Nichola Saminather

TORONTO, Reuters -Toronto-Dominion Bank froze two accounts of individuals in which C$1.4m ($1.1m) was deposited to help protesters against the Canadian government’s Pandemic Measures.

The demonstrations, dubbed the “Freedom Convoy” by Canadian truckers opposing a vaccination mandate https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-canada-trucking-idCNL1N2UK2CD for cross-border drivers as well as other pandemic restrictions, are now in their third week. The protestors have blocked U.S. border crossings between Canada and the U.S., causing gridlock in Ottawa.

Early on Saturday, Canadian police began clearing protesters https://www.reuters.com/article/healthcoronavirus-canada-trucking/update-1-canada-police-start-to-clear-protesters-blocking-u-s-canada-bridge-idINL1N2UN09T blocking a key bridge linking Canada and the United States.

TD requested the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to accept the funds. They were transferred through GoFundMe, bank transfers and GoFundMe.

TD was “noticed that their actions were improper and disappointing”, Keith Wilson, a lawyer representing the convoy said Saturday in an email that the convoy would seek a court order to allow the donation to be released to a newly formed not-for profit corporation.

According to a spokesperson for TD, one bank account received a lump sum amount of C$1,000,000 through GoFundMe. The rest went to the second bank account via multiple bank etransfers. They claimed that TD doesn’t know from where the GoFundMe payments originated.

GoFundMe pulled down the donation page for the protest convoy on Feb. 4, when it had reached $10,000,000. Most protesters turned to Boston’s GiveSendGo instead. GoFundMe has said https://twitter.com/gofundme it will refund the donations.

GiveSendGo was ordered by the Ontario Superior Court to stop all donations in support of Thursday’s protest. The crowdfunding platform defied that order in a tweet https://twitter.com/GiveSendGo/status/1491940399505682434 on Thursday.

Wilson stated that the protest raised C$11 Million on GiveSendGo.

He said, “We will also be going to court against the Ontario government in order to obtain an immediate lift of what we consider an illegal order.”

Canada’s major banks didn’t immediately reply to email requests asking if they were following similar steps as TD.

The country’s anti-money-laundering agency told a parliamentary committee on Thursday that it has not seen a spike in suspicious transaction reporting from the banks in recent weeks.

($1 = 1.2736 Canadian dollars)