Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
I thank all the witnesses for their longevity and for being so patient in answering all of our questions.
I want to just dispel a couple of things, because I think it's important.
I believe one of my Conservative colleagues earlier said there was “a complete suspension of civil liberties”. I just want to make sure everybody is very clear that the enactment of the Emergencies Act requires that the actions undertaken under our public order emergency be charter-compliant every step of the way, and we have had that confirmed at this meeting.
There has also been the notion—and I think Mr. Lawrence was a little on this track—that little old ladies and the general public are being impacted in terms of their accounts being frozen. Therefore, I just want to make sure that I read into the record something from an article in the Globe and Mail. It reads:
The RCMP, banking sector and federal government said Monday that account-freezing powers bestowed under the Emergencies Act to help authorities deal with convoy protests do not affect donors to the protests, despite
—unsubstantiated—
claims by a Conservative MP that a constituent had her bank account frozen over a $50 contribution. “At no time, did we provide a list of donors to Financial Institutions,” the RCMP said in a statement Monday. The agency said while it had sent financial institutions a list of accounts to monitor and freeze, those accounts belonged to “individuals and companies suspected of involvement in illegal acts,” such as “influencers in the illegal protest in Ottawa” and vehicle owners and drivers “who did not want to leave the area impacted by the protest.”
I just want to make sure that we have that on record. I do not want anybody out there to be terrified that their accounts are about to be frozen or that there are all these Canadians who have their accounts frozen willy-nilly. It's important to put that on the record.
I also think it's important to state the following. This is from a speech by our Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance. She had indicated:
Federal government institutions will have a new broad authority to share relevant information with banks and other financial service providers to ensure that we can all work together to put a stop to the funding of these illegal blockades. This is about following the money. This is about stopping the financing of these illegal blockades. We are today serving notice
She says “the Canadian economy needs them”—them being all those who were involved in the blockade—“to be doing legitimate work, not to be illegally making us all poorer.”
We also heard excellent responses from Ms. Jacques today who clarified that we did have gaps in terms of the fact that FINTRAC and the RCMP were not able to collect data from both the crowdfunding platforms as well as the cryptocurrencies.
We have also indicated that we're going to be introducing legislation to make this permanent. We've also heard that the federal government is not personally collecting the data. It is that we've enabled that information to actually go directly to financial institutions and the RCMP for them to take actions.
I just want to make sure that we put that all on record. It's important for us all to be clear about where we are at.
My first question actually falls along the lines of Mr. Fragiskatos' after his soliloquy when he talked about confirming the compliance of the Emergencies Act and for the public order emergency to be compliant with the charter.
Could I have Ms. Dickson talk to the other key difference, which is that there are accountability measures that the Emergencies Act imposes, and maybe describe some of these, please?
