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.
The B.C. board says home sales totalled 2,285 las month, an almost five per cent decrease from 2,389 in January 2021 and a 15 per cent fall from 2,688 in December 2021.
The Omicron wave appears to be cresting across the country, but it's difficult to predict what's next for the pandemic, experts say. Prof. Bernard Crespi, an evolutionary biologist at Simon Fraser University, said the development of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 gives clues as to what might come.
Charges of Aggravated Assault have been approved against 36-year-old Haman Lamar Benamaisia & 39-year-old Adam Marton. An additional count of Assault with a Weapon was approved against Mr. Marton.
Crowds that first arrived Friday have thinned out considerably on Parliament Hill and the surrounding area, where anti-COVID-19 restriction demonstrators have been protesting, and honking loudly, for days.
There are 28,302 active cases of COVID-19 in the province, and 293,488 people who tested positive have recovered. Of the active cases, 1,035 COVID-positive individuals are in hospital and 139 are in intensive care. The remaining people are recovering at home in self-isolation.
Dr. Bonnie Henry says 706 people have been hospitalized in the last week, but the numbers appear to be peaking. She says patients who contracted the dominant Omicron variant are going home in about half the time compared with those who are sickened with the Delta variant.
