The justice minister of Canada said Wednesday that supporters of former President Donald Trump who also financially backed anti-mandate truck protesters “ought to be worried” about having their bank accounts frozen.
Justice Minister David Lametti issued the stark warning Wednesday night during an interview on CTV News Channel, with host Evan Solomon. The exchange began when Solomon summed up his impression that Lametti [had] “just compared people who may have donated to this [trucker protests] to the same people who maybe are funding a terrorist.” He then asked Lametti to consider that many ordinary people gave money to support protests because they disagreed with government vaccination mandate policies, but would now find their support to have broken the law. (RELATED: Ilhan Omar Defends People Who Donated To Canadian Truckers)
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“I just want to be clear here, sir. A lot of folks say, ‘Look, I just don’t like your vaccine mandates and I donated to this, now it’s illegal, should I be worried that the bank can freeze my account?’ What’s your answer to that?” the host asked.
“If you are a member of a pro-Trump movement who is donating hundreds of thousands of dollars, and millions of dollars to this kind of thing, then you ought to be worried,” Lametti replied.
The broad application of such severe sanctions was made possible by the Trudeau government’s invoking of the Emergencies Act on Monday, which has enabled authorities to broaden “terrorist financing” rules to cover crowdfunding platforms.
What the hell is happening to Canada’s banks right now? pic.twitter.com/NRjPWlG0GE
— James Melville (@JamesMelville) February 16, 2022
As the possible implications of the minister’s admonishment were being contemplated, Canadian banks endured a series of outages from Wednesday night into Thursday morning. Some observers speculated that the outages might be caused by a bank run in response to the government’s actions.