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.
Chief of the defence Gen. Wayne Eyre ordered all Armed Forces members to be vaccinated by the end of November or face remedial measures, including possible dismissal from the military. That deadline has since been extended to Dec. 18.
The government's fiscal update shows the government plans to put $85 million toward processing those permanent resident and temporary resident applications in 2022.
In a statement released today, co-chairs Dr. Theresa Tam and Dr. Jennifer Russell said that the number of deaths and hospitalizations related to opioids remained high in the first half of 2021.
Federal parties and their MPs have spent the past week reacting to the law, known as Bill 21, which bans some public servants deemed to be in positions of authority, such as teachers, judges and police officers, from wearing religious symbols on the job.
Governor Tiff Macklem said the issue comes down to the trust Canadians have in the Bank of Canada to make sure the pace of price increases doesn’t run too high.
The federal government on Wednesday advised Canadians against non-essential international travel in an effort to protect against the Omicron variant, while Ontario and Quebec announced thousands of new COVID-19 infections.
