> Even in Vancouver, I see cops treating white arrestees with dignity and respect whereas I see them pinning black and indigenous people to the ground as their first move -- almost every single interaction that I've witnessed.
This is nothing but an anecdote; you don't know the whole situation in these cases, you're probably just walking by, you don't know what happened beforehand, you don't know what level of threat these individuals posed. It's also almost certainly a case of bias confirmation, you're paying attention to the demographics during an arrest and chalking up datapoints when you see what you're looking for. Are you everywhere in the city? Do you have a representative sample of policing? Not even close.
You're just looking to see this happening, and nowhere in your mind does it possibly occur to you that these perps might have been disrespectful, might have fought back, might be "known to police" already as a troublemaker that's causing yet again another incident despite living in a city with nothing but programs and handouts and tolerance for the antics of the homeless.
> nonviolent oil protests
Illegal trespassing, in many cases, and the show of force is to make it clear that there will be no violence, because none will be tolerated. If anything, it should help make it far more clear cut that there cannot be any pushback on these issues. It doesn't matter what your opinion is on the subject, it matters what has been decided by the government, and it's probably better that a protestor realizes that they have no hope of violent resistance rather than giving it a try.
> The main difference is that the genocide in canada was largely effective
Is this really how my fellow citizens view their own history? What an incredibly biased, anti-White narrative. No wonder folks like you want to deconstruct everything that is well-built, predictable, and good about our nation as we have it today: you view it all as an evil inheritance that was stolen, rather than a beautiful workable system hewn out of cruel nature.
> We need to remove a bunch of duties from police, and hand them to social services, mental health care workers, and unarmed bylaws enforcement.
I'll give you this: it might actually have a chance of working here, to some extent, because of how nonviolent people generally are and because we don't have a massively armed population.
Still, there will be incidents where these unarmed support officers are going to be physically overpowered, abused, beaten, even raped; there will be incidents when people get away who should be caught; and when it happens, we'll all just have to remember that that wouldn't have happened if sufficient force had been present.
> work to improve the lives of people who are shat on by our society.
One of the big dichotomies between people like you and people like me is that it never seems like your side is willing to admit to the large numbers of people in this position who themselves shit on society rather than the other way around. Again, we have as many opportunities for a leg up here as there have ever been, anywhere in the world.