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OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) – Recently released email records show that the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) had a blacklist made of fundraisers linked to the Freedom Convoy that was then sent to a government-run agriculture bank.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, recently disclosed emails from an Access to Information request show that both names and people’s credit scores were sent to Crown corporation Farm Credit Canada.
The information was sent to Farm Credit Canada on February 18, which was only days before the Emergencies Act (EA) was revoked on February 23, after protesters had been cleared out.
Farm Credit Canada staff in an email stated that it “received a list of names from the Ottawa Police Service in relation to a restraint order for the funds raised through the GiveSendGo crowdfunding platform for the Freedom Convoy.”
“This information was originally provided directly to Farm Credit Canada from the Ottawa Police and then we subsequently received more information through our membership with the Canadian Bankers Association,” the email said.
The information came from a secret blacklist of those who helped crowdfund the Freedom Convoy’s GoFundMe page, which at one point topped over $10 million before being shut down on February 4 due to a request from Ottawa’s mayor.
Canada’s draconian COVID measures were the catalyst for the Freedom Convoy, which took to the streets of Ottawa to demand an end to all COVID mandates for three weeks in February. As a result, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on February 14 enacted the EA to shut down the Freedom Convoy.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claimed the Freedom Convoy protesters were funded by foreign entities with ties to terrorist-linked financing. This reasoning was used as justification for Trudeau to enact the EA against them.
However, a top official with Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said there is no evidence of any links to terrorist activity in the funding of the Freedom Convoy.
Over 230 people were arrested during the Freedom Convoy crackdown. Also, the Trudeau government took the unprecedented step of freezing the bank accounts of hundreds who donated to and sympathized with the truckers to the tune of almost $8 million.
According to the Farm Credit Canada emails, the records did not say why people were being identified.
Farm Credit Canada said that it got the list not from the RCMP but “from the Ottawa Police Service. though in relation to a restraint order for the funds raised through the GiveSendGo crowdfunding platform for the Freedom Convoy.”
“This information was originally provided directly to Farm Credit Canada from the Ottawa Police and then we subsequently received more information through our membership with the Canadian Bankers Association,” the email read.
Most of the funds raised for GoFundMe (88 percent) were from Canadian donors.
The news regarding the OPS releasing the records to Farm Credit Canada came at the same time news broke the government-owned bank ordered a blacklist of customers who supported the Freedom Convoy.
Earlier this month, Members of Parliament (MP) from the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) demanded a federal privacy overseer look into banks’ requests to freeze Freedom Convoy supporters’ accounts.
This came after testimony from Canadian bankers showed the financial targeting of some Freedom Convoy supporters might have breached privacy laws.
Emails also reveal that staff kept a list of names even after the Emergencies Act was revoked on February 23, when protesters had been cleared out of Ottawa.