MPP Randy Hillier Charged For Supporting The Freedom Convoy

This morning, the Ontario Police had Independent MPP Randy Hillier surrender to them on charges relating to his attendance at the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa during January and February.

There are nine charges which are:

• Two counts of mischief or obstructing property exceeding $5,000.

• One count of assaulting a peace or public officer.

• Two counts of obstructing or resisting a public officer.

• One count of obstructing or resisting someone aiding a public or peace officer.

• Three counts of counseling an uncommitted indictable offense, two of them considered mischief.

Hillier complied, but disputes the legitimacy of the charges, and is now facing a bail hearing to see whether or not he has to stay in prison, pending a trial.

So far this looks like this is just an attempt for Ottawa Police to make the Freedom Convoy look bad by going after a politician who was in attendance. They are doing the same thing with two of the convoy organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber. 

The strategy from Ontario Police seems to be to slap charges on people associated with the convoy in order to make the public retroactively see the peaceful protest in a negative light, despite the local Ottawa Police and legacy media having to do multiple corrections on allegations against the protest. 

In the case of Randy Hillier what is particularly unethical is charging him with “assaulting a peace of public officer” without releasing any footage of the instance in question. If Hillier did assault someone of course he should be held accountable, but without video footage in an area around Parliament drenched in cameras it makes it hard to believe he made aggressive contact or intimidating actions towards anyone. 

The silver-lining with the Ontario government sending the police after MPP Randy Hillier is the indication that the government decisively lost against the message of the peaceful Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa. They are now trying to fight back against the positive messaging of the convoy by getting even more aggressive and trying to scare or shame people away from associating with the truckers and convoy supporters, who are still rallying all over Canada.