A band of Freedom Convoy protesters is in Federal Court demanding cabinet disclose documents justifying Emergencies Act police powers. The crackdown including the freezing of trucking companies’ bank accounts was politically motivated, lawyers wrote the Court: "There is no national emergency."
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday justified a bank freeze against Freedom Convoy protesters as narrow and focused. However one Liberal-appointed senator, a former banker, complained the freeze left protesters without legal fees to defend themselves against police charges: "There seems to be a significant lack of clarity on the parameters used by authorities to come up with this blacklist."
Conservative MP Ben Lobb (Huron-Bruce, Ont.) yesterday challenged a parliamentary secretary to step outside after Liberals circulated a purported list of opposition legislators they claimed had funded the Freedom Convoy. Lobb said the claim was false and threatened libel action: "There will be many lawyers calling."
The Canadian Embassy in Washington is paying thousands to consultants to influence U.S. “thought leaders” on social media, according to records. The initiative coincided with American media criticism of a cabinet order invoking the Emergencies Act against truckers opposed to vaccine mandates: "Mr. Trudeau criminalized a protest movement."
The Commons finance committee will investigate cabinet's freeze on millions held in bank accounts of Freedom Convoy protesters. MPs said they feared far-reaching impacts of the emergency order: "What is going to happen to the security of our monetary system with the government haphazardly forcing banks to actually freeze the accounts of people?"
Attorney General David Lametti’s Emergencies Act order to freeze bank accounts of political protesters “cannot be justified in a free and democratic society,” the Canadian Civil Liberties Association has told a federal judge. The legal challenge was filed as MPs cited remarks by Lametti that conservatives “ought to be worried.”
Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly’s department is unapologetic after denouncing Cuba for failing to embrace “the right to peaceful assembly free from intimidation.” The Twitter message was posted as police arrested 191 truckers in Ottawa, and an ex-Canadian diplomat in Cuba accused the Freedom Convoy of sedition: "Canadians need to think about what we want our beloved maple leaf and our country to stand for."
MPs have been flooded with thousands of protest emails in the lead-up to this evening’s vote on the Emergencies Act. “Just today we received 1,300 emails and 600 the day before,” said Liberal MP John McKay (Scarborough-Guildwood, Ont.), chair of the Commons defence committee: "When the conversation starts with, ‘I have never voted for you and I never will,’ we know we are off to a bad start."
The taxpayer-owned Trans Mountain Pipeline is 46 percent over budget. The Department of Finance said it will not put a penny more into the pipeline expansion now half-finished and running a year behind schedule: "The government will spend no additional public money on the project."
Cabinet is shelving a campaign promise to ban replacement workers in the federally regulated private sector. Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan had no direct comment when questioned at the Commons human resources committee: "Do you have a timeline on this?"
Federal bank regulators are hiring coaches to help answer rapid-fire questions at parliamentary committee hearings. The key is to appear “in comfort and with confidence” when answering queries in mere seconds, said the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions: "The objective of the coaching sessions is to upgrade and sharpen Office employees’ parliamentary appearance skills."
Poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, writes for Blacklock’s each and every Sunday: “The movie starts shortly after takeoff. By the time we cross the Caribbean Sea, Tom Cruise changes identity, intercepts an armoured convoy in Paris…”
Civil liberties groups yesterday launched legal and letter-writing campaigns against an Emergencies Act crackdown on truckers protesting outside Parliament. The Freedom Convoy blockade was admittedly disruptive but nothing close to a national emergency, lawyers said: "It is wrong. It is unconstitutional. It is undemocratic."
Cabinet has approved the freezing of an undisclosed number of bank accounts belonging to Freedom Convoy truckers, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said yesterday. “Accounts have been frozen and more accounts will be frozen,” Freeland told reporters: "Consequences are real and they will bite."
Canadian parents are wary of vaccinating kindergartners and resent being made to “feel guilty” by federal regulators, says in-house research by the Privy Council Office. Vaccination rates for young children are the lowest of any age group: 'They objected to what they saw as an attempt to make them feel guilty and worried about the well-being of their children.'
