Major Canadian banks went offline for hours blocking access to online and mobile banking as well as e-transfers for customers. The banks reportedly hit by the outage include Royal Bank of Canada, BMO, Scotiabank, and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. The cause of the outage is yet to be known but its timing is rather interesting, just days after the Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act amid ongoing ‘Freedom Convoy’ protests. On Monday, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland explained the new regulations that payment service providers need to adhere to, under the newly invoked Emergencies act.”]