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Trudeau Government Moves to Make Expanded Surveillance Powers over Financial Transactions ‘Permanent’
National Review ^ | February 20, 2022 | NATE HOCHMAN

Posted on 02/20/2022 7:47:02 PM PST by Mount Athos

As all eyes were trained on the aggressive police sweep of the Ottawa trucker convoy this week, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau’s administration was quietly moving to implement a sweeping expansion of surveillance power at the federal level.

The Trudeau government’s financial war against the truckers has been covered at length. But one underreported aspect of this broader assault on Canadian civil liberties is the effort to bring crowdfunding and payment service providers — two of the most prominent routes for financial transactions on the Internet — under the permanent control of a centralized government authority.

In a February 14 news conference, Canadian finance minister Chrystia Freeland said that the government was using the Emergencies Act to broaden “the scope of Canada’s anti-money-laundering and terrorist financing rules so that they cover crowdfunding platforms and the payment service providers they use.” That broadened power requires all forms of digital transactions, including cryptocurrencies, to be reported to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center of Canada. (I.e., “Fintrac”). “As of today, all crowdfunding platforms and the payment service providers they use must register with Fintrac, and they must report large and suspicious transactions to Fintrac,” Freeland said. She justified the move as a way to “mitigate the risk” of “illicit funds” and “increase the quality and quantity of intelligence received by Fintrac and make more information available to support investigations by law enforcement.” Trudeau, standing behind Freeland at the press conference, nodded his head in agreement.

Freeland said the trucker convoy, which had assembled to protest coronavirus restrictions, had “highlighted the fact” that digital assets and funding mechanisms “weren’t captured” by the Canadian government’s pre-existing surveillance powers. As a result, she said, “the government will also bring forward legislation to provide these authorities to FinTrac on a permanent basis.”

Freeland reiterated that point in a subsequent press conference this past Friday. “We reviewed very, very carefully the tools at the disposal of the federal government, and we used all the tools that we had prior to the invocation of the Emergencies Act, and we determined that we needed some additional tools,” she said. “Now some of those tools, we will be putting forward measures to put those tools permanently in place. The authorities of FinTrac, I believe, do need to be expanded to cover crowdsourcing platforms and their payment providers.”

We already know what the Canadian government would do with that permanent power. They’re showing us as we speak. As Kevin Williamson wrote earlier this week, Trudeau has promptly weaponized his expanded Emergencies Act powers to “invest himself with the unilateral power to freeze bank accounts and cancel insurance policies, without so much as a court order and with essentially no recourse for those he targets.” That punitive action against political dissidents expands beyond the truckers themselves: On Wednesday, Trudeau’s justice minister suggested that private citizens who donated large sums to the convoy “ought to be worried” about the possibility of a freeze on their bank accounts, too. At least one young woman has already been fired from her job in the Ontario provincial government for making a $100 donation.

All this, of course, flies in the face of Trudeau’s promise that the Emergencies Act powers would be temporary. When he announced his invocation of the order, he promised the Canadian people that his expanded authorities would “be time-limited, geographically targeted, as well as reasonable and proportionate to the threats they are meant to address.” Not a single part of that sentence has proved to be true.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Canada; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: canada; civilliberties; civilrights; despotism; dictatorship; justintrudeausescu; pettytyrunt; policestate; privacy; spying; surveillance; thegoodcanadian; thegoodgerman; thewallforyou; trudeaumustgo
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1 posted on 02/20/2022 7:47:02 PM PST by Mount Athos
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To: Mount Athos

Pigs.


2 posted on 02/20/2022 7:49:01 PM PST by Allegra
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To: Mount Athos

Remember when 43 said the Patriot Act would be temporary?


3 posted on 02/20/2022 7:51:12 PM PST by Regulator (It's fraud, Jim)
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To: Mount Athos
Freeland reiterated that point in a subsequent press conference this past Friday. “We reviewed very, very carefully the tools at the disposal of the federal government, and we used all the tools that we had prior to the invocation of the Emergencies Act, and we determined that we needed some additional tools,” she said. “Now some of those tools, we will be putting forward measures to put those tools permanently in place.

Of course, because once a fascist grabs power, they never give it up.

4 posted on 02/20/2022 7:57:23 PM PST by metmom (...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith….)
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To: Mount Athos

So the Queen is good with Her newfound totalitarian police state’s newfound warrantless spying powers?


5 posted on 02/20/2022 7:59:21 PM PST by cockroach_magoo
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To: Mount Athos

Reichsminister Freeland


6 posted on 02/20/2022 8:03:47 PM PST by tomkat
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To: Mount Athos

7 posted on 02/20/2022 8:05:26 PM PST by A Formerly Proud Canadian ( Ceterum autem censeo Justinius True-dope-us esse delendam)
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To: Regulator

That’s the beauty of fighting undeclared “conflicts”.

By maintaining a constant state of war, the countermeasures enacted can be permanent.


8 posted on 02/20/2022 8:10:01 PM PST by Bratch
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To: Mount Athos

Fin-trac, coming to our country soon.


9 posted on 02/20/2022 8:10:09 PM PST by M_Continuum
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To: Mount Athos
They really are moving to a Chinese type social credit system.

I suspect the WEF and the Davos crowd are pushing for just that.

10 posted on 02/20/2022 8:15:36 PM PST by Tench_Coxe
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Trudeau’s SS has now passed the “Firehose / dogs” treatment
of protesters that we saw in the 60s here in the United States
against Blacks.

We look back on that time embarrassed.

He really screwed up.

He’ll never live this down, and I suspect he’s destroyed his
party.

When you ride horses over humans, you have declared yourself
DA, Prosecutor, Judge, Jury, and Executioner.

Those police think the peaceful truckers are deserving of
the death penalty, severe physical injury, or blindness
using horses and rubber bullets.

Think about that.


11 posted on 02/20/2022 8:18:14 PM PST by DoughtyOne (I pledge allegiance to the flag of the U S of A, and to the REPUBLIC for which it stands.)
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To: DoughtyOne

He has also determined they deserve to have their current
financial status destroyed. We’re looking at lost homes
lost ability to feed themselves, the likely split of families
and the possible loss of children.

Savings gone. Checking accounts frozen. No ability to pay
mortgages, bills, utilities, buy food, clothing, rent a
warm place to sleep...

This over peaceful protests.

The guy deserves the death penalty for this.

I think there’s a very good chance he’ll have to appear
before a war-crimes level tribunal, and I think people
under him and the police are exposed as well.


12 posted on 02/20/2022 8:22:47 PM PST by DoughtyOne (I pledge allegiance to the flag of the U S of A, and to the REPUBLIC for which it stands.)
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To: cockroach_magoo

I’m pretty sure the Queen is now a Globalist so she will do nothing.


13 posted on 02/20/2022 9:03:47 PM PST by laplata (")
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To: laplata
I’m pretty sure the Queen is now a Globalist so she will do nothing.

Oh well. I guess once a colonialist, always a colonialist.

14 posted on 02/20/2022 9:11:55 PM PST by cockroach_magoo
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To: Mount Athos

Well he is Castro’s son after all. 😐


15 posted on 02/20/2022 9:24:02 PM PST by Georgia Girl 2 (The only purpose of a pistol is to fight your way back to the rifle you should never have dropped)
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To: Mount Athos

FinTrac bump for later....


16 posted on 02/20/2022 9:46:10 PM PST by indthkr
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To: Mount Athos

“This is a crisis. We must grant the Prime Minister emergency powers.”


17 posted on 02/20/2022 9:46:12 PM PST by Republican Wildcat
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To: M_Continuum
Fin-trac, coming to our country soon.

That's exactly what all the crap with Russia is about. Finding an excuse to implement a Wilsonian Sedition Act.

18 posted on 02/20/2022 9:49:02 PM PST by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: Mount Athos

If you have accounts at TD Bank (Toronto Dominion), you might want to close them out.


19 posted on 02/20/2022 9:53:56 PM PST by Antoninus (Republicans are all honorable men.)
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To: Mount Athos

There was an article in the HuffPo in 2014-15 stating that JT would ultimately be a dictator.


20 posted on 02/20/2022 10:32:13 PM PST by Jaded (Pope Francis? Definitely NOT a fan... miss the last guy )
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