The first amendment to the US constitution does not apply to Canada. Unless you believe US law is globally binding.
(That said, Canada does have their own freedom of speech, under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.)
(That said, Canada does have their own freedom of speech, under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.)
I found the final report on the whole EA invocation to be reasonable. It found that the use of the EA was warranted, but also made it crystal clear that a) other people could look at the same facts and come to a different conclusion, and b) that the only reason it got to the point where it needed to be invoked was due to government incompetence at the municipal, provincial, and federal level.
For example, a truck may be allowed to park on a road for a while. They are allowed to honk occasionally as needed while driving. This is completely legal. However, that doesn’t mean they have a fundamental right to park private objects in public space and disturb the peace by honking unnecessarily for extended periods of time.
Laws allow people to do a lot more than just what fundamental rights allow. Often those laws will never consider scenarios that are not fundamental rights but are possibly hurting the fundamental rights of others, and then for practical reasons, an emergency would be the only way to resolve the situation in a reasonable amount of time.
If the emergency was abused to suspend fundamental rights that can be opposed in courts and at the ballot box. Emergencies don’t give the government carte blanche to abuse citizens’ rights. They give government a reprieve to act quickly, and let the legal system get involved later.
In most jurisdictions (I don’t know if this is true in Canada, but it’s certainly true in the US, where courts required governments to overturn emergency laws during the pandemic), people can still petition the courts that their rights were suspended illegally.
Emergency laws don’t eliminate rights. They suspend them and courts absolutely have the ability (at least in the US) to get involved and penalize the government if it finds the suspension of rights are unwarranted.
I don’t believe any Canadian court has found that to be the case in the truckers blockade, which probably reflects that fundamental rights were not suppressed.
One of the key differences between the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the US Constitution is that the charter was an escape hatch right in section 1:
> The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
When there’s an allegation that someone’s charter rights have been violated by the government, there’s a 3 part test known as the Oakes test that the courts use to determine whether or not the violation is appropriate per section 1. When an action by the government makes it to court and fails the Oakes test, the courts come up with a remedy.
> I don’t believe any Canadian court has found that to be the case in the truckers blockade, which probably reflects that fundamental rights were not suppressed.
I believe you are correct, but with a bit of nuance. From what I can tell, the convoy lawyers are somewhat incompetent. I don’t personally have much of a horse in this race, but as a citizen it would have been a really nice outcome for me to have seen some clarity and consistency come out of the Canadian courts on what exactly is or is not acceptable and when one side is doing a terrible job of arguing their case you end up with weak precedent.
Beyond the trucker convoy, in the past couple of years we have also had several rail lines and an oil refinery blockaded for many weeks. National, provincial, and municipal police forces have handled these situations very differently, the courts have handled them differently, and the current legislative and precedent situation is very very hazy.
Honestly I generally think Canadian federalism doesn't work anymore, at least in English Canada. Our media and voter landscape stubbornly refuses to understand and respect the separation of powers, so all it does is creat messes of misdirected blame and perverse incentives.
It's not just about policing. For anyone who is looking for the document, see here: https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Fi...
Section 25.2 says this in the context of the "fringe minority" comments made by the Prime Minister early in the protests:
> I expect that the Prime Minister was intending to refer to the small number of people who were expressing racist, extremist, or otherwise reprehensible views, rather than to all Freedom Convoy participants. It may well be that his comments were taken out of context, including by some media. However, in my view more of an effort should have been made by government leaders at all levels during the protests to acknowledge that the majority of protesters were exercising their fundamental democratic rights.
And further in 25.3:
> Had there been greater collaboration at the political level from the start, it could well have assisted in ironing out the communication, jurisdictional, and resourcing issues that plagued the early response to the protests.
All in all I found it to be a really well written document that does a really good job of breaking down the timeline, the various players, the affected legislation, etc. The media headlines lost so much of the nuance of this report and I was pretty disappointed by the general reception of it.
Also, the government declared a state of emergency, the whole point of which is to create a temporary environment where certain rights may be ignored.
I don’t see the government of Quebec declaring an emergency because of an epidemic of people flipping the bird before proceeding with legal proceedings against this guy.
There’s literally no comparison between the 2 situations.
You may disagree with declaration of emergency, and there are ways for the people to protest that. Doesn’t seem like the vast majority of Canadians were interested.
There may have been issues with the response to the trucker blockade. But an illegal suppression of fundamental rights wasn’t one of them.
So-called “Freedom Convoy” protesters were ultimately responsible if banks froze their accounts under the Emergencies Act last winter, but the government was not trying to “punish” those who took part, senior bureaucrats said Thursday.
The government set a precedent that donating to causes deemed "threatening" is worthy of an emergency freeze on your bank account.
Well done. Canada.
Seriously, there is a line between civil disobedience and uncivil disobedience, and they crossed it.
The government (and voters) won't hesitate to call the opposition "terrorists" and claim donating $5 to a cause is "supporting terrorism" and freeze your bank account so you can't pay rent or buy food.
It's really scary. This time it's the other side, next time it's you.
> This time it's the other side, next time it's you.
First they came for the violent criminals, and i did not speak up because i wasn't a violent criminal... oh wait i'm actually totally ok with that.
However, generally speaking people who give money to someone in order to further a criminal act are comitting a criminal act. This is hardly a new concept.
There's also mental torture aspect of doing it 24/7 (literally a tactic used in war to break troops).
Additionally people living in the area reported experiencing significant harrasment from protestors.
Right, honking horns and blocking roads is pretty much the same as setting off bombs and murdering people for political ends.
There appears to be little evidence that donors had their accounts frozen. Accounts receiving those donations were.
“Yes,” she replied.
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/even-small-donation-t...
Such action, she said, would only be taken on donations made after Feb. 15’s emergency declaration and isn’t retroactive — adding such a case would be “very unlikely,” but definitely possible.
The main solid takeaway from that article is that 206 accounts were definitely frozen .. accounts that very probably donations were flowing into.
The rest of the article is weasel phrased, there are allegations of donors having their accounts frozen but no corroboration and then later details on how some of those stories don't add up.
A solid reference would be the actual public records that were requested to be kept:
The committee gave unanimous consent to a motion tabled by Chambers compelling government departments and agencies to report weekly to the committee on how many accounts they’d recommended frozen, who owned them and the reasons thereof.Those sound like a lot of attempts to say "oh, seizing people's assets without trial for the crime of a small donation only happened to a few people, so no big deal".
Some blue collar guy trying to make ends meets hears about the protest after the emergency and says "yeah, I think the government is overstepping, I'm going to send $10 in support". Never stepped foot in Ottawa, never blocked any bridges, never honked any horns. Now his bank account is frozen and he can't pay the rent.
How in any way is that acceptable in a country that claims to respect person freedoms? These are the tactics you'd expect from authoritarian systems. I used to laugh at the irony when Vietnam would charge some protestor for "abusing democratic freedoms", but hey, that's kinda what Canada did.
People should be really pissed off that it happens at all. But you know what, I'm ok if people aren't that pissed off. What's more maddening are people who saying "yeah, that should have happened. In fact, I'm glad it happened".
Jesus Christ Canada. I don't know what it is with Commonwealth countries but you see places like New Zealand and Australia doing the same. "The right of the state supersede the rights of the individual".
> Now his bank account is frozen and he can't pay the rent.
Where does your linked article say that happened though?
The article does not say that the frozen accounts were donor accounts ( ie accounts of blue collar workers ).
The part you highlighted was in response to a question about whether that might happen .. and the response was it's technically possible .. but pretty unlikely.
Yet you skip over to the "well, I see no proof someone was affected so what's the big deal?"
I'm horrified by the fact it could even happen at all. That the government had the power to arbitrarily freeze someone's bank account with nothing more than a note from the RCMP. No evidence, no presumption of innocence, no right to argue in front of a judge.
Why aren't you horrified? Because it didn't affect you?
Next time it could be you.
Someone that had their account frozen for no other reason than they donated a few bucks from afar?
The government had the power to do it. No trial, no evidence, nothing but the police putting you on a list (as per the Deputy Minister of Finance).
That alone should scare you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace,_order,_and_good_governm...
> "The right of the state supersede the rights of the individual"
The rights of people to go about their lives freely, specifically those living and working around the 'protest' site, and the residents and workers of the city in general, should supersede the rights of noisy assholes to block roads and blast their horns at all hours of day and night.
In general, you don't get to ruin everyone else's life for your cause. This is why most protests in western countries work with police and have a window of time during which streets are shut down etc. And why (for example) everyone cheered when an environment protestor in London was ripped away from a train he was trying to glue himself to at peak commuting time and given a kicking by the crowd (not that we should praise violence but really, think about what you’re doing).
You don't get to just shut down everyone else's use of a public space, or disrupt people's sleep with your airhorns, or block their access to transport and services, indefinitely. You absolutely have the right to be heard, but you don't get to hold the population or the government to ransom like that, and not expect society to take steps to stop you.
The government never decided the Convoy was a "criminal enterprise". I have no idea where you go that from.
The government decided the protests were going beyond that allowed, but that had to do with the people protesting, not the people sending in $10.
What's amazing to me is how you just dismiss all this. "Oh well, some guy who Paypaled $10 to an organization (and did nothing else) deserves to get his account frozen. Sucks to be him if you he can't afford rent or food."
What ever happen to due process? What happened to restraints on the government. What even happened to "innocent until proven guilty"?
Canada like to point to the US abuses like Gitmo and say they are better, but I think they are worse. Canada does it with no concern at all, no self-reflection on consequences, no public outcry.
They say that democratic freedoms are fragile and now I know why. So many people are will to take them away from others without a thought.
And the thing is, AFAICT there is no “guy who PayPal’d $10 and got his accounts frozen”, so if there’s no outcry, if people like me dismiss it, that might be because it didn’t happen.
From here it looks like you bought into the ‘freedumb!’ narrative, that any action taken to deal with the situation was bad. We had people here on HN lamenting that with the invocation of emergency powers, Canada had seen it’s last election, they would never be rescinded and that Trudeau was now a dictator for life. The whole thing is hyperbole built on childish notions of freedom that are pretty incompatible with the democratic functioning of a country.
The Deputy Minister of Finance said they had that power.
And instead of being pissed your government can lock your bank account down with no evidence, no trial, no ability to defend yourself and your response is “you bought into the ‘freedunb!’ narrative.
Yikes.
The theoretical but non-exercised power to put a temporary freeze on the bank account of someone contributing to a blockade which is being dismantled under the provisions of a national emergency, with both democratic and judicial oversight …
Yeah there are bigger things to get worked up about. I would expect national emergency legislation to come with all sorts of powers, and only the appropriate ones to be exercised, with Parliamentary and democratic accountability down the line for those doing the exercising.
Yikes indeed, that people are surprised by the availability of financial interventions available to governments, in extremis.
As a Canadian citizen, your bank account cannot be arbitrarily frozen by the RCMP and some politician because they feel like it.
Your bank can do it, but no the government cant without evidence, a court order and your right to argue your case before a judge. It’s called “due process”.
How do you not know that?
I think I get it now. You’re not upset because you didn't even understand the rights you had before they were taken away.
In the circumstances, I don’t believe that power is disproportionate, particularly as it was not exercised. You do. I think that’s really all we can learn from this conversation.
The banks can and will freeze accounts when the police or other agencies raise suspicions with them in most western nations
The police or a politician cannot arbitrarily order a bank account frozen without a court order (again due process). Sure, the police could say "hey that looks suspicious", but the bank is under no obligation to do anything.
You say there is no distinction there - I'd say it's a massive distinction.
I’m not upset because it’s not unreasonable to grant powers to perform an emergency breakup of a blockade, particularly when not all of those powers are going to be exercised (as they weren’t here), and when under the scrutiny of parliament and with democratic accountability.
What scrutiny of Parliament? The decision to enact the Emergencies Act was a decision by the Prime Minister, done with his cabinet, and those discussions were secret.
Sure, there was a inquiry after the fact, but hey, the horse is already out the barn by then.
That clause, I agree, was a mistake.
Still, the charter has at least been beneficial in many court cases, and caused many laws to be turfed (many of which, are just dropped forever).
It would make sense for Quebec to ignore it since, well, they didn't sign it. Just like the US constitution doesn't apply since, well, Canada didn't sign it.
> Sadly, other political bodies do this as well, and it is becoming more common.
What makes no sense is the federal government can apparently decide to "suspend the constitution" as it pleases (and did so for peaceful freedom of speech demonstrations by truckers recently).
Ahh yes, the "speech" of 160dB ship horns for 22 hours a day for 3 weeks in residential neighborhoods.
(Just to be clear, is case anyone doesn't know about this, the above is either an absolutely insane or absurdly dishonest characterization, it's easy to do your own research)
Comparing truck and ship horns with closed circuits for 22 hours or more a day to "music from a summer festival" might not be the MOST disingenuous comparison I've heard, but it's pretty close, if not.
- being unable to sleep for weeks due to train horns being blared at all hours of the night.
- having every single one of my friends and family who is some sort of visual minority having racial slurs hurled at them daily.
- seeing someone waving a nazi flag near the War Memorial.
- Having fireworks explode in between apartment buildings right next to where people lived.
- Daily harassment of any medical staff, sometimes coming directly into hospitals to shout conspiracy theories about doctors killing people with vaccines. Nurses self-organized into protection groups and were instructed not to come to work wearing scrubs to avoid harrassment.
- a group of grown men yelling at a kid who could not have been more than 17, who was unfortunate enough to be working at Tim Hortons, calling him a mask wearing faggot.
All these are personal stories either directly from myself or from those who were close to me. I share these because I am well aware of the those attempting to frame these types of stories as small, performed by a few bad actors,not representative of the movement, and that the media was highlighting a few isolated incidents to spin the image as negative. So let me assure you, these types of behaviours were constant, everywhere, and actively encouraged by many who were there. The supposed "media narrative" was quite real, as was apparent by anyone who lived in the area.
I believe in the right to protest, but there is a line where a "protest" becomes harassment to those around you. Let's recall that parliament was remote at the time, so the government who this anger was directed at was not even present at the location. Nor do government employees typically live in the city. So the justification of getting back at those who wronged you was not even present. They weren't even inconveniencing the people they came to protest. Instead they blared horns in residential areas, shot fireworks next to high-rises that were people's homes, threatened health care workers, and yelled at Tim Hortons employees. They had / have a legitimate right to protest. They instead chose to occupy a city who's inhabitants were not even those who they were angry at.
Ah yes, the confederate flag, that ubiquitous symbol of Canadian freedom.
Don’t forget the farmers nazi, the nurses nazi, the little kids nazi, the immigrant dark skin nazi.
The oppression clearly came from the government, it’s high time to wake up.
At this point I don’t know if this is a parody position or you really believe it.
I mean, if we're going to make this analogy, the thing that was signed was Treaty of Paris of 1763.
The usa only requires 3/4 of state legislators to agree before it becomes binding on all of them. In canada, the rule depends on the thing, but generally its 7 provinces containing >50% of population. Quebec was the only province not to agree to the charter.
If we're making a comparison to the usa, it works basically the same way.
> What makes no sense is the federal government can apparently decide to "suspend the constitution" as it pleases (and did so for peaceful freedom of speech demonstrations by truckers recently).
This is incorrect. The emergencies act did not suspend the constitution.
While this is certainly technically true, the charter is something of a representation of the social contract that already existed between Canadians and their government, and given that we are a country of common law, that does mean something.
technically, Quebec has civil law [1] for a portion of their legal system. If we're being pedantic :)
So… no.
“To be abundantly clear, it is not a crime to give someone the finger. Flipping the proverbial bird is a God-given, Charter enshrined right that belongs to every red-blooded Canadian.”
Edit: I'm apparently rate-limited. Anyway, if words on paper don't mean anything, then bringing up the Charter as evidence that Canadians have free speech is completely irrelevant.
Second, the notwithstanding clause isn't a theoretical possibility.
> I find my American friends sometimes freak out over the “but they could take your freedoms away!” when they read about stuff like that. Well, yeah they could do anything. Like make secret courts that ignore constitutional freedoms.
This is a cute way of pretending the clause is never used.
Also I don’t actually own any land. It all belongs to my king. That’s written down too.
This is actually a really fascinating subject but not for a Friday night. Long story short: what’s written, and what actually is, are often quite different. I find my American friends sometimes freak out over the “but they could take your freedoms away!” when they read about stuff like that. Well, yeah they could do anything. Like make secret courts that ignore constitutional freedoms.
I think it’s healthier to be aware that it’s all a social construct that demands political activism.
But did they?
> It’s also written somewhere that I’m subject to a king, so I’m not really free anyways. Also I don’t actually own any land. It all belongs to my king. That’s written down too.
Is it something that people are proud of? A big part of the culture?
> Heck we aren’t even accumulating weapons just in case!
Not like you could do anything about it, seeing as the monarch took the guns!
This is silly. Canada is free to legislate however it wants on gun ownership. King Charles has nothing to do with it.
FWIW, technically they do not have that power. In a constitutional monarchy the monarch is subject to the constitution. The king can't technically abolish canadian parliment anymore than the us president would be able to technically abolish congress.
Of course there is a certain truth to the idea that its all a social construct, and anyone can abolish the government if they are backed by a large enough number of people with guns.
At least, the overrides expire after 5 years if not re-legislated for a new 5 years, so politicians can’t enact them once and then permanently flee accountability.
(I'd encourage people to read the charter and Quebec's concerns, Quebec objects to it because it doesn't allow them to discriminate against foreigners, there's not some legitimate concern)
Some background https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/28/quebec-ca...
The people of Quebec may be unhappy with the mechanism but surely the principle of protecting people from government overreach should not be in dispute.
https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuit_des_Longs_Couteaux_(Qu%...
However, fair is fair - that was more secretive than i was aware, although i would still say that quebec was actively participating in the negotiations up to that point.
The First Amendment is a a flat limitation of Congressional power, not a rights grant. So in that way, it is globally binding as it applies to laws that the United States Congress may make as they pertain to e.g. US citizens residing in Canada, or really even Canadians at home or in the US.
So basically the same amendment, covering the same rights and inspired by the same document (pretty sure the US constitution came first) just under a different name.
Additionally prior to the charter canada had some limited freedom of speech from the implied bill of rights, so its not like it introduced it.