That includes not posting flamewar comments, not calling names, not crossing into personal attack, not being snarky, and not using the thread for political or ideological battle. You can make your substantive points without any of that, and we want curious conversation here.
What played out last night indicates that none of these checks and balances really matter in a parliamentary system where the nuclear option of a non-confidence vote (and subsequent election) can be invoked to force any MPs with qualms to vote along party lines.
It's easy to see what will happen next, based on this government's track record: they will introduce amendments to the Act, or new legislation containing only the provisions they would like to make permanent, and once again proclaim that voting against the amendment will result in a new election.
They will probably also use it as an excuse to ram through their "Online Harms Bill", i.e. internet censorship, targeted at "misinformation" (disagreeable speech) and, many suspect, independent media outlets that the PM despises.
Internet censorship + government-directed financial de-platforming = Canada's near-term future if the situation doesn't change somehow.
I suspect most people commenting haven't even read the act. It's actually very short and would take you less time than reading this article. One should entirely get hung up on the text of the act -- it outlines exactly what is possible and the consequences. It's actually very reasonable but point that out doesn't produce enough outrage up votes or get articles published.
I'm sure the rationale for why it's apparently Charter-compliant leans heavily on Section 1, but the courts have been far too generous in deferring to Parliament on use of Section 1 as a justification for "minor" infringements.
It has also never been invoked before, and hence has not withstood the scrutiny of a Charter challenge yet. It may not, in fact, be Charter-compliant.
Nothing is sacred or revered, to the extent that religion is being replaced by diy mysticism, ideology, politics, or Great Causes, be it climate or BLM or MAGA.
In my mind, the solution is cultural. We need shared values and deep understanding of the principles that govern our countries. We need good faith debate and review of outdated laws, revision or excision of bad ideas - racial language, weird moral errata, and finally a sufficiently detailed and rigorous regulation of novel technology that older concepts fail to account for.
Social media, adtech, and search engines aren't common carriers, but legislation shouldn't try to shoehorn regulation of platforms and communities into pre-internet legal paradigms. It's way past time for regulation and legislation of digital liberties.
The 2nd amendment in the US didn't account for nuclear weapons. The war on drugs and the current global legal system around drugs didn't account for human nature and civil liberty. Section 230 and phone companies and cable TV aren't concepts that map properly to the modern internet, and we'll probably see radical changes at an increasing rate. Nailing down basic things like digital privacy rights, penalizing surveillance, rewarding innovation and fixing patents and copyright are crucial, but apparently it doesn't test well, so nobody is fundraising for that platform.
Canada is not bad, but things can break down rapidly. Trudeau will fail on the side of authoritarian control, so any actual damage resulting from that should be fodder for debate on refining the system and protection from abuse. And if no damage is done, recognizing and reinforcing the fail-safe structures in government is probably necessary.
You could have provided a helpful link to said act. I would like to read it.
Although I do want to comment on the 30 days thing - this protest isn't that special. If a majority of politicians think it is appropriate to freeze people out of the banking system now, why will they have changed their mind in 30 days? This is going to be a routine response.
The specifics aren't exactly new (governments have been able to go after bank accounts for a long time) but the idea that it can be done on a mass scale is one of the most powerful arguments for crypto that I've ever seen. There is now a risk of being debanked for having the wrong sort of political opinions! These tactics are a horrific assault on the principles of liberty.
It isn't really the crux of the argument, but there are already concerning stories of it being abused [0]. Given the trend of dehumanising political opponents, it is easy how stories like this become less of a 1-off and people would still be making positive murmurings.
[0] https://bc.ctvnews.ca/social-media-post-from-b-c-politician-...
Not a risk, a reality.
It's so much more exciting to believe the government is freezing the accounts of political opponents than the boring facts about how crowd funding hasn't been subject to normal anti-fraud and anti-terrorism regulations.
The greatest concerns seem to be from Americans and this is particularly bad on Reddit, where the Canadian subreddit has been captured by right-leaning Americans mainly.
Let's be clear: there is no legal justification for using the emergencies act.
The broad powers the government has granted to police curtail Charter rights across the country.
This risk of abuse is high.
The emergency declaration should be immediately revoked.
"Fully 61 percent of Americans said they approve of renewing the Patriot Act's provisions to allow for continued collection of phone data, according to a CNN/ORC poll released Monday, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points."
https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/06/01/41123...
>The greatest concerns seem to be from Americans and this is particularly bad on Reddit, where the Canadian subreddit has been captured by right-leaning Americans mainly.
Source for this?
I suspect Canadians aren't concerned because for the most part Canadians have lived a very comfortable existence for a very long time due to the nature of our geopolitical privileges. I think the hyperbole tossed around regarding the convoy and blockade illustrate this.
I think Canadians have more faith in our institutions, particularly the courts, to remain apolitical.
Much of the dysfunction of the USA partly comes from it's size and it's economic, climatic & historical diversity compared to Canada. Canada is significantly smaller economically, historically and population wise. It is also a country that has had consistently cold winters, which creates cultural values that forces you to save for the winter, which makes everyone work better together, which is something you see similar with Scandinavian countries [0].
The USA has many climates that make fairly different cultures in subtle ways. Canada works better because it's smaller and accidents of history, not because they don't have free speech. Canada is more american than they feel comfortable with, and this creates a unease that makes them feel like they need to differentiate themselves on minor difference, much like two twins.
[0] If your wondering why russia doesn't work like scandinavia, one reason why is hundreds of years of brutal mongolian rule, while scandinanvia avoided that trauma.
I guess it's just natural for canadians to have this weird smug inferiority complex towards the US but you have to remember that our government admitted to committing a genocide (still ongoing) barely 2 years ago. Also on average even a majority government rarely gets more than 34% of the total votes. But I'm legimately curious as to what parts of our system you see as being so healthy?
Btw saying that the majority of canadians are not concerned at all about setting the precedent of suspending charter rights over a protest is just a complete self own if it was true and I don't think it is. Well at least I hope it isn't
I think this bears repeating. Especially when one of the protest organizers tried to cite their "first amendment rights" in court: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/tamara-lich-bail-heari...
We as Canadians don't want to give the government these powers all the time, so that's why we have an escape hatch here to maintain our democracy. It is a great approach and many of us are proud of it.
In practice, the government simply kept voting to extend its emergency powers until it passed a piece of legistlation that allowed it to keep the relevant powers from the emergencies act indefinitely.
You could say the same about the PATRIOT act, which has been around for a little under 2 decades.
The only party against it was Conservatives and I believe Bloc Quebcios.
Imo, the government must provide instructions for how to legally protest in Ottawa.
(No I don't support the illegal activities. But the government in stopping illegal activities is also preventing peaceful protests.)
> 15.2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
People who donated had all their money confiscated by Castro.
This is the expected behaviour and boon of having minority governments. When the government does something Canada doesn't like, a new election gets called
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_i...
This is to say that 'states of emergency' can be renewed..... forever....
“ Under the Emergencies Act, a declaration of an emergency by the Cabinet must be reviewed by Parliament.[33] Any temporary laws made under the act are subject to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Bill of Rights, and must have regard to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”
I guess it's a race to the bottom and impossible to prevent coercion. I just wish there was a better way.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/conservative-m...
But Michael Chong did get a bill through reminding MPs they can turf their leader, and it just got exercised for the first time. And some parts of the Conservative party are aghast that the lowly representatives of people overturned the will of the party.
...and yet still subject to the constitution.
See https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-12.3/FullText.htm...
“Recognition and declaration of rights and freedoms
1 It is hereby recognized and declared that in Canada there have existed and shall continue to exist without discrimination by reason of race, national origin, colour, religion or sex, the following human rights and fundamental freedoms, namely,
(a) the right of the individual to life, liberty, security of the person and enjoyment of property, and the right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of law;
(b) the right of the individual to equality before the law and the protection of the law;
(c) freedom of religion;
(d) freedom of speech;
(e) freedom of assembly and association; and
(f) freedom of the press.”
>Although the Bill of Rights remains in effect, many of its provisions were superseded by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. And unlike the Bill of Rights, the Charter is part of the Constitution — the highest law of the land.
>The Charter can be limited by the notwithstanding clause, also known as the override clause. Section 33 permits federal, provincial and territorial governments to temporarily bypass Charter rights in section 2 and sections 7 to 15.
Section 1 (probably what would make almost any emergency measure stand in court since "reasonable limits" is almost always judged in favor of what the state deems is reasonable) says:
>1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society
Section 33 (Not-withstanding clause, not used in this case but just goes to show how worthless the charter is as a bill of rights) :
>33. Parliament or the legislature of a province may expressly declare in an Act of Parliament or of the legislature, as the case may be, that the Act or a provision thereof shall operate notwithstanding a provision included in section 2 or sections 7 to 15 [those sections make up for most of the core basic human rights]
Since 1982, and part of our constitution: https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/const/page-12.html
From the accounts I've heard, I can't really tell what the protestors were hoping to realistically accomplish. Pissing off a whole city for a whole month doesn't exactly have a great track record with regards to swaying policy.
According to polls, most canadians opposed the protest. That doesn't mean they necessarily have an opinion on whether invoking of the act was appropriate or not. I think most canadians are sensible enough to let the lawyers figure that out than adding noise via their uninformed hot takes. My personal take is that canadians as a society just don't like gratuitously loud whining and would much rather get back to peacefulness.
I think the police response speaks volumes about canadian values and what they represent, regardless of what laws say on paper: some people actually criticized the police response for being too "soft" on protesters but it was a good example that canadian police always prioritizes de-escalation[0]. They focused on reducing the risk of violence from breaking out even if it meant standing down; and arrests were largely related to dangerous threats (e.g. weapons) or gross disregard for public peace/safety.
People keep making parallels to US politics, but one big difference is that Canadians just aren't as polarized as to disagree on core principles, i.e. there's much less inclination for political parties to double down into increasingly polarized, extremist tribes. So even if it turns out that invoking the Emergencies Act was a bad call this time, it doesn't necessarily follow that Canada will devolve into a tyranny.
[0] https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/02/01/news/ottawa-offi...
The question in some minds will be ensuring if existing tools and capabilities are not used, including existing enforcement of laws, what is the point of creating new ones? Any holes in today's legislation might have been the rushed legislation of the past.
There are generally more parallels between OWS and the truckers than people are willing to recognize, because there’s been a hell of an inversion: if you supported OWS 10 years ago you probably don’t like the truckers today and if you like the truckers you probably weren’t for OWS 10 years ago. There are a handful of Tim Pools that like both, and there are elites that disliked both, but the average person has to do some gymnastics.
All that I ask is that everyone is consistent: if OWS is a protest, then this is too. If you don’t like that Americans funded the truckers, you have to be willing to call out that OWS took place in NYC but formed from a Canadian nonprofit.
I have no idea why whether this event is a protest or not is considered the key question. Both movements could be protests and still be diametrically opposed in aims, approaches and broad political direction.
Protests often go beyond the legal bounds of free speech. Yeah. But obviously go far enough beyond legal bounds and you may find yourself in jail. And if you've done that in a fashion that's mostly oriented to harming the average person, then you may well deserve to be in jail by a strong concensus. But sure, you're still protesting.
Edit: A simple way to put that occurs to me is, sure, "people on the left support some protests that break some laws for some causes they consider important". But that doesn't mean they would or anyone would support "any protest that breaks any law for anything the protesters consider important"
By contrast, most of the residential neighborhoods in Manhattan easily clear 100k people, and are not as segregated in terms of business and residential streets.
If it hadn’t been for the honking and intimidation, I bet the party could still be going on. But the truckers imposed themselves on too many people to tolerate. They seemed to take pleasure in making Ottawa residents miserable. They had limited ability or willingness to police themselves which OWS at least tried to do.
Is this actually true? According to [0] "The Declaration expires after 30 days unless an extension is confirmed within specific timelines by both the House of Commons and the Senate.". I don't see how this would grant the government permanent powers unless the Emergencies Act gets renewed in perpetuity.
[0] https://www.canada.ca/en/department-justice/news/2022/02/can...
While I generally agree with the alarm raised by this article, I find it does itself a disservice by exaggerating and citing to Americans with, charitably, a passing understanding of Canadian law and government.
If people would like a dispassionate/neutral reading of the legal obligations imposed by the invocation of the Emergencies Act, I can recommend:
- a summary by Osler, a prestigious Canadian law firm [1]
- the order itself [2]
- the regulations themselves [3]
They are bad enough on their own without embellishment.
For additional context, I have never voted for the Liberal party. Federally, I have donated to and voted for Conservative and Green candidates my entire life. My current MP (a Green MP), voted against the Emergencies Act. I approved of that vote. But it is just absolutely bizarre to me to see people comparing Trudeau to Hitler, Stalin and Mao, as is done in the punk6529 Twitter thread that is embedded in this article. There is plenty to criticize without undermining yourself by using these stupidly emotive comparisons.
[1]: https://www.osler.com/en/blogs/risk/february-2022/new-emerge...
[2]: https://www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p2/2022/2022-02-15-x1/html/s...
[3]: https://www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p2/2022/2022-02-15-x1/html/s...
In addition this interview by en ex-CSIS (Canadian spycops agency) employee suggests that the funding is getting to the organizers by some means other than those which go directly through payment processors. It would be interesting if these measures were also actually ineffective. I was a bit skeptical of her claim that bitcoin ATMs in Ottawa were a likely source though:
https://thebigstorypodcast.ca/2022/02/15/trying-to-follow-th...
(And even if they do, 30 days is still a really long time not to have access to money, aside from whatever cash you happened to have on you at the time.)
“Although not impossible that someone who gave $20 be captured and have their bank account frozen, I find that scenario…you know I think it would be in rare circumstances.”
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/banks-begin-unfreezing-accou...
[0] https://mobile.twitter.com/ezralevant/status/149485205614596...
I understand why Freeland would not want to outright say "we want the permanent power to freeze funds with no recourse" - but that's the only conclusion I could reach based on that clip.
Keep in mind, the government had the power to seize/freeze assets, before this Emergency Act, as long as they had a court order. However, that low bar seemed to be too high a hurdle so the Liberals want to make this permanent.
At the end of the video that you linked, she explicitly says that some of the emergency powers (suspending insurance for commercial vehicles involved in blockades) should not be available to governments in ordinary times.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_1_of_the_Canadian_Char...
Label any protest you don't like an "illegal protest". Then as long as there's less than one such protest every 30 days, it's not "permanent"... Yet it is.
Honking a horn carries very little penalty but is massively annoying if done in front of the PM's house. Parking your truck infront of a border crossing is similarly not very penalized, yet killing 25% of the trade between two countries is very damaging to the gov't.
The real reason we never saw these measures before is because of how brutally effective they are while being entirely non-violent.
This is true. They have frozen the bank accounts of hundreds and you cannot do anything about it. You never got due process, there is no redress from the courts because you dont have a bank account to hire a lawyer.
Did you notice how "freedom" became a swear word over the last 5-6 years? With all these "muh freedoms", "what exact freedom have you lost?", "freedom of speech don't protect you from anything" it seems like any movement that fights for any "freedom" will be labeled as terrorist/nazi in next few years.
History repeats itself, and I'm sick of it. My country of origin and my country where I grew up, both turned to totalitarian hellholes, and now it's Canada's turn.
Because it's about "freedom" and not freedom. Remember when the US called french fries freedom fries because France wasn't part of the coalition of the willing? That's the same freedom.
Freedom also means responsibility, but some just want to do what ever they want and as soon as somebody demands from them to take responsibility they cry freedom.
People were drafted in wars and got killed and these guys whine about some pokes. I want my freedom too but these guys showed me that that will never happen. I underestimated the number of stupid people.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/truck-convoy-downtown-...
We live in a society, your personal space and freedom intersects with the personal space and freedom of others. So yo have to compromise and jab is nothing too demanding. Especially when billions of people have already done it.
This assertion that the government cannot do anything good, by virtue of being the government, is kinda why the kids gloves are coming off between the Canadian government and these protestors.
What exactly should the government response be to a group of people who demand the entire government be thrown out, and are going to ruin the majority of the populations lives until it happens? Are they supposed to sit there and accept that they’re a naughty little government who can never do anything right so they need to be quiet and go away?
People decide to protest about removing restrictions and the news tells you everyone is here trying overthrow the government.
You now think unarmed people with a hottub, roasting a pig who made a big party in front of parliment were a threat to the Canadian government?
Does that make sense?
Because it didn’t rise to the level of treason?
For the entire rest of your comment I can’t respond until you let me know what was the appropriate response for the government here. So far you’ve implied they should have done nothing, and explicitly threw treason out as another possibility. Is there any step the government could have taken that was appropriate in your view other than do nothing, charge treason, or capitulate entirely to the protestors?
Occupy Wallstreet was treated harder for less. Tough truckers fearing a needle, hard to believe.
That's not their demand? They want the government to stop imposing vax mandates and lockdowns. I'm sure a lot of people also want Trudeau out, but I doubt if they lifted the restrictions like the UK did that the truckers would still stick around.
> CTV cited Bauder saying that he hoped the signed MoU would convince Elections Canada to trigger an election, which is not constitutionally possible. In this pseudolegal document, CU called on the "SCGGC" to cease all vaccine mandates, reemploy all employees terminated due to vaccination status, and rescind all fines imposed for non-compliance with public health orders.[46] If this failed, the MoU called on the "SCGGC" to dissolve the government, and name members of the CU to form a Canadian Citizens Committee (CCC), which is beyond the constitutional powers of either the Governor General or the Senate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_convoy_protest#Planning
They released an MOU at the start of this that explicitly called for the resignation of the current government if they were not willing to immediately lift the Covid19 mandates. In the case of a refusal to lift the mandates, it demanded that a new government be formed of representatives from the Senate and, incredibly, representatives from the convoy.
I didn't say that. I literally said is that government can and will abuse any power that citizens give up to them. Also, that power and lost freedoms are extremely hard to take back (you're welcome to find counterexamples). Therefore we (citizens) must be very alert every time when government tries to do that.
I think I generally agree but I’m this instance it didn’t look the Canadian federal government really overreached. I think it might have been a better look if they had gone after the police chief first who was refusing to enforce the law, and try and get local government to do the enforcement but after three weeks in a residential area I can see how leadership would be concerned about escalation
In the American context, there's also a lot of hypocrisy on the right in terms of using that word, e.g. celebrating post 911 stuff like The Patriot Act and No Fly lists and Guantanamo, not caring about the conditions of immigration detention, but then bitching about having to wear cloth on one's face sometimes. Right-wingers literally cheered Joe Arpaio saying he runs concentration camps. So long as great atrocities befall minorities, they don't care. If they get minorly inconvenienced --> somehow it's a big deal.
I'd say more, but it's hard to discuss properly on phone. I would say there are reasonable libertarian concerns about this bill and Covid policies and a bunch of other stuff, but if you're wondering why so many of us reflexively distrust such arguments, you have to look at the cultural and political context in which we grew up. You're not seeing the full picture, to say the least.
The state is fucking powerful. After all, the state is the one in charge of checking the state's power. If you piss off enough people, or merely the wrong people, you may discover that your rights only extend so far as other people are willing to protect them. The difference here is that most protestors are punished via ass-kicking, seizure of personal belongings, a few nights being humiliated in a jail cell, and a bunch of fines.
The people whose lives were interrupted by this are pissed off and out for blood. And Trudeau is going to give it to them, and be heralded as a hero while doing so. Especially after the perceived police incompetence in the matter (by failing to dole out the standard ass-kicking-jail-fine punishment).
So to compare these occupiers with typical protestors does not make sense. Talking with other locals, the last time someone could remember a non-peaceful protest in Ottawa was around the beginning of the Iraq war, aside from when about a dozen BLM protestors occupied a single intersection overnight and were all arrested on day 2 of their attempt to keep the intersection shut down.
It's literally straight out of a third world country's dictator textbook on how to discredit any opposition, especially the cold War Era style insanity around "foreign backing!!" by... Americans. I guess at least they didn't blame the Russians this time
Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Movement basically just took over city parks and fed people. Occupy was basically a good. CHAZ is a kind of rolling disaster that involved over-anxious security killing a guy who'd stolen someone's car. As a leftist who knows people who were involved with it, I would say CHAZ was a very bad thing.
Of course, a democratic society has to decide what sorts of disruptions are acceptable and which have to be stopped. Of course such a society is going to do that. Otherwise, the first extremist cult to field enough armed people to seize the state will win.
...just because you disagree with the message or the METHODS(emphasis added)...
If the trucker convoy was basically thugs who were breaking the law because they thought they could and because they thought doing this would force the rest of the nation to bow to their demands, I don't think anyone has an obligation to have the least respect for their efforts.
So sure, we can call both protests, but the important thing is that this was also a foreign-funded occupation. So there is no value in comparing this with the protests for both left- and right- wing causes that Ottawa sees on a weekly basis. Protests that get a permit, last an afternoon, and then go home and lets people live their lives without being harassed.
If protests were "comfortable", then there would be no pressure for the government to do anything. The point of a protest is to make enough noise (heh) so the government is forced to react.
Look at protests like Euromaiden, or the recent protests in Kazakhstan with 200+ dead. If the Ukrainian people didn't protest at the levels they did, and occupy Kiev for as long as they did, would the government have done anything? I don't think anyone in Kiev was sleeping when people were building barricades and engaging in deadly firefights with the Ukrainian police & army.
There's varying levels of "uncomfortable", and a question of who is being made uncomfortable.
If a protest is permanently damaging the hearing of regular people who are not in positions of leadership for 21 days straight, and subjecting them to significant harassment, some of them a botched arson attempt, and a whole litany of other assaults as have been documented in Centertowne Ottawa, I would argue it is more akin to holding them hostage.
You want politicians or big business to react but you’re pissing off small businesses and civilians. Even if I 100% agree with your protest, I don’t want you to blare loud music and block off roadways and generally be aggressive and obnoxious. In fact this kind of thing makes ordinary people go against you.
If you can’t target the politicians and big businesses directly, if you want to get the people’s support, bring attention to your issue. If it’s a serious issue people will take interest themselves. Once you some support, then you can go out and protest and lead a huge rally, but don’t blatantly piss off bystanders.
Emergency powers were needed to force what would be the normal job of police.
For example, they got rid of the police chief. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/canadian-official-po...
Businesses weren't closed by protesters. That's what they were protesting FOR: to have things open up.
The protesters weren't harassing people: the government has been doing it for 2 years.
And the kinds of people who say this are familiar too. They perceive themselves to be part of the majority (Or the "Right Side Of History", in other imaginations), they think it will never turn against them or - for that matter - that the people they're oppressing will never return the unpleasant favor and gang on them back.
All those countless centuries of history and people still haven't fully grasped that Power and Oppression are completely symmetric tools, totally blind to the identities of those wielding them or those they're used against. The tyranny you so gleefully cheer now is going to turn against you (or an equivalent one will be constructed by the ones you oppressed one day and used against you) and you won't be laughing then.
I totally agree that democracy on paper says the People have control but I am not seeing that play out at any real scale.
Suppress people's rights & freedoms for long enough until they revolt, then call them violent terrorists and suppress them a bit more.
Look at what they did in Euromaiden, or the recent protests in Kazakhstan (200+ dead). If Ukrainian people resorted to peaceful protests, the pro-Russian government would have easily cracked down and suppressed the protests.
If you want another even more brutal example - look at the Tiananmen Protests. Do you think peaceful protest will convince an authoritarian communist government to magically give up its powers?
The government rarely listens to its people (yes that includes democratic countries). If you want the government to listen, you gotta make a lot of noise.
This act has never been used before, it's predecessor was used only during serious war. This act being used against legitimate protest and then going forward banning all protest?
Like say you want to protest the government based on one side of the Ukraine war? You can't, that's illegal.
Say you want to go cover those illegal protests and report on it as a journalist? That's illegal.
>Especially after the perceived police incompetence in the matter (by failing to dole out the standard ass-kicking-jail-fine punishment).
The police couldn't touch the protest for weeks not because of inaction but because your right to protest is a human right. They required the national emergency to remove our right to protest in order to label the protest illegal.
So you are saying under Canadian law, if you protest and do something illegal like blocking roads, destroying property, etc then Canadian police can't do anything? So if I go back in history and look at other protests in Canada like the ones against the pipelines for example, then I will see that the police didn't act against them?
Any protest of any respectable size will block the roads it chooses to march in, every climate change protest and every gay pride blocks the roads, never see people complaining about those.
>destroying property
What is the property that was destroyed by the protest in question?
Every protest in history has “done something illegal” like blocking roads or disrupting access to public spaces, at an absolute minimum. So if you have the right to protest, then you have the right to do those things that would otherwise be illegal within the context of a protest, or you don’t have the right to protest at all.
This is wholly incorrect. The Ottawa Police made a huge error at the beginning of the occupation, allowing the occupiers to entrench themselves in the city. Further disagreements in the police force and municipality extended the situation that all levels of government agreed was illegal from day 1.
This wasn't a protest, it was an illegal occupation.
This article https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2022/02/21/convoy-protesters-b... isn't quite a debunking but certainly throws some cold water on this claim. Although it's not really explicitly claimed in the article that this is actually happening, just strongly implied. I wonder if that is intentional.
The government is also working on a plan where you can appeal your account being frozen.
[0] https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/rcmp-says-it-did-not-provide...
[1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-rcmp-banks-an...
[2] https://twitter.com/MarkGerretsen/status/1495381037274251268
What a shame that Canada has come to this.
So the question isn't "Is it reasonable to have the power to do this in this specific case". The question really should be, are the powers actually being exercised in this way. It seems pretty clear that they aren't. So all this outrage about freezing accounts for donating to a political course are outrage over something that doesn't seem to have actually happened.
However, the problem is that you still need to convert this "uncontrollable" currency into fiat currency. At the very least, you need to pay your taxes. But if the governments decide that non-custodial currency is illegal, then everything from grocery stores to web hosts won't risk accepting anything but government-approved currency. Sure, we'll have black markets where people can convert things to fiat, but those will be expensive and risky.
So I still don't see blockchain as a savior here. If the government can give themselves the power to freeze people's custodial assets on a whim, they can also make it illegal to deal in bitcoin or whatever. And I'm skeptical that this is the kind of issue that can be boiled down into easy-to-understand bits in order to generate a lot of public support. Blockchain already has an image problem, being full of "bros" and undeserved millionaires/billionaires. Most people are not going to put their political support behind this without a huge shift.
Sadly, as long as this hype fueled bubble remains, I doubt much will change.
In terms of the Overton window (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window), it moves the idea of decentralized, censure resistant money from "unthinkable" to merely being "radical", or even "sensible". This should cause a similar shift on the other side of the window-- rather than having fully censurable state controlled money as being obvious future policy, we are having a debate about the explicit tradeoffs of that choice. The system we get will probably be somewhere in the middle of this, so the shifting of the window matters a lot.
So the existence of a technology can change the outcome merely by its existence, not by it's explicit adoption.
In situations like this having a backup emergency supply of nok-fait money is critical. If your bank account is frozen for any reason.
Very disappointing to see.
There are multiple facets to the protests.
- Blocking the bridge that was responsible for a sizeable percentage of trade between US and Canada goes far beyond a protest and any government would be well within their right to classify this as an emergency.
- You had US-based, armed, ultra-right wing militia elements who weren't trying to protest at all but rather sow discord. These were the types wanting to overthrow the government. Which meant that police weren't able to control the situation and there were legitimate concerns about it getting out of hand.
To your second point.. I've watched mainstream media in Canada and watched livestreams coming out of Ottawa, and have no heard of this _at all_. Is there actual evidence of this?
When they were deemed unable to is when the emergency decree went into effect.
And the Canadian government stated that some portion of the protests were either part of or linked to US militia groups:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/16/ottawa-blockad...
Reputable source or it didn't happen.
Congratulations, now you've made it such that it would be _irresponsible_ for me to not keep a large amount of savings outside of the financial system.
This is a new precedent. Expect it to proliferate, with virulence.
I'm sure others will be addressing the subject of social credit.
I have to go through police checkpoints to get to my home. I'm dealing with political divisions ripping through my friends and family right now. I'm scared of how this is pushing us to more centralized, unchecked, and unjust power in the hands of government.
Canada has dropped many rankings on the democracy scale.
Maybe it's just me, but it doesn't seem like that much to require that:
> A person must not participate in a public assembly that may reasonably be expected to lead to a breach of the peace by: > > (a) the serious disruption of the movement of persons or goods or the serious interference with trade; > (b) the interference with the functioning of critical infrastructure; or > (c) the support of the threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property.
I think it's possible to respect that approach, but still be mad as hell and get your point across.
(EDIT: according to rescripting, there are protests still happening in Ottawa. See thread [0])
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30434974
They are clearing the entire city. Anybody who doesn't work or live in Ottawa is not allowed to be there - you get arrested for being there. The new Ottawa police chief said something to the effect of "We are doing everything we can to ensure there are no more protests happening in Ottawa."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRWygfG3D9g
I wish all these law enforcement actions came along with official instructions for how to legally protest. Right now protesting is simply not allowed.
By the 2020’s western state power is no longer exercised through employment of a physical law enforcement corps. The middle class is sufficiently controlled by a centralized financial structure, but the social protection capacity of the state has become overwhelmed by both the numbers of the underclass and the wealth of the overclass. This is often presented as an intentional political position, but it should be easy to see that this was just a pragmatic alignment with the inevitable reality. A pandemic pushes the state into a position to assert absolute power, and a series of protests arise to test that power, while investors enter a mania for alternative financial systems. The differences in response to the various threats to state power raise the ultimate question of this learning unit: Is there such a thing as a power based on and constrained by the consent of the governed, or is a government only legitimized by its ability to exert and retain power in the form of control over the governed?
Certainly some of their methods will be of great interest to the unpersons, perhaps some of the philosophy will be more appealing too.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cultures/wordcel-shape-rotato...
https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/wordcels-numbercels-defi...
The bank that I had account + credit card was shut down (stolen by Turkish state) with the decree laws. My brother had an additional account in another bank. That bank terminated his account and credit card using decree laws as a reason, no court order.
We lost our jobs, money and freedom in a single night. Our company was shut down by the state without due process. My relatives, friends and colleagues got jailed and tortured by Turkish police and soldiers. We got fired and almost none of us were able to get employment (we got work permits revoked) code 36 (fired due to decree laws) is on social insurance records. University degrees of some of us cancelled by the decree law. There are thousands of things I want to tell but it is too long. At the end my brother became a permanent resident in Canada via asylum and I am an asylum seeker in Greece (decisions take way long here). My relatives and friends still in jail in Turkey.
To put it simply, what Canadian government is planning right now is a clear way to go for genocide. Killing people economically is a part of genocide method (don't ask me where I know it).
When the Saudi prince locked up his brothers under false charged pulling a complete power coup and no one said much I wondered why.
Also equating what is happening in Turkey or Canada to Genocide is a bit too much :)
Given that modern technology enables silencing political opposition without necessarily murdering them, some might argue that we'll see fewer murders in the future.
But China is a good counter-argument to that assertion. It's very technologically advanced, yet its totalitarian regime is continuing to commit atrocities (murders, work camps, prison sentences without due process, etc.) against Uyghurs.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergency-bank-measures-fin...
I mean: in the end what they were really protesting against were measures they did find totalitarian (btw I'm double vaccinated and so is my wife, out of our free will, so we're not anti-vaxx).
The measures taken do not look like something normal to do in a democracy: invoking an emergency act and using laws meant for war times... Aren't some people who were not sympathetic to their cause now going to think they were right all along?
I'm asking because I just explained the situation to my wife and her first reaction was precisely what I mentioned: "so they were right all along?"
I didn't look at it from that angle but there are obviously people who will.
You do not just get to seize all of their assets without due process.
The protest was already cleared away using conventional policing methods yet this law still remains on the books and they are going after protestors retroactively. It is vindictive and despotic.
(
) that's up to courts, not public opinion. I'm in the public.The emergency act removes that requirement, which is what is scary. Not only can you not prove it, they don't even have to hold a trial (afaict)
Also that law was clearly not intended to be used against protests. Seems more aimed at organized crime.
As to organised crime, there's strong accusation of exactly that involved here. But I suppose it'll sort in the trials of the leaders.
They don't have any respect from the average Canadian. They are an incredibly disruptive, sometimes violent group, with no respect for basic human decency. I know people who were forced out of their homes because you go crazy after that much continuous honking.
I don't have the slightest shred of pity for anyone involved in these "protests", or anyone who supported them. It's a disgrace that strong action wasn't taken more quickly.
Unlike in the US, most Canadians are okay with trading some small freedoms for the greater good.
As a Canadian I have no problem with these power being used in this extreme case. After three weeks of occupying downtown Ottawa with the demand that the government be dismantled, they are no longer peaceful protesters. They are a group trying to remove a democratically elected western government. It makes perfect sense that funding for a group like that (a terrorist group) would be blocked.
I am glad that unlike the US, Canada is not allowing the far right to operate unimpeded. Homegrown right wing extremism is a growing problem in the US and is spilling over into Canada (Thanks Facebook) and I’m happy to see it being put down in this small way.
https://www.facebook.com/thomas.minnee/posts/101600891209174...
This time the answer is "It's useful to make your mortgage payment when one of your family members donates to a trucker protest that successfully applies pressure to the Canadian government, which then 'freezes' your bank account until the emergency legislation expires."
The quoted tweets point out that legal pornographers and legal gun shops have been subjected to similar, but less transparent, measures.
Of course the law says it applies equally to cryptocurrencies, but it really only applies to intermediaries. The point of cryptocurrencies is that they make you independent of intermediaries; you can possess your own coins instead of lending them to a bank or a stockbroker. This is part of what the Nunchuk response quoted explains.
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30408611
One comment about the article tho: Quoting Ezra Lavant immediately destroys the credibility of the author due to his obvious and direct connection to misinformation and over all general grift by attaching himself to right wing causes. There are lots of strong credible sources that could back up the argument of government overreach with the EA, but Ezra is not one of them.
This proves again and again that when the government implements a policy that is not based on science, the outcomes are very very bad.
At the time this convoy began, Ontario was experiencing a surge in its hospitals with around 4000 hospital beds occupied by people with COVID.[1][2] Note, that's from COVID, not with COVID.
While it may turn out to be true that Omicron made mandates make no sense, keep in mind these rules were in response to the US' implementation, announced in October of last year.[3] Canada implemented these to sync up and provide clarity at the borders in January, when then American rules went into effect.[4]
[1]: https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data/hospitalizations
[2]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/covid-19-update-ontar...
[3]: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2021/10/12/secretary-mayorkas-allow...
[4]: https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canada-s-vaccine-mandate-for-c...
1) About half of those people in hospitals were vaccinated.
2) Vaccine mandates do not considerably improve vaccination update, especially among elderly who benefit the most from vaccination.
As for the US rules, both countries ignore science on this. Nothing good came out of it.
> 1) About half of those people in hospitals were vaccinated.
Considering Ontario is 90% 12+ fully vaccinated and 85% 5+ fully vaccinated[1], this means somewhere in the neighbourhood of say 15-18% of the population represents 50% of our hospitalizations, likely a lower percentage, since as you note this tends to hospitalize people in older cohorts.
> 2) Vaccine mandates do not considerably improve vaccination update, especially among elderly who benefit the most from vaccination.
Firstly, Ontario's elderly are massively vaccinated. 80+ is 99.99%, 70-79 is 99.99%, 60-69 (which I wouldn't consider elderly these days) is 97.37%.[4] This isn't due to anything very recent either, the rates have been 90%+ two doses for the 70+ crowd since August of last year.
Secondly, if this were true, you would not expect to see upticks in vaccinations coinciding with mandate implementations. Yet in [1], in November of 2021 you see a clear uptake in vaccination doses administered. This coincides roughly when 5+ were authorized for vaccination[2], as well as when federally regulated industries began requiring it.[3]
You can see from the raw data in [4] first doses between Nov 1 2021 and Jan 1 2022 was 468,443 for 5-11s, 28,257 for 12-17s, and 220,641 for 18+. Nearly a third of all first doses during the time period when 5-11 just became newly able to be vaccinated came from Ontario's adults. There was an 88.5% vaccination rate among 18+ at the start of that time period and there was a noticeable dip in vaccinations due to the holidays (you can see this in the booster #s too). You can question the motivations of those people but I think the numbers at least suggest that the mandates do have a part to play in driving people to get vaccinated.
[1]: https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data
[2]: https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/covid-19-vaccine-e...
[3]: https://www.canada.ca/en/transport-canada/news/2021/10/manda...
[4]: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=171000...
The provisions expire ostensibly in 30 days, but what's pretty clear is there are exceptions for certain protests, and what I forsee occuring is there will be provocative so-called "counter protests," backed by the governing parties, which will result in "random" violence (some staged, some provoked), that will be used as a further pretext to extend and augment the powers into an indefinite emergency. (remind me: April 15, 2022) The playbook is a mix of colour revolution tactics with Arendt's description of totalitarian movements using absurdity and chaos via other movements to neutralize people at large.
In case you were still catching up, it would now seem uncontroversial that the Emergencies Act is at least how far they are willing to go to implement digital identity via vaccine passports. Simply, the Canadian government has metastasized. I'm not neutral at all, but I like to constantly reassess whether my views have predictive power.
The outs I see are:
a) tension fizzles and cools off, vaccine passports get pulled as promised in 2 weeks, act expires in 30 days, life goes back to mostly normal, pandemic finished like it is in dozens of other countries around the world.
b) narrative changes and now that truckers are moved, no reason to pull back vaccine passports anymore, and some excuse is contrived to maintain them - permanently divided society results.
c) government becomes histrionic and starts escalating reaction to imaginary threats, adds additional powers, starts purging society groups from financial system and employment - result is decade+ of strife.
d) government just says fuck it, Queen dies, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and potentially France form a new post-national bloc with only nominal local rule, similar to the EU, but mainly operated by a transnational committee that implements a social credit system to engineer a utopian experiment that accepts a lot of casulties.
These are coarse grained scenarios, but as poles for likely outcomes, they're the waypoints I'm using. Most people think option a) is plausible, but I think their hope obscures their ability to see incentives. Option b) is a verifiable bet in a couple of weeks, and if b, then it's a quesiton of whether it's in service of c) or d).
There wasn't much/any honking, but there was some looting and burning.
The critics of the use of the Emergency Powers have been derided as cranks, and this is in line with the majority opinion of Canadians
Canada simply does not have a heritage of individual rights. Their country, their rules.
They absolutely do, and they changed "their rules" in 1982 to make it official.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and...
> 2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association.Do you believe comments section on poll and news websites are an accurate representation of the wider populace?
Democracy doesn't have to be 51% majority rule. That would be quite unfair to the loosing minority. Consensus democracy is one alternative, preventing a majority from imposing on a minority. There's things like super majorities, also. Not just winner-take-all majority voting.
Switzerland is a great example of a more direct democracy. Local canton governments control taxes, health care, etc. The people can petition for a referendum vote to overrule the politicians, adding or deleting laws. It's been working well for a while.
Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30433141.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope
> In a slippery slope argument, a course of action is rejected because, with little or no evidence, one insists that it will lead to a chain reaction resulting in an undesirable end or ends. The slippery slope involves an acceptance of a succession of events without direct evidence that this course of events will happen.
https://www.txstate.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definit...
> The two primary forms of the slippery slope argument are the logical form, (in which acceptance of A must logically lead to acceptance of the undesirable B), and the psychological form, in which it is argued that the acceptance of A will, over time, lead people to be more willing to accept B.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Slippery_slope
Also: general hand-waving like "based on this government's track record" does not a pattern make. Like most of my cited sources say: "based on little or no supporting evidence."
Personally, I don't think that a government which stamps out protest and bank accounts of political rivals is anywhere but at the bottom of the slope. I've lived in Africa and I've seen how this goes.
What _would_ make a pattern? Is it possible to make any negative predictions without falling into the Slippery Slope?
Remember the PATRIOT Act? It recently prevented me from buying a package of decongestants at Walgreens. I guess keeping my nose clogged helped America fight Al Qaeda or something.
I think government overreach is basically the status quo. Or as the old saying goes, "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy".
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: we've also had to ask you this kind of thing in the past.
There are probably very few cases where the government implemented a rule or regulation or tax or anything where it was eventually rolled back. The government has a long and documented track record of incrementally expanding its reach and power.
The US homeland security act will never time out. The Canadian emergencies act will likely also continue on forever, but the act doesn't actually have to get worse to BE worse. The act is already dictatorial. The controlling government will just figure out how to apply the emergencies act more liberally against political opponents. That's how it will get worse.
And they even helped with convenient tax credits for taking their preferred modes of transportation! (spending tax dollars)
strawman fallacy (or "whataboutism" if you prefer (I don't))
This will be an impossible subject to wade through due to the very charged reality of what has gone down. Preconceived perceptions are broken.
I respect Bill Maher's opinion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i72czkSUsM
I respect Jimmy Dore's opinion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUNnGdv8ceM
One of the best objective timelines I have read on this subject to date: https://quillette.com/2022/02/21/the-ottawa-trucker-protest-...
20 minute video, I'm sure he's going to say stuff. I'll even say that I tend not to agree with him on many things. He's a bernie bro and I'm certainly not.
But the point I was making, the shit going down in Canada is real and hard pill to swallow.
If you wish to ignore jimmy dore, fine. Did you read the article?
* Quoting Ezra Levant is just... hilarious. His news rag has been banned from so many press events.
* We JUST had a federal election where these protesters could have made their point. Instead they chose to strangle the capitol and borders across the country.
* Over a thousand donors to the Convoy have been linked to the Jan 6th capitol demonstration and attack.
* 3 weeks of disruption to the nation's capital with horns blaring overnight, arson attempts, and weapons seizures is not "non-violent". There is not much difference between storming a capital and strangling one. Police and Military members were involved in creating supply lines and creating an occupation. And there were plans to block airport cargo terminals. The economic impacts across the nation are in the billions of dollars.
* The freezing of finances IS NOT retroactive, thanks to our charter, meaning if you donated to the convoy before the invocation of the Emergencies Act, you won't be targeted. The only accounts were “individuals and companies suspected of involvement in illegal acts,” such as “influencers in the illegal protest in Ottawa” and vehicle owners and drivers “who did not want to leave the area impacted by the protest.”
* It's hard to see the act as a tyrannical overreach if it can be challenged in court and has a public inquiry
* Police didn't enforce the law which is why the feds needed to intervene. The public inquiry (required by the act) should reveal why police forces were unable to shut down these protests earlier, and where the money was flowing. If donor lists are to be believed, there was a significant amount of foreign funding into this operation, as well as members of the public service.
Governments should not have tools so readily available that allow them to destroy a person's (or family's) finances without due process.
> Police didn't enforce the law which is why the feds needed to intervene.
That seems to be a pretty big problem. If the police aren't doing their job, fire their leadership and find people who will get it done. Does Canada have something analogous to the US National Guard that could have been brought in to deal with this if the local authorities were refusing to take action?
The outrage here -- at least to me -- isn't about how many people were affected by this or about how the truckers could have better made their point. It's that governments just should not have the power to "solve" problems like this in this way. (And before anyone decides to jump into whataboutism territory, yes, I acknowledge that the US has similar problems, and we suck as well for letting authorities get away with it.)
They did this, once they had the additional support they needed.
> That seems to be a pretty big problem. If the police aren't doing their job, fire their leadership and find people who will get it done. Does Canada have something analogous to the US National Guard that could have been brought in to deal with this if the local authorities were refusing to take action?
Not really anything specifically the same as the National Guard in terms of policing actions. The closest you could argue is the RCMP.
The city did eventually fire the police chief, get extra resources, and make arrests, as I'm sure if you've followed this story at all you'll have seen by now.
> The outrage here -- at least to me -- isn't about how many people were affected by this or about how the truckers could have better made their point. It's that governments just should not have the power to "solve" problems like this in this way. (And before anyone decides to jump into whataboutism territory, yes, I acknowledge that the US has similar problems, and we suck as well for letting authorities get away with it.)
I agree with you here. It should not have gotten to this point. Where do you draw the line though?
At what point is a person's right to protest crossing a line?
Is it blocking off roadways for several weeks?
Is it shutting down businesses in a downtown core?
Is it harassing people?
Is it threatening people?
Is it assaulting people?
Is it attempted arson?
I'm trying to envision where the line should be drawn in a way that respects right to protest and allows the locals to not have to endure the above.
At what point do you cut off their funding source(s)?
The failure on the convoy organizer's part was placing the trucks where they did and deciding to harass the people who just live in downtown Ottawa. If they were up on Parliament hill for these three weeks and there weren't collections of stories of the above, nobody would really care.[1] As I've mentioned elsewhere, Ottawa is familiar with large protests and marches. The people calling it an occupation aren't wrong, from the video I've seen and the stories I've heard from friends and family living down there.
[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/ontario/comments/sgcx4a/del_duca_it...
2. the state of emergency could not be in response to the border closures, because they were cleared prior. one single cachet of weapons was found. per 100,000 criminals, gee, thats better than my hood. as for honking, it should be punishable by death or bankruptcy in any civilized country.
3. yes it is. override of the charter is precisely the power the emergency act seeks
4. have you ever donated to the world wildlife fund? sponsored a child in africa? the data has already made it clear that the majority of funding came from within canada in small amounts. occams razor: this is the result of frustrated citizens, not vladimir putin
2. The weapons themselves were not the problem. Gas canisters stockpiled unsafely near parliament is a huge concern. And weapons found in Coutts were directly linked to a credible threat of an attack on RCMP members (high-capacity magazines are extremely illegal).
3. The Emergencies Act is subject to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is written into the Act itself. The Charter, which continues to be supreme to the Emergency Act, forbids retroactive punishment.
4. See above. This is not a charity or nonprofit. It is a criminal organization that is under investigation.
are you able to provide sources? I’ve heard the exact opposite.