Is it common? My understanding is that freezing bank accounts is generally limited to things like financial crimes or drug dealing, where the account might contain money that you obtained unlawfully in the first place. Do people arrested for, say, murder usually have their bank accounts frozen?
Your bank will freeze your account if they detect suspicious activity. Your credit card agreement likely has a provision to allow them to freeze your bank account for non-payment.
The underlying question is whether or not a financial crime is actually happening. The idea of a decentralized protest having some random "leaders" in-trusted with donations is in need of scrutiny. It doesn't matter if it's this or BLM. Where is this money coming from and who is it going to?
Which authorities specifically say that this is the underlying question? When Trudeau announced the policy, he said it was about "keeping Canadians safe, protecting people's jobs" (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60383385) - it doesn't really sound to me like his goal was to protect protest donors from potential fraud.
The TD bank had already requested prior to the act some direction on what to do with the funds "“We are unable to release the funds without the court’s direction because multiple parties, including the account holder, intended recipients and some donors, may be entitled to the funds,” a TD spokesperson said."
“The illegal blockades have highlighted the fact that crowdfunding platforms and some of the payment service providers they use are not fully captured under the proceeds of crime and terrorist financing act,” said Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland.
there's a push both in Canada and here in the US to label these political undesirables as "domestic terrorists" as justification, because it makes sense to freeze the bank accounts of domestic terrorists. this is why they're trying to make a direct connection between the "January 6th Insurrection" and this incident, to portray both as connected instances of far-right-wing domestic terror/insurrectionism.
At least some of the protestors have profited from their protests ie. we know that money has been flowing in courtesy of sites like GoFundMe.
So there is a case that some of those protestors should have profits seized if they committed a crime (not claiming they did). The question is whether ordinary protestors will have the same process applied to them.
