Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland in a confidential videoconference with bankers said she “couldn’t agree more” with a recommendation that cabinet deploy armed soldiers against the Freedom Convoy. “It is a threat to our democracy,” said Freeland: “All options are on the table.”

Cabinet’s “central concern” in freezing Freedom Convoy accounts was that angry depositors might yell at bankers, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said yesterday. Freeland elaborated on worries she raised at a secret February 19 cabinet meeting about bank employees’ well-being: “My central concern was, you know, that some poor teller not get yelled at.”

Perrin Beatty, a former Conservative minister who wrote the Emergencies Act, privately warned cabinet “lots of long term issues” would follow its use of the law against the Freedom Convoy. “I am worried,” Beatty texted the finance minister: “I am particularly concerned about the radicalization of people who would normally be law-abiding.”

Small business confidence is falling amid fears of a Christmas recession, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business said yesterday. A members’ questionnaire found “the 12-month index is the lowest recorded since 2009 outside of recessions.”

Exports of seal products have fallen to a pittance amid international protests, the Department of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The Atlantic seal industry once worth millions has seen exports of a few thousand dollars a year: “It’s not a lot.”

The Commons ethics committee for the second time in seven weeks has censured the RCMP as evasive and uncooperative. The latest reprimand came over the Mounties’ undisclosed use of spyware: “The committee would like to note the lack of cooperation shown by the RCMP.”

Defence Minister Anita Anand yesterday said she never considered deploying tanks against the Freedom Convoy. The remarks followed disclosure of a text exchange in which two cabinet ministers joked about “how many tanks” it would take to clear protesters off Parliament Hill: “We were not considering deploying tanks in any number.”

A Senate committee last night began rewriting cabinet’s latest attempt at regulating legal internet content. Members of the Senate transport and communications committee proposed 100 separate amendments to Bill C-11: “There are numerous sources of uncertainty related to this bill.”

Attorney General David Lametti yesterday said he was so frightened by the Freedom Convoy he left his downtown Ottawa condo and thought it unsafe to walk the streets. “It only takes one person to recognize me,” he said: “I felt personally threatened.”

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino relied on allegations from political aides in accusing the Freedom Convoy of hooliganism, records show. One claim by Mendicino that “families could not drop off their kids to daycare” reflected a personal complaint from his chief of staff: “I don’t even feel safe.”

Former public safety minister Ralph Goodale in an email to cabinet said he suspected the Freedom Convoy was a U.S. neo-Nazi movement. The finding contradicted police memos denying protesters were violent extremists: “It may even have U.S. roots.”

The Commons yesterday passed a private Conservative bill to save employee pensions in cases of corporate bankruptcy. The bill passed by unanimous vote, 318 to 0: “This will force CEOs to invest enough money today to secure the future and the retirement of their workers.”

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s office secretly distributed a blacklist of 201 trucking companies that participated in the Freedom Convoy, records show. Staff included a blacklist of 45 firms that received the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy: “Please find attached an excel sheet detailing which companies whose trucks are participating in Ottawa convoy.”

A Freedom Convoy lawyer yesterday alleged Liberal Party operatives paraded Nazi and Confederate flags at last winter’s protest to discredit demonstrators. Libel counsel for one man named as a provocateur said their client was neither a Liberal nor in Ottawa at the time: “It was all over the news.”