Cabinet Proposed Reporting to Police as Requirement to Have Bank Accounts Unfrozen: Meeting Minutes

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland pauses while responding to questions during the second day of a Liberal cabinet retreat, in Vancouver on Sept. 7, 2022. (The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck)

The federal government considered requiring alleged Freedom Convoy supporters who had their bank accounts frozen to report to police before being allowed to regain account access, said the minutes of a confidential cabinet meeting that were marked “secret.”

Minutes from the closed Liberal cabinet meeting on Feb. 21 show that Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland had spoken with “chief executive officers at the major banks” about beginning the process of unfreezing individuals’ bank accounts that had been frozen under the Emergencies Act.

“Banks were pleased that the government was working on a plan that would see individuals with their bank accounts frozen report to police prior to the bank to have their accounts unfrozen,” read the minutes, as first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter.

The brief summary of Freeland’s conversation with the bank CEOs is followed by over a page of redacted minutes.

The minutes were introduced Tuesday as evidence to the Public Order Emergency Commission, which is currently examining the circumstances under which the federal government invoked emergency powers in February.

The government never brought in force the requirement that individuals report to police as a condition for regaining access to their accounts.

Frozen Accounts

Freeland first told reporters on Feb. 17 that the federal government had started taking steps to freeze the accounts of suspected Convoy supporters.

“The names of both individuals and entities, as well as crypto-wallets, have been shared by the RCMP with financial institutions, and accounts have been frozen, and more accounts will be frozen,” she said.

“Crowdfunding platforms and payment service providers have started the registration process with FINTRAC,” Freeland added, referring to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada.

The news conference occurred on the same day Freeland noted during House of Commons debates that FINTRAC lacked the “necessary authorities” to regulate the Convoy’s crowdfunding.

“With these [Emergencies Act] measures, we have enhanced the authorities of FINTRAC and that is allowing us to stop the illegal funding of these illegal blockades,” Freeland told the House on Feb. 17.

Less than a week later, over 200 accounts totalling $7.8 million had been frozen, according to Isabelle Jacques, assistant deputy minister of finance.

Jacques told the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance on Feb. 22 that it was “not impossible” that an individual recorded to have given as little as $20 to the Freedom Convoy could’ve had his or her account frozen.

Freeland had denied a day earlier that the RCMP would have been aware of small-time donors to the Convoy.

“The RCMP has given to the financial institutions names of leaders and organizers of the protests and of people whose trucks were part of occupations and blockades. That is the only information given, according to the RCMP, that the RCMP has given to financial institutions,” she said on Feb. 21.

However, Canadian Bankers Association vice president Angelina Mason told the House finance committee in March that banks had gone slightly beyond the RCMP’s list of accounts to freeze and used their own “risk-based approach.”

“They monitor in a general fashion for unusual activity, but that’s a pretty high threshold,” Mason said.

“If there is threshold found to be unusual, it would then obviously be looked at with the lens of the activities that were happening within Ottawa.”

Andrew Chen and Noé Chartier contributed to this report.