Right Wing Canadians No Longer Trust Their Institutions.

A lawyer representing clients whose bank accounts were blocked as a result of the trucker convoy protest in Ottawa believes the measure has had a substantial impact on his clients’ lives and will lead to a loss of trust in Canada’s institutions. Six of Keith Wilson’s clients have their bank accounts returned following bans ranging from one or two days to more than a week, according to the lawyer. The national police force offered banks a list of names of persons directly involved in the Ottawa protests, according to RCMP Superintendent Denis Beaudoin, who testified before the House of Commons finance committee on March 7. Personal information from the police database, such as whether demonstrators had been suspects of previous crimes or had past “dealings” with police, was included in the material, which resulted in the freezing of 257 accounts…

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Canadian Banks Froze Accounts Based On Their “Own Determinations” & Beyond Canadian Police Provided List.

The Canadian Bankers Association told a parliamentary committee that during the public order emergency, its members froze Freedom Convoy protesters’ bank accounts not only to comply with RCMP disclosures, but also on “their own determinations.” “We primarily relied on the names provided by the RCMP,” Angelina Mason, general counsel and vice-president of the Canadian Bankers Association (CBA), testified before the Finance Committee on March 7. “There were obligations under the order separate from that, that required banks to make their own determinations,” she said. Mason stated that banks did not depend on leaked lists of convoy contributors’ information. Around Feb. 13, the crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo, which had raised over $10 million for the Freedom Convoy, was hacked, and the donor information was published to several media sources. “What banks were required to do, however, was to monitor their accounts using…

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