Canada Says It ’s Un‐​Freezing Protestors’ Accounts. The Controversy Isn’t Going Away.

Walter OlsonThe government of Canada on Wednesdayrevoked its invocation of the Emergencies Act, under which it had acted to financially incapacitate, by freezing bank and payments accounts, persons associated with protests that had disrupted the capital Ottawa and other locations for weeks. Two days earlier it had prevailed in a Parliamentary vote sustaining its use of the Act, with the leftist New Democratic Party coming to the aid of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ’s Liberal Party. The payments freeze, along with a suspension of some other liberties, had raised an outcry both at home and abroad. (See last week ’s postsby me andby Norbert Michel and Nicholas Anthony of Cato ’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives.)University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geistwrites on Twitter, “This is the right thing to do, but in my view re‐​affirms that the vote on Monday was a mistake. There isn ’t grounds to continue the Emergencies Act now and there wasn’t 48 hours ago either. ”The government now says it isinstructing banks to undo freeze orders, and has claimed that persons with a more incidental connection to the “Freedom Convoy,” such as small donors, were not included among the 200 or so accounts frozen. But the order was definitely broad enough to have allowed the government to add such names at its whim to the freeze list had it chosen. “The plain language catches anyone sending money to support th e public assembly at ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs