Western Standard - July 25, 2025


It's worth looking at who gets unbanked and what they do to deserve it

Topics
Chipiuk's banking troubles
Hosted by
Nigel Hannaford
Mentioned
Bitcoin Chipiot Nigel Farage Eva Chipiak Chipiup Chipiok Barber Kutz
Could Alberta pull out of dairy supply management？ How Alberta Could Destroy Canada's Soviet-Style Dairy Cartel ｜ The Cory Morgan Show

Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

113.21

Word count

746

Sentence count

52

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

A prominent Canadian civil rights lawyer, Eva Chipiak, has had her bank account frozen, or in fact, as we described it in our story this morning, she has been given notice to find a new bank. According to the correspondence from the Royal Bank of Canada, the situation was triggered by a Bitcoin transaction, and if transactions appear suspicious, then banks are actually required by law to take action. On the other hand, lots of people buy and sell Bitcoin, so do they all get investigated? Was that really all it was? And was it nothing to do with Ms. Chipiak's public support for the Freedom Convoy and her well-attested political views?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. It is Thursday, July the 24th, and welcome to Hannaford.
00:00:22.460 It's a quick one this evening.
00:00:25.380 I'm quite concerned to read that a prominent civil rights lawyer,
00:00:30.700 Eva Chipiak, has had her bank account frozen.
00:00:35.400 Or in fact, as we described it in our story this morning,
00:00:38.940 she has been unbanked.
00:00:40.880 She has been given notice to find a new bank.
00:00:44.540 Now, it's not unheard of for banks to fire clients.
00:00:49.980 However, when somebody like high-profile lawyer Eva Chipiup gets unbanked, 1.00
00:00:54.860 it should catch your attention as it caught mine.
00:00:59.000 The details are somewhat opaque and protected by client confidentiality.
00:01:05.400 However, according to the correspondence from the Royal Bank of Canada that Ms. Chipiup released,
00:01:11.220 the situation was triggered by a Bitcoin transaction.
00:01:15.960 And if transactions appear suspicious, yes, banks are actually required by law to take action.
00:01:24.680 On the other hand, lots of people buy and sell Bitcoin, so do they all get investigated?
00:01:31.260 Was that really all it was?
00:01:34.220 And was it nothing to do with Miss Chipiot's public support for the Freedom Convoy 0.65
00:01:41.280 and her well-attested counter-establishment political views.
00:01:47.360 Well, nobody's saying that.
00:01:49.800 So perhaps we shouldn't say it either.
00:01:53.140 The bank just says the transaction was beyond what they call their risk tolerance,
00:01:59.760 and you could argue that that's okay.
00:02:03.720 After all, people are allowed to switch banks, and do.
00:02:07.580 Can't banks switch people?
00:02:09.320 Well, yes, and they do.
00:02:13.460 But it's not normal behavior.
00:02:16.240 They like to have clients.
00:02:18.700 Two years ago, on the other side of the Atlantic, though,
00:02:21.640 the private bank, Kut's, an ancient and estimable institution in banking in Great Britain,
00:02:28.720 dumped Nigel Farage, the controversial leader of Great Britain's UK Independence Party.
00:02:35.540 Farage was a prominent, ferocious even, critic of the British government and of the World Economic
00:02:41.460 Forum. Eventually, Kutz found a loophole in their agreement and showed Farage the door. So yes, it
00:02:49.860 happens. But then when you're talking about a controversial politician getting unbanked,
00:02:58.100 and an Edmonton lawyer who takes an interest in people who governments don't like,
00:03:03.940 and speaks up for them. When people like that are shown the door by a bank,
00:03:08.500 there is a consistent look and feel. So are Chipiok's banking troubles just about Bitcoin?
00:03:14.580 Do all lawyers who buy Bitcoin face scrutiny? Or is a commercial bank in Canada, one that
00:03:22.980 cooperated with the government of Canada in freezing bank accounts of convoy protesters,
00:03:27.940 and the people who donated to the convoy cause wanting to send a message.
00:03:35.420 It seems they are operating within their rights.
00:03:39.820 So let's leave that as a rhetorical question.
00:03:44.720 But in 2022, they weren't on the side of feisty people picking bones with their government.
00:03:53.420 Shepiat is feisty, after all. I had a look today at her ex-posting as she reviewed the 0.66
00:04:01.140 events of the week. Looking at this leech barber sentencing hearing, she said on her
00:04:07.880 ex-posting that the lengthy sentences demanded by the prosecution, seven years and eight years,
00:04:14.040 were cruel and unusual punishment for a charge of mischief.
00:04:20.260 I agree. So might you.
00:04:23.420 Leach and Barber were associated with a non-violent protest
00:04:26.960 rooted in charter-protected rights.
00:04:30.100 Neither of them had a criminal record.
00:04:33.660 So she rightly asks,
00:04:37.780 how did a protest resulting in minor criminal charges
00:04:41.500 turn into the threat of nearly a decade in prison.
00:04:47.300 A lot of people are asking the same thing.
00:04:50.660 I am wondering, perhaps you are wondering,
00:04:53.480 meanwhile, what was the bank asking?
00:04:57.120 In her post on X today,
00:04:59.940 Chipiot also commented that the Federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program
00:05:04.860 has now been exposed for what it really is,
00:05:08.260 a bureaucratic nightmare, and frankly, a fraud on the people it was supposed to help.
00:05:14.900 Years later, she writes, most injured Canadians still haven't seen a cent. And once again,
00:05:23.060 she adds, that the RBC froze her bank accounts, citing vague risk concerns.
00:05:29.800 They did it once before, in 2022, she said. The year of the convoy.
00:05:40.280 Again, no charges, no hearing, no explanation.
00:05:45.840 This is not about whether you supported the protest or not. It is about principle. It is
00:05:52.600 about fairness and process, the rule of law, and the kind of Canada we want to live in.
00:05:58.200 What kind of country is this becoming, and are we okay with it?" she asks.
00:06:07.840 Good questions for all of us, but not perhaps ones to bring up with your bank manager.
00:06:17.040 Ladies and gentlemen, for the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.
00:06:28.200 Thank you.