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Comment by kkjjkgjjgg | Hacker News Reader

"unlawful, illegal occupation"

Has it been established that that is what it was? Serious question, I didn't follow the details closely enough.

Canada’s protest laws are different (and much more limited) than those of the US. Any protest that significantly disturbs the peace is not protected.

https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/chec...

Isn't significantly disturbing the peace kinda the entire point of protest? I would wager many of the protests and demonstrations done during the Civil Rights Movement in the US "significantly disturbed" the peace, and yet they were effective at creating needed change.

A protest almost by definition is a disturbance of the peace - otherwise it’s just a gathering of like minded people doing something.

> Isn't significantly disturbing the peace kinda the entire point of protest?

No.

Again, Canada is not the US.

> Section 2(c) guarantees the right to peaceful assembly; it does not protect riots and gatherings that seriously disturb the peace: R. v. Lecompte, [2000] J.Q. No. 2452 (Que. C.A.). It has been stated that the right to freedom of assembly, along with freedom of expression, does not include the right to physically impede or blockade lawful activities: Guelph (City) v. Soltys, [2009] O.J. No. 3369 (Ont. Sup. Ct. Jus), at paragraph 26.

So an hypothetical protest that, for example, had set up on the lawn of parliament or major’s hill park and did not sound loud horns at random hours of the night would not be dispersed.

Yes but Canada doesn't work like the US. They don't have constitutional free speech or rights to assemble.

My link is to the section from our charter on the freedom of assembly. Our freedom of assembly and freedom of speech are understood differently than yours.

Our Charter is not an analogue to the US constitution. It can be suspended (and routinely is) by the government.

The charter is explicitly part of the Canadian constitution. The notwithstanding clause or override is only very rarely invoked (and in many provinces has never been invoked).

It has been used repeatedly, and it's not just provinces either, the federal government can also use it. It's not really rare, it crops up every few years.

Legislation invoking the clause has been enacted only five times across all of Canada. In one of those cases no rights were suspended and invoking it was unnecessary.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_C...

I would count 4 invocations that actually did something (all of which were limited to single provinces) across the past 40 years to be fairly rare.

Actually, the first invocation was an "Omnibus" invocation, which contained around a dozen separate invocations in itself. Beyond that, no, even 4 invocations isn't small at all. A single invocation is potentially devastating. It's been completely normalized in Quebec, for example.

I consider this notwithstanding clause as a public embarrassment. It basically castrates our freedoms.

You can have a successful protest that doesn't disturb the peace simply by gathering a large enough number of people to demonstrate that there's significant support for your demands.

Disturbing the peace will also inconvenience other people who might not have had an opinion before, but end up opposing your protest simply because they want to live their lives undisturbed. Unless you have a realistic plan to seize power, remaining peaceful is probably a better idea.

I remember when Toronto was suffocating because of garbage removal workers strike. More than that when we finally started to bring garbage to commercial dumping sites those were blocked by strikers and they would allow only few people per hour to make huge line ups. IANAL but this looked like mischief to me. And when people out of frustration had started throwing garbage bags in front of the site bylaw officers were right there issuing big fines.

More than that, I tried to talk to strikers and they were fucking boozed up to their gills. That is despite laws against public intoxication.

Police were ignoring all of this. So the government was totally fine with strikers "disturbing the peace". From what I see they're very selective on what to enforce and when.

Exactly. However, in the world of those who long ago fell prey to the "red vs. blue" or "left vs. right" false dichotomies, there is only the question of "what side are you on?" One is not allowed to point out hypocrisy or plausible hypotheticals where the exact same decision-making in the future will be turned against those for whom the decision-making is currently convenient.

I think that's important.

I don't have citations, but my understanding is that what the truckers are doing directly is illegal, but that police haven't taken action in order to avoid violence or to fuel the grievances of the protesters.

Is it illegal or violent to donate to them?

The federal government made it illegal with the emergencies act, this donation almost certainly came before that though. More relevant is that the Ontario government asked a court (which was granted) to freeze all funds related to the convoy.

So maybe not illegal as much as just a terrible look for the party.

mischief is considered a criminal offence, referring to the deliberate or reckless damage of someone’s property or the act of interfering with someone’s property.

So these folks who have been camped in downtown Ottawa, and blockading bridges are in fact committing unlawful acts. And mischief is pretty well the low water mark for what some of these folks are getting charged with

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