1. Under Harper, Canadian banks were considered the strongest in the world. No banks collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis.
Under Trudeau, banks have becoming political playthings, being weaponized against a vague list of enemies. This is an unprecedented political risk.
2. But the world of finance is interconnected. Many Canadian banks operate in the U.S., have customers there, and are also regulated there. Does Trudeau think he can order @RBC to seize a customer's bank account in Florida? That's what the Emergencies Act order suggests.
3. But it's not just Canadian banks with customers in the U.S. It's U.S. banks operating in Canada. Look at Trudeau's emergency economic measures order: gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p2/2022/…
It covers foreign banks and insurance companies operating in Canada. So, mainly American banks.
4. If you're a U.S. bank doing business in Canada, you've always known that we were a liberal democracy with the rule of law, including free trade agreements. That's gone. Now it's Chavez-style political expropriation of opponents bank accounts.
Should U.S. banks comply?
5. Here's a list of foreign banks in Canada. They are specifically covered in Trudeau's expropriation order: osfi-bsif.gc.ca/Eng/wt-ow/Page…
If you were in charge of privacy, legal compliance, political affairs, etc., who would you be more afraid of: Trudeau, or the U.S. Congress?
6. Polls say it's likely the U.S. Congress will turn Republican in November. What kind of hearings, subpoenas, investigations will pro-trucker, anti-Trudeau, anti-cancel-culture Republicans have for U.S. banks that willingly served up their U.S. customers to Trudeau?
7. Or -- for that matter -- if those U.S. banks served up their Canadian customers to Trudeau?
If you were in charge of compliance and risk management, what would you do?
If it were Venezuela, you'd close shop. It's Canada. What do you do? Resist Trudeau? Delay? Or comply?
8. We know for a fact that a number of American Congressmen and Senators were supportive of the truckers. I bet some of them, or their staff or families or friends, made donations, too. If you're a U.S. bank do you turn them in to Trudeau? Do you actually seize their property?
9. Here's a timely reminder about Chrystia Freeland, the World Economic Forum executive who serves as Trudeau's Finance Minister.
At age 45, she needed her parents to cosign her mortgage.
She's going to tell banks how to operate.
10. I'm not making fun of someone who needs parents to buy them a house at 45. I'm making fun of that person claiming to be an authority on banking. She has the reverse Midas touch -- everything she handles turns pear-shaped. She is going to destroy trust in Canada's banks.
11. Trudeau also orders insurance companies to cancel insurance on any truck he says is a mean, honking kind of truck (seriously though, how are insurance companies to know the difference between a good truck an a truck Trudeau hates?): gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p2/2022/…
12. As with Trudeau's seizure of bank accounts, his insurance edict applies to a huge number of U.S. insurance companies. Here's a list: osfi-bsif.gc.ca/Eng/fi-if/ic-s…
Are you actually going to cancel insurance on a customer because a politician says so?
Is that legal under U.S. law?
13. Let's say you're a U.S. insurer of a U.S. citizen driving a U.S. truck between Detroit and Windsor. And he honks his horn and says F&ck Trudeau. Are you going to cancel his insurance for exercising his U.S. First Amendment, because some banana republic politician says so?
14. Trudeau says his victims are banned from suing banks or insurance companies. That may be true in Canada where civil liberties have been suspended.
But it's not true in the U.S. Would a U.S. company violate a U.S. contract with a U.S. citizen because Little Fidel said so?
15. Trudeau said a reason for martial law is that the truckers are hurting the economy. That's a laugh -- Trudeau's two-year lockdown has done far more damage. But destabilizing banking, insurance and general Canada-U.S. trade law is something only a woke know-nothing could do.
16. Maybe Chrystia Freeland's parents can help out their grown daughter again.
Just don't ask her grandfather, though -- yikes: theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/…
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