Canada Froze Bank Accounts for Political Revenge
They weaponized the banking system against political opponents.
Don’t let anyone say this never happened.
In 2022, the government of Canada granted itself emergency powers to crush the peaceful protesters of the Freedom Convoy, a group of truckers drove to Ottawa, parked on the street and honked their horns in objection to Canada’s vaccine mandates.
Donations to the truckers flooded in from all over the world, and the government used its emergency power to freeze the truckers’ bank accounts, without a court order. The government of Canada granted itself an unlimited hunting license for conservatives.
But the state didn’t just target the truckers on the ground in Ottawa. The language of the order gave the government the authority to freeze anyone’s assets who was indirectly associated with the protests, i.e. the people donating money to the truckers.
In order to get a list of donors, the Canadian government would need to subpoena GiveSendGo, the US-based crowdfunding platform that collected donations for the truckers, but that’s a jurisdictional nightmare.
Well, as chance would have it, a hacker stole the donor list from GiveSendGo, and released it on the exact same day that Canada announced the bank account freezing. What are the odds of such a coincidence?
Aubrey Cottle, the Canadian who claimed responsibility for the hack, was never prosecuted for it. GiveSendGo asked the FBI to investigate the crime, but did not get a response.
Although Americans were safe from Canada’s financial weapons, we faced an internal threat, having been doxxed. Doxxing is illegal in the United States, but law enforcement could not be bothered.
Yes, this happened. In response to a non-violent protest, the government of Canada used emergency powers to confiscate dissenters’ wealth. The Canadian government did not prosecute the hacker who released the “target list”, and the American government refused to investigate the hack.
The banks were okay with this.
Many people were okay with this.
Nobody involved in this has faced any consequences.