ladallada

> if I claim that they can’t use physical force because they (the government) didn’t have the popular support and risk facing overwhelming violence escalation, what is your response to that?

I'm not sure I'm following 100% your question, but I think you mean what if the government is so unpopular that the country is close to a revolution from its citizens?

This doesn't really makes sense to me in a liberal democracy like Canada. Every few years, the citizen get to replace the government with another if they're unhappy with the current one. The opposition are able to have a vote to cast out the current prime minister if they want. The governor general, at any point, if it senses the people are no longer favorable to the government can kick off a new election as well. On top of that, the government is using force within the established limits of the laws and Charter of Rights of the country that are already pre-agreed upon, and the force it is using is itself in order to enforce the laws of the country from being broken, which is kind of its job as a government.

> More to the point, the government are free to follow up the threat in a court case in front of a judge, and the fact that they didn’t is the problem

I'm not really following your point? The government is also allowed to enforce laws, and they can later be trialed. Police does this all the time, they will intervene and perform an arrest, and the trial in front of the court happens after. They are also free to enact the Emergency Act in the case of an Emergency as they did.

The funds from bank accounts are frozen, not taken. What will happen next is they will either be released, or a court case can start and decide what to do with the funds.

You're talking to one right now. So let's discuss.

My view is that everyone has the right to protest whenever and whatever. And you can also as part of your protest show a little bit of civil disobedience, like break a few windows, burn a fire can, chant loudly through the night keeping everyone awake, or block some roads. Something to really get people to pay attention and really listen to what you have to protest about and see how serious you take the matter.

But after people did notice you, and did listen, and after they've asked you to please stop your civil disobedience now and continue your protest within the laws, if you still continue with civil disobedience, well it is normal for the government to then follow up with threats of consequences, like tear gas, handcuffs, jail time, fines, account freezes, etc. And if you still refuse after the treats, then it's normal for the government to follow through with it after all that, and force you to now obey the civil laws.

This I feel is true of all protests, may I agree or not with the protesters.

You can continue to protest, but you can't be breaking the laws forever. We can't have people block the biggest commercial boarder between Canada and US all year long because they're protesting. Once the message has been heard, if people didn't care, it means you don't have support, and you kind of have to accept that. You can keep protesting normally hoping to slowly build more and more support, but you can't keep civil disobedience going on until you get support, because that's starting to get closer to coercion.

I'm all for putting more transparency and reasonable bounds on the process formally, but I think you're missing two points:

1. While having formal bounds would be great, in this case, it hasn't been shown yet that they applied force unreasonably and beyond what those bounds should be. Some people want to believe they froze assets of innocent bystanders or small local donors, but that's just conjecture right now.

2. In your example, am I also blocking the biggest commercial boarder crossing between Canada and US? If so, I'm surprised you've not yet thrown tear gas at me, put me in handcuffs and physically forced me to move. And that instead you chose to simply freeze my bank accounts until I move.

I say that, because again, while I do like what the article points out, yes freezing assets is a big deal, and yes having bounds and guards and protections from abuse is important, I'm all for that. But my impression in this case is actually the government is trying to limit the blast radius and choose the lesser of two evils in order to force the convoys to stop blocking the boarder and major roads.

Instead of tear gas and physical force, which often impact a ton of innocent protesters that are legally and peacefully protesting, they went for a more targeted approach, where by blocking bank accounts you can be more specific exactly who you target, and it is also a more civil way to force you to move.

Can you explain what you mean a bit more?

What things you feel make people lunatics in this case?

It's not fake news, they did freeze some accounts, people are arguing which account was frozen, was it only that of people who illegally block major roads and boarder crossings as part of the tricker protest, and/or did they also include small donors to their funds, and/or only large donors, but then what is the threshold for small/large, and/or did they also include collateral of people who might have been peacefully protesting alongside the truckers illegally blocking roads and boarder crossings.

The article makes the point that it's is dangerous to not have some limitations on over reach in this case.

For example, in a protest, you might get physically tear gased or jailed, but it's temporary, and eventually you get due process and can be released, and your tears from tear gas will dissipate. Yet the nature of it is that police punishes you before you've been convinced in a court, so there's collateral damage, people who did nothing wrong are hit and tear gased and arrested by the police, and it's a big deal each time it happens.

Here too, there could very well be this sort of collateral, but the article worries that since it's less visible in nature, that people might not see it as a big deal, the same way that they would if they'd see police throwing tear gas, hitting people and arresting people left and right.

So it's saying, there's a possibility of overreach and collateral, but it might create less of a concern from citizens towards the government, since they won't notice the blast radius, as it is harder to notice it.

It's a good argument to some extent, even if in this case there would have been zero overreach and collateral, it is still a good argument for next time where there could be some.

Do we know there's no public records in this case?

I think there might be, the banks aren't in individually being contacted, I'm pretty sure they would have been added to one of the public sanction lists here: https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/international_re...

It's hard to argue without proofs. We can argue so many things when we go the route of conspiracy.

The Canadian government isn't known to have lied over and over a thousand times over as far as I know.

Yes the government has had scandals, here's a list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_scandals_i...

So I won't say they can't, but I also like OP think arguing in these hypothetical is a waste of energy.

We could argue that the process needs to be transparent, make the list public for example. In fact, maybe it is, might be one of these: https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/international_re...

I also feel logically, I don't see a motivate, small donors would only be cause for political complications. Logically it would make sense for them to restrict it to the people actually blocking roads with their trucks and to big donors financing large sums of money.

I think the article brings good points, but I also think it ignores something important, the alternatives...

You can agree or disagree as much as you want with the current situation, but at some point, there has to be ways for a society to enforce its laws.

Ideally you want to be in a society that define laws collaboratively, where you have a say in them, with a vote for example, and where the laws are applied fairly to everyone, without preferential treatment or specific targeting. And you'd want a process for people to asses and review if the law needs to be enforce in a particular case or not and what that looks like.

But you still need a way to enforce them somehow.

Ok, so let's say a group of people is indeed doing something that isn't right by the laws, and let's accept for arguments sake that you agree with that.

Now how do you enforce the laws on that case?

You could tear gas them, hit them with batons, point guns at them, handcuff them, and physically force them to comply, and lock them up if needed.

Or you can use softer methods, like temporarily freeze their accounts and funds, starving them of resource until they comply.

Yes, both methods are serious, they're meant to force you to follow the laws. So I agree that both are a big deal, but between the two, I think the latter is much better overall, and a lot more civil in my opinion.