It's been two years since Canada's Freedom Convoy protests. I have spent them in a Canadian jail. My name is Tony Olienick and I am a political prisoner. As the mandates and crushing restrictions against society wore on, I saw the trucker's Freedom Convoy birthed from the ashes of the remnants of Canada. Like so many others, I was filled with hope that someone was standing up for us.
I couldn't make it all the way to Ottawa, where the main gathering was, but I heard about another rally not far from me in the border town of Coutts. I headed there at 4 a.m. the next day with a group of friends.
It was a true freedom-loving experience. During the day, kids played street hockey and bands played music for the crowd. I met so many awesome people, even many Americans who we hung out with right on the border with Sweetgrass, Montana. Many of our American brothers and sisters came to Sweetgrass in support of us, and I met people who had traveled from as far away as Texas.
The love and affection and common humanity we shared in Coutts was one of the greatest experiences of my life. That all came to an end on the night of February 13, 2022, when a heavily militarized police force entered the village and a number of us were arrested.
I was very surprised to be arrested; I've never been in trouble with the law in my entire life, and I was simply exercising my right to protest. But I complied peacefully.
This was only the beginning of my troubles.
Along with three other men, I was denied bail and kept in jail for two years without trial. The four of us were charged with conspiracy to commit murder—an absolutely astonishing charge against four guys who went to a peaceful protest and hung out with a bunch of kids and fellow Canadians (these charges were dropped against two of my co-accused a couple of weeks ago).
Throughout this carceral purgatory, I have been witness to the overcrowding of jail facilities in Alberta. We are often three men to a cell with only one bunk bed, and I've spent many nights sleeping on the floor. I've spent long weeks in tiny cells with people going through extreme withdrawal from drug problems, and all of the bodily and mental excesses this entails. At least that was better than when I was kept in solitary confinement—a recognized form of torture—for at least 80 of the 730 days I have been in here.
I am told that one of my co-defendants, Jerry Morin, has also spent many periods in solitary confinement, though when not in solitary, he was mostly kept at a gang unit in Calgary with some truly unsavory convicted criminals and repeat offenders.
This is how Canada treats those who have yet to face trial and are guilty of nothing but peaceful protest.