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Comment by stackedinserter | Hacker News Reader

Any power given to government will be abused by them. It's sad that many Canadians support these clearly dangerous and totalitarian actions from their "leader".

Did you notice how "freedom" became a swear word over the last 5-6 years? With all these "muh freedoms", "what exact freedom have you lost?", "freedom of speech don't protect you from anything" it seems like any movement that fights for any "freedom" will be labeled as terrorist/nazi in next few years.

History repeats itself, and I'm sick of it. My country of origin and my country where I grew up, both turned to totalitarian hellholes, and now it's Canada's turn.

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>Did you notice how "freedom" became a swear word over the last 5-6 years?

Because it's about "freedom" and not freedom. Remember when the US called french fries freedom fries because France wasn't part of the coalition of the willing? That's the same freedom.

Freedom also means responsibility, but some just want to do what ever they want and as soon as somebody demands from them to take responsibility they cry freedom.

People were drafted in wars and got killed and these guys whine about some pokes. I want my freedom too but these guys showed me that that will never happen. I underestimated the number of stupid people.

Personal autonomy is THE fundamental freedom. Deciding what is done to your body is what separates the free from the enslaved.

What about the personal freedom of others?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/truck-convoy-downtown-...

We live in a society, your personal space and freedom intersects with the personal space and freedom of others. So yo have to compromise and jab is nothing too demanding. Especially when billions of people have already done it.

It is true. The jab prevents collapse of the health system.

But why stop at the jab? Fat people are also a burden on the health system. It is not too demanding that they lose weight.

How much time is needed to jab everyone and how much for losing weight?

And if you are too overweight you are excluded from some activities and medical operations.

Just compare how much freedom was taken by things like the Patriot Act compared to mandatory vaccinations, not to mention the higher death toll of corona. A long it's only the freedom of others there is no problem but when it comes to themselves, they channel their inner William Wallace

You're moving the goalposts. If we're going to enact policy for the betterment of society let us not stop at jabs. Let us enact anti-obesity mandates. We'll check your weight at the entrance to bars and restaurants.

> Any power given to government will be abused by them.

This assertion that the government cannot do anything good, by virtue of being the government, is kinda why the kids gloves are coming off between the Canadian government and these protestors.

What exactly should the government response be to a group of people who demand the entire government be thrown out, and are going to ruin the majority of the populations lives until it happens? Are they supposed to sit there and accept that they’re a naughty little government who can never do anything right so they need to be quiet and go away?

Then why wasn't a treason charge leveled? You are falling for the drama.

People decide to protest about removing restrictions and the news tells you everyone is here trying overthrow the government.

You now think unarmed people with a hottub, roasting a pig who made a big party in front of parliment were a threat to the Canadian government?

Does that make sense?

> Then why wasn't a treason charge leveled?

Because it didn’t rise to the level of treason?

For the entire rest of your comment I can’t respond until you let me know what was the appropriate response for the government here. So far you’ve implied they should have done nothing, and explicitly threw treason out as another possibility. Is there any step the government could have taken that was appropriate in your view other than do nothing, charge treason, or capitulate entirely to the protestors?

The obvious steps were to send the police in the same manner charging the protestors with the same charges. The joint operation doesn't require the emergency act.

The prime minister could have said sorry to everyone he called deplorable.

These were the two steps.

Now we have this situation

The federal government of Canada did not have the legal authority to command the local police. That would have been illegal and even more authoritarian an act.

> The prime minister could have said sorry to everyone he called deplorable.

Do you really believe the protestors would go home if they got an apology for their hurt feelings?

They still don't. This was an Ottawa police lead operation. The federal government provided resources (officers) as they did before the emergency.

If the prime minister didn't paint 40% or more of Canadians a certain way so many people wouldn't have joined.

Well A: I thought we were talking about the EA that got implemented by the federal government and is being used to freeze bank accounts, if you meant the police then take in mind that I was referencing the feds in my responses.

B: I thought it was about mask and vaccine mandates at first, and then moved onto dissolving the government, but now it’s because they feel slighted? These may all be reasons that the group has said but that makes them sound a lot more like a disorganized group with constantly moving goal posts that can’t actually be reasoned with

Original protest was over trucker mandates. Trudeau made his comments and it became about a lot more.

Blocking a whole city isn't the same as making a big party.

Occupy Wallstreet was treated harder for less. Tough truckers fearing a needle, hard to believe.

The many people protesting were vaxxed and fully vaxxed. Many are concerned their children are being forced.

The one thing I don't understand.

The people who would die over the right of a women to choose to have a baby are the same ones who want to prevent a women from choosing to get the vax or not. If those people win the vax debate do they lose the abortion debate? The state may have good reasons in an unpopulated country like Canada to want to increase the birthrate.

This isn't about children, many countries or a least parts of countries have mandatory vaccinations for children.

"Ontario and New Brunswick require immunization for diphtheria, tetanus, polio, measles, mumps, and rubella immunization, while Manitoba requires a measles vaccination."

And you can turn this around, many of those who try to force women fo give birth are against mandatory vaccinations.

Guess what has a longer and deeper effects? A 30second jab or raising a child? BTW many of the anti abortion activists don't care about children after they were born. Free education, healthcare, school lunch? Not on their watch.

Do you think the risk profiles are different or the same because they contain the word vaccine?

I can show you the longterm studies of those you mentioned. But the first long term study for these new vaccines are due in 2024.

In the end these kids are part of an experiment that we all hope goes well.

Most of anti-abortion activists are vaxxed. They are promoting the idea that your body society's choice. Do you stand with that crowd?

Please don't post flamebait or call names on HN. It's against the site guidelines, and you can make your substantive points without it.

Your comment would be fine without the last sentence.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

When you're disrupting major cities with your "fun party" it is completely acceptable to assume trying to interrupt peoples daily lives and livelihood is a bad act and it's perfectly acceptable to deal with that.

> people who demand the entire government be thrown out

That's not their demand? They want the government to stop imposing vax mandates and lockdowns. I'm sure a lot of people also want Trudeau out, but I doubt if they lifted the restrictions like the UK did that the truckers would still stick around.

It started as demands around mandate but then that Tamara Lich character gained prominence who is pushing an Albertan separatist movement

I don't think one person gets to show up and take claim of the movement and make it about something else all of a sudden.

It started because the Canadian government was requiring truckers to be vaccinated or else they would lose their jobs. If they get their way, the government says "fine you don't need the vaccine," and the protests continue to stick around then the "what are they supposed to do" argument might hold water. But so far the only government response is to call them racist/transphobic/islamophobic/whatever buzzword gets you good PR.

I mean I’d agree that you can’t just show up and claim you lead the movement, but she showed up, organized truckers to get to Ottawa, and ran the fund that got millions in donations for the convoy. She may not be too boss but she certainly has some non trivial representation of the group.

> If they get their way, the government says "fine you don't need the vaccine," and the protests continue to stick around then the "what are they supposed to do" argument might hold water.

That’s just capitulating to their incorrect ideas that covid isn’t real or isn’t dangerous and the vaccines are, which is a non starter. So assuming that they aren’t going to capitulate to the protestors what should the government be doing? This still feels very low touch compared to how most other protests are handled

> That’s just capitulating to their incorrect ideas that covid isn’t real or isn’t dangerous and the vaccines are

Stop conflating anti-vaxx with anti-mandate. There are plenty of vaccinated people who participated in the protests because they think mandates are a step too far. The mandates for truckers were the original trigger for the protests, and the primary demand was to remove them.

> Stop conflating anti-vaxx with anti-mandate.

I didn’t at first but the majority of “anti mandate” folk I run into then start slipping things into the conversation like “the vaccines don’t even work” which makes me think the anti mandate movement is just anti vaxxers with a mask on.(pun not intended)

I also happen to think being legitimately anti mandate is an incorrect idea about how covid and viruses spread as we’ve seen leaving it up to people to decide means they just make our hospital networks break down.

It’s pretty much a distinction without a difference to me when looking at anti vaxxers, anti maskers, or anti mandate groups

Anecdotical evidence only, but the people in my country that I know to be anti-mandate are all triple-vaccinated. We are quite used with vaccines, we kind of understand to some degree how they work and we decided to use it, same as masks and other measures, but most of these people are anti-mandates.

We lived under a Communism regime and many people died fighting it, some of us still remember and are marked for life by a fear of government mandates of any kind. Younger people don't remember, so we are also split on this matter, but there is a simple explanation for that.

Unfortunately, that is how populism works. One person can do that.

It was part of their demands. They laid it all out in the MOU before the protests started.

> CTV cited Bauder saying that he hoped the signed MoU would convince Elections Canada to trigger an election, which is not constitutionally possible. In this pseudolegal document, CU called on the "SCGGC" to cease all vaccine mandates, reemploy all employees terminated due to vaccination status, and rescind all fines imposed for non-compliance with public health orders.[46] If this failed, the MoU called on the "SCGGC" to dissolve the government, and name members of the CU to form a Canadian Citizens Committee (CCC), which is beyond the constitutional powers of either the Governor General or the Senate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_convoy_protest#Planning

Except it was?

They released an MOU at the start of this that explicitly called for the resignation of the current government if they were not willing to immediately lift the Covid19 mandates. In the case of a refusal to lift the mandates, it demanded that a new government be formed of representatives from the Senate and, incredibly, representatives from the convoy.

> This assertion that the government cannot do anything good

I didn't say that. I literally said is that government can and will abuse any power that citizens give up to them. Also, that power and lost freedoms are extremely hard to take back (you're welcome to find counterexamples). Therefore we (citizens) must be very alert every time when government tries to do that.

I interpreted your phrase and using the word “will” as, “will always happen” and not “can’t be rolled back if the government does start abusing it”, but I understand what your saying now.

I think I generally agree but I’m this instance it didn’t look the Canadian federal government really overreached. I think it might have been a better look if they had gone after the police chief first who was refusing to enforce the law, and try and get local government to do the enforcement but after three weeks in a residential area I can see how leadership would be concerned about escalation

It has become a pejorative precisely because it has been bandied about stupidly by people who aren't always arguing in good faith. At best, it's often invoked in an unsophisticated manner that assumes that individual freedom supersedes any other public good--i.e. during Covid.

In the American context, there's also a lot of hypocrisy on the right in terms of using that word, e.g. celebrating post 911 stuff like The Patriot Act and No Fly lists and Guantanamo, not caring about the conditions of immigration detention, but then bitching about having to wear cloth on one's face sometimes. Right-wingers literally cheered Joe Arpaio saying he runs concentration camps. So long as great atrocities befall minorities, they don't care. If they get minorly inconvenienced --> somehow it's a big deal.

I'd say more, but it's hard to discuss properly on phone. I would say there are reasonable libertarian concerns about this bill and Covid policies and a bunch of other stuff, but if you're wondering why so many of us reflexively distrust such arguments, you have to look at the cultural and political context in which we grew up. You're not seeing the full picture, to say the least.

I liked and upvoted your comment. This could be true, and yet it could also simultaneously be true that the people being reflexively skepticism about “freedom” don’t sufficiently understand the cultural and historical context in which that concept was formed - the history of struggles against tyranny in the 19th and 20th centuries, for example.

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