Ottawa, Ontario: The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms is defending Nova Scotia trucker, Guy Meister, whose Charter Application seeking a stay of his criminal charges of mischief and resisting or wilfully obstructing police. Mr. Meister was arrested last year while peacefully protesting at the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa.
In court on Feb 24, 2023, Mr. Meister’s counsel, Brian Doody, argued that Mr. Meister was arbitrarily detained and arrested by the police in violation of his section 9 Charter rights and that therefore the criminal charge against him should be stayed.
Guy Meister went to Ottawa to protest the Canadian Government mandating Covid-19 vaccines for truckers and Canadians with serious consequences for those who did not comply.
Mr. Meister is a law-abiding citizen who did not want to be pressured by the Canadian government into taking a new Covid-19 vaccine with no long-term safety data. Mr. Meister simply believes in the freedom to choose what goes into one’s body without government interference -a right that has been enshrined in the Charter.
On the day of his arrest, he was sitting with his friend, Mike, in Mike’s rig near the intersection of Rideau and Sussex, in Ottawa. Suddenly, a group of tactical officers dressed in riot gear and carrying hammers and AR 15 assault rifles, encircled the rig. They had no ID numbers on their uniforms.
One of the tactical officers smashed the driver side window with a hammer and quickly arrested Mike who was covered in glass. Guy Meister was also arrested, and his hands were zip-tied behind his back.
After half an hour in the custody of these tactical officers, Mr. Meister was transferred to the custody of the Ottawa police who were also in the vicinity. The Ottawa police emptied his pockets and replaced the zip-tie with handcuffs that were so tight that his fingers started to go numb. Mr. Meister told the police that the handcuffs were painful and asked to have his hands cuffed in the front of his body. The police refused to loosen them and just retorted that “they are gonna hurt.”
He was detained in this condition with his arms handcuffed behind him in an unheated transport vehicle in the bitter cold without access to food, water, washrooms, medical care, or legal counsel for over two hours. He was then driven to a remote makeshift processing station. There were approximately eight other people in the police transport vehicle. They were taken one at a time into the processing trailer.
Those arrested were required to sign an undertaking in order to be released. They were not provided with the opportunity to speak with legal counsel.
Mr. Meister made his decision: His arms, shoulders and hands were aching. He was in extreme physical pain and he just wanted to get out, so without legal counsel, he signed the undertaking. The question, “don’t we even get to have a lawyer”, that he initially posed to the Ottawa police, was ignored.
Guy Meister’s ordeal lasted more than three hours. He was eventually released on to Conroy Road, where he met up again with his friend Mike. They tried to avoid the cold wind in a bus shelter while Mike called a friend to pick to them up.
Later, Mr. Meister discovered that his truck had been towed away. He recovered his truck after a week with its windows rolled down and the seat wet and full of snow. He needed a jump to start it. The cost to get his truck back was $1200.
“Mr. Meister, a hard-working Canadian trucker, was arrested for exercising his constitutional right to peacefully protest,” states lawyer Sayeh Hassan, who is supervising the Justice Centre-funded legal defense of dozens of Freedom Convoy participants. “It is imperative for Canadians to have the right and freedom to peacefully oppose government mandates without facing punishment, including arrest and criminal charges. Justice Rouleau correctly recognized that the majority of Freedom Convoy protestors were exercising their fundamental, democratic rights. A stay of charges in this case would send a clear message that the rights of Canadians to peacefully protest is and will be protected.”
Updated March 3, 2023
Freedom Convoy Trucker, Guy Meister, Fighting for Stay of Criminal Charges
Epilogue
Fate has a way of snatching people from their ordinary existence when they least expect it and propelling them into history. Never in his wildest dreams did Guy Meister envision himself driving his rig to Ottawa to join thousands of truckers from across the nation to take a stand against the vaccine mandates. Never did he imagine that he would visit a local Ottawa art gallery, a year after the freedom convoy was forced from Parliament Hill by Justin Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act, and see a photo of his rig prominently featured on the wall.
Before the Freedom Convoy, Guy enjoyed his quiet life with his wife Charlene, in their 1880 farmhouse in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia. He was content to build and drive race cars with his friend Malcolm in his down time as a long-haul driver. He never expected to join the “Freedom Convoy”.
But join he did. After doing extensive research it was Charlene and their 3 children who drew the line in the sand and told Guy that they had no intention of taking the COVID vaccine. He respected his wife’s opinion because of the extensive research that she does before making important decisions. Their daughter Amy is a nurse, on her way to becoming a nurse practitioner, and she didn’t want to take the shot either.
Then news of a convoy to Ottawa started spreading like wildfire. Guy spent an afternoon welding at his friend’s house, when his friend’s teasing about joining the Freedom Convoy started to make perfect sense. Guy now believed in the cause, and he strongly believed in taking a stand for the things he believed in. How could he not be part of the convoy when his friend kept pointing out that Guy’s own truck was the exact same replica of the truck that was featured rig in the 1978 movie “Convoy”?
He called his wife and she told him to go. He still hesitated. It was a big decision to make that had financial implications. On the drive back home, he left it to providence: he figured that he would go if his little rig would start, and he wouldn’t go if she didn’t. She started right up at 3pm that winter afternoon and he left for Ottawa at 6pm the same evening.
Charlene posted a photo of the soon-to-be-famous truck on Facebook and told all her friends and family, “Guy is off to join the convoy to Ottawa!”
Now a photo of a rig from Nova Scotia has its rightful place on an Ottawa art gallery wall, immortalizing the role the little rig played in Canadian history. The thousands upon thousands of Canadians lining the freeways and overpasses of Canada, waving their Canadian flags with renewed pride, as the truckers drove by on their way to Parliament Hill. The truckers took the lead and thousands upon thousands of Canadians joined them in the freezing cold with the now historic message to governments – No More Forced Vaccinations, We Are Free People!
