Trudeau Government’s Emergencies Act Threatens Financial Ruin, Privacy Violations for Thousands | National Review
It does not take a particularly active imagination to see the obvious problem with a government s enlisting banks, without court oversight, to freeze the assets of protesters hostile to the government and ordering the disclosure of their information to the police and intelligence agencies, especially when the justice minister himself publicly states that donors who are members of a pro-Trump movement should be worried. One need not sympathize with the protesters themselves to spot the obvious and disturbing precedent set by this unjustifiable overreach. And since there is no indication that this information will be destroyed upon the expiry of the current Emergencies Act declaration, the government of the day has the potential to acquire and retain a list of hundreds possibly thousands of Canadians identified as unfriendly.
We have already had a small preview of the kind of retribution that could follow. An illegal hack and subsequent leak of data from one of the convoy fundraisers cost a provincial-government worker her job as a result of a $100 donation and exposed a gelato-shop owner in Ottawa to threats of bricks thrown through her store window as a result of a $250 donation she made on February 5. Troublingly, these criminal acts of vigilantism were cheered on by many of the same voices critical of the convoy, including Trudeau s former top adviser, and those who have complained about the failure of police to uphold the law.
By invoking the Emergencies Act and casting a wide net in pursuit of a narrow goal, the Trudeau government has recklessly exposed thousands of Canadians to prospective financial ruin and gross violations of privacy. This illiberal turn is something Canadians should speak out against even if it risks having their names put on a government list.
Surely the Canadian courts will put a stop to this — won’t they?