Although Covid and the truckers’ convoy have been relegated to a part of our memories that many would prefer to keep locked up and left alone, there are unresolved issues. Few Canadians realize that there are four Canadians who are still locked up and being held without a trial and without bail on charges of “conspiracy to commit murder” in connection with protests at the Coutts border crossing in Alberta.

It has been well over 500 days since Chris Lysak, Chris Carbert, Anthony (Tony) Olienick, and Jerry Morin were arrested, yet no trial has taken place. The denial of bail to the four is particularly unusual.

“These are political prisoners, pure and simple” shared trucker Gord Magill in an opinion piece for Newsweek.

“They are being denied basic rights due to even the most violent of criminals because they are on the wrong side of the Trudeau government. They are being used as a fig leaf, the last shred of Trudeau’s legitimacy for invoking The Emergencies Act and for the massive overreach of freezing bank accounts and seizing assets that it incurred.”

So how can Christians evaluate a situation like this? We might have our sympathies and opinions, but there is a lot here we just don’t know and aren’t really in a position to evaluate. For example, we don’t know if Magill’s claims are true. We also don’t know if these four are guilty or innocent of the crimes they are charged with. But we can hear Solomon’s warning in Ecclesiastes 8:11 that “when the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, people’s hearts are filled with schemes to do wrong.” If these men are innocent, that they’ve spent more than a year in jail is outrageous. And if they are guilty, this delay in justice will only foster mischief.