Modern Finance-Centric Governance: the 2022 Emergency Measures, Property and Financial Powers

A distinctively financial hammer was used to shutter the February 2022 public order emergency. Bank accounts were frozen, donation conduits were squeezed, financial intermediaries were placed under surveillance, and protestors and their financial supporters were met with the risk of severe sanctions. While this tethering of finance and property to end the 2022 Convoy uprising elicits a certain surprise, it is also familiar territory: it sits well within modern crime control policy. The greater surprise is not the type of hammer but the finding of this tool within the box of federal emergency powers that might be leveraged to deal with a public order emergency. This brief note examines the distinct finance and property related measures used in 2022 and their relationship to the federal Emergencies Act. It recommends that Parliament engage in careful deliberation over the appropriateness of financial and property measures for responding to a public order emergency, that the permissibility of such measures be clearly specified and constrained by the statutory language of s. 19(1) and that s. 19(1) be further amended to explicitly require review for Charter compliance of all emergency measures prior to any implementation.