First-ever use of the Emergencies Act to quash the Freedom Convoy movement will set a federal precedent for years to come, legislators warned yesterday. Liberal and Conservative-appointed senators called it government overreach: "The country is deeply divided like I have never seen it."
A $100 billion pandemic relief program originally intended to aid small business instead benefited large corporations, Statistics Canada data disclosed yesterday. Large corporations were three times as likely as small business to receive the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy: "One of the challenges the government has had is a profound misunderstanding of how small business works."
The federal minimum wage will rise to a higher rate than any province effective April 1. The pay hike affects three percent of federally regulated employees in the private sector but "sends a strong signal" on wage rates, say unions: "The federal government believes in a reasonable wage floor."
Banks have frozen nearly $8 million in accounts held by Freedom Convoy truckers, the Department of Finance disclosed yesterday. Authorities confirmed even small donations to the convoy, as little as $20, could trigger retribution if cash was contributed after cabinet declared the Freedom Convoy an illegal assembly on February 15: "It could be a savings account, a chequing account, a mortgage."
MPs on the Commons finance committee yesterday said they feared cabinet normalized financial retribution against political protesters. An Emergencies Act order allows banks to freeze personal and corporate accounts of Freedom Convoy protesters without a court order or advance notice to account holders: 'It is like a no-fly list where someone is now asterisked for the rest of their life.'
Cabinet has confidential information justifying extraordinary police powers against Freedom Convoy truckers, the Senate was told yesterday. Skeptical senators questioned why records could not be shown to legislators: "The short answer is no."
Freedom Convoy protests typify the despair of industrial workers “left out of the good life,” Senator Marc Gold (Que.), Government Representative in the Senate, said yesterday. One colleague questioned whether Gold spoke with any truckers: "Everyone had an opinion about them but certainly no one was talking to them."
Auditors have uncovered widespread irregularities in misuse of government-issue charge cards by Canadian diplomats abroad. Records at the Department of Foreign Affairs showed employees billed taxpayers for liquor, jewelry and “hospitality” expenses: "Documentation is required to verify compliance and identify misappropriation or fraud."
The Commons last night by a 185 to 151 vote upheld cabinet’s declaration of a national emergency curbing Freedom Convoy protests against vaccine mandates. The landmark vote, first of its kind, followed 36 hours of debate that saw a minority of MPs including Liberals express unease with use of the Emergencies Act: "This is a slippery slope."
Here is how members of the 44th Parliament last night voted on a cabinet motion to invoke the Emergencies Act.
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?"
