A tale of two convoy trials

The three of them once stood side-by-side as road captains of a historic protest.

Now, more than two years after thousands of honking vehicles rolled through Ottawa in what became known as the Freedom Convoy, two narratives are emerging in court — potentially splitting the fates of Pat King, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber.

Factually, they are separate cases. King is being tried alone, whereas Lich and Barber are co-accused in their trial.

And while the two trials share many similarities, including the nature of the charges and some of the fundamental legal arguments being mounted, they've also played out in markedly different ways.

Whereas the joint trial of Lich and Barber drags on, punctuated by starts and stops that have forced the duo to make multiple trips back to Ottawa, the case involving King is more or less running smoothly and on schedule.

Key to both trials is less about what Lich, Barber and King did. The evidence, particularly the statements they made in early 2022, were well-documented on social media and are largely self-explanatory.

At issue instead is the legality of each of their actions. And in both trials, the Crown argues they crossed the line.

But how prosecutors go about making that argument — and how they've been countered by the defence teams — has varied between the two trials.

Underpinning those differences is the fact that one case is better funded, more closely scrutinized and arguably more symbolic than the other.

For many convoy supporters, the case against Lich and Barber is about ideas — that the government, in their view, is trying to persecute an entire movement after already trampling the constitutional rights of Canadians when it invoked the Emergencies Act and arrested more than 200 people.

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