Instalment 5: The Illusion of Recourse

Under ordinary conditions, a Canadian whose bank account has been frozen or mishandled can climb a well‑worn complaint ladder. First, the branch. Then the bank’s internal ombuds. Then, if still unsatisfied, the national Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments (OBSI) or another approved external complaints body. These steps are designed for mistakes: an error on a file, a misapplied fee, an unjustified closure or hold where the bank has misinterpreted its own risk policies.

The Emergency Economic Measures Order was not a mistake. It was design.

The Order imposed a positive obligation on banks, credit unions, securities dealers, and payment processors to “cease dealing in” any property of a “designated person,” and to “immediately disclose” to the RCMP or CSIS the existence of every account they held for such persons. A “designated person” was defined broadly as anyone who directly or indirectly engaged in or provided property to a designated protest, including those who “provided property to facilitate” it. And the Order went further: it granted blanket civil immunity to any entity that froze accounts in good-faith compliance. “No proceedings under the Emergencies Act and no civil proceedings lie against an entity for complying with this Order,” it stated.

When your bank has been told that it must freeze your account and that it cannot be sued for doing so, there is nothing an internal complaint officer can “investigate” in any meaningful sense. They can confirm that the bank complied with a federal order. They cannot reverse the freeze while the order is in force. OBSI, in turn, can only review whether the bank followed the law and its own policies. In the Emergencies Act window, those policies had been temporarily replaced by a federal directive backed by civil-immunity language. The “recourse” ladder led back to the same locked door.

This is why, to this day, the meaningful challenges are not in bank ombudsman files but in constitutional litigation against Ottawa. Freedom Convoy organizer Tamara Lich’s lawsuit, and others like it, do not allege ordinary banking error; they allege that the federal government unlawfully weaponized the banking system against political dissent. In January 2024, a Federal Court judge agreed in part, ruling that invoking the Emergencies Act was unreasonable and breached Charter protections. By then, the accounts had been unfrozen for nearly two years. The people whose financial lives were suspended during that window had no practical remedy left to pursue.

The complaint system is built to correct errors within the herd-management machinery. It has almost nothing to offer when the machinery is doing exactly what it was told.

It doesn’t matter what side of the political divide you stand on: once one government uses these tools, the next will too, because herding citizens becomes normalized. When freedoms are eroded, the freedom to be right and, yes, even to be wrong, you are no longer a free citizen. You are livestock to be managed and punished by whoever happens to be wearing the paper crown that year.