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Comment by lovich | Hacker News Reader

> 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?

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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

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