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 victim, a 22-year-old woman, was walking along West Georgia Street in front of Hotel Georgia when she was suddenly grabbed by a man, walking in the opposite direction, on December 31 at around 3:30 p.m. She was thrown against the exterior wall of the hotel and held down.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the first shipment of an oral COVID-19 pill is making its way across Canada but is no substitute for vaccination against the rapidly spreading virus. The anti-viral drug Paxlovid is meant to protect against hospitalization and death.
Controversy over mandatory vaccinations for the military has re-emerged during the pandemic, with chief of the defence staff Gen. Wayne Eyre ordering all personnel to be inoculated against COVID-19.
In a report this morning, Yves Giroux says the federal guardrails designed to guide spending decisions appear to have been met, suggesting any stimulus should be wound down before the fiscal year ends in March.
Due to COVID-19 restrictions, families weren't permitted on the wharf in Halifax for the traditional sendoff as the HMCS Montreal pulled away from the jetty and its 240 crew members set off for the six-month deployment.
Statistics Canada reported Wednesday that the annual pace of inflation climbed in December to 4.8 per cent, a pace that hasn't been seen since September 1991.
