This feels downright dystopian, especially if the move away from cash and towards centrally-controlled electronic payment systems is anywhere near as widespread in Canada as elsewhere.
As I wrote elsewhere in this thread [1], I recommend taking a look at this channel or other extended livestreams to get a view from the ground if your impression of this event has been mostly shaped by articles. That recommendation goes for all major protests, especially if you think you disagree with the people protesting.
Don't get me wrong I like his videos but I also like hearing from the other side for good measure. Perhaps it is pedantic to point out that everyone has a political leaning but I think it is good to be upfront so that people can consider the biases of the input in order to make a more informed opinion. Or perhaps others should gauge the political bias themselves? That's a question of philosophy and ethics. I wish that everyone had enough skepticism and critical thinking to question everything and be conscious of their measures of validity and invalidity.
Edit: As I note in the linked comment, this channel is openly supportive of the protests. As I also write there, a quick YouTube search will yield a large variety of other sources. The important thing is finding sources with long and unedited footage. As Jacques Ellul observed, "propaganda ceases where simple dialogue begins." (This seems to be the primary driver of interest in long-form podcasts.)
I chose to share a channel with a positive bias because 1.) in my view Frei does a respectable job engaging counter-protestors with opposing views and 2.) in my view, mainstream coverage of this skews more negative than is warranted based on having watched many hours of livestream footage.
*edit: Ironically I've been rate limited and can't continue this conversation, lmao
So how… how would a moderation log and strict policies make HN a better place?
Given:
1) HN was started by / is moderated by "computer nerds" (IMO you're hardcore if you write it in lisp)
2) 'dang' is the only acknowledged public moderator (some small? number of additional secret moderators also exist)
It follows that:
It's difficult and doesn’t scale to "manually" apply rate limiting. Most / all such action is highly automated.
At least that's my wild, possibly way-off-base guess.
This doesn't happen to me often, but does happen when I comment in rapid succession.
The edit button is still not showing up for me, though. Do you have any idea why that might be or if there's something I can do to fix it?
Imgur screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/ZEWIJeW
Edit: Was there a thread-level edit ban or something? Because I can now edit this post.
Users flagged that comment.
I blame the big media for sowing so much division because they flatout refuse to write a positive story about the other side.
https://youtube.com/user/DCNews2Share
What ever the YouTube channel attribute flag to throttle visibility is, is probably set to max as they never get more than a few hundred views.
Ottawa Walks: https://www.youtube.com/c/Ottawalks/videos
Pre-convoy this user was just doing walking live streams around the city.
I am all for demonstrating, but I think it is a little ridiculous what they are doing.
My personal opinion: your threshold to kill free speech is way, WAY too low.
Anyone here with on the ground experience about the nighttime situation?
Perhaps reading the comment in context of the comment chain is necessary. I am making no claims as to the truckers, I am stating that the onus is on those who are causing damage by their "Free Speech" to adjust to avoid causing that damage, rather than on the people suffering the damage.
Took 5s to find.
Look at how casually you make these connections: speech -> noise -> sleeplessness -> damage ... therefore implying, purposefully or not, that speech = violence.
No. Speech is NOT violence. I suggest you get a pair of earplugs.
Sadly, I doubt you even recognise your contribution to the polarisation of society and removal of nuance from social discourse.
> No. Speech is NOT violence. I suggest you get a pair of earplugs.
Threats. That's one form of violence. Yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, that's another.
Threat is instigating fear of injury. Violence is causing injury. You can have your own personal definition, but from a legal perspective, threat is not a violent crime.
Yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre isn't even illegal. Let alone a violence. Inciting panic is illegal. If you incite panic through yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre, you'll answer for inciting panic and will bear responsibility for the actual consequences, if any, not for the yelling.
https://dictionary.thelaw.com/violence/
this violence is not confined to an actual assault of the person, [..] whatever goes to intimidate or overawe, by the apprehension of personal violence, or by fear of life [..] equally falls within its limits
Instead, read a little further: The term “violence” is synonymous with “physical force,” and the two are used interchangeably, in relation to assaults
Speech is not physical force, and is not an assault, and is not violence.
It doesn't have to be either one or the other. A more conciliatory approach by the Canadian government would pay off better. My personal opinion, only. I might be wrong, who knows?...
I cannot have a festival out on my lawn for similar reasons...
This whole thread is people arguing about something they evidently know nothing about.
Free speech has nothing to do with it.
If that is the only type of demonstration that gets your point across, ok, but I seriously doubt that is the case.
Unless Trudeau does that, and god forbid show some humility, this will not end good for Canada.
In what way will this "not end good for Canada"?
Most likely the blockades will be shut down and everyone else will be able to get on with life.
"Most likely the blockades will be shut down and everyone else will be able to get on with life."
Except for all people who can't because they got unlucky in the vaccine lottery, like Maddie de Garay:
https://thecovidblog.com/2021/07/08/maddie-de-garay-ohio-13-...
Note: de Garay is a child. Zero benefit from Covid vaccines to her or anyone else. It's bad enough when parents submit their children for medical experimentation like that, but when governments force them to do so it's even worse.
Well I can see you're not interested in things like facts, evidence, science or reality. Never mind then.
An absolute handful of children have been (possibly; causality unclear) sickened by the COVID-19 vaccine.
About 1,000 children have died of COVID-19 in the US (https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-Focus-...).
The exact details of why the virus hits children less hard are unclear; one theory is that the primary cause of lung-failure death in adults is a cytokine storm (i.e. the immune system reacting to the virus by attacking too many healthy cells at a rate the body can't repair), and a younger, more naive immune system is less likely to have picked up whatever environmentally-primed triggers COVID-19 aggravates to kick off a cytokine storm.
... but sadly, "less likely" isn't "didn't happen," and if that causality is correct, some thousand unlucky kids have gotten snake-eyes on the immune dice and died of a disease that we can now vaccinate for. That's an order of magnitude more children than the number we even suspect of being sickened by the vaccine.
We should vaccinate those who haven't been vaccinated because the risk balance is pretty clear at this point from the gross numbers we have on under-18 vaccination already.
from your source:
> COVID-19 deaths are those with confirmed or presumed COVID-19
i.e. 1000 children have died with COVID, not of COVID. Big difference.
1 - https://youtu.be/pcGsqLRyKo0?t=67
2 - https://givesendgo.com/FreedomConvoy2022
If you can't even describe the situation accurately, why should anyone care about your take on it?
Of the ~90k GiveSendGo donors, ~35k were from Canada. Population: 36-38m.
Here's one of the top donors confirming their entry was accurate: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/nb-sussex-corne...
This doesn't look like public discontent, it looks like a small group of motivated contrarians and their international backers.
You know what looks like public discontent? The public coming together to stop trucks disrupting their lives and their city - https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/battle-of-billings...
And none of this answers the question about how this will "not end good for canada".
I don't have the right to go lay on my horn outside your house, and for good reason.
If not, then maybe not the most unbiased source of information.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/coutts-protest-blocka...
Why not do the obvious thing: send the police in to arrest people who won't leave. Tow their trucks. That worked at the border the other day -- why wouldn't it work in Ottawa too? It's not like the Canadian police haven't dealt with large protests in the capital before.
If that approach doesn't work, then it might make sense use emergency powers. But why go straight to emergency powers without trying to clear people out the normal way?
For me the main takeaway from the protests so far is that the Canadian police are either afraid to, or unwilling to, enforce the law, and the government at all levels is afraid to make the police do their jobs.
They claimed they didn't have enough manpower and needed help from the provincial and federal governments.
Why they were so poorly prepared when the convoy was broadcasting its intentions in advance is a great question, but it also doesn't help now.
The Ottawa Police Service abandoned the people of the city for weeks and now can't resolve the problem on its own.
So I guess the answer to "why go straight to emergency powers without trying to clear people out the normal way?" is because the people whose job it was to handle this the normal way raised the white flag about 24 hours in and haven't done much about it since.
This is not correct. The Ottawa police have repeatedly said that they're ready to arrest anyone breaking the law but currently it is not illegal to park in public roads with trucks and the truck drivers are mostly abiding by all laws. Less than half a dozen people have been arrested because there's no laws being broken.
The reason they are not doing any enforcement is because they have no legal authority to kick out the bulk of the protestors.
Fireworks in the downtown core nightly. Air horns for days on end. Harassment, assaults and intimidation targeted towards minorities or those wearing a mask. Public urination, defication.
Even “it’s not illegal to park on public roads” is false because they’re parked across all lanes, blocking north/south access to several blocks.
Enforcement is non existent. The police are so afraid of escalating what are clearly a volatile group that they’ve opted to arrest only when it’s unavoidable. Whether or not that I keeping a lid on the situation is up for debate, but what isn’t up for debate is that laws are being broken and it’s making life hell for residents.
Oh, also, three days ago protestors jammed the emergency lines with phony calls. It would ring until the line disconnected. It’s a miracle no deaths were directly attributed to this.
As noted in the release, blocking a public road the way they've been doing seems to be a violation of section 423(g) of the Criminal Code: https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-423.ht...
Note that the Criminal Code defines "highway" as "a road to which the public has the right of access, and includes bridges over which or tunnels through which a road passes."
There's also mischief - section 430(1)(c): https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-430.ht...
They've certainly interfered with Centretown residents' lawful enjoyment of their property.
Not to mention Highway Traffic Act violations. Plus other Criminal Code violations for the train horns (and while we're at it, even by-law violations). The reality is that the Ottawa Police have had plenty of tools at their disposal but have chosen not to. I don't mean to blame the individual officers - I've seen quite a few of them on the live streams trying their best. I see it more as a failure of leadership.
And I get that during a protest, it's better for police to err on the side of not nailing people for every infraction they can. But it seems like they have the tools to do a lot of than they've done - and have had these tools available since the beginning.
Also, in fairness - it could be they have intel about weapons like the ones the RCMP seized at the Alberta blockade today. That would explain their reluctance, and would mean they are really stuck between a rock and a hard place because if they step up enforcement and kick off an armed conflict, they'll get blamed for that, too. So it might be a bit of a no-win situation.
But if that's the case, it's not very visible from the outside - making the whole situation understandably frustrating for citizens who feel like they are paying $350mil a year and not getting enough protection in return.
The police have begged repeatedly for people to report lawbreaking to them so they can arrest more people.
Train horns in residential areas, let alone at night, are against the law. Harassment is against the law. Parking vehicles in intersections is against the law. Do I need to go on? Stop pretending this isn't what residents are taking issue with, no one gives a fuck about protesting in and of itself.
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-423.ht...
Highway, in this context, means any public road.
Early on, you could maybe argue you came to protest and there was really nowhere else to park. But after a few days, given the convoy's stated intent was to shut down Ottawa, it's difficult to argue that you're not trying to make residents abstain from their lawful right to drive down Kent St. or Wellington St if you're still blocking the roads when there are plenty of other places you could park and then walk or bus to the hill to protest.
Here they are around 11pm last night: https://youtu.be/bZ6d2rnUvi8?t=1988
Plenty of truck horns, a train horn, and someone continually engaging his Jake brake. There are apartments 50 meters away on Sparks St. And if memory serves, there are plenty more on Queen St. close enough to be kept awake by that much noise at that time of night. It's difficult to see how that's not depriving residents of lawful enjoyment of their property.
That's an indictable offense, which makes it an arrestable offense as per the code:
495 (1) A peace officer may arrest without warrant
(a) a person who has committed an indictable offence or who, on reasonable grounds, he believes has committed or is about to commit an indictable offence;
I realize this isn't what you want, but the law means what it says, not what you think it should mean. If you want to change it, you're free to run for political office.
But on that note, a big issue we face is that while anyone can decide to run for election in theory, in practice it's way, way easier to become an MP if you're already wealthy and can afford to take the time away from work to run a successful campaign.
So in reality, running to become a member of Parliament is least accessible to those whose voices need to be heard to most. I don't know what the right answer is, but I don't think that harassing your fellow citizens to try and blackmail the government into doing what you want is the way to go.
If I left my car parked in the middle of the road in Ottawa it would be towed within a couple of hours. It's complete bullshit that there are no laws for the police to enforce.
Some of the reasons listed as to the reluctance of towing companies to participate: - the heavy truck towing companies get much of their business from the truck industry. If these towing companies were to tow away these heavy trucks, they may lose much of that business. - many of the towing companies support the freedom convoy and their participants - fear of violence against tow truck operators if they try to tow away these trucks
see https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-protest-truck-t...
the police and government had ample time to prepare for the protest.
They should have restricted vehicle access near Parliament Hill once they heard the protesters were heading to Ottawa.
There must be day to day things disrupted enough that someone's job has been disrupted with this all going on that can be reallocated to this.
also from the CBC article, excerpts:
====
While the city likely has some vehicles with heavy-duty towing capacity for large OC Transpo vehicles, they also did not provide a response when asked how many they had.
Hooking up a commercial truck to a heavy-duty tower — sometimes called a "wrecker" — takes at least 30 minutes, Whan said.
It also takes time to tow the trucks to wherever they're being relocated to, and if the City of Ottawa did attempt it, they'd need to find a sizable space to put them.
Police don't think towing the trucks is an effective solution, said Matt Skof, president of the Ottawa Police Association.
"You can tow all you want — they're just going to return to the location, so it hasn't resolved the issue," Skof said. "And where are you putting all these vehicles?"
====
Access to most of Ottawa was been cut off, including one of the biggest border crossings in Canada, not a "pizza place". Deploying hyperbole like this isn't helping your case. Surely if the Ambassador Bridge doesn't qualify as critical infrastructure, nothing does.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/marc-miller-path-forward-pr...
These railway blockades forced layoffs, and the CBC also notes that rail carries three times more than what trucks do in Canada.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/rail-shutdown-pro...
Instead, in this case, the Trudeau government met with the protestors and had a process of dialogue that resolved them peacefully after almost a year.
It wasn't the "entire CN rail network" (instead it was the Eastern Canada segment, comprising maybe 15% of CN's network). They don't claim that rail carries three times more than trucks do, but instead simply note that one rail car carries as much as three trucks.
And the blockade lasted approximately 2-3 weeks. Not sure what you mean by "after almost a year".
But let's be clear -- most of Canada was enraged about that. It was hugely expensive to Trudeau politically, and was a tenterhooks [edit - thank you fennec] situation because of the aboriginal file. Yet most of Canada absolutely wanted a stronger response and it hurt Trudeau in the election.
I honestly don't get these "but the rail blockade" or "but some BLM protest in some US city" responses.
It's usually called integrity and honestty
I am ok with BLM blocking infrastructure and disripting things to spread an important message. But we have to give everybody the same ability then.
So as long as it's politically expedient for the sitting PM you would advocate using the emergencies act? Yikes.
Can you point to the part of my post that said that? Anywhere?
Yikes.
Stronger response simply means demanding that police enforce existing laws and injunctions (where injunctions are often simply court orders saying "follow the law") instead of the conciliatory let-it-play-out messaging that Trudeau used at the time. Even in the case of the current protests the emergency act seems unnecessary, and is basically a failure condition for the Ottawa Police basically doing nothing and claiming that they're all out of ideas.
I am saying that during the pandemic for the purposes of restrictions and exceptions, people who worked at grocery stores were "critical workers". It's a big old caution for using words like "critical" which are very vague in order to implement policy assuming it will be used for things you deem to be important, because you do things like that and now there's precedent. Grocery stores are critical infrastructure now so some picket line for a labor dispute at a grocery store is now legally arguably a banned protest.
When opposed to things, people are usually very happy to give away freedoms they don't realize might have adverse consequences in the future.
https://covid19.ca.gov/essential-workforce/
> In accordance with this order, the State Public Health Officer has designated the following list of Essential Critical Infrastructure Workers to help state, local, tribal, and industry partners as they work to protect communities, while ensuring continuity of functions critical to public health and safety, as well as economic and national security.
> Blocking critical infrastructure is illegal
and pointing out that there are an enormous number of things which were labeled critical infrastructure during the pandemic, like any store that sells food.
You’re splitting hairs in an unhelpful way which distracts from the point entirely.
However, enough grocery stores have to be kept running, or else people could run out of food, or the food supply chain could be disrupted.
So, "essential workers" means that they have to be protected and encouraged to work as a group, but that if some individual ones quit or have to take time off work, it will be OK. Whereas in this crisis, if even one grocery store closed, that could, depending on the area, cause a problem.
Edit: changed AT ALL to without a trial because on second thought resized it's possible that there are some legit uses for freezing bank accounts.
The forcing of wearing masks is a tyrannical action, whether it's for a 'good cause' or not.
Some people view the ends do not justify tyrannical means.
A mandate with a good justification is authoritarian but not tyrannical.
Is this something that has precedent in Canada?
We don't have the concept of co-equal branches of government, but the judiciary can declare acts of parliament to violate the charter of rights and freedoms. The Emergencies Act explicitly says it does not supercede any constitutional rights.
Several MPs and MLAs have received suspicious packages: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/mike-kelloway-sus...
"Protesters" tried to break into a federal MP's constituency office: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/covid-19-protests...
And that's just Nova Scotia. This isn't as bad as the October Crisis, but it's still quite serious. It's not small potatoes.
“The government is issuing an order with immediate effect under the Emergencies Act, authorizing Canadian financial institutions to temporarily cease providing financial services where the institution suspects that an account is being used to further the illegal blockades and occupations,” she said. “This order covers both personal and corporate accounts.”
—-
Under Canadian law, the Liberal government has to put this before both the House of Commons and Senate within 7 days.
Say what? Those two are literally polar opposites. I guess they can be progressive on the social scale and conservative on the economic one, but there's got to be a better name for that.
There’s plenty of areas of this that are misused (see things like civil asset forfeiture), but the overarching strategy of freezing bank accounts isn’t novel or dystopian.
Edit: it’s a bit sneaky to change “AT ALL” to “WITHOUT A TRIAL” without calling out the change.
You can't just have the executive decide they can do that using pure administrative action to seize property. Also, you generally also have to prove in a court of law there was a crime before you can do anything at all.
The US civilian asset forfeiture (and now in Canada too, it seems) are actually quite unique in that regard outside of maybe China (not sure even you can do that there anymore), and at most couple other dystopian very authoritarian nations.
Guess we were all a little asymmetrical with our "reply" button pushes.
That’s it. It’s a time out, not a forfeiture. The Emergency Act is powerful, but this invocation isn’t that powerful.
Is Canada throwing the market efficiency and equity principles baby with the trucker's protest bathwater ?
Oh yeah, letting a bureaucrat freeze assets on an arbitrary basis people's savings and then, eventually, another bureaucrat will unfreeze it.
Rights delayed are rights denied.
Moral is, don’t ignore court orders in democratic countries.
It doesn't exist in the normal course of judicial business, how does it get created here ?
My understanding is that the legal link was created by the Emergencies Act. The government believes that it will be able to calm the situation faster if they can track and cut off the flow of money. This invocation gives the government increased powers to track (they ordered crowdfunding platforms/payment processors to register with FINTRAC). And increased powers to cut off funds (through freezing bank accounts).
Edit:
Here's a relevant quote from Canada's Deputy PM:
“The government is issuing an order with immediate effect under the Emergencies Act, authorizing Canadian financial institutions to temporarily cease providing financial services where the institution suspects that an account is being used to further the illegal blockades and occupations,” she said. “This order covers both personal and corporate accounts.”
They created a power of themselves, out of expedience, but there still doesn't seem to be any justification or grounds for it according to the basic principles of the Canadian legal order, except it formally comes from the PM, and he has cops.
They created a false legal reality (grave danger of violence to Canada and its people), which isn't objectively observable, to justify a power to solve that false reality, where in fact they are using it for something else (forcing people to move parked trucks).
They could have just arrested all the truckers for a variety of traffic laws or public-order laws (honking, noise), and then moved the trucks one by one. Instead, Emergency powers...
As my administrative and fiscal law professor taught us, after listing for two weeks all the principles which can be used to craft a law (not Canadian law school, European) :
There's one very old legal principle left, according to which laws are sometimes made, wrongly, but well, that's the real world for you : "I'mma the state, I do it because I can, or I'mma gonna crush you".Due process should be quicker, I wish more people would vote based on making the courts more responsive, but unfortunately no one does.
The trick is to categorize the protest as something else.
The US First amendment has some good language on this: the people have a right to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Imposing a blockade does not qualify. If they just sit in front of Parliament and hold up signs and shout, but don't impede anyone going about their business, then they have a right to make their voices heard.
But what about (some other protest)? Civil rights protesters are usually ordered to disperse after a short time and get arrested if they don't. Sometimes they engage in civil disobedience, but they can be arrested if they do that.
If I go through your post history am I going to see a consistent belief expressed in mid 2020?
https://twitter.com/FrischReport/status/1493344853421436946
They are using terrorism financing laws to execute this.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
1. The use of violence or the threat of violence, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political goals.
2. Resort to terrorizing methods as a means of coercion, or the state of fear and submission produced by the prevalence of such methods.
3. The act of terrorizing, or state of being terrorized; a mode of government by terror or intimidation.
I'm sympathetic to (some) of the aims of the protesters but I think they've made their point and should go home. Still, this move by Trudeau seems like an overreaction considering there's been little/no violence.
I think that anyone following closely would have to concede that police conduct and the lack of enforcement is a product of the threat of violence, but I certainly concede that it might be the case that immediate enforcement /might/ result in nonviolent resolution - it just seems very unlikely.
If that's your bar for "violent protest", then it's trivial for anyone to disrupt any protest by injecting interlopers to try to trigger an explosion. There's evidence that undercover police tried to instigate violence and looting in the BLM protests. Couldn't that be happening here too?
I think it is lost on most people not following closely that the day-to-day protest headcount is quite low, easily under 1,000 people, probably well under 500. Any normal crowd control policing unit could disperse such a small group, the police do not do so despite many instances of having done so and clear legal authority to do so.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/photos-climate-strike-...
I would also note that some in this thread are claiming shutting down streets are violence. That protest shut down multiple streets.
Obviously shutting down streets for hours or a day is not "violence" but preventing people from enjoying public roadways for 17+ days in their own neighbourhood is a violation of their liberities. Just the same a single day horn-honking protest would not be the same as weeks unending.
But language-lawyering about the word "violence" isn't really the point anyway, this is more about the right to protest being in tension with the rights of nearby residents and workers to live peacefully.
At what point does shutting down a street go too far? 1 day, 2 days, a week? It seems somewhat arbitrary to me, and that is what I was trying to convey. I think any obstruction of a road is an inconvenience. Does that mean it is too much of a tension and is causing me to not be able to live peacefully? I don't think so.
I would also say that the point of the protest is to inconvenience people. If the truckers blocked roads in the middle of the Yukon nobody would care. The reason they are doing it in Ottawa is because it is capital and because it is populated.
I guess I wouldn't have as much of an issue if there was a clear standard, but as far as I can tell there isn't.
I think OWS is a good example, they got a lot of publicity and staged long term protests and demonstrations that indeed inconvenienced people, in a two month occupation there certainly was some disruption but I would invite you to compare the two events closely and I think you will see that this Ottawa situation is quite different both in the level of disruption and the quantity of arrests.
Of course in Canada we have lots of great examples of roads being blocked in isolated areas because of logging and pipeline protests, they draw a lot of the comparisons because despite their impact being very limited in terms of the people effected they are cleared out much more violently than has occurred in any instance here. Fairy Creek is something you can look into, the RCMP happily arrested journalists covering the protest crackdown in a gross violation of civil liberties and the rule of law.
I think if your impression of the protests in Ottawa is that they have simply "shut down a street" you should look into it in more detail. (For example the mayor tried to negotiate a deal to get the trucks to stop overnighting and honking in residential areas but failed to get it to stick, that's not related to blocking off one street downtown.) I know a few people that have been hassled on the street in a manner that resulting in them regarding the area unsafe and not a public space for them anymore.
The trucker protest, on the other hand, I can understand what it is supposed to do. Make people uncomfortable, block critical infrastructure, force the government to do what you want. But, if truckers just leave, then we're back to "What's the point of this?"
If the point of a protect is go 'get your way', it's essentially a crappy "Might makes right" play. Might as well not vote, ignore all the rules etc. Society doesn't work if you pick-and-choose at scale.
Now, you can say "The trucker protest isn't as important as civil rights" but that's just a "You shouldn't be protesting" argument. Racists thought civil rights protesters shouldn't be protesting too. If the protesters believe their cause is actually important then it makes sense to protest. But, it only makes sense to protest in ways that are likely to result in changes. Symbols are fine, but empty symbolism isn't enough for something you think is really important.
Something has gone wrong though with this trucker protest because people should have already been arrested. LBJ wasn't granting himself power to deal with civil rights protests.
IMO now it is going to turn into some kind of Canadian Reichstag fire.
Some headline like 2/3rds of Canadians want the government to make sure there is never another Reichstag fire is just a matter of time.
For most of us COVID is like a cold or at worse a flu if not vaccinated, and likely absolutely nothing if you are vaccinated. So the need to force people to get vaccinated is pointless because they’re only harming themselves, but it’s their own damn choice.
Clown world.
Imagine someone honking their horn at your bedroom window all night because they wanted a McFlurry but "the machine was broken".
If all a protest does is mess with society, it'll just end up with counter-protests and civil war light edition.
There's no guarantee of due process in Canada's constitution?
The whole protest has been illegal from the start (violating the highway traffic act)
> Last week they arrested an old man for merely honking his horn to show support.
Source? Either way, yes, there was an injunction granted specifically against honking horns.
> So, anyone attending a protest is joining an illegal activity...and can have their accounts frozen.
No, anyone attending this specific protest at this specific time when there is a provincial state of an emergency (and now the invoking of the federal emergencies act, which requires provincial assent) is joining an illegal activity, and anyone providing monetary support to said illegal activity may have their accounts frozen.
> There's no guarantee of due process in Canada's constitution?
There is indeed. The Emergencies Act is subject to the charter of rights and freedoms, section 7 of which covers legal rights[1] and section 1 of which lays out how these rights are subject to "such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society". It'll be up to the courts to decide after the fact whether these restrictions were demonstrably justified (hint: with the province declaring the protest illegal, declaring a state of emergency last week, and the protesters totally refusing to move: they will be found justified. Our court system is not nearly as politicized as our southern neighbours')
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and...
Man arrested for honking
He appears to have been arrested for refusing to identify himself when stopped (it looks like he was intending to, then emboldened by the cameraman opted not to). That's bog standard highway traffic act stuff - if you're stopped driving, you have to show your license, registration and proof of insurance if asked.
To say "arrested for honking" feels misleading - it seems reasonable to suggest that if he followed standard Highway Traffic Act stuff he would have been on his way with a warning/ticket/whatever is done presently to stop the honking, doesn't it? I'm open to have misunderstood, I'm not even qualified to be an armchair lawyer.
But you might be better served to first examine the reasons why so many Canadians are in favour of various restrictions that have been introduced (and eventually once again withdrawn), by every party and every level of government in the last two years. It's mostly because we have much more faith than our American counterparts that our institutions will do what's right for all Canadians.
What about an online petition or a bake sale?
Less sarcastically: there are frequently situations in which a majority may democratically decide to make a minority behave in a certain way. I think it is relatively clear from opinion polls that a majority of Canadians do not agree with the behavior of the truckers. So writing to an MP or running for parliament will probably be a fruitless strategy. Hence the protests.
It would be trivial to find unpleasant, widely-condemned situations in which you and I would probably be united in our opposition.
The difficulty comes when the minority being forced to behave in a certain way are non-appealing in some way. Democracies need to find a way of dealing with them. It will be horse-trading, negotiation, cajoling, appealing and arguing.
None of those strategies were applied by the Trudeau government before they became hysterical and tried to claim they were having a Canadian version of Jan 6th.
I am certain that many Canadians both do not agree with the apparent demands of the truckers and simultaneously do not agree with the application of the Emergencies Act.
I found this podcast interesting: three interviews with people who were doxxed as donors. I disagreed with the first two, but the third one seemed like a very sane person: https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/756-how-i-ended-up-suppor...
Getting these people off the street isn't authoritarianism, it's preventing the inmates from running the asylum.
Can't you make a distinction with the bridge blockade and the rest?
To me the Canadian government doesn't look authoritarian, it looks weak. For weeks you have people threatening public order as well as public health. To accommodate this implies that a minority can intimidate the majority of the population and legitimate authority through use of force.
> violating the highway traffic act
Show me the man, and I'll find you a crime. Seriously man, what the fuck is the "Highway Traffic Act."
> an injunction granted specifically against honking horns
Let's simply declare a benign activity that people do thousands of times per day in every city, illegal!
> this specific protest at this specific time
But also, you better not show up at similar protests at other times either
> provincial state of an emergency
Yep, the blanket "emergency declaration" that makes virtually everything we don't like, illegal
> joining an illegal activity
because we just declared whatever you are doing to be illegal
> anyone providing monetary support to said illegal activity may have their accounts frozen
so you don't have to be a protester to be engulfed by this, just offering $5 so someone can get a coffee means you could have your accounts frozen. Cast a wide net, indeed!
> It'll be up to the courts to decide after the fact
Yes, by judges who are appointed by Canada's federal government!
Isn't there a court order forbidding that? Ignoring court orders is a crime and there is plenty of due process around that.
Managed to hurt him too.
Imagine being in law enforcement. Coming home to your family and brag about how you physically hurt an old man and bullied him out of his constitutional rights.
And this is entire event has been orchestrated by "people with power" with a political agenda which is hostile to most of the population.
It has almost exactly zero organic content. No amount of rhetoric and gaslighting is going to change that.
> The top donation, $215,000, has a comment that says “processed but not recorded.” The next top donation, at $90,000, is listed as from Thomas M. Siebel. CTV News has reached out to the American billionaire by the same name but has not confirmed it is his donation.
Those standards being "billionaires donated, therefore illegitimate" as far as I can tell.
This is the first I'm hearing of this. Which neighborhoods were burned to the ground?
In Portland Oregon, BLM spray painted buildings, burnt many things in the middle of the road and sidewalks, destroyed property, physically assaulted, broke windows, and ripped down bus stops and statues. They formulated an incursion into a state building putting the lives of Oregon's law officers in jeopardy (Molotov cocktails throw at them).
Depending on your persuasion, you might argue some justification occurred in Minneapolis Minnesota. But there are clearly limits when destruction of property and looting fall far outside of any tenuous reflection of social unrest. (Target?)
Seattle Washington was worse. Much much worse. The city directed their police force to yield a central block of the city to armed rebellion. People, one as I recall completely innocent, were shot and killed.
There was not the immediacy nor the widespread arrests to match the level of violence and destruction in these three locations. In terms of accuracy and spirit I believe you have missed the mark in your description of action and response.
There have been some good points in this thread otherwise and I'm still thinking about them. But you would be better served by re-evaluating your position on this topic.
Mid-level police commanders unilaterally decided to abandon the precinct, which allowed CHAZ to form. Not “the city,” and not in the face of “armed rebellion.”
(Yes, there were guns and unfortunate violence later: after the police left. Their job is maintaining public order; they failed.)
https://theoryreader.org/2021/03/30/french-philosopher-miche...
Here is a more conservative one (yet still, the essay is very good), which also brings up how he knowingly spread HIV to young men in San Francisco:
https://newcriterion.com/issues/1993/3/the-perversions-of-m-...
BLM arose from several extrajudicial murders by police after a history of racism and mistreatment by the state. The trucker protest is essentially about commerce policy in an already very heavily regulated industry. It's hard to imagine other similar jobs where mandating your hours of sleep is discussed by a federal legislature (possibly international treaty too?).
The perspective is important because these are obviously not the same thing.
> The inquiry launched by Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s government into the scale of foreign funds aimed at damaging the province’s oil and gas industry has issued its long-awaited report, finding that foreign donors provided nearly $1.3 billion in funds for Canadian environmental campaigns between 2003 and 2019.
There were BLM protests in Canada.
Europe is opening up. I guess Science different in Canada.
But its not Gov following science, at best it's Gov following sentiment. People are right fed up of the overreach and want no more rules around masks, passports and lockdowns. There's no more tolerating restrictions for something that's a minor cold, can be vaccinated against if you are worried or early treated with antiviral using both new and repurposed drugs.
The restrictions have already been poised to be lifted on the strength of said advice. This was already on the horizon and one can only imagine that protestors purposefully decided to move on this on the tail end of these policies.
With that being said, how do you get noticed? I remember there was a Wall Street protest of some kind right after the crash. They sat quietly in parks and protested because people got annoyed when they were "inconvenienced" when they protested outside buildings. Their protests fizzled out and was forgotten. Even though large swathes of people were pissed off with Wall Street.
Back in college, we had a protest. Few people from the media were there and we were protesting on campus, doing it "right". The media people were like "go do something...we cannot cover a bunch of college kids sitting around!"
Unfortunately protests(the ones you agree with and the ones your disagree with) run by smaller groups are going to get noticed only when they do "illegal" things.
The reason they fizzled is they had absolutely zero marketing experience. When they finally got down to listing their demands, it was a 43 point manifesto from save the penquins to truther investigations.
BLM really didn’t get anywhere (they initially had a ~14 point demands) until someone came up with “Defund!”. Marketers would get you down to 2 or 3 items, but two syllables was brilliant.
Someone in this thread mentioned "civil disobedience" movements. Studying the history of such movements (anti-apartheid politics, workers movements, womens rights, anti-colonial struggles), we quickly realize although having a mass of non-violent protesters (popular support) is important, the actual balance of power lies with more militant groups putting actual pressure (sabotage, blockages, attacks) on our overlords to change things for the better.
That sounds pretty healthy. I mean, having a central authority deciding for everyone else is precisely what's wrong with our society.
It also doesn't help to keep a unified front when you have many people injured/traumatized/incarcerated due to police actions (political repression). So while i agree the Occupy movement was a colossal failure, i don't agree with your interpretation of why.
I don't think that is true. I've personally witnessed several major movements in France which involved literally millions of people on the streets, some of which were successful and some not. Let's look over the past 20 years:
- the anti-CPE movement (CPE was a reform for quasi-slave labor for people fresh out of studies) won after months of intense and violent struggle (think molotov cocktails) and university occupations
- the national suburbs riots of 2005 (caused by cops murdering two kids, and Sarkozy raging racist discourse) failed after weeks of intense and violent struggle ; nothing changed except some people were jailed
- in 2010-2011, the protests against retirement reform gathered over a million people every week and the government was on the verge of collapse (we no longer has gas in the petrol stations) yet the movement was never very violent, the government never ceded and so the movement lost
- in 2016, millions of people demonstrated and blockaded for months against working law reform, yet Macron (at the time "socialist" minister of economy) passed it without a vote (article 49-3 of the constitution allows the government to bypass the parliament, and it had not been used in decades) ; this was the first mass movement after the State of emergency (2015) and we can see the fascist cops were on free wheels as we started getting serious life-threatening injuries at every demo even in smaller cities
- in 2018, with the gilets jaunes, despite approval by a vast majority of the population and the protests spreading to even the tiniest countryside cities for over a year and half, the movement failed as it was teargased/grenaded/batoned to hospital (or to death, as with Zineb Redouane) and MANY people were either jailed for extensive periods of time or crippled for life
All of these protests i've noted had very clear objectives and were very massive. Some succeeded, some not. What's the difference between those cases? The only difference is the decisions by the government and the amount of blood they were willing to spill. If you want to know what kind of blood spilling i'm talking about, there's a gilets jaunes collection here: TRIGGER WARNING http://lemurjaune.fr/
On the other hand, studying the history of political repression gives us much clearer ideas on how/why social movements can succeed or fail. The fact that INTERPOL started with a "international police conference on the peril of anarchism" for example, or early collaboration between french/russian/american services to hunt down radical troublemakers. Or the Church committee investigation about FBI's COINTELPRO. Or in France, the many post-WWII scandals involving pro-nazi police prefects (like Maurice Papon who ordered to kill and deports hundreds-to-thousands of algerians in a single week of october 1961). Or the fascist militias organized by De Gaulle (Services d'Action Civique) to attack May 68 demos. Or... and the list goes on.
Modern States have spend considerable resources on counter-insurgency strategies because that's how they hold power. Whether opposition movements have a common purpose is irrelevant as long as the State has the powers and is willing to cripple or kill a significant portion of the demonstrators should their organizing start to be effective.
They flopped because they had no plan. Even today, you can’t come up with any concrete thing/legislation they wanted.
The masters of Wall Street didn’t have to lift a finger.
> The masters of Wall Street didn’t have to lift a finger.
No, because they had their obedient militia (the police) teargas, beat up and arrest everyone for them. And the media to spew lies along the lines of "we don't know what these people want" because their desires can't be confined in a single bill/reform.
These people wanted what Barack Obama promised and denied them: hope and change. Food & housing & healthcare for free for all. Putting an end to racial policing. Etc. They were met with rubber bullets and detention. And now clueless people like you who were not on the ground (i personally was involved with other Occupy movements in Europe at the same time) now judge them based on State/corporate propaganda.
That's pretty representative of any form of collective organizing defying the status quo. The civil rights activists of the 60s in the USA were equally derided by the media and repressed by the police in their day, just like the gilets jaunes of today's France.
Thanks for so eloquently making my point that they had no plan.
> clueless… who were not on the ground
Best of luck with projection and raging about conspiracies on the internets.
You've mentioned "conspiracy theory" twice now. What's a conspiracy theory about what i said? Are you implying police/political repression does not exist and we all live in a free and democratic society? Or something else entirely?
Doing illegal stuff to get attention only makes me less supportive of any cause, personally, whether it's lefty or righty bullshit - I don't like this, I didn't like the Jan 6 riots, and I don't like a lot of what I saw from BLM, Occupy Wall Street, and many others over the years. Even if I agreed with a few of the underlying demands or issues (I'm against vax mandates, I do think Derek Chauvin should be in prison, there was a ton of bank fraud in the 00s and high level people should have been jailed, etc).
Emergency powers weren't invoked in 2020 when Canada's railways were blocked for months. In fact, at the time Trudeau was quoted saying things like "Politicians should not be telling the police how to deal with protesters"
The double standards in this country are staggering at times.
The bureaucratic state can freeze your bank account, revoke your license, and shut down your life, all remotely.
And now they've set precedent for future protests. I don't know how anyone who considers themselves a liberal or Leftist can support this.
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/anonymous-donations-to-convoy-as-...
Assuming both police force (as many minorities have experienced) and administrative force can be abused, is one worse for society or more susceptible to abuse?
...Now the fact a bunch of donors are American and not Canadian is... Fascinating...
I'm not sure what to do about that little chestnut... Sorry Canada. Welcome to politics by free trade I guess???
>I'm not sure what to do about that little chestnut... Sorry Canada. Welcome to politics by free trade I guess???
That'd make sense if they were only freezing the funds that were received from outside the country, but according to the article they're freezing the accounts of "anyone linked with the protests".
Taking a second look through the media coverage, I've gotta laugh though... To think that your Federal capital should be immune from a glorified sit in, and to go and make a big fluff about demanding to "take it back"
...Yet no moment of reflection in this is a symbolic gesture to the people of Ottawa on what the Federal mandates have taken from the protestors. It's like people are shouting completely past one another. It's one of the most sublime examples of dysfunction writ large I've lived through to date.
Sad that...
The rest of the truckers will have to obtain a proof of vaccination BEFORE they are aloowed to drive their trucks again.
Ottawa residents aren’t forced to live in that city.
“This leads us, as a leader and as a country, to make a choice: Do we tolerate these people? Over 80% of the population of Quebec have done their duty by getting the shot. They are obviously not the issue in this situation.”- this is according to this article: https://thepulse.one/2022/01/03/prime-minister-justin-trudea...
After all, extremists either left or right, terrorists and criminals have been doing that for years on Signal.