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.
The act was passed specifically to curtail charter abuses from the previous bill and in the end, still answers to the charter.
"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.
The governments actions meet at least 2/3 and most Canadians would say 3/3 of the main Canadian values.
I think Canadians have more faith in our institutions, particularly the courts, to remain apolitical.
Speak for yourself. Also consider that an estimated 9% of all Canadians live abroad (mostly in the US and Europe), including up to 25% of professionals in certain industries (doctors, for example, and I'm sure tech is up there too).
Lots of Canadians don't have faith in our institutions. Unfortunately, moving away is easier than changing the docile Canadian mentality and is a better individual choice.
Edit - and for comparison purposes around 1.7% of Americans live abroad.
I was speaking for myself, as I see it, as are you. Note that I was one of the 9% living abroad for ~3 years.
> the docile Canadian mentality
I rather disagree with this supposed generalization
> moving away is [..] a better individual choice
Yes, for those who are more professionally desirable (doctors, tech, other professionals as you mention), moving to the US in particular is the "better individual choice", in that you can earn a better living. I certainly could, but I prefer to live here with my fellow docile Canadians.
I'm one of that 9% and I can tell you that you couldn't be further from the truth.
But in this case they're freezing bank accounts without even going through the courts.
And the emergencies act is being challenged in court, which will determine if this is lawful.
Banks are private entities. They freeze accounts engaged in illegal activities regularly. The US does too - here's one random citation. [1]
[1] https://www.kqed.org/news/11899955/when-banks-turned-their-b...
The courts now get to play a role. https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/kenney-to-launch-l...
I would like to protect our constitutional rights, but I feel that Canada is too far gone.
Our prime minister called the protesters racists, declare emergency act, froze bank accounts of people who donated.
I am thinking about moving out.
If I had access to my laptop I'd locate the video (self-filmed) where Pat King discusses this exact topic. Someone may be able to find this for us.
Edit: found with great difficulty on my phone - https://mobile.twitter.com/VestsCanada/status/11779958944085...
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.
"Most Canadians" likely could not care less about things that does not affect them directly. And the opinions of the ones who do are most likely split in very different proportions contrary to your claim.
But yes, tiresome to see people trying to claim that they know the mind of the people.
We`ll see next elections: I bet Conservatives will do well and the Liberals will decline and the NDP will be wiped out. Jagmeet Singh has managed to extract the worst possible position from this.
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
There was an article in the Montreal Gazette this January that was very earnest, but if you read it with a critical outside perspective, it's absolutely ludicrous:
https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/josh-freed-flori...
So this guy fled Quebec's corona restrictions for a vacation in Florida, and describes this experience while constantly complaining how Floridians are ignoring corona, and putting in a bunch of digs at the US healthcare system.
But at the same time, why did he go to Florida if everything is so terrible there? And if Canada's healthcare is so great, why was his pre-departure corona test that he needed to take before being let back in to Canada, free and easy to get in Florida? And why was the post-arrival test he needed to do in Quebec, expensive and hard to get?
The amount of Stockholm syndrome and "Canadian apologetics" is completely off-the-charts. I simply cannot understand how you can write an article like this in the first place, it's absolutely deranged.
(The height of irony, of course, is that at the time of the article's publishing, the daily death rate in Quebec was twice as high as the one in Florida.)
Also I totally agree on the canadian apologetics. It's really up there with some of the worst. A part from maybe the cognitive dissonance I've seen with Europeans grandstanding on racism in the USA (but don't talk to them about the Roma or moroccans or Muslims or albanians or... etc though, its different & they have totally valid reasons to hate them!).
This is the country that freelyadmitted to a genocide (and a currently occuring one at that) which caused just a bit of controversy, which I guess is good right if we are the worlds first to self declare a genocide? Except that we just... didn't do anything about it. Like we recognized it and flew the flags down for a bit, and that's all you need for a currently occuring genocide. The real debate is obviously talking about how bad american society is at dealing with race relations. 4 years later and the genocide is apparenly still ongoing and no on in government has been prosecuted or penalized, or even lost a siege in parliement over it.
It's one of the less charming facets of Canadian culture.
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...
And it is unfortunate that many Canadians do not understand that they are living in a state in which the parliament can be suspended by the unelected representative of the Queen (prorogation -- the same issue that led to Australia deciding they wanted to change their constitution) and that the not withstanding clause makes a mockery of the Charter.
Hopefully this wakes a few people up and gives some new impetus to the reform movements.
