> the Canadian prime minister imposed martial law on the protestors
No, he didn’t.
No, he didn’t.
Remember, it's not about the individuals, it's about the precedent it sets. If the government can do it to those you disagree with, they can (and will) do it to you.
> The ability for a government to unilaterally lock people out of their bank accounts without a court order or any form of recourse is virtually unprecedented in Western society.
No, it isn't. The US uses SARs[1] on a daily basis, and has since the passing of the Bank Secrecy Act in the 1970s. There is virtually no recourse to a SAR levied against your account: virtually every bank in the US will simply close your account and refuse to disclose any further information.
"But the US discards due process, too!"
There isn't even remotely a due process concern here, in the US constitutional sense (which isn't the Canadian sense!) of the phrase. When someone receives a SAR, their bank account is frozen and they are given steps to liquidate the account. No deprivation of property, the necessary condition for due process, occurs.
Link? I found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_activity_report but this describes a process where a bank makes a report to the feds, not a process where the feds make a report to the bank. And account closure is not mentioned.
Again, do you have a source on this? It would seem to be at odds with the requirement that a bank keeps the filing of SARs secret from the accountholder. Skimming the BSA, there seem to be a lot of liability carveouts for banks that file SARs. I can't find anything that would increase bank liability in a situation where a SAR is filed.
If you have a SAR filed against your account, your bank will not tell you. They'll tell you that they've closed your account for internal policy or compliance reasons. And they won't be lying: the BSA doesn't require them to close the account.
The liabilities in question are both regulatory and financial.
On the regulatory side: bank employees are instructed never to tell a customer about the presence of a SAR, but mistakes can happen (and thus open the bank up to regulatory scrutiny or punishment). Similarly, the FDIC and Fed track SAR patterns, and may increase their scrutiny of a bank if customers who have historically received SARs at other banks successfully maintain accounts with a different bank.
On the financial side: SARs are filed for all kinds of crimes, including crimes against financial institutions themselves. It's a financial risk to keep those accounts around, because their rotating value might not reflect their actual "ultimate" settled value.
As for sources: here is a FAQ on SARs from the NCUA[1]. I don't have a pre-existing source for banks immediately closing accounts on SARs. Here's one I randomly found that states that a little over 1/4th of all SARs lead to account closure[2].
[1]: https://www.ncua.gov/newsroom/press-release/2021/ncua-federa...
[2]: https://bpi.com/the-truth-about-suspicious-activity-reports/
From what I saw, the language specifically allows them to continue using their account for regular daily purchases (food, etc).
Technically you are right, but for me the bail-in in Cyprus in 2013 was scary enough to diversify into physical gold and Bitcoin (I stopped the gold part since then), as I realized that I'm just a ,,creditor'' to a bank, I don't own the money that exists in my bank account, and this can happen inside the EU.
We can all understand what this really is in spirit, though, and I don't think anyone is claiming literally that the military is in charge.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10535361/Canadian-M...
[edit] I would be just as glib about someone who donated $50 to Hezbollah and got their accounts shut down.
[edit2] Trudeau has a minority government, and minority governments both require another party to prop them up - and have an average tenure of 1 year and 140 days. It's been 154 days already. There will be an election in less than a year, on average. We have courts, we have ballot boxes. Use them.
[edit3] I say this as someone who did not vote for the Liberals, and is open to revisiting restrictions.
When the truckers start lobbing rockets into population zones, this comparison might be reasonable. The increasingly common habit of comparing everyone with Wrong Political Opinions to terrorists does not sit well with me.
Besides how can a peaceful protest be unlawful? I hear that in China when protests are "unlawful" when they disagree with the great leader
This isn't a protest, it's an unlawful occupation. Canada has a long history of peaceful protest. If they'd picketed on the streets in front of Parliament Hill as hundreds of thousands have done over the last century nobody would have batted an eyelash. In fact the government gave them three full weeks of outright occupation before they began to ask them to leave - then eventually told them to in no uncertain terms.
After all there have been tens of other anti-vaxx protests in Canada over the last two years. None were treated this way.
Indeed, but the protests made national news basically each time. There's a lot of folks from outside Canada suddenly paying attention when they were not, at all, paying attention to Canada over the last few months, years or even decades. Context matters and a lot of folks. I don't know if you're Canadian or not, but most commenters have none - but still insist on raising their pitchforks over something they either do not understand or do not have any context on.
Really? A protest deemed illegal because some company is loosing money? That's one of the points of peaceful protest, making non violent pressure where possible. If there was no more food and they were blocking it I could understand, but this is just keeps getting more ridiculous. Please call in the emergency act used only 3 times in the past, 2 of them world wars
BLM protests caused billions in damages, fire, looting, vandalism... And Trudeau supported it
And peaceful protesters were harassed by police in other locations
It's not that they were protesting, it's how.
> BLM protests caused billions in damages, fire, looting, vandalism... And Trudeau supported it
This feels a lot like whataboutism.
I didn't vote for Trudeau last election and I do not plan to vote for Trudeau this election. That doesn't change my opinion of the lawfulness or correctness of the actions taken here. Only 1/3 of Canadians voted for Trudeau last election but 2/3 of Canadians support this decision. So clearly it can't just be LPC voters or "Trudeauphiles."
I don't think I can get 2/3 of my coworkers to agree on a dinner spot for an offset. It's only slightly less than the percentage of dentists who think Oral B makes your teeth fall out. Politically speaking that's a heck of a support base.
> And peaceful protesters were harassed by police in other locations
Obviously I do not support this behavior. I believe in broad-based police and prison reform.
I don't wish any harm on the protestors. I think they're misguided, but I do believe they want for what they think is best. I do however wish them a speedy GTFO the capital and border crossings.
I hope that once things are cleared out and order is restored that they return to parliament, without trucks - but instead, with their signs. They deserve to be heard.
The MP either lied, or got played by someone who knew he was a gullible tool.
Every level of government has asked the MP to give details, because clearly it isn't true. He hasn't because the person does not exist.
Ultimately he should resign. Either he was trolled and played, or he simply has so little respect for the public that he invented a tale to play on (largely foreign) beliefs.
A majority of Canadians agree with a lifting of mandates, but this was true before this protest, and if anything the protest set it back. Support for the protest was extremely low.