As they defend against a class-action lawsuit brought forth by Ottawa residents, lawyers for the Freedom Convoy organizers are arguing that the Ottawa Police Services Board should be the ones to pay for potential damages, as protestors were merely following police direction when parking their vehicles in downtown Ottawa.
“None of the defendants … had originally expected to park any vehicles on the streets of downtown Ottawa as part of the protest,” read documents filed in the Superior Court of Ontario by the lawyer for the defendants, which include organizers Chris Barber, Tamara Lich, and other participants.
The documents, submitted by defence lawyer James Manson and obtained by The National Post, claim it had been expected that the Convoy vehicles would park in “staging areas” away from the downtown core selected by the Ottawa police, and that other forms of transportation would then bring the protestors from the staging areas to Parliament Hill.
Back in February 2022, as the trucker protest against COVID-19 vaccine mandates and pandemic restrictions was ongoing, downtown Ottawa resident Zexi Li and other downtown residents and businesses launched a $290-million class-action lawsuit against the protest organizers and participants.
‘Adhere to the Police Plan’
The recent court filing say that the Convoy organizers initially expected to park their vehicles on the Kichi Zībī Mīkan avenue, which was then called the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway, and the Sir George Etienne Cartier Parkway. The filing claims that while those two parkways could accommodate around 2,500 tractor-trailers, Wellington Street in front of Parliament Hill could only hold a “small number of trucks.”
The document says Ottawa police provided detailed maps and instructions on where the trucks should park and how they should arrive at the staging locations, and that all protestors were “expecting to adhere to the police plan.” But the filing notes that the Ottawa police modified the plan on Jan. 28, the day the trucks began arriving in the city, instead directing the protestors to park their trucks ”all over” the downtown core.
The court filing further claims that once the trucks had settled into their locations, nobody from the Ottawa police directed the trucks to relocate until the federal government had invoked the Emergencies Act on Feb. 14 to end the protest. The Ottawa Police Service was overwhelmed by the number of vehicles arriving in Ottawa and failed to “adequately plan for the protest,” the document adds.
On Feb. 5, Superior Court Justice Calum MacLeod struck down a defence motion to dismiss the class-action lawsuit against the protestors, arguing there was sufficient evidence to conclude the plaintiffs had “difficulty accessing their properties and that business was disrupted, reservations cancelled, and revenue negatively impacted” by the protestors.
