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.
Jean-Yves Duclos told a COVID-19 briefing on Friday that such a measure was not currently being contemplated in Canada, but his personal opinion was that the country would get there at some point.
Dabney L. Friedrich, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., today denied a motion from Pascale Ferrier for the return of the money, which was seized when she was arrested at the United States border in September 2020.
A statement from the department says, for the first time, it is enacting a clause in its contract with its police union that allows for the potential assignment of all officers to front-line duties.
In addition to the health-care sector, police forces in Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg are facing similar staffing problems, as is Winnipeg Transit and the fire department in Prince Rupert in northwestern British Columbia.
Tam says the average daily case count rose 65 per cent from last week, with an average of close to 42,000 cases being reported daily over the past seven days up to Wednesday.
The Canadian economy added 55,000 jobs in December before COVID-19 cases began spiking at the end of the month, prompting public health restrictions that forced many businesses to close or curtail operations.
