Canada Is so Cold that even Your Bank Account Gets Frozen
In today’s post, I would like to tell you what happened with the Canadian truckers and what lessons we can take from it for our finance.
Long story short. In January, hundreds of truckers gathered in Ottawa demanding that the government remove all Covid restrictions. And that they allow traveling freely through the country once again. They blocked the roads and stayed there for a couple of weeks, protesting peacefully.
To finance themselves, they raised a funding campaign through several crowdfunding platforms and bitcoin. They reached almost 10 million US dollars, more than what the main Canadian political parties raised during the last quarter.. A fact that could be used as a proxy to support their protest from a democratic standpoint. People donate money to political parties to promote their views. So if the truckers receive more money than all parties together, it means that they have the support of the majority.
Instead of talking to the protesters, the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, invoked the Emergency act. That granted to the government powers that are only to be used in case of war or natural catastrophe. Using those, they allowed banks to freeze the accounts of individuals involved in supporting the truckers. The banks became the police and the judge and whoever was suspected of funding the protesters wouldn’t have gotten access to their money. Notice that if you would have agreed with the trucker’s claims and decided to send them 20 dollars for lunch, you could still have had your money frozen.
Why is this relevant?
This tells us that a developed world government can suspend democracy temporarily, at any given time. Even if it is just to disperse a crowd that politically opposes them. This means that the government has the ability to confiscate your wealth and your property.
After invoking the act, some of the banks in Canada had their online services temporarily unavailable. This might be a coincidence or a conspiracy, but in any case, this is a reminder that your money does not belong to you, but to the political and banking elite.
Additionally, I haven’t seen any political leader point out how wrong this was. This is what terrifies me the most, and it makes me wonder what government will be the next to follow the same path.
In conclusion, regardless of what your political views are and what country you live in, this might happen to you and I would invite you to take action. You should consider always political risk in your financial decisions and leave something out of the reach of the banks and the state (Cash, gold, silver, bitcoin, etc) to cover for these situations. Remember, we are not talking about investment here. We are talking about having something valuable that cannot be confiscated, so you can use it in times of need. Just google to locate your closest ATM or gold/silver shop in your city and on Youtube type “How to buy bitcoin” and start your crypto journey.
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