Canadian residents are pleading with Ottawa to release assets frozen after sanctions were imposed on banks.
Canada’s economic measures against Russia — which are meant to target the assets of wealthy oligarchs and government officials — are hitting the personal finances of people with no ties to the Putin regime, CBC News has learned.
Some Canadian residents who have no connections to the Russian government and don’t support President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine say their personal savings have been frozen because of how Global Affairs Canada administers its sanctions.
Acting in tandem with other Western allies, Canada has been blocking all financial dealings and freezing Canadian-held accounts linked to a list of sanctioned individuals and business entities — a list that now runs to over 2,100 names.
CBC News has spoken to four individuals who are not named on this list and are not accused of supporting Putin’s regime. They say they can’t access tens of thousands of dollars in personal savings because the major banks they and their families dealt with in Russia and Kazakhstan were caught up in Canada’s sanctions.
“I support Ukraine in this. A lot,” said Natasha, who’s originally from Belarus but moved to Saint Petersburg for university. She said she and her husband were offered jobs in Canada’s tech sector and left Russia in 2020, looking for a “better and safer life.”
CBC News has agreed not to use her last name or show her face because she’s concerned about her job security.
Natasha and her husband have applied for, but have not yet received, permanent residency in Canada. Because of the strong emotions the war in Ukraine evokes, she said, she also fears online harassment.
In the weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, Natasha worried about losing the savings she and her husband left behind in Alfa-Bank, Russia’s largest private bank — between $80,000 and $133,000 Cdn, she said.
“Because of the history of where I come from, I just thought that it would be very risky to have anything there,” she said.
She began the process of moving her money to a Canadian account. But the transfer wasn’t complete by Feb. 24 — when Ottawa’s sanctions barred Canadians from doing business with Alfa-Bank. Her money was blocked and frozen.
Her application for an exemption is now part of a growing backlog at Global Affairs, as non-sanctioned individuals plead for ministerial permits to release their personal savings.
“Maybe [Canadian government officials] don’t have enough time to dig into this and to actually see that regular people who are already here, who pay taxes and work hard and are part of this community here, are also affected. And it’s just not fair,” Natasha said.
It’s also not clear that the impact of Canada’s sanctions on non-oligarchs like Natasha is actually accomplishing anything.
‘Absolutely unfair’
“When we look at the purpose of economic sanctions … they are implemented to change behaviour, and in this case to change the behaviour of the Putin regime regarding the invasion and continued war in Ukraine,” said John Boscariol, a trade lawyer who represents businesses and individuals affected by sanctions regulations. (He has not been retained by any of the individuals interviewed for this story.)
“Freezing these personal remittances … [for example] that happened to be sent by grandparents to their grandchildren, do not change and will never change the behaviour of the Putin regime,” he said. “It’s just an untenable situation and absolutely unfair for those that are caught up in it.”
Trade lawyer John Boscariol: “It’s just an untenable situation.” (Keith Whelan/CBC)
Last month, the RCMP reported that over $122 million Cdn in Canadian assets had been frozen since Russia invaded.
But the RCMP’s tracking doesn’t distinguish between the wealth of oligarchs and the more modest savings Natasha and her husband hoped to use for a down payment on a home.
They aren’t the only small fish caught up in Ottawa’s sanctions net.
Svetlana’s employer transferred her from Moscow to Toronto in 2021. She recently became a permanent resident of Canada. Fearing both for her employer and her personal security, she also asked that her surname and image not appear in this article.
“While I was opening my first bank account, which was obviously one of the first things you do when you come to a new country, I was told that if anything’s wrong with my work permit, then my account’s going to be terminated,” she said.
That’s why she left about $39,000 Cdn in personal savings behind in Russia — a nest egg she reported to Canadian officials during her immigration process to prove she had the means to support herself.
A ‘night full of tears’
“I had signs of severe depression. Life back in Russia was not easy,” Svetlana said. “After I moved to Canada, I had hopes that I could build a better life here. Less stressful, at least.”
A doctor advised her not to follow the news too closely to help manage her stress. On the night Russia invaded Ukraine, she was out for dinner with a Ukrainian friend.
“I got back home and he texted me: ‘Do not read anything. Do not open newsfeeds. Like, just don’t do it.’ And of course I did that immediately after I got that message,” she said.
After a “night full of tears,” she said, she contacted her Alfa-Bank branch back in Russia at 3 a.m. Toronto time to pull her money out. Mere hours later, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his ministers stepped in front of microphones to announce Canada’s new sanctions.
Svetlana’s money never arrived. Just like Natasha’s, it was blocked in transit and never reached her Canadian account — but Alfa-Bank says it no longer holds it. She’s struggled to figure out what happened.
People stand in line to withdraw money from an Alfa Bank ATM in Moscow, Russia on Feb. 27, 2022. Russians flocked to banks and ATMs shortly after Russia launched an attack on Ukraine and the West announced crippling sanctions. (The Associated Press)
Alfa-Bank suggested to her weeks later that her transfer “most likely” was frozen by the Canadian government. It directed her to a website where she could apply for an exemption.
Global Affairs Canada confirmed it received her application but never explained why her savings are frozen. Svetlana said the only feedback she got from the department was an auto-reply e-mail thanking her for her patience as the department faces a backlog of requests.
“What frustrates me the most is that I don’t see any actions. They do not communicate, they do not provide any time estimations, so we just don’t know what to expect,” she said.
“I did nothing wrong.”
Russian citizens aren’t the only ones being kept from their savings by Canadian sanctions.
Darya — who also spoke to CBC News on the condition that her last name be withheld — is working and raising two young kids, aged five and eight, with her husband in Winnipeg. Their immigration was approved under the provincial nominee program earlier in the pandemic, but they couldn’t move to Canada from Kazakhstan until near the end of 2021.
Darya said she doesn’t support Vladimir Putin either. Her mother is of Ukrainian descent.
When they sold their property in Kazakhstan, they brought some of the proceeds with them and left the rest with Darya’s brother, to transfer later.
An apartment building heavily damaged by a Russian missile strike in Dnipro, Ukraine on January 14, 2022. Scenes like this one drove Canada and other allies to impose heavy sanctions on wealthy Russians – sanctions that appear to be landing wide of their targets. (Valentyn Reznichenko/Telegram/Reuters)
When they needed the rest of their money, her brother discovered that only one local bank could send a Swift transfer abroad: Sberbank Kazakhstan, a subsidiary of a Russian state-owned bank that’s been blacklisted by Canada.
Although it was once part of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan is now an independent country with its own financial system. The bank told her brother that Canadian sanctions would not affect the transfer. But the funds never made it to Darya’s account in Canada.
She applied to Global Affairs for an exemption to release the money — tens of thousands of dollars — in late March. The department told her that her application would be considered. Since then, silence.
“Now it has been ten months and we have nothing,” Darya said. “For us, it’s a large amount of money, and we earned this money in Kazakhstan.”
She said she and her husband were turned down for a Canadian mortgage because they didn’t have enough for a down payment.
“My immigration now … it’s not so pleasant,” she said.
‘We’re slowly losing hope’
Madina Muslimova is another permanent resident of Canada who moved to Toronto from Kazakhstan in 2018.
She’s now working while raising a toddler on her own. She hopes to return to school to do a master’s degree. Her parents, now in their 70s, recently sold some assets so they could help her out financially.
Her mom has a visitor’s visa and comes to help out, but she requires medical treatment that the family must pay for out of pocket while she’s in Canada. Which is why her family tried to move a six-figure sum into Madina’s Canadian account.
Just like Darya, they learned the hard way that Sberbank Kazakhstan wasn’t excluded from Canada’s regulations.
“My parents chose that bank,” Madina said. “It was just across the street … they thought it was stable.”
The Kazakh subsidiary was sold and rebranded last summer to escape from Russian sanctions, but that move came too late for Madina’s family — their funds appear to be frozen too.
Canada’s Russia sanctions snag people with no ties to Putin
15 hours ago
Duration2:31
Canada’s sanctions against Russia have caught up not just oligarchs but Canadian residents who say they have had their assets frozen despite having no ties to Vladimir Putin’s regime.
“I still have not received any clarification about where my funds are,” Madina said. “We relied on that money … I think we’re slowly losing hope, to be honest.”
CBC News asked Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly what her department was doing to manage its backlog of sanctions exemption requests.
“Our goal is to really target Putin and his enablers. That has been our strategy for Canada [and] for all our allies as well,” the minister said.
“When it comes to individual cases, we’ll do what will work on a case by case basis. You want to make sure that the essence of our approach is respected. And we want to make sure that we have a human approach.”
In a written statement sent to CBC News in December, Global Affairs said that while it cannot speak about individual applications, it “is not seeking to confiscate assets owned by non-listed individuals or entities.”
But how long will it take the department to run due diligence and release the savings belonging to Natasha, Svetlana, Darya and Madina?
“They are really being treated as collateral damage,” Boscariol said.
He said he believes Global Affairs now has a backlog of over 500 applications, with limited resources to tackle it.
Last November, Boscariol appeared before a Senate committee as an expert witness on sanctions measures. He gave the department a failing grade for its administration, saying Canada is missing opportunities to put in place more effective compliance measures.
“There’s some good lessons we could learn from our allies on this in the United States and the United Kingdom,” he told CBC News.
The European Union, for example, has exempted personal remittances for people who don’t own sanctioned companies and aren’t government officials.
Boscariol said he also believes Canada could issue a general licence to cut its backlog much faster.
“Our quarrel is not with the people of Russia,” Prime Minister Trudeau said on the day these sanctions were announced. “It is with President Putin and Russian leadership that has enabled and supported this further invasion of Ukraine.”
“I’m a Canadian resident and these sanctions affected us heavily,” Natasha told CBC News. “So I don’t know how to react to that.”
BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. (AP) — Lions coach Dan Campbell is selling his suburban Detroit home to get more privacy.
“There’s plenty of space, it’s on two acres, the home is beautiful,” Campbell told Crain’s Detroit Business. “It’s just that people figured out where we lived when we lost.”
He didn’t elaborate.
Campbell and wife Holly listed the 7,800-square-foot house in Bloomfield Hills for $4.5 million this week. A deal was pending within 24 hours, Crain’s reported.
Campbell was hired by the Lions in 2021. After a 3-13-1 record that season, the team has become one of the best in the NFL, reaching the NFC championship game last January.
Campbell’s home was built in 2013 for Igor Larionov, a Hockey Hall of Fame member who played for the Detroit Red Wings.
The likely buyers are “huge” Lions fans, said Ashley Crain, who is representing Campbell and the buyers in the sale.
Ariella Kimmel and Mandi Johnson were grabbing a bite to eat in Vienna, when their August trip to the Austrian capital was upended.
The Canadian duo had travelled to the city to see Taylor Swift in concert only to learn her shows would be cancelled because of two men plotting to launch an attack on fans outside the venue, Ernst Happel Stadium.
While Kimmel and Johnson were disappointed they weren’t going to be able to see Swift perform, they made the most of the remainder of their trip. However, the experience serves as a buyer’s beware for Canadians considering jet setting to see their favourite artists or teams.
“If you’re travelling to these concerts, it’s really hard to protect yourself,” said Kimmel, a Toronto-based vice-president at a public affairs firm who had previously travelled with Johnson to see Swift in Las Vegas, Nashville and Stockholm.
Such trips can make lifelong memories when they go off without a hitch, but cancellations and rescheduled events are common because of artist illnesses, poor ticket sales, security threats, unruly weather and natural disasters.
In the last year alone, Jennifer Lopez and the Black Keys scuttled touring plans after tickets had been sold, while Bruce Springsteen, Usher and Pink had to tell fans they couldn’t take the stage mere hoursbefore show time.
Between airfares, hotels, travel expenses and tickets, last-minute cancellations can leave globe-trotting eventgoers out hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.
“Regrettably, unpredictability has always been a reality of the industry but it’s increasingly common that there might be things that are going to interrupt your plans, especially plans that you’re really excited about,” said Jenny Kost, the Calgary-based global director of strategic sales initiatives at Corporate Traveller Canada.
“It’s a tricky one because the airline or hotel understands the reason behind your travel but its likelihood of happening or not happening is a little bit outside of their purview.”
Because Swift is known to power through shows even when sick, Kimmel never imagined a concert she was headed to would ever be cancelled, but she always booked plane tickets and hotels that could be rescheduled or refunded — a move she recommends to others travelling for events.
“It’s like common sense, you never know what’s going to happen,” Kimmel said.
However, making use of the rescheduling and refund options her hotel booking and airline tickets had weren’t an option for Kimmel this time because she had already been in Austria for a few days and had very little of her stay left when Swift cancelled.
Had the show been nixed before Kimmel left home, the flexibility baked into the bookings would have been useful, though Kost said such arrangements aren’t cheap.
“There is a cost associated with that that’s not insignificant,” she warned, estimating these kinds of bookings can add hundreds of dollars to your bill and have lots of quirks in the fine print.
The better bet is travel insurance, Kost said. It’s often cheaper than flexible fares and hotel bookings and can reimburse customers for accommodations and flights they have to drop or swap when an event gets cancel or an emergency strikes.
Kost opted for such insurance when she journeyed to Paris to see Swift over the summer and bought it again in a cab on her way to Mexico for a wedding. The insurance cost her about $150 for a week, but when she had to extend her stay because she fell ill, it covered the cost of all of her accommodations.
She doesn’t encourage people to wait until the last minute to buy the insurance like she did because buying it early can provide some reprieve when an event you’re travelling to is cancelled well in advance.
Travel costs aside, people heading out-of-town for events that wind up cancelled also have to consider whether they will get the money they spent on entry fees and tickets back.
In Kimmel and Johnson’s case, they paid Ticketmaster about $300 per seat. They learned just after the cancellation that they would be refunded — but not for an $85 transaction fee they were charged when purchasing the tickets.
“We paid $85 to not see her but I guess that in the grand scheme of what we were going to pay, it’s not a lot at all,” Kimmel said.
They did not opt to buy insurance on their tickets, which Ticketmaster offers through Allianz Global Assistance for $8, plus tax. Allianz’s vice-president of marketing and insights Dan Keon said the insurance offers coverage up to $1,000 per ticket.
In addition to offering refunds if an event is cancelled by a venue or promoter, the coverage can provide a reimbursement for a variety of situations. Those include if you are facing a serious medical issue or death, have a family member in life-threatening condition, are summoned by the military or are delayed in arriving at the venue because of a common transportation carrier.
If you’re going to opt into the insurance, Keon said review the terms ahead of time, so you understand exactly what scenarios you will be covered in.
The insurance, for example, can’t be used in the event of a pandemic, war or natural disaster.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
Losing a loved one is never easy, and the legal steps that follow can add even more stress to an already difficult time.
For years, families in Vancouver (and Canada in general) have struggled with a complex probate process—filled with paperwork and legal challenges.
Thankfully, recent changes to Canada’s probate laws aim to make this process simpler and easier to navigate.
Let’s unearth how these updates can simplify the process for you and your family.
What is probate?
Probate might sound complicated, but it’s simply the legal process of settling someone’s estate after death.
Here’s how it works.
Validating the will. The court checks if the will is legal and valid.
Appointing an executor. If named in the will, the executor manages the estate. If not, the court appoints someone.
Settling debts and taxes. The executor (and you) pays debts and taxes before anything can be given.
Distributing the estate. Once everything is settled, the executor distributes the remaining assets according to the will or legal rules.
Probate ensures everything is done by the book, giving you peace of mind during a difficult time.
Recent Changes in Canadian Probate Laws
Several updates to probate law in the country are making the process smoother for you and your family.
Here’s a closer look at the fundamental changes that are making a real difference.
1) Virtual witnessing of wills
Now permanent in many provinces, including British Columbia, wills can be signed and witnessed remotely through video calls.
Such a change makes estate planning more accessible, especially for those in remote areas or with limited mobility.
2) Simplified process for small estates
Smaller estates, like those under 25,000 CAD in BC, now have a faster, simplified probate process.
Fewer forms and legal steps mean less hassle for families handling modest estates.
3) Substantial compliance for wills
Courts can now approve wills with minor errors if they reflect the person’s true intentions.
This update prevents unnecessary legal challenges and ensures the deceased’s wishes are respected.
These changes help make probate less stressful and more efficient for you and other families across Canada.
The Probate Process and You: The Role of a Probate Lawyer
(Image: Freepik.com)
Working with a probate lawyer in Vancouver can significantly simplify the probate process, especially given the city’s complex legal landscape.
Here’s how they can help.
Navigating the legal process
Probate lawyers ensure all legal steps are followed, preventing costly mistakes and ensuring the estate is managed properly.
Handling paperwork and deadlines
They manage all the paperwork and court deadlines, taking the burden off of you during this difficult time.
Resolving disputes
If conflicts arise, probate lawyers resolve them, avoiding legal battles.
Providing you peace of mind
With a probate lawyer’s expertise, you can trust that the estate is being handled efficiently and according to the law.
With a skilled probate lawyer, you can ensure the entire process is smooth and stress-free.
Why These Changes Matter
The updates to probate law make a big difference for Canadian families. Here’s why.
Less stress for you. Simplified processes mean you can focus on grieving, not paperwork.
Faster estate settlements. Estates are settled more quickly, so beneficiaries don’t face long delays.
Fewer disputes. Courts can now honor will with minor errors, reducing family conflicts.
Accessible for everyone. Virtual witnessing and easier rules for small estates make probate more accessible for everyone, no matter where you live.
With these changes, probate becomes smoother and more manageable for you and your family.
How to Prepare for the Probate Process
Even with the recent changes, being prepared makes probate smoother. Here are a few steps to help you prepare.
Create a will. Ensure a valid will is in place to avoid complications.
Choose an executor. Pick someone responsible for managing the estate and discuss their role with them.
Organize documents. Keep key financial and legal documents in one place for easy access.
Talk to your family. Have open conversations with your family to prevent future misunderstandings.
Get legal advice. Consult with a probate lawyer to ensure everything is legally sound and up-to-date.
These simple steps make the probate process easier for everyone involved.
Wrapping Up: Making Probate Easier in Vancouver
Recent updates in probate law are simplifying the process for families, from virtual witnessing to easier estate rules. These reforms are designed to ease the burden, helping you focus on what matters—grieving and respecting your dead loved ones’ final wishes.
Despite these changes, it’s best to consult a probate lawyer to ensure you can manage everything properly. Remember, they’re here to help you during this difficult time.
