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Comment by rand_r | Hacker News Reader

I don’t know why they couldn’t do the friggen obvious move of asking the police to unblock the roads by force, and impounding the vehicles for repeat offences. Going after bank accounts was a coward move that never made sense. If I just sat down in the middle of a subway tunnel, I would be removed by force immediately, no matter what I was protesting. They created problems for themselves by not doing the obvious solution.

Blocking a road is a fire hazard and should never have been tolerated by local police for that reason alone. You cannot impede transit in a city.

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If only more people A) asked this question and B) looked into what was (not) happening.

Basically Ottawa police were insubordinate, sided with the truckers/occupiers/protesters, etc. The populist conservative provincial government completely failed to act, likely due to the protestors being on "their side".

> Ottawa was not being policed. Ticketing didn’t start for days. Tow-truck companies hesitated to move illegally parked trucks for fear of losing business from truckers after the protests ended. Protesters were refilling their trucks with jerry cans of diesel. When the police were ordered to put a stop to that, protesters began to carry empty jerry cans en masse to overwhelm law enforcement, but they needn’t have bothered: front-line officers were not following orders to stop them from gassing up. There were reports that sympathetic officers were sharing police intelligence with protesters. Anything the police did could backfire. Families with children were living in some of the trucks, and there were reports of firearms in others.

https://thewalrus.ca/freedom-convoy-the-prince/

> Basically Ottawa police were insubordinate, sided with the truckers/occupiers/protesters, etc

Maybe the correct move was to resign if it got that bad.

I agree, the police should've resigned if they failed to do their job. Call in the military.

That's basically what happened.

The police chief? He did.

The city or the province could have done that. They didn't. The Feds could only use federal reasons.

The mishandled response to the trucker protest should be blamed on the city and the province, not on Trudeau.

Trudeau was the one who triggered the protests in the first place.

The liberal, moral, fast and peaceful solution to the trucker protests was simple: stop forcing people to take experimental drugs against their will. The vaccines didn't reduce transmission, and there is no rule against living life in a risky way (even if you believe the vaccines worked at all), so there was never any moral argument for the mandates. The truckers were right to protest, as Trudeau and the Canadian people were doing them a severe injustice.

[flagged]

I'm an Ontario resident.

Every single vaccine or gathering mandate I experienced was either provincial (Conservatives) or municipal (also conservative for Toronto and georgetown where I live).that they barked up the completely wrong tree is the breathtakingly depressing stupidity behind the whole thing.

Don't believe me? Alberta Conservatives did not have same policies. Then they begged BC and Saskatchewan for ICU beds but that's besides the point - provinces and municipalities had freedom to enact different policies.

Also in Ontario. I am still very confused how none of this seems to have affected Doug Ford. This was the most mandated, school-closed, shut-things-down jurisdiction in North America at the time. And somehow Trudeau is apparently to blame for it all, and Ford is still... electable?

Meanwhile the feds only had jurisdiction over borders and airports. They acquired the vaccines, but it was the provinces that doled them out and set the policies for what would require them.

At the height of covid Ford even had outdoor ski hills shut down. Crazy times. Some of it made sense, some of it didn't. But I can tell you my neighbours with F Trudeau stickers were very angry about the vaccines, but still somehow are voting for Ford. Confusing.

Provincial governments were a mistake - the average Canadian fundamentally misunderstands the division of powers and responsibilities between federal and provincial governments, and this is remarkably useful for bad actors.

I personally think Chrétien was a terrible offender, since his balanced budgets in the 90’s were a result of pushing responsibilities on the provinces. The current wave of conservative provincial governments have similarly created their own problems (particularly with the international student explosion) while placing all of the blame of the federal government.

Agree on your second point for sure.

Harris/Klein + Chretien was a deadly combination, and more intimately connected than people will admit. Supposed ideological opponents, but the latter created the conditions for the former to thrive.

There is room for two failures. The province should have enforced the provincial law, and the feds should not have have taken action through the banking sector.

But this leads to the question if the province is not doing it's job, what do you do as the feds?

Not saying they did right, but curious.

My preference would be that the fed enforce the laws on the books themselves (if they have the power to do so), or pressure the province to do so (using the democratic leverage available).

They tried that for weeks and it didn’t work. So what did you want them to do.

Are there no federal police or laws that are applicable? Is there no federal funding that goes to the province that can be used as leverage?

Those would be my starting place.

There’s no federal police, the government can make their resources available but it’s up to the province to use them or not. And sure, you could use funding, but there’s no guarantee that that would have solved the problem. The province could have kept digging their heels in.

Arent there 30,000 Mounties capable of enforcing the law?

Sure, but like I said the federal government can’t deploy them, only the provinces. And the premier of Ontario is a drug addict nimby conservative that hates trudeau, so he refused to do anything about it.

Interesting, I'm somewhat shocked that the fed has no ability to direct and deploy the Mounties, but I wont argue with a Canadian. That said, I think the democratic solution is to act through ones representatives, impeach the premier, ect.

I also dont see why the emergency act, if declared, couldn't be used to enforce existing laws and remove the truckers.

I think my core point is that there are conventional and broadly accepted methods to take when people are breaking the law. People breaking the law does not provide a blank check to stop them by any means desired.

It’s a whole thing because Quebec threatened to secede in the 80s, so the federal government doesn’t intervene unless provinces ask for it. I’m not sure about the legal basis for it either though hahaha.

And like, I agree with you in general, I just don’t see the action as an abuse of power. The economic intervention was also accompanied by on the ground action, as you said should have happened. At the time there were lots of questions about foreign interference in funding the protest, that’s why their accounts were frozen.

> what do you do as the feds?

I don't know exactly how Federalism works in Canada but the answer is their jobs. If that doesn't entail stepping in to provincial business, they shouldn't do anything.

There doesn't always have to be something done.

This is very easy to say as someone who wasn’t affected by the situation. Most people supported the federal governments decision.

Provinces are absolutely responsible, policing is all on them.

Ultimately, the responsibility rests with the truckers, period.

Thing is, the federal government does not have the power to "ask the police" to do anything. That's obviously by design and part of the demarcation of powers we expect from a democracy. The accusations of authoritarianism would have been just as drastic (I think?) if the PM had stood up and tried to call the RCMP or Ottawa police / OPP to task for their inaction and so on.

Sibling commenter is right: the police should be the ones under the microscope, for failing the citizenry. Questions should be asked about to what degree their membership was compromised by allegiance to or involvement with the convoy and its cause.

> Thing is, the federal government does not have the power to "ask the police" to do anything.

Wut?

The RCMP reports to Parliament up through the Public Safety minister. The bucks stops with the PM.

The federal government has not only the right but the obligation to hold the RCMP accountable.

But that's not what I was arguing? Holding accountable is not the same as telling them what to do in terms of enforcement action.

This was actually discussed as a specific controversy at the time the convoy was undergoing. Trudeau getting on the phone with chief of police and asking him to clear the protest would be a serious breach of political standards in our democracy.

Also the police in question here are the Ottawa Police Service, not the RCMP, I believe.

Your phrasing is "do not have the power". Trudeau most certainly does have the power.

And I'd disagree about breeching political standards. The police are an executive function and report to the PM. I'd like to think Canadians know that.

Where can I educate myself on the issue? The differing narratives have left me puzzled.

The police are NOT an executive function and do not report to the PM.

The Ottawa police, report to the city of Ottawa. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Police_Service)

The Ontario police, report to the Province of Ontario (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Provincial_Police)

The RCMP, reports of the Country of Canada (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Canadian_Mounted_Police). And the RCMP is "a police service for the whole of Canada to be used in the enforcement of the laws of the Dominion, but at the same time available for the enforcement of law generally in such provinces as may desire to employ its services."

The most important part is the RCMP enforcement in provinces is at the DESIRE of the provinces, in this case The Ontario Provincial Government.

Some Canadians may know the above.

Please read your own links!

RCMP

Minister responsible Dominic LeBlanc, Minister of Public Safety

How a Canadian doesn’t know the structure of their federal government is beyond me.

The local police do not report to the PM. It is that simple.

Your local cops don't report to the president.

The RCMP don't have jurisdiction in Ottawa. You said it yourself, it's the federal government and it's not the same as the municipal government.

Additionally regardless of formal "powers", no legitimate leader in any democratic govt wants to be seen "giving orders" to police forces -- that's entirely outside of democratic norms.

The federal govt sets standards and expectations and framework for the RCMP. It should not, and does not (hopefully), tell them what to do on specific case files.

RCMP in Ottawa would enforce federal laws not provincial. Seems to me you are talking about OPP responsibilities.

It was something like the Ottawa police said they were unable to and Ford said it was a local issue or not a priority. He was onboard with emergency act as it helped with Windsor too.

This was also voted on in Parliament too, 185 to 151

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