Convoy Protesters Whose Bank Accounts Were Frozen Launch Lawsuit Against Feds, Banks

Convoy Protesters Whose Bank Accounts Were Frozen Launch Lawsuit Against Feds, Banks
Police move in to clear downtown Ottawa near Parliament hill of protesters after weeks of demonstrations on Saturday, Feb. 19, 2022. A national civil liberties group is set to argue that "nebulous or strained claims" about economic instability or general unrest weren't enough to legally justify the Liberal government's use of the Emergencies Act early last year. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Cole Burston
Matthew Horwood
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Numerous Freedom Convoy protesters who had their bank accounts frozen after the government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act have filed a tort lawsuit against federal ministers and financial institutions behind the decision.

The lawsuit is in addition to several others that have been launched or are going to be launched after a federal court found the invocation of the act infringed Charter rights.

“It’s what we had to do. The people that are in it, are not in it for the money. It’s the principle. They have to be held to account, every last one of them,” said Eddie Cornell, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

Loberg Ector LLP commenced the proceedings in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on behalf of 20 plaintiffs on Feb. 14, which is exactly two years after Ottawa invoked the Emergencies Act to deal with the trucker protest.

The Freedom Convoy protest was started as a response to a COVID-19 vaccination mandate and other pandemic restrictions and culminated in vehicles converging in the nation’s capital. To end the protests, the federal government invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time in Canadian history, giving law enforcement expanded powers to arrest demonstrators and freeze the bank accounts of some protesters.

A Feb. 14 press release claims the plaintiffs are seeking relief from the “unjustified and unconstitutional actions” of the federal government, financial institutions that followed the federal directive to freeze bank accounts, and police agencies that helped bring the protest to an end.

Mr. Cornell, who co-founded the group Veterans 4 Freedom, told The Epoch Times that Canadians who had their accounts frozen were chosen as plaintiffs because their cases are easier to prove in court. “With other people, for example, that were...shot with tear gas and that sort of thing, it’s a much bigger litigation, it takes much longer, and much more evidence has to be gathered. So we had to go with something that is provable beyond a doubt,” he said.

Mr. Cornell was one of five plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the federal government that resulted in Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley’s ruling in their favour on Jan. 23. Justice Mosley found that the Liberal government’s use of the Emergencies Act did “not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness—justification, transparency and intelligibility—and was not justified in relation to the relevant factual and legal constraints that were required to be taken into consideration.”
The judge also ruled that the invocation of the act infringed the Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ Section 2(b), which deals with “freedom of thought, belief, opinion, and expression,” and Section 8, which deals with the “right to be secure against unreasonable search seizure.” The freezing of protesters’ bank accounts was also not “minimally impairing,” Justice Mosley said, as the directive was overly broad and there were “less impairing options available.”

Seeking General and Special Damages

The Statement of Claim filed on Feb. 14 says that the plaintiffs were subjected to the “unreasonable use of the Emergencies Act,” which breached their Section 8 and Section 2(b) Charter Rights. It also accused the defendants of having “acted in panic, political spite, and with the intention of punishing and intimidating citizens of Canada.”

According to the Statement of Claim, all plaintiffs are individuals or businesses who had their financial accounts and private property frozen, including banking, credit cards, and cryptocurrency. It adds that not all plaintiffs participated in the Freedom Convoy, and some had joint accounts frozen despite never having been in Ottawa.

The lawsuit also lists the Canadian Anti-Hate Network as a defendant, arguing that the organization provided “false information to several other defendants and media organizations designed to harm the plaintiffs” and that its statements led to the Emergencies Act being invoked.

The lawsuit seeks general and special damages of up to $1.16 million for each plaintiff for various charges such as injurious falsehoods, defamation, harassment, intimidation, Charter breaches, and “high-handed misconduct.”

The lawsuit came a day after the main organizers of the Freedom Convoy launched a $2 million tort lawsuit against the federal government for violation of charter rights. According to lawyer Keith Wilson, organizers Tamara Lich, Chris Barber, Tom Marazzo, Danny Bulford, and other protesters “who were targeted by Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland” submitted lawsuits on Feb. 13.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story misstated the type of lawsuit being filed by Convoy participants. The Epoch Times regrets the error.