Policing Protest Through Financial Sanctions: Canada and the ‘Freedom Convoy’

ABSTRACT For 3 weeks in early 2022, the so‐called ‘Freedom’ Convoy took over the downtown of Canada's capital, fuelled by frustrations with the federal government over strict vaccine policies and frequent lockdowns. In response, the Prime Minister declared a national crisis and invoked the Emergencies Act. This article examines the financial sanctions used as part of these emergency measures to force an end to the Ottawa encampments. In the 1 week during which the Emergency Orders were active, individual financial accounts were frozen with a total value of about $8 million. In the words of legal scholar Michelle Gallant, the government was brandishing a ‘financial hammer’ straight out of the counter‐terrorism financing playbook. I examine the use of these sanctions, their impact and their troubling implications—both in terms of the extension of the tools of counter‐terrorism finance to policing protests and their legitimation in terms of national economic security.