In June of 2022, the Report of the Standing Committee on Finance was released in relation to the Invocation of the Emergencies Act and Related Measures.
As one could reasonably deduce from the title of the Committee, the report was focused on the financial sanctions that occurred against Canadians during the time the Emergency Act was in effect.

In reading the report, one will learn that a total of 257 bank accounts were frozen by financial institutions, in addition to approximately 1 to 1.2 million dollar’s worth of Bitcoin wallets. All this was done without due process and required nothing more than a phone call from the RCMP as to which accounts to freeze.
This is a first in Canadian history and should shock everyone to the core that the government would take such drastic action against its citizens, particularly when other acts exist to achieve this same objective.

Unfortunately, the shock-factor does not stop there. Representatives from the RCMP that testified before the committee stated that “it provided the government with recommendations on certain points, but did not ask for the Emergencies Act to be invoked”, they then continued on to say that there is other legislation under which the RCMP can demand financial institutions to freeze accounts through court order but the EA allowed it to happen faster (and without due process, as we have previously mentioned). The RCMP then stated it believed the EA was necessary to enable law enforcement to discourage people from maintaining involvement in the “illegal” protest.

The final piece of brow-raising, head scratching comes from the RCMP’s testimony before the committee that “the only additional power that law enforcement received from the EA was the ability to share information with financial institutions”. Canadians were told the invoking of the EA was necessary to clear the “illegal” blockades and to give law enforcement the tools they needed to do so. Given this piece of information, it stands to reason the act was focused on punishment rather than restoring order, all the while subverting the involvement of the courts and with that, consideration of the Charter Rights of the protestors.
At the end of the day, the only thing to come out of this report were 15 recommendations. There were no statements pertaining to justification of the invoking of the Act (those statements came from 2 of the 3 political parties who provided written responses to the Committee’s report), but recommendations as to how to better deal with the financial aspects and sanctions of the EA should it be implemented again. The committee did state in recommendation #4 that it was concerned that this could be a template for dealing with the public in response to future protests.

And how could it not be concerned? How could anyone not be concerned, regardless of their personal opinions of the convoy? The act was invoked based on now-proven-false information. There was no terrorist funding, particularly from Russia, which the report addressed with testimony provided by FINTRAC. An Ontario Superior Court Justice ruled through an earlier injunction that people were free to continue to participate in this lawful protest provided they stopped honking their damned horns (which they complied). The Police did not ask for the act to be invoked because they needed the powers therein to address the issue and there were other acts at the disposal of the government and law enforcement with which to achieve that objective.

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, proper rules of evidence and investigatory conduct and due process are all checks and balances to ensure that Police and the Government never have to look back on their actions and say “oops”. The mere fact that these institutions so hastily and recklessly avoided these proper procedures is a tragedy.

To read the report, click here