Canada’s ‘Freedom Convoy’ leaders face up to eight years in prison

The leaders of Canada’s “Freedom Convoy” are facing up to eight years in prison, an “abusive” sentencing recommendation critics are ripping as “political vengeance.”

Tamara Lich and Chris Barber sat in an Ottawa courtroom for their sentencing hearings this week after being found guilty in April of mischief for organizing the trucker protest against then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s ultra-strict vaccine mandate.

The protest paralyzed the Great White North’s capital for three weeks in 2022.

The Crown is seeking seven years for Lich, 51, of Alberta, and eight for Barber, of Saskatchewan — who was also found guilty of counseling others to disobey a court order.

“It seems like a considerable overreach,” Lich told The Post Friday, during a stop on her three-day drive back to Alberta. “They’re trying to deter others, I believe, from ever protesting something like this again.”

Prosecutors are also pushing to seize Barber’s truck, “Big Red,” which was used in the protest — through a forfeiture order they filed three years after the fact.

“I’ve owned this truck for 21 years,” said Barber, 50, who runs a family trucking business and co-owns “Big Red” with his son. “This is how I make a living. And the Crown wants to remove that from me and destroy it, which is absolutely disheartening to see that they will go to such a level of vileness.”

“It’s just this vindictive vendetta of pettiness,” Lich added.

Barber’s lawyer slammed the Crown’s sentencing recommendation as “excessive, abusive and unconstitutional.”

Both Lich and Barber have been under bail conditions for the past three and a half years.

“This is political vengeance, not actual justice, and it’s why trust in our institutions is dwindling,” fumed Conservative Party Deputy Leader Melissa Lantsman.

The convoy started in revolt of Trudeau’s vaccine mandate for US-Canada cross-border truckers — but quickly grew into a mass demonstration against the government’s excessive COVID-19 restrictions.

“The Freedom convoy is peacefully protesting the harsh policies of far-left lunatic Justin Trudeau who has destroyed Canada with insane COVID mandates,” President Trump said at the time.

Lich and Barber are set to be sentenced on Oct. 7, with their lawyers pushing for absolute discharges, which would absolve them of any criminal record.