Great thread on what’s problematic with Canada’s anti-protest actions
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35/ Canada has asked every single financial system provider from banks to credit card companies to investment firms to crowdfunding platforms to crypto companies to insurance companies to:
- freeze the accounts - of anyone directly or "indirectly" supporting the protests
36/ Given the powers of the Emergency Act, there is no due process on these actions and no civil liability for this freezing.
Without the massive inflows of cash this protest would have been just as demonstrative, but not as crippling or injurious to the public.
If you're against that, the reasonable reaction would be to block foreign transfers and/or freeze the portion of funds that came from foreign sources, not ban them from the financial system entirely. Imagine the government shutting down an opposition candidate's campaign entirely, because it received a little too much money from foreign donors.
- Leaked data of the donations on GiveSendGo showed Canadians raised $4.31 million for the Freedom Convoy while Americans donated $3.62 million.
- Americans, however, accounted 56 per cent of the donor base while Canadians made up only 29 per cent of all donors
Australia is creating a massive surveillance state, NZ won’t allow their own citizens into the country (2 years now!) and Canada pulls out a sledgehammer to deal with protestors on the front steps of its legislature.
Maybe Canada can adopt some of Singapore’s rules? Permits for any protest (even a one person protest), a “free speech square” where you can exercise your rights - all in the name of “stability and maintenance of harmony”.
https://www.canada.ca/en/department-justice/news/2022/02/can...
"The Charter allows the Government to balance the rights of the individual with the interests of society where limits on guaranteed rights and freedoms can be justified in a free and democratic society."
The Emergencies Act can give the government the power to force you to act on their behalf.... "Directing specified persons to render essential services". If that's not a violation of the Charter..."the right to life, liberty and security of the person", I don't know what is.
It's basically saying "we'll respect the Charter because the Charter allows reasonable violations of those rights".
> 6/ Freedom of speech might require such activities like:
> A website
> A pamphlet
> An advertisement
> Paying a graphic designer
> Travelling to a different location
All of those amplify your speech, but they're not prerequisites for speech. You can speak without any of them - I'm doing it right now!
Same for all the other various things mentioned in this thread. None of the things are requirements for the rights. You can worship and pray without a physical building, you can assemble without buying hot dogs etc etc.
> All of which "cost money".
This is the world that crypto folks want, but it's not the reality (at least yet). You can do plenty of things without money, including exercising said rights. The problem is that they can't conceive that because their worldview is centered around trying to monetize everything and every interaction - interactions that don't involve money aren't valid to them.
What did you use to post this comment?
Freedom of Speech everyone is all about. Freedom to be Heard is what everyone is in a tizzy about.
You can't buy a printing press without... Money. You can't buy a computer without... Money You can't get an internet connection without... Money.
You can't just pass this off as cryptobros being cryptobros.
Canada is basically saying, no one shall be serviced whose capital is getting allocated to "this".
And that is dangerous, especially when done unilaterally by the executive government. Call me an overly stiff contrarian if you want, but a spade is a spade, whether you want to call it something else. That people are busy playing these semantic games should be reason for pause.
Taking money out of the equation democratizes speech and makes sure everyone has a say, not just the Peter Thiels that can buy printing presses.
Nobody has freedom to be heard. "Freedom to be heard" equals "freedom to force others to listen (or at least to hear)". I deny that anyone legitimately has that freedom.
Freedom of speech doesn’t mean the freedom to make people listen, but the government can’t make that choice for people.
Like, coercion? As in, physically restrain someone so they must engage with my ideas?
Maybe it would be clearer if you told me what "freedom of speech" means to you .
Freedom of speech means you can stand on the corner and yell about the "undisputed benefits of cryptocurrencies". It also means me and a group of my friends can surround you and sing "Baby Shark" repeatedly at the top of our lungs, drowning out your message.
If the government froze my bank account so I couldn't pay my phone bill, I wouldn't be free to speak to you right now.
I don't have the right to speak in the Queen's bedroom in Buckingham Palace, either.
Neither of those things are significant limitations on the freedom of speech.
You have the right to protest and make your opinion heard. But at the point that you are actively preventing ~25% of the international trade between two countries while further increasing both inflation and supply chain issues, your "protest" looks more like economic terrorism. Especially when only a small minority of people actually care--let alone support--your position.
To tie this back to the original thread: The author states "There are no other constitutional rights in substance without freedom to transact". But this protest is impacting other people's ability to transact. Therefore, by the same logic the author presents, this "protest" is impacting the freedoms of millions just because a couple of hundred people don't want to get vaccinated or get tested regularly.
The requirement that people crossing the border be vaccinated or have taken quick and painless test to prove that they are not carrying a virus that has claimed more than 5M lives in the past two year is NOT tyranny: it's an minor inconvenience.
From TFA:
>I don't actually have a view on the substance of the trucker protests and if Canada's COVID policies are good, bad or neutral.
>I would further guess that the truckers are probably violating a variety of Canadian laws relating to how they can protest.
>What would be a normal constitutional democracy political response to a problem like this is either:
>a) let it play out if you think it is in good faith
>or
>b) encourage the local authorities to arrest them and try them in a court if you think it is not
>Either is fine.
>The right to assembly in Canada probably does not allow you to block the highway for days for everyone else.
>I assume Canada still has police and courts so they could presumably arrest the highway blockers & take them to court
In other words, he's not advocating that the protests should go on unimpeded (contrary to what you think). He's against the government punishing the protesters extra-judicially.
It is really astonishing that you try to claim there is equivalence between having one's accounts frozen vs being impacted by the effects of a protest.
Is this what twitter has turned discourse into? If you haven't made your within one or two tweets your whole work is dismissed as "not have a specific point".
Anyways the "point" of this article is that the government is punishing their enemies by locking them out of the financial system. This is bad because of how much we rely on the financial system for every day life, and that the action is being done without the usual due process (ie. right to a trial). You might be in favor of this action because the targets happen to be your enemies, but this could easily be flipped next time around.
I don't find that to be an unreasonable reaction given the scope of the daily business and economic disruption being caused. If the Canadian government actually confiscated the money or kept the accounts frozen after the situation resolves, that would be government overreach.
If you think those actions are illegal, the correct course of action is to prosecute them under the normal judicial process, not to shut them out of society "nosedive" style. Murderers and rapists do worse but even then we give them due process.
>They haven't confiscated the money, they have simply frozen the accounts, effectively saying "block our commerce, we block your access to money to support your actions."
As was stated in the OP and my previous comment, the argument here isn't that "this protest is legal and should be allowed", it's "if the protest is illegal, the government should go through the normal legal channels (ie. courts) to shut it down, rather than having the executive branch unilaterally dish out punishments.
All the same, you should be able to fit your thesis and list your key arguments in a couple of sentences.
Well luckily OP posted a "tl;dr" at the end. I agree it'll be better if it was at the front, but posting tl;drs at the end seems to be pretty common for whatever reason.
Well, that's the irony right there. Conservatives are all about this authoritarian garbage, have been for decades or more. Now that it's been flipped around on them, it's all hue and cry. If the cops had treated this like any other protest, they'd have violently shut it down 3 weeks ago. The federal government declared it a national emergency because the cops decided not to maintain order. Sure, this is bad. But if it's somehow news to you, you just haven't been paying attention because you didn't like what the protesters had to say. Let's change the law already. But let's make sure the cops are respectful of everybody's freedom to assemble while we're at it.