Canada Went Rogue, Damaging Our International Reputation
The Finance Ministry may as well have announced on every billboard in Times Square that Canada is not governed by grownups. Part 3 of 3.
Part 1: Here's Who Froze Trucker Bank Accounts Part 2: Grandson of Immigrants Has No Empathy for Immigrant Truckers
Michael Sabia, Canada’s Deputy Finance Minister, told the Emergencies Act hearings last month that “the level of business investment” in Canada is “a chronic issue.” In other words, foreign investors often go elsewhere when deciding where to risk millions or billions.
He also testified that the Finance Ministry is perennially concerned about Canada’s international reputation. We need to be seen as an orderly place to do business, he said. The extended trucker protest in Ottawa, but especially the border blockades (by separate, unconnected groups of protesters in Windsor, Ontario and Coutts, Alberta) were therefore of grave concern.
On that particular day of the hearings the public was poorly served by the small army of lawyers involved. Collectively, these lawyers failed to ask Mr. Sabia a single question about the damage to Canada’s international reputation after the world watched our government invoke the Emergencies Act for a non-emergency. After the world watched our government unleash police brutality on festive, bouncy castle, hot tub protesters.
No one asked Mr. Sabia how freezing bank accounts without a court order could possibly have enhanced our reputation as a nation in which the rule of law prevails.
No one asked how confidence in the integrity of our banking sector could possibly have increased after Canadian banks morphed, practically instantaneously, into the long arm of the state. As Peter Shaun Taylor observes in his brilliant essay Frozen: How Canada’s Banks Betrayed their Customers During the Emergencies Act, our financial institutions were supremely supine:
Handed a list of clients who were allegedly connected to the truckers’ Freedom Convoy protest rally in downtown Ottawa the banks…dutifully froze the accounts in question without ever publicly questioning the authority of the order, or the legitimacy of the list. Neither did they challenge the constitutionality of the directive in court, or at the very least seek legal clarity, as one might expect from institutions whose very business model involves safeguarding other people’s money. They didn’t even demand to see written instructions. [original italics, bold added]
He describes the measures drawn up by Mr. Sabia’s Finance Ministry as “breathtakingly broad” in scope, with profound implications. Here’s another quote:
Having one’s bank accounts frozen goes far beyond being unable to grab some cash for a night out. Such a person is – suddenly and without warning or recourse – unable to pay any bills. Automated payments and withdrawals cease. A person could default on their mortgage or car payment, or fail to pay a critical utility bill in the middle of a Canadian winter…If travelling far from home, they might be stranded at a remote gas station or in another country. The targets of such government action are effectively rendered outcasts from our modern and increasingly cash-less economy. [bold added]
In February, vast numbers of people across this land - rich and poor alike - spent a few days worried that their own bank accounts were about to be frozen because they’d made financial donations to the Freedom Convoy. Vast numbers of Canadians got a scare they won’t be forgetting anytime soon.
The well-heeled individuals in my orbit were calling up their financial advisors demanding to know why the banks hadn’t told the government to get lost. Many of those people have since shifted assets out of the country, beyond the reach of Canadian authorities. My understanding is that this is a continuing process, something that’s occurring gradually but determinedly.
For many Canadians, the Ottawa trucker protest was a one-way ticket. Numerous illusions, about numerous institutions, got shattered. People who’d never in their lives had concerns about the trustworthiness of our banking system will now mistrust it until their dying day.
On Mr. Sabia’s watch, Canada went rogue. Rather than responding to the trucker protest in a normal fashion, using normal tools such as dialogue and negotiation, the government deployed financial sanctions never before used in the civilized world.
It’s difficult to imagine a course of action more likely to undermine the confidence of foreign investors. If you’re able to set up shop anywhere in the world, why would you place yourself at the mercy of a government that has already gone rogue? Mr. Sabia may as well have announced on every billboard in Times Square: Canada is not a serious country. It is not governed by grownups.
How distressing that none of the lawyers associated with these hearings considered this a topic worth talking about.
Wasn’t our international reputation already destroyed? The Trudeau Liberals have dictated business since they were first elected. Our recourse development was halted - no more oil because of a global warming that didn’t exist then, or now. But we have this climate “catastrophe”. Oh, my!! The polar ice is all going to melt. We’re all going to burn up. Rule by scare tactics, then and now. When one crisis falls apart, well, we’re just going to create another one. Trudeau is just part of a global bunch. Our economy is a mess, we’re in debt, prices are out of sight - we all know that. It’s part of a world wide crisis. So Trudeau, Liberals, don’t try to sell us on the idea that this is the fault of Canadian people. We know better, and our truckers let you and the rest of the world that we know better. God Bless Our Truckers!
Absolutely.