Court of Appeal Reinstates Multiple Criminal Charges Against Former MPP Randy Hillier in Freedom Convoy Case.
https://breaking-news.ca/court-of-appeal-reinstates-multiple-criminal-charges-against-former-mpp-randy-hillier-in-freedom-convoy-case/
The criminal case against former Ontario MPP Randy Hillier related to his involvement in the Freedom Convoy protest is set to proceed after an appeal court overturned a previous decision that had stayed the proceedings.
Hillier faces several charges, including two counts of mischief, three counts of counselling to commit an indictable offence, three counts of obstructing a peace officer, and one count of assaulting a peace officer. The Crown was proceeding by indictable offence, and a four-week judge-and-jury trial was scheduled to begin on January 27, 2024. The Crown was seeking a three and a half year prison sentence for Hillier; however, the trial never took place and was delayed multiple times for various reasons.
In August 2024, Hillier filed an application claiming that the prolonged delays in his case violated his Charter rights. The court heard his arguments on October 3, 2024, and Ontario Superior Court of Justice Keery McVey ultimately agreed, determining that most of the delays were not the defence’s fault.
McVey ruled on November 14, 2024, that delays in Hillier’s prosecution violated his right to be tried within a reasonable time under Section 11(b) of the
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In a 28-page decision, McVey concluded that the 34-month delay from Hillier’s initial charges in March 2022 exceeded the 30-month ceiling established by the Supreme Court in R v. Jordan.
The court determined that only 65 days of delay could be attributed to Hillier, mainly due to his initial counsel’s refusal to attend a pretrial conference during a pending change of venue motion. While the Crown argued that a 2023 Supreme Court decision in R v. Haevischer caused unavoidable delays in Hillier’s case, the court ruled that it accounted for only 40 days of exceptional circumstances. Justice McVey criticised the Crown for failing to address other delays, including the rescheduling of Hillier’s change of venue motion. After these two deductions, Justice McVey calculated the net delay at 31 months and 13 days, exceeding the 30-month limit.
In a ruling released Friday, March 20, 2026, the Court of Appeal for Ontario determined that a lower court judge erred in staying the charges due to delays. The appeal court found that an additional 93 days should have been classified as exceptional circumstances, related to the rescheduling of the venue motion following a new Supreme Court ruling affecting such applications.
The appellate decision also noted that some of the delay was unavoidable, stating there was little the Crown could have done to secure an earlier hearing date and that prosecutors were found to have taken reasonable steps by accepting one of the earliest available court dates.