That is incorrect. ~200 bank accounts were frozen for refusing to follow police orders to clear illegal blockades. Accounts were not frozen for speech, but for unlawful actions.
I am not Canadian and you're going to have to do your own fact checking but here is a post from an MP (whom I know nothing about but can assume you absolutely hate, try to put that aside):
https://twitter.com/markstrahl/status/1495472037438967808
Briane is a single mom from Chilliwack working a minimum wage job. She gave $50 to the convoy when it was 100% legal. She hasn’t participated in any other way. Her bank account has now been frozen.
I think regardless of your political affiliation freezing bank accounts and invoking emergency powers is controversial for obvious reasons. It is not a good precedent. Try to think ahead to a time when your political opponents are in power.
Sworn testimony in parliament makes it seem as if Mr Strahl’s story is either wholly or partially manufactured. No accounts were frozen for donating when the protest was still allowed.
Additionally there is no evidence that a person by the name of “Briane” lives in that town, and no one with that name was listed as a donor to the protest.
If you read more carefully (I can not stress enough that I am not Canadian, if you ask me the protests were dumb 'etc) that does not at all refute the point I am making.
One day Mark Strahl or somebody like him will be in power and the shoe will be on the other foot. If you start banning people you don't like (from twitter, bank accounts, whatever) left and right you will end up in a very dark place by setting that precedent.
There were ~200 accounts frozen affecting less than that number of people (some people had multiple accounts frozen). The claim is that these accounts were the ones directly supporting the protest. This was after the courts had declared many aspects of the protest unlawful. The accounts were mostly unfrozen after the protest broke up. The mechanism that was used to freeze their accounts allows them to sue for compensation
As much as the process for the emergencies act has been painted as absolute power. It very much isn’t. It is subject to quite a bit of oversight from the legislative and judicial.
I understand what your point is, but Canada has a history of going after left leaning protesters in FAR more concerning ways than this. As far as I can tell this was way more preferable to the usual tactics that the RCMP used to enforce injunctions.
For example, the military was used to clear native peoples off their land to build a golf course. A child was bayoneted. In 1990.
The RCMP broke into a cabin with a chainsaw and axe where indigenous elders were praying to stop oil and gas construction. That was last year.
Temporarily freezing funds of enablers seems like a pretty reasonable solution to an unlawful protest, all things considered.
Besides all that, at the time it was VERY clear that this political action was funded from unknown sources outside the country. I don’t think that money is speech. And I really don’t think that political destabilization should be funded by anonymous overseas donors.
Fine. Ignore that part. But feel free to address the actual argument:
Temporarily freezing the banking privileges of people involved in the perpetuation of 1. A crime 2. while acting against an injunction 3. after being authorized to use that power by a majority of elected representatives is a pretty acceptable use of government. Regardless of who in power does it.
You said you don’t like people in power arbitrarily freezing accounts of people they don’t like, and cited what appears to be a completely made up story from a fringe candidate.
I’m pointing out that this was not arbitrary, and it was used in a very specific and limited manner, as authorized by law, to accomplish a very specific goal. The goal was accomplished with, as far as has been actually proven, an absolute minimum of harm caused, even to the perpetrators themselves.
The protest is still allowed, there are still people protesting in my town. Just saw ‘em this weekend. What they aren’t allowed to do is use money from unknown international sources to shut down cities and infrastructure