Frozen Bank Accounts
The day after he left Ottawa, Rich's bank accounts were frozen - including those belonging to his parents.
Part 1: Frozen Ketchup and Brand New BBQs Part 2: Three Men and a Van Part 3: Frozen Bank Accounts Part 4: Why Aircraft Mechanics Went to Ottawa Part 5: Why Aircraft Mechanics Went to Ottawa (Part 2) Part 6: From Hero to Zero
Rich and Dan left Ottawa in the van on Thursday, Feb. 17th. Their plan was to return for the weekend, after checking in with their families and Rich’s employer.
But the police crackdown began the next day. A mounted unit rode into a crowd of peaceful protesters at speed, trampling two of them. Rich’s bank accounts were also frozen that day. He was the owner of the van, and police had taken photos.
In his words:
the day after I got back from Ottawa, I had to e-transfer a friend for a lottery pool at work and e-transfer wasn’t working. What’s going on, here? I go back into the app, into the accounts. I’m looking [at] zeros and dashes on the accounts.
Ah, God, really? So then I decided to check my joint accounts with my parents, which I have sort of a power of attorney thing, and all of those accounts were frozen.
So, I called [my wife] and I said: ‘Our bank accounts are frozen.’ She says: ‘How can they do that? How can they do that?’
I said, ‘Well we’ve seen how they can do what they want over the last couple of years.’
The banks didn’t notify Rich before, during, or after this historically unprecedented action. Nor did they let him know later, when they reversed course:
I spent hours, probably two hours with the one bank. They gave me no answers. They didn’t give me any direction - what I should do, how long is this gonna last? The other one, I couldn’t even speak to anybody.
It was stressful for the first few days. Because we didn’t have any cash on hand. We’ve got bills due. How long are the accounts going to be frozen for? You know, are they gonna be frozen indefinitely? Is there going to be some sort of trial?
Friends and loved ones soon stepped into the breach. His wife’s sister called to say “Look, we can set up an account for you guys to get you through.”
Rich continues:
We’ve had - all of our friends: ‘Can I give you some money?’ A thousand dollars here. Five hundred from this one, you know.
For four or five days this went on, and then finally we got our accounts unfrozen. I just checked the one day and the accounts were back online.
A lot of people withdrew a lot of cash that week. I have heard over a billion dollars. The CEOs of the Banks should have communicated with each other and collectively told the government to go get specific court orders. They did not, they should be fired.
I wish I had thought of this before, as they had their Annual Meetings in April, but we should have encouraged all shareholders to vote their proxies to remove the Chairman, CEO's and Presidents from the Boards of Directors.
Here is a link to a photo comment I created last night about our rights, or lack thereof.
http://heinzegroup.com/deer%20rights%20sm.jpg
Those words, "I said, ‘Well we’ve seen how they can do what they want over the last couple of years.’" say it all. The trucker's freedom convoy was a strong enough action to fully expose the travesty of how the government breached the 'rule of law' at the smell of the power they could wield by misstating the severity of Covid 19. That the official opposition and the legacy media raised no objections is the resulting police brutality on removing those protesters and Mr Trudeau's personal experience with crowdfunding thwarting his ability to intimidate to demanding emergency power to implement dictatorial action on his part fully. Tragically few people appreciate that freedom is lost when individuals carry out the demands of a government that's run amok without insisting on a court order to violate citizens' rights. Yes, the banks acted deplorably but I blame the opposition member firstly, the media secondly but ultimately every Canadian, myself include, who misplaced trust in a governing system that has failed.