Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said the invocation of the Emergencies Act was needed to protect Canada's economy from the impacts of the Freedom Convoy, calling the freezing of protestors' bank accounts 'economic incentives' for them to leave.."The danger wasn't just immediate damage and harm, and 'oh, this plant closed for four days of operation.' The danger was doing long-term and possibly irreparable harm to our trading relationship with the United States," Freeland testified during the Public Order Emergency Commission on Thursday..Freeland described to the commission the "worrying" impacts the trucker protest had on Canada's economy. During the three-week protest, the Detroit-Windsor border crossing had been blocked, stopping vital auto-manufacturing parts from being traded..Transport Canada estimated that the blockade at the Ambassador Bridge, stopped an estimated $2.3 billion in cross-border trade..Emails and text messages entered into evidence at the commission showed was concerning to steel and auto-manufacturing industry leaders, as well as Canadian bank CEOs..A readout of a February 13 phone call showed one bank CEO said Canada had been labelled a "joke" by American investors.."I had one investor say, 'I won't invest another red cent in your banana republic in Canada,'" Freeland said. "That adds to an already tough investment perspective.".In one email with top government officials on February 10, Freeland said the White House was “very, very, very worried” and that “if this is not sorted out in the next 12 hours, all of their northeastern car plants will shut down.”.Freeland said the severity of the situation became apparent when US President Joe Biden's senior economic advisor Brian Deese, who is normally hard to get ahold of, requested a call with her.."That was a dangerous moment for Canada, I felt. That one conversation was a seminal one for me. And it was a moment when I realized as a country, somehow, we had to find a way to bring this to an end.".Freeland described the freezing of protestor's bank accounts as "economic incentives" for people to leave the protests. She claimed to "regret that it happened to those people," but added she weighed it against "what I really believe was the tens to hundreds of thousands of Canadian jobs that we protected.".Freeland said Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), which monitors money laundering and terrorist financing, could not be used to examine the crowdfunding and payment platforms that were central to the Freedom Convoy's success.."The FINTRAC monitoring authorities were appropriate for a 20th century economy, but not for a 21st century economy," she said, calling it a "blind spot.".Freeland says passing government legislation to deal with protestors' bank accounts and their online fundraising would have taken too long.."Given the snowballing, exponentially damaging impact on the economy, the legislative timeline was not appropriate to the scale and speed of the damage being done," she said.
