One of the organizers of the convoy protest
that snarled downtown Ottawa in 2022 faces a Canada-wide warrant after failing to appear in court earlier last week.
James Bauder, a 55-year-old from Calgary, was charged with mischief to obstruct property, disobeying a lawful court order and obstructing/restricting a peace officer in February 2022.
Bauder is
the founder of Canada Unity
, an organization that gathered signatures for a petition that called for governments to end all vaccine mandates, passports and other “discriminatory regulations and initiatives” and for a “cease and desist order” to be issued to elected members of parliament.
According to posts on his social media account, Bauder fled to the U.S. earlier this summer and filed an asylum application on Aug. 5. He
claims he is being politically persecuted
and is raising money for his legal fees. His GIveSendGo campaign has raised US$13,040 as of Sunday, Aug. 31.
Court documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen showed that Justice Kevin Phillips issued Bauder a summons to appear in court earlier this month.
However, Bauder did not appear in court on Tuesday, Aug. 26 and again on Wednesday, Aug. 27, which prompted Phillips to issue a warrant for his arrest.
Lawrence Greenspon, who is on retainer for Bauder, told the judge that the matter should be adjourned until Bauder’s asylum application could be heard in U.S. federal court, or the charges should be stayed.
According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website, the government will assume someone has abandoned their asylum application if they leave the U.S. without first obtaining advance parole.
Court documents and social media posts show Bauder has retained Kolken Law to represent him in the U.S. Kolken Law is an immigration law firm based in Buffalo, N.Y. specializing in all areas of immigration and nationality law.
Bid to move trial previously denied
Bauder previously
tried to move his court case out of Ottawa
to Brockville or North Bay before he fled to the U.S.
In a self-represented court hearing on Feb. 3, 2023, Bauder claimed that he would not get a fair trial in Ottawa because he participated in a “high-profile, highly politicized, lawful protest directed at the federal government in Ottawa.”
He also said it would be hard to find jurors who had not been exposed to the media coverage the convoy received.
“(T)he character and personality types in Ottawa are government workers and the convoy was a protest against government overreach,” he said.
“These government employees are not my peers.”
Justice Charles Hackland denied Bauder’s request, saying there hasn’t been a lot of media coverage focused on Bauder’s involvement in the convoy.
“What there was tended to simply report what he had said from time to time. I seriously doubt that Mr. Bauder is well known to Ottawa residents. The adverse coverage in the media that Mr. Bauder complains of is directed at the Freedom Convoy, not at Mr. Bauder specifically. There is nothing about the media coverage that would make it unlikely that Mr. Bauder would receive a fair trial in this community,” Hackland
wrote in a decision published in February 2023.
The judge also called Bauder’s claims about public service workers “baseless.”
“I find that Mr. Bauder’s concerns about the attitudes of persons employed by the federal government, is baseless in fact and boils down to his concern that most Ottawa residents do not share his political views. There is no right to be tried by persons who share one’s political views,” the decision read.
Hackland said there is a legitimate concern about securing an unbiased jury because a large number of Ottawa residents who work or live in downtown were injured or suffered because of the convoy’s actions.
Protesters blocked neighbourhoods and kept residents awake at night, Hackland wrote.
Residents were also subjected to large amounts of gasoline fumes and many were subjected to harassment or had their business obstructed, the judge added.
However, Hackland said Bauder is not on trial for his politics but for his alleged criminal conduct.
“He will be tried, and a verdict will be rendered, based on the evidence before the court,” the decision concluded.
“We do not as a society expect our jurors to be a tabula rasa devoid of any political views.
“Rather, and with the assistance of robust procedural safeguards, we trust jurors to leave their views at the door of the deliberation room and decide the case on the evidence, as per the trial judge’s instructions.
“There is no reason to think that this will not be the case in Mr. Bauder’s trial.
“In this case, having the matter tried in Ottawa complies with the local venue rule and serves the interests of justice by ensuring that the community alleged to have been impacted by the criminal conduct sees justice being done.”
What’s next?
Bauder’s trial is currently scheduled for three weeks later this year.
However, he maintains that he will not be going back to Canada.
In a social media post on Saturday, he urged supporters to send letters to U.S. President Donald Trump to intervene in his asylum application and “(ensure) his protection in the United States.”
It is unclear whether the Crown will request an international extradition warrant for Bauder’s arrest.
Other key figures in the convoy like Tamara Lich and Chris Barber were both found guilty for mischief back in April. The Crown sought prison sentences of seven years for Lich and eight years for Barber. Their sentencing hearing is scheduled for Oct. 7.
— With files from Blair Crawford
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