TORONTO–Many credit unions in this country are still dealing with the fallout from panicked members who recently raced to withdraw their savings following reports and rumors related to a government effort to identify how funds were reaching certain groups.
Specifically, the government had imposed the Emergencies Act as it vowed to “follow the money” that was financing the so-called “Freedom Convoy” that was blocking the streets around Parliament Hill, home to Canada’s capitol.
“The big banks were all given a few days’ heads-up that they would have to co-operate with Ottawa, dig through their records and stop the flow of contributions that was discretely paying — through digital, cryptocurrency or traditional means — for the increasingly intransigent protesters to stay in the streets,” the Toronto Star reported. “But credit unions — those smaller, provincially regulated institutions so popular in the same little towns and rural areas — were taken by surprise, not just by the government measures but also by their own customers.”
‘Racing’ to Branches
According to the Star, CU members raced to their local branches and withdrew millions of dollars, fearing the government was about to seize their savings.
“The government was less than clear about the intended targets of financial measures under the Emergencies Act,” Martha Durdin, president and CEO of the Canadian Credit Union Association, told parliamentarians, the Star reported. “Many of our members expressed this concern, and many Canadians made significant withdrawals from credit unions as a result, sometimes in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and on a few occasions, millions.”
Fortunately, the credit unions were able to absorb the sudden withdrawals, and there wasn’t a full-fledged run on them, the Star stated.
“But as one credit union leader told Durdin, ‘We had a tremendous amount of members very seriously concerned regarding the government’s ability to seize accounts; it brought forward a large sense of mistrust with the government that they could just seize individuals’ accounts,” the report added.
Growing Distrust
According to the Star, in the end credit unions temporarily blocked about 10 accounts worth less than half a million dollars.
Much like in the U.S., the Star reported Canadians have become distrustful of the federal government, with one leading conservative candidate drawing large crowds and urging them to reject the authority of the Bank of Canada and to “opt out” of inflation by investing in bitcoin.
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