February 21, 2022
By Priyanka Shetty
In 1970, Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau invoked emergency powers in Canada and now 52 years later, his son Justin Trudeau has done the same. Canada has been getting serious backlashes from civilians about COVID curbing protocols. It all began in November 2021, when Canada asked all cross-border essential workers, even truck drivers, to produce proof of vaccination to travel across the border from January 15. Initially what started as peaceful protests soon escalated to defacing monuments, displaying hate symbols and threatening locals.
Here is what you need to know:
- In order to get things under control, Justin Trudeau took to declaring emergency and threatened to freeze the bank accounts of anti-mandate protestors, according to FX Empire. The declaration of emergency enables the prime minister to freeze personal bank accounts without a court order. This has led people to panic and withdraw funds from banks to put it on bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Economists are worried that this will result in bank default rise and further bankruptcy.
- While Candians are seeking the crypto route, law enforcement had already ordered all regulated exchanges to stop allowing transactions across 34 crypto wallets linked to funding the “The Freedom Convoy 2022”. While so far the authority didn’t freeze any transfer of assets from fiat to crypto, the fear of it looms large over people.
- Even though decentralization is a big plus in cryptocurrencies and people are after it viewing it to be a free ticket from the emergency, reality is different. The state of emergency gives the government full power to regulate exchanges and thus control the crypto transactions.
- Earlier this month, bill C-249 titled “An Act Representing the Encouragement of the Growth of the Crypto Asset Sector”, which will support the crypto sector’s growth was making rounds of news giving hopes of regulation. However, current circumstances indicate that the government might go hard on regulations and ignore paying heed to ease it unless the protests take a backseat.
About the author
Based in Bengaluru, Priyanka Shetty is a freelance writer at the Blockchain Asset Review.
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