Darpan News Desk The Canadian Press, 28 Feb, 2022 01:15 PM
An Ontario court has extended to March 9 a freezing order on funds donated to the recent Ottawa convoy protest, as a class-action civil suit against protest organizers continues.
Parties in the case have agreed to move some donated funds and cryptocurrency into escrow, which could be redistributed to affected Ottawa residents and business owners should the class action succeed.
Norman Groot, a lawyer representing some convoy protest leaders, says ChristopherGarrah, Benjamin Dichter and Nicholas St. Louis have agreed in principle to moving donated funds within their control to an escrow account.
Groot notes the funds that Garrah, Dichter and St. Louis have agreed to move to escrow might not account for all the cryptocurrency that was donated, and he proposed parties meet next week to take stock of what has been transferred.
An escrow agent will oversee the transferred funds, and will be permitted to change the passwords for cryptocurrency.
The class-action lawsuit seeks a total of $306 million in damages related to the three-week anti-government convoy protest near Parliament Hill that snarled traffic, shut businesses and plagued residents with near-constant honking.
U.S. President Joe Biden is slashing the current 72-hour testing window for fully vaccinated travellers as part of a suite of public health measures aimed at slowing the spread of the highly mutated Omicron variant.
Earlier this year, the B.C. Court of Appeal quashed the convictions of Cody Haevischer and Matthew Johnston for the gang-related murders in what has become known as the "Surrey Six" case.
The Office of the Secretary to Gov. Gen. Mary Simon confirms says its internal network was breached through unauthorized access. In a statement Thursday, the office said it is working with experts and "pursuing further network improvements" as needed and that the nature and scope of the breach is still being investigated.
A North Vancouver man is in police custody after RCMP responded to a call Wednesday afternoon about a suspect carrying a large knife and an axe. Police say at around noon, a member of public alerted an officer on patrol about an armed man in the Canyon Heights area.
Several rivers in British Columbia were under flood warnings on Wednesday as hundreds of homes remained evacuated because of heavy rainfall. There were 12 evacuation orders involving 350 homes in the Fraser Valley Regional District in its coverage area from Boston Bar to Abbotsford.
In B.C., the highest rates of fatal overdose are in the urban Vancouver health region, at 44.6 per 100,000 people, and the remote northern region, where the rate is 42.8 per 100,000.
