Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland told a secret cabinet meeting that Canadians with bank accounts frozen under the Emergencies Act should be denied their money unless they first reported to police. “Banks were pleased,” said confidential minutes..“Minister of finance reported on a conversation she had with chief executive officers at the major banks,” said minutes of the Monday, February 21 meeting. “Banks were pleased that the government was working on a plan that would see individuals with their bank accounts frozen report to police prior to the bank to have their accounts unfrozen.”.According to Blacklock's Reporter, the suggestion was not brought in force. The reference is contained in 25 pages of censored minutes of the meeting disclosed by the Public Order Emergency Commission..Freeland ordered accounts frozen Feb. 14 under the Emergencies Act. Some $7.8 million held in 267 bank and credit union accounts and 170 bitcoin wallets was frozen, by official estimate. The order was lifted on Feb. 23..Accounts were frozen without notice and regardless of whether account holders were charged or convicted of any crime. Records show RCMP emailed a blacklist of Freedom Convoy sympathizers to lobbyists like the Mutual Fund Dealers Association for distribution to members..One Crown bank, Farm Credit Canada of Regina, also ordered employees to secretly record the names of customers who expressed support for the convoy. “If you become aware of a customer’s involvement report it immediately,” Farm Credit’s chief operating officer wrote in a Feb. 23 email obtained under Access To Information..Minister Freeland at the time claimed the account freeze was narrow and targeted. “Regarding the accounts that are frozen, it was an action taken to end the blockades and the occupation,” Freeland told reporters on Feb. 21..“It was not a permanent action,” said Freeland. “We have no intention or right to take people’s money. It was really to end these illegal occupations and blockades.”.“The RCMP has given to the financial institutions names of leaders and organizers of the protests and of people whose trucks were part of occupations and blockades,” said Freeland. “That is the only information, according to the RCMP, that the RCMP has given to financial institutions.”.“Anyone who is concerned their accounts may have been frozen because of their participation in these illegal blockades and occupation, the way to get your account unfrozen is to stop being part of the blockade and occupation,” said Freeland..Critics opposed the account freeze as federal overreach. Senator Clément Gignac (Que.), a former vice president of the National Bank, on Feb. 21 called it “an important precedent and possibly a dangerous one.”.“There seems to be a significant lack of clarity on the parameters used by authorities to come up with this blacklist, and above all a lack of guidelines for financial institutions to unfreeze these accounts,” Gignac told the Senate.
