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.
There are 24,372 active cases of COVID-19 in the province, and 306,888 people who tested positive have recovered. Of the active cases, 986 COVID-positive individuals are in hospital and 146 are in intensive care. The remaining people are recovering at home in self-isolation.
This fraud usually includes a suspect calling a senior citizen pretending to be a law enforcement officer, lawyer, or the person’s grandson. The suspect tells them that their grandson has been arrested and requires bail money. In two of the three successful scams, someone actually attended the elderly person’s home to collect cash, debit and/or credit cards.
Planning for a census starts almost before Statistics Canada releases all the data from the current counts, given the complexity and scale of the exercise the agency runs every five years.
Trucks and other vehicles began parking on the highway near Coutts on Jan. 29 in solidarity with similar protests in Ottawa and across the country over vaccine mandates for cross-border truck drivers and broader public health measures.
RCMP found the frozen bodies of the migrants in the snow on Jan. 19 just metres from the Canada-U.S. border near Emerson, Man. Police believe the four were part of a larger human-smuggling operation. A man on the U.S. side has been charged with human smuggling.
The bridge linking Windsor, Ont., and Detroit remained closed to vehicles headed into Canada due to the protest that continued on the Canadian side of the border.
