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Comment by hhh | Hacker News Reader

What genocide is Canada committing?

Usually when people make that claim about Canada (and don't appear to be left/far left) they are referring to either our medical assistance in dying laws (which went from only for people on the brink of dying from stuff like cancer to now contemplating extension to mature minors, people with mental illness only among others) or they are referring to our abortion laws.

all of these being good things.

They could be but the could also be really bad things. I am personally uneasy about how far we are and continue to extend medical assistance in dying (it's one thing to help someone a few months away from death from cancer to speed things up and avoid a ton of suffering and expense, it's something entirely different to allow the government to off people that would have otherwise likely lived for decades, are minors, are retarded, etc). That is too new for me to have strong objections though, I will wait another decade and see where the regulations/practices settle down to before I draw a strong conclusion.

The abortion thing is also potentially problematic because it hasn't really been settled. The old law was just thrown out without replacement legislation, which legalized everything from early abortion (which most people are fine with) all the way up to very late stage abortion (which a large minority of people are very much not ok with). This leaves a wedge for people that feel strongly against the policy to convince more people to also be against by referencing the extreme minority of very late stage abortions as a cludge to remove support for the vast majority of abortions that are a lot earlier. I'm a big fan of abortion (mothers seem to know when they are going to raise criminals and abortion removed so many future criminals that it actually changed the crime stats) so I would prefer for us to go through the uncomfortable situation the USA is currently going through and settle this with a compromise that removes a lot of that wedge pressure, while maintaining abortion laws that would allow the vast majority of currently performed abortions with no additional bureaucratic BS.

Not OP, but they are likely referring to the MMIWG crisis [0], which Justin Trudeau called a "genocide" in 2018.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Inquiry_into_Missing_...

I would agree that or some ancient history residential schools stuff if this person appeared left/far left leaning. They are talking about the budget like the deficit matters though, so I suspect they are more right leaning and so are referring to what I proposed in my other response.

I wouldn't consider the 1970s "ancient history". We're well within survivor's lifespan, not to mention the trauma of family members.

Yes, this is a common error made by many. You are looking at the residential school not so great days and grouping it in with the actually terrible pre WW2 days. They aren't the same, especially when talking about genocide vs abuse. Even if they were the same 50+ years ago is a very long time ago.

I also worry that you are making the follow up error made by many and trying to use things that happened 50+ years ago now to justify current bad outcomes, when the current bad outcomes stem largely from the utter institutional failure that is indigenous services and the corrupt fiefdoms that are the reserves.

> What genocide is Canada committing?

My educated guess based on "as well as freezing bank accounts just for attending a peaceful protest" in the same breath is vaccine mandates.

Poster is a nutjob. The "peaceful protest" was a Russian dark money backed attempt to disrupt Canadian life, to sow discord and chaos. I mean, they were successful with Brexit and Trump so they took a stab at Canada but they didn't manage to tear Canada apart. On the surface, they were protesting vaccine mandates but that was just the drivel for the redneck fodder. Canadian authorities haven't seen the like yet so they let it grow up to a point where they actually managed to disrupt Canadian economy seriously by occupying a bridge leading to a border crossing. So the Prime Minister declared a state of emergency, froze their bank accounts and sent them home. No one died. These nutjobs forget this rather important point: Canadian authorities peacefully managed to end this.

The end of your comment has some facts wrong, if you care

- the emergency was declared after the bridges were back open - the private banks froze the accounts

“Russian dark money backed attempt to disrupt life” LOL. I watched the live streams. I know people who went to Ottawa. Real people were Real pissed off with government mandates and a peaceful protest that should not have ended in a proper democracy was disrupted. And you cheer for the result

Blaming boogeymen for discontent and protests is far more worrying then the protests themself in my opinion. Like Napoleon in the Animal farm ...

I don't really understand how such people end up on HN. You'd think it was the type of place educated people tend to find.

I don't know if poster GP is a nutjob but I've noticed more and more of those type of low-quality comments on here. It all sounds like echoes of a distorted news headlines repeated over and over until we get to the point of: "They don't even have the right to life, their country is committing a genocide, and the goverment tries to take most of their money".

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