Brian Lilley

February 17, 2022

-Toronto Sun

 

The justice minister in Justin Trudeau’s government has said that if you hold the wrong political views, you should be worried about your bank account.

David Lametti, a lawyer and former law professor who is now the government’s lead legal authority, made the comments when questioned about whether people who made donations to the trucker convoy will have accounts seized.

When they invoked the Emergencies Act on Monday, the Trudeau government made clear that they were not just going after the crowdfunding of Freedom Convoy organizers but would also target individual bank accounts.

“A lot of folks said, ‘I just don’t like your vaccine mandates and I donated to this, now it’s illegal, should I be worried that the bank can freeze my account?’” Evan Solomon, host of CTV’s Power Play, asked Lametti.

Lametti, who had previously in the interview compared what is happening to terrorism, said yes, donors should be worried.

“If you are a member of a pro-Trump movement who is donating hundreds of thousands of dollars, and millions of dollars to this kind of thing, then you ought to be worried,” Lametti said.

The Trudeau Liberals have used the Emergencies Act to greatly expand the power of the government to monitor financial transactions, expanding existing cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. They have also increased the responsibilities of financial institutions to report transactions.

The declaration of emergency goes so far as to “require any financial service provider to determine whether they have in their possession or control property that belongs to a person who participates in the blockade.” That could see the bank accounts of people who attended the protest but didn’t fund them frozen at the direction of the government.

c. TORONTO SUN