The prosecutorial record Spratt asked to see: sourced, documented, fact by fact
Michael Spratt’s complaint about me in his October 2 column ends with an invitation: if I think Moiz Karimjee’s prosecutorial discretion has been inconsistent, show the inconsistency.
Spratt quotes a post I made on X, calling Karimjee a “partisan extremist” who was “famous for dropping charges against Hamas activists.” I deleted that post because it compressed a long record into a few words, and a few words let Spratt pretend the argument was about Karimjee’s religion. It was not. I made no claim about his faith and none about what is in his heart. My claim concerns his decisions and actions, which are on the public record and can be verified. Here is that record, with a source for every fact.
Start with “partisan.” Elections Canada records show that Karimjee made 29 donations to the Liberal Party of Canada between 2013 and 2019, totalling $17,176.24, and was listed as an attendee at a 2017 “donor appreciation” reception with Justin Trudeau, reserved for people giving at least $1,500 a year — as reported by True North (July 6, 2022) and the Western Standard (July 6, 2022). He was a serving Ontario Crown throughout — confirmed by Ontario public sector salary disclosure records, which list him as an Assistant Crown Attorney from 2003 through 2023 and Deputy Crown Attorney in 2024, and by his University of Ottawa Faculty of Law profile (called to the Ontario bar in 1999; more than twenty years in the Ottawa Crown Attorney’s office). Karimjee then took carriage of the most politically charged prosecution in the country, against the leaders of a protest aimed squarely at the prime minister he had been funding. That is the basis for the word: the donations and the timing. Whether that makes him partisan is a judgment. He should not be surprised that anyone used the word. He should be surprised nobody in his office thought it was a problem.
Then there is how the bail phase was run. On May 19, 2022, at Lich’s bail review, Karimjee lost an evidentiary ruling and asked, mid-hearing, that Justice Kevin Phillips recuse himself. The judge declined. (True North, May 20, 2022.) In June, Lich posed for a photograph at an awards gala with a fellow convoy organizer she was under a court order not to contact. A Canada-wide warrant was issued, and police arrested her in Medicine Hat. At the hearing that followed, Karimjee called the contact a “flagrant” breach and argued for detention; on July 8, a justice of the peace ordered her held. (CBC News, July 5, 2022.) On July 26, Justice Andrew Goodman found that the order was “clearly inappropriate” and released her. (Global News.)
That same week, our reporter Sheila Gunn Reid posted a reference to Lich’s sister during the bail hearing, a detail that members of the public had been posting since March (screenshots of those public posts and of Gunn Reid’s deletion tweet are available from the author). She deleted it within the hour. The next afternoon, the court’s trial coordinator emailed Karimjee, as Crown on the Lich file, and Lich’s lawyers to set a contempt proceeding before Justice Goodman two days later. (Copy of that email available from the author.) I do not know who asked for that proceeding. What the documents show is that the matter went to a different Crown, Malcolm Savage, who wrote on August 15 that “the Crown has declined to pursue contempt proceedings.” (Copy of that letter available from the author.) Once the file left Karimjee’s hands, it was dropped quickly.
Then the co-accused, Chris Barber, whose phone contents, private texts included, were filed in open court. Karimjee swore an affidavit that he “did not expect all the text messages on Chris Barber’s phone would be attached to the report.” (Rebel News, March 2023.) That’s some mistake.
By the time the trial opened in September 2023, the Crowns were Tim Radcliffe and Siobhain Wetscher. Karimjee was not on it. (C2C Journal, November 2024. The reason for the change is not public.) I do not know how that came about. I said publicly, after the bail phase, that his conduct was out of control. That is my opinion of the record above. Readers can look at the same record.
Back to my tweet.
On November 18, 2024, a march organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement set off from the Human Rights Monument in Ottawa. Police said organizers had been warned “multiple times” to stay on the sidewalk and not block traffic. Five people were charged with mischief, obstructing police and participating in an unlawful assembly. (Ottawa Citizen, May 12, 2025; CBC News; Ottawa Life, May 16, 2025.)
Spratt was defence counsel in some of these cases, as he discloses, and calls his clients pro-Palestinian protesters at a “peace demonstration.” I have no evidence that they belong to Hamas. But the march was organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement, which marked October 7, 2023, the day Hamas murdered some 1,200 people, with a statement reading “Palestine lives! The resistance is alive!” (as documented by NGO Monitor.) Hamas has been a listed terrorist entity in Canada since 2002. A protest run by a movement that cheered the massacre is a pro-Hamas protest, whatever its participants call it. Spratt calls it a peace demonstration. I’ll let readers decide.
Six months later, Karimjee, by then Deputy Crown Attorney, stayed every charge against all five. The terms were a $500 donation to a food bank and a letter to the court. He told the court the accused had “an incomplete and inaccurate understanding about the right to protest being absolute” and that “change cannot be pursued by breaching criminal law.” (Ottawa Life, May 16, 2025.) The pro-Hamas Palestinian Youth Movement announced the result as “Victory: all charges dropped!”
The same Crown’s office asked for seven years in prison for Tamara Lich, and eight for her co-accused Chris Barber, in a case it also prosecuted as mischief. (Each ultimately received an 18-month conditional sentence in October 2025.) So the group that blocked a street in Ottawa was sent home for the price of a dinner. The other group was pursued for nearly four years. I call that two-tier justice. Spratt, whose clients were on the favourable tier, sees it differently, but a defence lawyer praising the prosecutor who went easy on his clients is not a neutral witness.
His counterexamples do not help him. David Henschel, a 58-year-old employee of a Swiss munitions company, punched a pro-Palestinian protester outside a defence trade show in Ottawa in May 2024 after she told him he was “actively supporting genocide.” One blow; he pleaded guilty. (CBC News, July 22, 2026.) Karimjee asked for two years less a day in prison, three years of probation and an order barring him from Canada. When Justice Norman Boxall imposed a discharge instead, Karimjee called it “demonstrably unfit” and appealed. (The Canadian Press, July 22, 2026.) Spratt offers this as even-handedness. Set it beside the stayed charges: the man who hit a protester was pursued for prison; the protesters who blocked a street and obstructed police were asked for a donation and a letter.
Then the hijab case. Spratt says Karimjee’s withdrawal of the assault charge against a 74-year-old Jewish woman shows he does not play favourites. First, in explaining the withdrawal, Karimjee told the court the complainant had been chanting “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free,” which he said could reasonably be read as “a call for genocide of the Jewish people,” adding that “anyone chants this at his or her own peril.” So the prosecutor that Spratt defends has himself put on the record that the chants at these rallies can be read as genocidal. Second, when that happened, the CBC quoted a lawyer calling it “dangerous” for Crowns to be “wading into what slogans mean.” That lawyer was Spratt. So he thought Karimjee’s discretion was fair game for public criticism when the beneficiary was an elderly Jewish woman. He finds it unacceptable when the beneficiaries are his own clients.
Ottawa police recorded Jews as the city’s most targeted group for hate crimes in 2024 (113 incidents, the most of any group) and 2025 (73 incidents, again the most of any group). Against that backdrop, the Crown’s office that spared no effort over four years against the trucker convoy sent a protest organized by a movement that cheered the October 7 massacre home with a slap on the wrist. I deleted a tweet. I do not retract the argument because the record supports it. Spratt’s tone-policing and his suggestion that criticizing the double standard is a dog whistle answer none of it.
Ezra Levant is the publisher of Rebel News and a former Alberta lawyer. Tamara Lich works for Rebel News.
