Any Canadian donor who gave the smallest bit ot the Freedom Convoy demonstrations are now at risk of having all of their financial assets placed under a governmental freeze by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s extended use of the Emergencies Act powers.
Isabelle Jacques, the Department of Finance Assistant Deputy Minister, gave their testimony after being called to the Canadian Parliament this past Tuesday. They stated that anyone who donated to the demonstrators of the convoy after Trudeau’s emergency declaration from the 15th of February is currently a potential target for financial penalties. They went on to state that law enforcement has stopped putting in requests to freeze bank accounts ever since the last of the protesters were officially cleared from Ottawa’s Parliament Hill this past Monday, as reported by the National Post.
Officials with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have outright denied the claim that they were using the user data obtained from crowdfunding projects such as GiveSendGo to highlight and then target the supporters of the Freedom Convoy. Officials with the RCMP issued a statement on Monday that claimed that they have only given recommendations for action to be carried out against key figurehead people that were identified throughout the protests and those demonstrators who entrenched and refused to leave in the wake of the dispersal orders from police.
Jacques also testified that penalties had been slammed against a total of 206 accounts. MPs who were extremely critical of Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act pushed back against the testimony from Jacques by stating that the bank accounts of Canadians were continued to be frozen.
“Some people’s accounts are being frozen right now,” NDP MP Daniel Blaikie stated to the assistant deputy Finance minister. “There’s the appearance that some people feel their accounts are being frozen as a result of the emergency orders, in some cases that does not cohere with what we’re hearing from government.”
Philip Lawrence, one Conservative MP, stated that the wording utilized in the Emergencies Act gives the federal government extremely far-reaching authority to overstep and freeze the accounts of anyone who was even tangentially involved in the Freedom Convoy. “The de-banking provisions are so broad, that literally a clerk at a Kwik-E-Mart who sold a propane canister to a protester could have his accounts frozen,” claimed Lawrence.
“When you freeze someone’s bank account, you’re effectively removing them from society,” he stated.
As groups of these Canadian lawmakers continue to claim that Trudeau’s administration was overreaching when dealing with the protesters, some of them are pushing the prime minister to go even further beyond. Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson put forth the idea this week that any assets taken from the Freedom Convoy, which would include cranes, trucks, and trailers, should be sold off with the revenue going to the city. Watson stated:
You (protesters) have disrupted our city, you’ve hurt our small business community, and this is costing a small fortune for the taxpayers of Ottawa. That’s one of the reasons why under the Emergencies Act, I’ve asked our solicitor and our city manager: How can we keep the tow trucks and the campers and the vans and everything else that we’ve confiscated, and sell those pieces of equipment to help recoup some of the costs that our taxpayers are absorbing? So that’s one of the provisions of the Emergencies Act, and we have been a beneficiary of the Emergencies Act. As they debated on the Hill, I asked the members of Parliament to consider [how] it’s helped us a lot on things like confiscating vehicles, not having to swear in peace officers through the RCMP, and so many other things that have been very helpful over the course of this period.