Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Finance committee  My understanding is that they follow and are very closely aligned with the list provided by the RCMP.

Finance committee  Because it happened so quickly—the Emergencies Act was put in place on February 15 and it was revoked on February 23—those kinds of issues would probably just be starting to arise. Had it been further extended, they would have had to address those particular issues, but they beca

Finance committee  I think it's just that the government doesn't automatically think of credit unions. We seem to be an afterthought, in many cases. We do have good access to Finance officials, but we have to be the instigators. We have to be the ones knocking at the door.

Finance committee  I would have to say that under the circumstances of the Emergencies Act there wasn't a directive given to credit unions to notify when accounts were frozen. I'd also like to clarify that if a credit union is suspicious about transactions, they don't freeze the account for that

Finance committee  Michael, do you want to take that question? You were on the front line of that more than I was.

Finance committee  My understanding of the act is that the financial institution, upon receiving information from the RCMP, legally needed to comply and to freeze the account.

Finance committee  That's right.

Finance committee  That's correct. Yes.

Finance committee  I would say it's anecdotal. There was some activity of withdrawals.

Finance committee  Based on the fact that, speaking anecdotally, we saw some withdrawals.... I know that credit unions really had to answer a lot of questions from members about the circumstances under which the government can freeze accounts, because many Canadians were surprised that the governme

Finance committee  I mentioned a couple of things in my opening remarks. I think making sure that credit unions are at the table at the same time is an important one. I think there was work the government could have done to be more clear about who they were actually targeting. As you know, there wa

Finance committee  No clear direction was given to us in writing or verbally, as I understand it, to alert any individuals whose accounts had been frozen. That was left to the discretion of the financial institution. I think some clarity around that would probably be useful in the future so that a

Finance committee  We did not.

Finance committee  Financial institutions manage their own risk portfolios, and they have ways of flagging individuals or companies in their reporting to FINTRAC on whether there is a risk. In particular, credit unions understand the relationships with individuals and with companies, because they t