‘Freedom Convoy’ organizer Chris Barber suing Ottawa for freezing accounts

A main organizer of the “Freedom Convoy” is suing the federal government for using the Emergencies Act to freeze his bank accounts, arguing it breached his Charter rights to protest COVID-19 mandates.

Chris Barber, who owns a trucking company in southwestern Saskatchewan, filed last week a statement of claim in Court of King’s Bench in Saskatoon, claiming the federal government’s unprecedented move to invoke the act constituted an abuse of power.

“This disruption deprived (Barber and his wife) of the ability to conduct basic financial transactions and live normal lives, leading to severe inconvenience, hardship, embarrassment, exclusion from modern society, and damaged personal and business relationships,” says the claim, which also names his wife and trucking business as plaintiffs.

None of the allegations have been proven in court.

The federal government has not filed a statement of defence. A spokesperson said in an email, ‘We will review the claims in order to determine next steps.”

Barber and Tamara Lich, who is from Medicine Hat, Alta., spearheaded protests in opposition to COVID-19 vaccine mandates that gridlocked downtown Ottawa and key border points in 2022.

The two are on trial for mischief and other charges. The case has been in an Ottawa court for months.

Barber’s lawsuit comes weeks after Federal Court Judge Richard Mosley ruled it was unreasonable for the federal government to use the Emergencies Act to quell the protests.

The judge said invocation of the act led to the infringement of constitutional rights. He specifically cited a federal failure to require that “some objective standard be satisfied” before bank accounts were frozen, concluding it breached the Charter prohibition against unreasonable search or