That includes not posting flamewar comments, not calling names, not crossing into personal attack, not being snarky, and not using the thread for political or ideological battle. You can make your substantive points without any of that, and we want curious conversation here.
I've seen a lot of commentary about the fact that the Emergencies Act provisions "expire" automatically after 30 days, and include "safeguards", ergo there's nothing worry about. People getting hung up on the text of the bill forget that it's merely an Act of Parliament, and thus can easily be amended or replaced via a simple majority vote.
What played out last night indicates that none of these checks and balances really matter in a parliamentary system where the nuclear option of a non-confidence vote (and subsequent election) can be invoked to force any MPs with qualms to vote along party lines.
It's easy to see what will happen next, based on this government's track record: they will introduce amendments to the Act, or new legislation containing only the provisions they would like to make permanent, and once again proclaim that voting against the amendment will result in a new election.
They will probably also use it as an excuse to ram through their "Online Harms Bill", i.e. internet censorship, targeted at "misinformation" (disagreeable speech) and, many suspect, independent media outlets that the PM despises.
Internet censorship + government-directed financial de-platforming = Canada's near-term future if the situation doesn't change somehow.
What better check and balance to automatically topple of the government if you really disagree with invoking the act? It's a minority government even.
I suspect most people commenting haven't even read the act. It's actually very short and would take you less time than reading this article. One should entirely get hung up on the text of the act -- it outlines exactly what is possible and the consequences. It's actually very reasonable but point that out doesn't produce enough outrage up votes or get articles published.
I've read the Act. It's quite rich that it proclaims to still be tethered to the Charter, and yet the act allows government to compel people to do a job against their will, ban protest in specified areas, seize/confiscate assets without a court order... it's like when a bully yells "stop hitting yourself!" while pummelling you with your own arm.
I'm sure the rationale for why it's apparently Charter-compliant leans heavily on Section 1, but the courts have been far too generous in deferring to Parliament on use of Section 1 as a justification for "minor" infringements.
It has also never been invoked before, and hence has not withstood the scrutiny of a Charter challenge yet. It may not, in fact, be Charter-compliant.
It's interesting to observe the different failure modes of western nations in the last decade. Democracy is undermined by populism, parliamentary systems are unstable with regards to civil rights, the Fourth Estate of media is completely compromised by local corruption, massive conglomerates, rich activists, and weird tribal mobs that flit from panic to panic, all of them degrading anything and everything in pursuit of wealth or political advantage.
Nothing is sacred or revered, to the extent that religion is being replaced by diy mysticism, ideology, politics, or Great Causes, be it climate or BLM or MAGA.
In my mind, the solution is cultural. We need shared values and deep understanding of the principles that govern our countries. We need good faith debate and review of outdated laws, revision or excision of bad ideas - racial language, weird moral errata, and finally a sufficiently detailed and rigorous regulation of novel technology that older concepts fail to account for.
Social media, adtech, and search engines aren't common carriers, but legislation shouldn't try to shoehorn regulation of platforms and communities into pre-internet legal paradigms. It's way past time for regulation and legislation of digital liberties.
The 2nd amendment in the US didn't account for nuclear weapons. The war on drugs and the current global legal system around drugs didn't account for human nature and civil liberty. Section 230 and phone companies and cable TV aren't concepts that map properly to the modern internet, and we'll probably see radical changes at an increasing rate. Nailing down basic things like digital privacy rights, penalizing surveillance, rewarding innovation and fixing patents and copyright are crucial, but apparently it doesn't test well, so nobody is fundraising for that platform.
Canada is not bad, but things can break down rapidly. Trudeau will fail on the side of authoritarian control, so any actual damage resulting from that should be fodder for debate on refining the system and protection from abuse. And if no damage is done, recognizing and reinforcing the fail-safe structures in government is probably necessary.
> The 2nd amendment in the US didn't account for nuclear weapons
What a wild straw man argument. On the one hand, I generally agree with you. On the other hand, I am fairly confident I wouldn't trust anyone to decide for me what limits there are on "revision or excision of bad ideas".
So much of what you argue for relies on trust- trust that we are all working towards a common goal, primarily. However, there really doesn't seem to be a clear path forward when both sides assume the other side is arguing in bad faith.
Somehow everyone making those arguments is also happy to overlook the reality of operating such weapons in any purposeful way.
I'm not aware of any military that deploys a precision marksman without a spotter. That makes a precision rifle a two-soldier job. .50 caliber machine gun? two, maybe three boots? Squads will have members with DMRs or LMGs but they aren't suitable for the same task -- they just extend the capabilities of the squad.
Extend that to thinks like fighter jets, nukes, comms, etc. etc. and the actual threat of any of those is drastically reduced outside the crazy people do crazy things category of events, and even then, you're going to need a big group of crazy people.
The replacement and actual threat already exists and was popularized in the Middle East in the 70s and arrived here in the 90s but it isn't sensational but I'm not confident I wouldn't end up on yet-another-watch-list by saying it explicitly. So, yay, freedom.
> We need shared values and deep understanding of the principles that govern our countries.
This is the mainstream prescription since there has been bellyaching about the woes of the age (i.e. forever, or provably, since the invention of writing).
One idea that I think is more interesting is Machievelli's - he pointed out that the Roman state was at its most dynamic and powerful when it was locked in permanent internal contradiction: between the landless and landed.
One can easily carry the analogy along. The 60's, in its time, was seen as a moment of social disintegration and civilizational collapse. In retrospect however, we can see that an america that had not had the 60's would be a scary, oppressive place, a perpetual 1955 of the human soul.
Only one was an embarrassed Southerner. The rest were nonplussed or outright angry that the article and confessions were published. There are black people alive today who were alive then, it hasn’t been that long.
Every time someone says anything good about any year prior to 1980 or so someone shoots back with this low effort quip. I think it's obvious that anyone praising the 1950s in 2022 can be assumed to be saying "like that but for everybody" unless there is a specific reason to think they want to exclude certain groups.
I don't understand your comment. The whole reason why most nightmarish historical moments are considered nightmarish is because they give certain groups drastically elevated rights, and others none. Talking about an apartheid society without talking about privilege is nonsensical.
>The whole reason why most nightmarish historical moments are considered nightmarish is because they give certain groups drastically elevated rights, and others none. Talking about an apartheid society without talking about privilege is nonsensical.
The 1950s were not nightmarish for anybody actually living in them. Racial minorities, though still mistreated, were mistreated a heck of a lot less than in decades prior and had much more economic opportunity though they were starting from lower on the ladder on average than white people.
That economic opportunity is what everyone wants back.
The fact that you can consider the 1950s in the US a "nightmarish historical moment" is nonsensical, to put it very, very charitably.
> The fact that you can consider the 1950s in the US a "nightmarish historical moment" is nonsensical
Well, you can go upthread and read about the lynching of Emmet Till, or familiarize yourself with any of the many ways in which the Jim Crow laws were formally and informally enforced. You can look at the photograph of Emmet Till, even, before or after he was lynched.
Maybe you have thicker skin than I, but I think living in a community where you could be brutally killed for any or no reason, and knowing that your killers would not be convicted, is a nightmare.
>ell, you can go upthread and read about the lynching of Emmet Till,
Funny you mention that. I was this >< close to preempting your comment by mentioning him but figured I'd give you the benefit of the doubt.
Ask yourself, why do you even know Till's name? Why did Till's killing spark national outrage when 20yr later that would have gotten barely a peep out of people? Because times changed and that kind of behavior was no longer excusable.
>but I think living in a community where you could be brutally killed for any or no reason...
Till was killed for violating social norms (that he presumably was not sufficiently aware of). His death was no different than that of a peasant 1000yr earlier killed for bad mouthing a local lord. It's tragic. But it wasn't without reason, though we may think the reason flimsy and disagreeable.
And this time I am going to head off the inevitable reply by pointing out that I am not defending or justifying Till's killers, just explaining the context.
> Till was killed for violating social norms (that he presumably was not sufficiently aware of).
You are defending them; your 'context' is simply how these particular murderers justified their actions. The real context is that white people could kill black people with impunity. The context is not that black people kept on making mistakes.
That is a large chunk of history and a lot of people were in it. You've put forward 1 name. Although there is an argument for your position, you haven't made it. Can things even have been said to have changed if there was 1 example in the 50s and 0 examples in 2020? That is a low-signal trendline.
People still felt the need to propose an anti-lynching law in 2020 [0] so maybe lynchings are an ongoing problem. There isn't anything to argue about without actual evidence.
The point about a lynching is it is a message. Imagine the power dynamic between a black man and a white man in the south, when the black man knows that the white man can murder him and get away with it.
This particular lynching was obviously not the only proof of this reality in the decade.
> That economic opportunity is what everyone wants back.
Given the frequency of folks literally marching around with Confederate and Nazi flags, you've overstated your case here. Perhaps that's what you want, but there's a significant movement in support of a white ethnostate. That movement has representation in the Republican party, and for example Tucker Carlson is wont to voice its talking points and his show is one of the most watched on cable TV.
Pretending that racism was just a blip in the past and not a present and ongoing problem, or ignoring it because it didn't impact your parents, is at best naive. The Emmet Till case was a stark reminder to Black Americans that their lives were worthless in the eyes of the law and the white citizens who had the power to change it. To call that event terrorizing is not remotely a stretch.
What will people in 2092 think of 2022? I won't be around to see it unless Bezos makes a breakthrough in immortality research but I really doubt this decade will be seen as the magical time when we finally figured everything out. Our grandchildren will probably not look on our time any more fondly than we look on the '50s.
I doubt people in the '50s thought "we are evil and we enjoy being evil so we shall be evil". If you read contemporary magazines and newspapers they actually thought they were quite modern and progressive. And why not? 1955 was as modern in 1955 as 2022 is today. It's only in retrospect that it looks backward and barbaric.
Many things that were seen as modern and progressive then are looked on in horror now (lobotomy, gay conversion therapy, insulin coma therapy, using asbestos in cigarette filters, segregation, redlining, anti-miscegenation laws, blacklisting communists, anti-sodomy laws, many others).
What will the list of "Oh my god can you even BELIEVE people did that?" look like in a couple of generations? I've got some ideas but they're almost certainly wrong because I can't see the future any more clearly than the 1950s people could. I would however bet my life savings that some of the values held by all right thinking decent people now will be seen as abhorrent in 70 years. I just can't tell you which ones. Conversely some things seen as shocking now, stuff that will get you ostracized from polite society, will be believed by all right thinking decent people in 2092. Again I can't tell you which ones (nor do I think it will even be related to race, disability, or LGBTQ+). But this does seem to be the pattern.
To be clear I am not saying consensus views were more right then, or that we are wrong now, or that I wish X, Y, or Z thing would make a comeback. I'm just saying I don't think we've finished history yet and we should wait till history is over before patting ourselves on the back.
Wrong. A democracy, at least a functioning and legitimate one, is not judged by enacting the will of the majority, but by protecting the rights of the minority.
That democracy was dead before it started. A democracy cannot survive without broad agreement in the value of the individual. That is a failure mode of democracy that can be brought about via poor civics education. This is why universal public education is so critical to a functioning democracy.
It's a preparatory phrase, and does not limit the rights to an organization. Remember, the 1st 10 Amendments were just meant to reiterate inherent rights in the individual, and ensure that they were not encroached upon by a tyrannical government.
You are saying that politics would be easier if everyone shared your values. OK. Whose calues should we pick? How to decide? What do we do with people who disagree?
I don't care what your values are, just that we should find some sort of common ground if we want to maintain and improve the country, or world, we find ourselves sharing.
The principles don't have to be mine, and they don't need to be political, even. It's even possible with something silly... "America has the best fucking apples on the planet, and we're goddamn proud of that. Everything we strive and suffer for is for the best goddamn apple pie in human history, and if you wanna take that, you can pry it from our cold dead hands. "
Right now, we're socially fractured in every way possible to fracture under the threshold of combat, and even that is failing in some places.
We better figure out what it means to be American before there's no point to it, or before it fails so badly that continuing as an American means fatally corrupting any principles or ideals we claim to hold.
There are ideas for seasteads and crypto-nations that I find compelling, but I'm not a utopian. I think the Constitution is something admirable and the ideals are structurally important for any notion of liberty going forward in history. I hope that America finds its way back to some sort of cohesion but I don't see any paths toward anything resembling unity.
> Canada is not bad, but things can break down rapidly. Trudeau will fail on the side of authoritarian control,
That feels accurate. The next question then becomes, how will that play and/or be exploited in the USA, it's neighbor.
Let's, for a moment, presume there are entities within the USA that would welcome the opportunity. Now back to Canada...how much outside (i.e., USA based) influence is being exerted on the situation in Canada to tilt things towards the authoritarian?
This isn't a conspiracy theory. It's a simple extrapolation of history. Let's not be naive.
If anything, it seems like the trucking protest was a case of American dollars and influence trying to tilt Canada towards right-wing populism. Granted, that appears to have been a grassroots fundraising campaign and not American government policy or CIA black budget money (as underwrote, e.g. the failed anti-Chavez and anti-Maduro coups Venezuela). The banking measures look like a ham-fisted, authoritarian attempt to squelch that.
I think this feels "new" to Americans because it's on our border, and because Canada looks more like the US and is assumed to be more stable and less prone to authoritarian emergency measures than e.g. Venezuela or Argentina. But similarly extreme and extra-judicial banking controls have been implemented by other governments in the hemisphere when authoritarian left-wing parties in power feel threatened by right-wing populist movements they believe are at least partly sponsored by America.
> If anything, it seems like the trucking protest was a case of American dollars and influence trying to tilt Canada towards right-wing populism
Why? Canada already has a strong conservative movement, and NAFTA makes it damn easy for US-based companies to do as they please.
This reeks of the same forces that got Trump elected. Which would be a mix of billionaires, Russian money, and anyone who has an axe to grind against Canada, e.g. China (for the Huawei, et al, conflicts).
You might have misread me. Nothing I said was contrary to this. There certainly may be billionaires, Russian money, etc. in the mix; those indeed helped to fund American right-wing groups, whose members in turn contributed to the Canadian truckers. I'm just making the point that even though it's not American policy this time, US secret services and US corporations have a long history of funding right-wing groups all over the Americas; and that this isn't the first time it's provoked left-leaning governments to respond with overt financial controls and seizures.
There was likely influence coming from Left and Right. If one gets involved, the other isn't going to sit on the sidelines. This comes as direct involvement, as well as the media spin that covers such an event.
It's difficult to understand where the legit events ends and the outside influence begins. That's not a conspiracy theory. It's simply how these things work, with so many chef's in the kitchen (and that in general, the media can't be trusted).
> I suspect most people commenting haven't even read the act.
You could have provided a helpful link to said act. I would like to read it.
Although I do want to comment on the 30 days thing - this protest isn't that special. If a majority of politicians think it is appropriate to freeze people out of the banking system now, why will they have changed their mind in 30 days? This is going to be a routine response.
The specifics aren't exactly new (governments have been able to go after bank accounts for a long time) but the idea that it can be done on a mass scale is one of the most powerful arguments for crypto that I've ever seen. There is now a risk of being debanked for having the wrong sort of political opinions! These tactics are a horrific assault on the principles of liberty.
It isn't really the crux of the argument, but there are already concerning stories of it being abused [0]. Given the trend of dehumanising political opponents, it is easy how stories like this become less of a 1-off and people would still be making positive murmurings.
Indeed, everybody has been going along with sanctions of nations and organizations with the wrong political opinions, up to and including frozen bank accounts or even prison for so much as financially supporting those nations and organizations. But that was terrorism, so anything goes, right? Up here in Canada, the Conservatives proposed, and the Liberals enacted, a law (Bill C-51) to classify interference with "critical infrastructure" as an act of terrorism. But that was targeted at those pesky pipeline protesters, so anything goes, right?
So now the shoe is firmly on the other foot, and I can't help but wonder if folks will finally realize that disruptive protests are a necessary component of democracy, or if we're just going to keep going in circles because the entrenched politicians stay in power when their voter bases are at eachothers' throats.
It's so much more exciting to believe the government is freezing the accounts of political opponents than the boring facts about how crowd funding hasn't been subject to normal anti-fraud and anti-terrorism regulations.
I consider the worst part to be that many Canadians (particularly the educated) seem to be fine this is happening, or even openly advocating for it. This more than anything else makes me very concerned about how Canada navigates the next little while.
Canada is not America. We trade some freedoms for a healthier, more robust system. I find the American reactions to our system confusing, honestly. Our democracy is not in danger, nor are the majority of Canadians concerned about this.
The greatest concerns seem to be from Americans and this is particularly bad on Reddit, where the Canadian subreddit has been captured by right-leaning Americans mainly.
Let's be clear that the CCLA is not an organization that many Canadians have even heard of (unlike the ACLU), and that their stance really doesn't carry any weight more than any other organization weighing in on this.
The act was passed specifically to curtail charter abuses from the previous bill and in the end, still answers to the charter.
I'm Canadian and I'm both familiar with CCLA and glad they exist, especially at the moment. Not to be hyperbolic, but many people around the world don't know Amnesty International exists until they find themselves locked up without due process and find that they have a weighty advocate.
>Our democracy is not in danger, nor are the majority of Canadians concerned about this.
"Fully 61 percent of Americans said they approve of renewing the Patriot Act's provisions to allow for continued collection of phone data, according to a CNN/ORC poll released Monday, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points."
>The greatest concerns seem to be from Americans and this is particularly bad on Reddit, where the Canadian subreddit has been captured by right-leaning Americans mainly.
On the contrary, I feel like the pandemic has revealed the fragility and asymmetric distribution of costs in our society, and the governments unwillingness to even address it. I do not consider democracy in danger, but there are some pretty serious precedents being set.
I suspect Canadians aren't concerned because for the most part Canadians have lived a very comfortable existence for a very long time due to the nature of our geopolitical privileges. I think the hyperbole tossed around regarding the convoy and blockade illustrate this.
It’s not America but it was founded with western liberal ideas to be a functioning self-governing democracy and have English common law ideals similar to America. Chief among those is due process which this emergencies act completely sidesteps.
It's a system set up with "here's where the American system gets screwy" hindsight available, though. The two systems are cousins, not identical twins.
Absolutely agree. The American viewpoint seems to be "restrictions on freedom of speech! Not allowing protests! Canada is becoming a dictatorship!" which I think is an absurdly extreme reaction, particularly in a minority parliament.
I think Canadians have more faith in our institutions, particularly the courts, to remain apolitical.
> I think Canadians have more faith in our institutions, particularly the courts, to remain apolitical.
Speak for yourself. Also consider that an estimated 9% of all Canadians live abroad (mostly in the US and Europe), including up to 25% of professionals in certain industries (doctors, for example, and I'm sure tech is up there too).
Lots of Canadians don't have faith in our institutions. Unfortunately, moving away is easier than changing the docile Canadian mentality and is a better individual choice.
Edit - and for comparison purposes around 1.7% of Americans live abroad.
> Speak for yourself. Also consider that an estimated 9% of all Canadians live abroad
I was speaking for myself, as I see it, as are you. Note that I was one of the 9% living abroad for ~3 years.
> the docile Canadian mentality
I rather disagree with this supposed generalization
> moving away is [..] a better individual choice
Yes, for those who are more professionally desirable (doctors, tech, other professionals as you mention), moving to the US in particular is the "better individual choice", in that you can earn a better living. I certainly could, but I prefer to live here with my fellow docile Canadians.
Most Canadians I imagine live abroad for economic reasons. But that in itself is a failure of our institutions; an economy is a reflection of the set of rules created by the government.
Anyhow, some examples:
- Police, it's obvious they can't do their jobs. Between inability to clear protests, all our cities being taken over by crackheads, it's failed.
- Courts: basically catch and release. Murder regularly gets plead down to manslaughter with pathetic sentences
- Municipalities: make starting a physical business damn near impossible. Tons of red tape and random fees, then you get taxed to hell because homeowners can't possibly pay for their share...
- Healthcare: it's a joke. Worst of any country in our income bracket yet Canadians inexplicably think it's not shit.
- Bank of Canada: literally went out and said they're propping up house prices
- Feds: literally said they are bringing in immigrants to reduce wage inflation ie. Prevent wage growth. Trudeau senior capped wage increases for awhile while in power...
Tons more examples of failed institutions in this country...
I want to live near extended family for a while and have another life experience. Living abroad doesn't mean it's better than Canada but that I want to experience something different for a while.
I'll be back ... None of the issues you listed stand out at all to someone born in Canada but who has lived in 5 countries (mix of very rich, middle income and poor). Ok, I admit the housing price situation bothers me.
To judge by IP addresses, at least, there are a lot of Canadians posting to HN on both sides of this argument. There are also a lot of users from other countries posting on both sides of the argument. The dividing line seems more ideological than national.
Thanks for the insight, Dan. I think that HN does over-represent (relative to population at large) the libertarian viewpoint, but my comments really stemmed from what I've seen of mainstream media coverage of the issue from the two sides of the border.
>And the emergencies act is being challenged in court, which will determine if this is lawful.
The difference is that in liberal democracies, the executive branches has to convince a court before they can act. eg. getting a warrant before doing a search, or getting a conviction before imprisoning someone. The approach of "shoot first, you can sue us in court later" makes a mockery of this.
>Banks are private entities. They freeze accounts engaged in illegal activities regularly. The US does too - here's one random citation. [1]
They're both bad. This is just slightly worse because the government is directing businesses into targeting their political enemies.
In this case the executive didn't do any convincing, the legislature did. It's a parliamentary system - the executive is an extension of the legislature.
> The difference is that in liberal democracies, the executive branches has to convince a court before they can act. eg. getting a warrant before doing a search, or getting a conviction before imprisoning someone. The approach of "shoot first, you can sue us in court later" makes a mockery of this.
Uh no, not really. I'm going to presume you're comparing with the US. Do you forget that the US kidnapped, imprisoned and murdered random people, including American citizens without any judicial oversight? Not to mention sweeping surveillance with laughable pretense of judicial oversight ( FISA courts)?
Executive branches have lots of power, and that power is controlled via checks and balances, the judicial and legislative branches ( in many countries the executive branch' power comes from the legislative and is directly beholden to it ( where PMs are sitting MPs)).
>Uh no, not really. I'm going to presume you're comparing with the US. Do you forget that the US kidnapped, imprisoned and murdered random people, including American citizens without any judicial oversight? Not to mention sweeping surveillance with laughable pretense of judicial oversight ( FISA courts)?
And? That's just as bad. I'm saying canada's actions are bad because they go against how liberal democracies should work, not against how the US works in practice
>Executive branches have lots of power
That's exactly why I'm concerned.
>and that power is controlled via checks and balances, the judicial and legislative branches ( in many countries the executive branch' power comes from the legislative and is directly beholden to it ( where PMs are sitting MPs)).
And 9/11 in the US shows how easily the populace can be convinced to abandon those liberal democracy ideals given a threat.
The key here is that these people are not engaged in illegal activities or even accused of engaging in illegal activities before their accounts are frozen and before they have been given any chance to defend themselves. Rapists and murderers don’t even get treated this badly. They are treating them like terrorists.
> The key here is that these people are not engaged in illegal activities or even accused of engaging in illegal activities before their accounts are frozen
What stood out the most about these protests, vs most other large protests in recent Canadian history, is how many warnings the participants received. They were told time and time and time again by every party involved that their conduct was illegal - from the police as well as from municipal, provincial, and federal level. They were even given a court injunction against certain specific actions (horn honking), which was largely ignored after the first 24 hrs. They were engaged in illegal activities for weeks before this action was taken.
> That has nothing to do with freezing accounts of donors, or blocking donations.
Yes, it does. The donations were specifically to fund an activity that had been deemed illegal. Similar to the other things tracked by FINTRAC.
I have seen only one claim of a donor being targeted, and quite frankly, I didn't trust the source, but it is possible. The RCMP issued a statement [1] yesterday clarifying that the only information they had provided to banks was regarding organizers and trucks blocking the street (both groups were made explicitly aware that their behaviour was illegal and would have consequences).
But they are engaged in illegal activities, which you can find with a cursory Google search. And blocking borders and pipelines can arguably be classified as economic terrorism.
They are fully welcome to protest peacefully, on foot, in front of parliament like everyone else.
Yes, donating money can be illegal depending on what it is being donated to. Here[1]'s a list of financial transactions that would be tracked in Canada.
Banks freeze accounts under the effective duress and cover of the government, because freezing money is stealing money from someone, even if you (might) give it back one day. If they didn't have the cover of the government then they would be under a ton of liability.
Much like how taking someone's car, even if you plan to give it back one day, maybe, if you think they deserve it, is still theft.
Because banks do it under duress, it's really the government that is doing this, not the bank itself.
Yeah, Kenney's lawsuit is mostly political grandstanding, but I welcome the use of the Act being challenged in court. All this makes our democracy stronger.
A law was on the books for decades but hadn't been used. It has now been used (in a rather restrained way, considering what it could be used for). This use is now being challenged in court, which will likely clarify what restrictions the use of that law actually has. Eg, did it respect the charter appropriately? Was it appropriately justified?
Why does that make democracy stronger? It's just an elaboration of a particular interpretation of the rules by jurists that are probably already not uncomfortable with the state.
The outcome of those deliberations will be to some extent obscure and subject to yet further interpretation and arguments.
That doesn't in, and of itself, make democracy stronger.
I would argue that the use of this Act has already weakened democracy in Canada because it shows that the only response the political systems has to a very minor disruption is to use acts that everyone understood to be for much more extreme situations.
This has already deepened many people's cynicism about the idea of this form of government.
> I would argue that the use of this Act has already weakened democracy in Canada because it shows that the only response the political systems has to a very minor disruption is to use acts that everyone understood to be for much more extreme situations.
Certainly the act was used in response to weaknesses in the system - eg the Ottawa Police Service were unwilling to fine/ticket/otherwise deal with the illegal activity for weeks; crowdfunding sites weren't subject to FINTRAC; etc. Ideally this will lead to proper legislation regarding these weaknesses, removing the necessity of using the Emergencies Act to deal with a similar situation again.
Legal certainty? It was supposed to be the answer to the problems for the War Measures Act; the Constitution of Transitional Measures Act; the Emergency Powers Act; the Public Order (Temporary Measures) Act and some others I have forgotten.
I would argue that laws only mean what they are interpreted to mean by a particular governmental body at a particular time.
And you can in addition have a coherent, clear and easily interpretable body of laws and measures which result in a society which lacks many of the features of what people like to imagine is a "democracy".
Fair enough. It's better than nothing, but probably not good enough. We'll be seeing more of this sort of problem as living standards decline under climate destruction and the buffers separating us from more direct conflict of interest thin out.
In fairness, the leaders of this protest are on video literally discussing topics that would be considered racist (ie: depopulation of the white race).
If I had access to my laptop I'd locate the video (self-filmed) where Pat King discusses this exact topic. Someone may be able to find this for us.
Why would that matter? Should I take away your rights if I disagree with your views?
Ultimately the true test for the existence of guaranteed rights is if those who you and the majority of people absolutely hate and despise have their rights guaranteed and protected in the same way and with the same vehemence as those of the average Joe.
A right lives and dies by our willingness to protect it for those who we hate.
I'm canadian. That's not true for me, nor many people I know. Canadians have "liberal elites" just like the US, and they tend to over represent on HN, but there is not some Canadian phenomenon about trust in institutions. We have apathy and only get politically involved when we absolutely have to, if I have to stereotype. But it's certainly not because we trust "institutions" especially. I've heard this only recently as a general talking point abou Democrats/liberals, but it seems like something that just got made up to justify current support of orthodoxy. It certainly wouldn't have been true on the George W Bush days for example.
The 'freedoms' (more accurately called rights) that Canada sacrifices to make the country work better and simpler, such as specific local & state rights, are not the lost freedoms that most Canadians think make the country better. By removing some forms of vetocracy, the state can coordinate better and avoids some forms of small scale corruption, although not enough as most of the housing crisis shows.
Much of the dysfunction of the USA partly comes from it's size and it's economic, climatic & historical diversity compared to Canada. Canada is significantly smaller economically, historically and population wise. It is also a country that has had consistently cold winters, which creates cultural values that forces you to save for the winter, which makes everyone work better together, which is something you see similar with Scandinavian countries [0].
The USA has many climates that make fairly different cultures in subtle ways. Canada works better because it's smaller and accidents of history, not because they don't have free speech. Canada is more american than they feel comfortable with, and this creates a unease that makes them feel like they need to differentiate themselves on minor difference, much like two twins.
[0] If your wondering why russia doesn't work like scandinavia, one reason why is hundreds of years of brutal mongolian rule, while scandinanvia avoided that trauma.
Interesting theories. First, i find that the communal work togetherness is also present in Mediterranean European countries which don't have that bad winters. Second, i don't get the premise behind the Mongols explanation. Doesn't a common external enemy make people work together even more? Furthermore many countries were rules by Mongols ( including China and most of Central Asia), yet they exhibit varying levels of "togetherness"/communal spirit.
I completely disagree with everything you said. And please do not pretend to speak on behalf of "most Canadians".
"Most Canadians" likely could not care less about things that does not affect them directly. And the opinions of the ones who do are most likely split in very different proportions contrary to your claim.
But yes, tiresome to see people trying to claim that they know the mind of the people.
We`ll see next elections: I bet Conservatives will do well and the Liberals will decline and the NDP will be wiped out. Jagmeet Singh has managed to extract the worst possible position from this.
It's very difficult to know which way things will turn. The most likely leader of the CPC supported the protests directly, and I think we will see that hurt them somewhat. The interim leader is a definite liability.
Trudeau is not making friends, but given a lack of strong leadership from any other party, you may not see them able to pull any more support out. The only poll that matters is the election and it's probably fair to say we don't know what will happen.
The protests may be a distant memory by then. And if one of the parties gets a handle on housing prices, that could swing things.
Jean Charest is not exactly loved in quebec. The end of his provincial premiership was pretty rough and his name is a bit synonymous with "corrupt slimey politician". But I'd bet Québec would still vote for him just because he's from "our team" and he's a very familiar figure
Calling the Canadian system robust is just detached from reality. Between the fact that quebec has not even signed the constitution yet, the opportunist and sometimes never ending elections, the total mess that is our constitution and charter... and your comment is in a thread where the government invoked an act that strips away almost all our charter rights and does away with due process. Do you not see the irony? That has never happened even in the USA.
I guess it's just natural for canadians to have this weird smug inferiority complex towards the US but you have to remember that our government admitted to committing a genocide (still ongoing) barely 2 years ago. Also on average even a majority government rarely gets more than 34% of the total votes. But I'm legimately curious as to what parts of our system you see as being so healthy?
Btw saying that the majority of canadians are not concerned at all about setting the precedent of suspending charter rights over a protest is just a complete self own if it was true and I don't think it is. Well at least I hope it isn't
> I guess it's just natural for canadians to have this weird smug inferiority complex towards the US
There was an article in the Montreal Gazette this January that was very earnest, but if you read it with a critical outside perspective, it's absolutely ludicrous:
So this guy fled Quebec's corona restrictions for a vacation in Florida, and describes this experience while constantly complaining how Floridians are ignoring corona, and putting in a bunch of digs at the US healthcare system.
But at the same time, why did he go to Florida if everything is so terrible there? And if Canada's healthcare is so great, why was his pre-departure corona test that he needed to take before being let back in to Canada, free and easy to get in Florida? And why was the post-arrival test he needed to do in Quebec, expensive and hard to get?
The amount of Stockholm syndrome and "Canadian apologetics" is completely off-the-charts. I simply cannot understand how you can write an article like this in the first place, it's absolutely deranged.
(The height of irony, of course, is that at the time of the article's publishing, the daily death rate in Quebec was twice as high as the one in Florida.)
Oh yeah that's another maddening episode. Every single media outlet here in quebec was obsessed by sweden and florida,and was doing some soviet tier governement praising while we had worse numbers than both and some of the worst daily stats per capita.
Also I totally agree on the canadian apologetics. It's really up there with some of the worst. A part from maybe the cognitive dissonance I've seen with Europeans grandstanding on racism in the USA (but don't talk to them about the Roma or moroccans or Muslims or albanians or... etc though, its different & they have totally valid reasons to hate them!).
This is the country that freelyadmitted to a genocide (and a currently occuring one at that) which caused just a bit of controversy, which I guess is good right if we are the worlds first to self declare a genocide? Except that we just... didn't do anything about it. Like we recognized it and flew the flags down for a bit, and that's all you need for a currently occuring genocide. The real debate is obviously talking about how bad american society is at dealing with race relations. 4 years later and the genocide is apparenly still ongoing and no on in government has been prosecuted or penalized, or even lost a siege in parliement over it.
And it is unfortunate that many Canadians do not understand that they are living in a state in which the parliament can be suspended by the unelected representative of the Queen (prorogation -- the same issue that led to Australia deciding they wanted to change their constitution) and that the not withstanding clause makes a mockery of the Charter.
Hopefully this wakes a few people up and gives some new impetus to the reform movements.
If you read the act itself, it's a measured approach to give the government limited powers for a limited time specifically because regular powers failed.
We as Canadians don't want to give the government these powers all the time, so that's why we have an escape hatch here to maintain our democracy. It is a great approach and many of us are proud of it.
Here in Victoria, Australia, we had similar emergency powers which were only valid for a couple of months.
In practice, the government simply kept voting to extend its emergency powers until it passed a piece of legistlation that allowed it to keep the relevant powers from the emergencies act indefinitely.
This. Invoking the Act in Canada was a blatantly political move, and they will not easily give up such powers once they get a taste of them. As is always the case with government.
While I'm definitely wary of government overreach and not really a fan of the Pandemic management bill the Vic government passed to replace the use of state of emergency powers, at least this bill did say that its provisions could only be used if the state premier and health minister declared a "state of pandemic", and also the bill was heavily modified from its original reading after criticism from the legal profession and negotiation with the state opposition.
So in actual reality those state of emergency powers to compel lockdowns, quarantine people and compel business to shut were NOT extended indefinitely, the government wrote them into legislation designed to cope with the current situation, and specified that they could only be used in a pandemic situation and NOT indefinitely.
Yes before you say it the government could amend the bill again before the state of pandemic is declared over, or pass more draconian legislation or try and do anything it feels like. In the end it comes down to if you think the government is acting in good faith to do what is best for the population or not, and I can't think of much evidence they are actually acting in bad faith or otherwise misusing their powers.
The situation in Canada is not the same, I very much do not like the idea of freezing people's bank accounts without oversight or recourse.
Any reasonable person would not consider the suspension of due process in response to peaceable protests “a measured approach”. Due process, along with equal protections of the law, are about as fundamental to a lawful society as any rights afforded by a representative government.
The Patriot Act had a timer built in years, not days. That, coupled with foreign intrigue that kept the velocity of interest ongoing (and endless threats -some valid, some not- from said foreign actors) made extending the PA easier for a mostly neo-conservative foreign policy establishment.
It also started expiring (in sections) in 2005, with more and more being sunset through the last 2020 window. I'm not actually sure how many of it's provisions still stand, but they are a much smaller subset than the massive umbrella of powers initially approved in 2001.
It's a harder sell with a small group of noisy Peterbilt drivers in a 30 day window.
> I'm not actually sure how many of it's provisions still stand, but they are a much smaller subset than the massive umbrella of powers initially approved in 2001.
I'd be curious as to how many of those powers simply got spun out into other covering legislation/banking law. I suspect quite a few.
Particularly in the freezing of suspicious funds, AML/KYC, banking secrecy, etc. If anything I think we've ramped up the regulation and lack of due process to 11 more than de-escalated.
it's a representative democracy filled with power-hungry people. the dynamics that would cause "temporary" laws to be renewed infinitely is the same. it's not like it's some quirk/loophole like filibusterers. if anything the more pragmatic (for lack of a better word) approach (as opposed to absolutist in the US) to freedom compared to the US makes it even more likely that authoritarian measures will remain.
What amazes me is that you can pass a measure that strips the rights of the citizens with less than a super majority of 2/3 or even 3/4. This is a mockery of democracy.
The NDP (left wing) party ended up supporting the emergencies act in parliament a few days after it was put in place by the Liberals. That provided them with a majority support to get 185-151 so about 55%.
The only party against it was Conservatives and I believe Bloc Quebcios.
I’m talking about how some simple majority to strip citizens of basic rights it’s not what you expect of a country that pretends to be Democratic state. 50% + 1 vote is not a mandate for anything much less unlawful violations of your citizens human rights.
As an amusing side note, "50% plus 1" is on its own a bit of a loaded phrase in Canada. Some argue that is enough of a majority for an entire province to secede via referendum.
I don't agree with that either. I don't view the tyranny of the simple majority in any favourable light especially now that everything in every country of the west is more and more polarised.
In fact I would prefer parliaments to be elected by citizen lottery and do away with all the political class at every level.
I’m not sure what rights Canadians have but something sounds wrong when they will freeze your bank account before even telling you what you’ve been accused of, let alone given you a chance to defend yourself.
Yes, we absolutely do. Smaller protests are ongoing right now in Ottawa by the same group(s) that set up at parliament. They're totally legal, because they're not breaking any laws.
The big hoopla down on Wellington _was_ breaking _many_ laws. The municipality was unable to disperse it with the resources at hand, and so voila, emergencies act.
Thanks. I've been so curious about this - the news gives the opposite impression. I haven't been able to find any news media about ongoing legal protests in Ottawa (ie today/yesterday/Sunday). Do you know of any?
A smaller demonstration outside the War Museum was ongoing Sunday and Monday [1], I think there were like 3 people left there today. The authorities did not interfere since the protest was peaceful and lawful.
Many of the more hardcore members of the convoy have moved just outside of town to Arnprior and a nearby truckstop. [2][3]
No, but if you are knowingly committing crimes as part of your protest, that falls under civil disobedience, which assumes you are willing to "do the time" for your crimes.
It's not typically expected that you commit crimes in the name of a cause and then just go home and live your life normally.
> proclaim that voting against the amendment will result in a new election.
This is the expected behaviour and boon of having minority governments. When the government does something Canada doesn't like, a new election gets called
Canadian States of Emregency Acts must still comport with due process.
“ Under the Emergencies Act, a declaration of an emergency by the Cabinet must be reviewed by Parliament.[33] Any temporary laws made under the act are subject to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Bill of Rights, and must have regard to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”
Which is meaningless considering the chart allows for almost everything inside of it to be either suspended (as per section 1) or outright ignored even outside of an emergency (not-withstanding clause). So yes it's not reassuring for an emergency law to have to follow the charter that explicitly allows for almost anything in cases where it's needed (such as government declared emergencies...).
The joys of having a "living constitution" where nothing is really set in stone and almost every right in the charter of rights can be just essentially ignored because of the very first section of said charter.
Shouldn't it be illegal for a political party to force any MP vote on any matter? The MP was voted in to represent the people, not the political party.
I guess it's a race to the bottom and impossible to prevent coercion. I just wish there was a better way.
But Michael Chong did get a bill through reminding MPs they can turf their leader, and it just got exercised for the first time. And some parts of the Conservative party are aghast that the lowly representatives of people overturned the will of the party.
> People getting hung up on the text of the bill forget that it's merely an Act of Parliament, and thus can easily be amended or replaced via a simple majority vote.
“Recognition and declaration of rights and freedoms
1 It is hereby recognized and declared that in Canada there have existed and shall continue to exist without discrimination by reason of race, national origin, colour, religion or sex, the following human rights and fundamental freedoms, namely,
(a) the right of the individual to life, liberty, security of the person and enjoyment of property, and the right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of law;
(b) the right of the individual to equality before the law and the protection of the law;
Canadian constitutional law is esoteric and insanely complicated so the bill of rights you cited is not actually part of the constitution at all but can sometimes maybe be used since it's still in effect even if it's been superceded by the charter of rights (that is actually part of the constitution). The bill of rights preceded the charter by 2 decades, and didn't have the problematic clauses that makes it completely neuter itself.
>Although the Bill of Rights remains in effect, many of its provisions were superseded by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. And unlike the Bill of Rights, the Charter is part of the Constitution — the highest law of the land.
>The Charter can be limited by the notwithstanding clause, also known as the override clause. Section 33 permits federal, provincial and territorial governments to temporarily bypass Charter rights in section 2 and sections 7 to 15.
Section 1 (probably what would make almost any emergency measure stand in court since "reasonable limits" is almost always judged in favor of what the state deems is reasonable) says:
>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
Section 33 (Not-withstanding clause, not used in this case but just goes to show how worthless the charter is as a bill of rights) :
>33. Parliament or the legislature of a province may expressly declare in an Act of Parliament or of the legislature, as the case may be, that the Act or a provision thereof shall operate notwithstanding a provision included in section 2 or sections 7 to 15 [those sections make up for most of the core basic human rights]
A few hours ago, the government revoked the act. So while there are many things that could have been done to extend / abuse it, they don't seem likely to happen.
I'm curious about what comes out of the deliberations about whether it was appropriate to invoke the Emergencies Act, but at the same time, I feel like critics are engaging in doomsday porn when they characterize bank account freezing as some sort of indication of dystopic things to come.
From the accounts I've heard, I can't really tell what the protestors were hoping to realistically accomplish. Pissing off a whole city for a whole month doesn't exactly have a great track record with regards to swaying policy.
According to polls, most canadians opposed the protest. That doesn't mean they necessarily have an opinion on whether invoking of the act was appropriate or not. I think most canadians are sensible enough to let the lawyers figure that out than adding noise via their uninformed hot takes. My personal take is that canadians as a society just don't like gratuitously loud whining and would much rather get back to peacefulness.
I think the police response speaks volumes about canadian values and what they represent, regardless of what laws say on paper: some people actually criticized the police response for being too "soft" on protesters but it was a good example that canadian police always prioritizes de-escalation[0]. They focused on reducing the risk of violence from breaking out even if it meant standing down; and arrests were largely related to dangerous threats (e.g. weapons) or gross disregard for public peace/safety.
People keep making parallels to US politics, but one big difference is that Canadians just aren't as polarized as to disagree on core principles, i.e. there's much less inclination for political parties to double down into increasingly polarized, extremist tribes. So even if it turns out that invoking the Emergencies Act was a bad call this time, it doesn't necessarily follow that Canada will devolve into a tyranny.
Various internet bills have been attempted to be passed by the Canadian government in past years. Despite regular uproar and push back, the attempts continue. Based on the current situation it might not entirely be a surprise if new tools come out of this, either mysterious and cloaked, or out in the open.
The question in some minds will be ensuring if existing tools and capabilities are not used, including existing enforcement of laws, what is the point of creating new ones? Any holes in today's legislation might have been the rushed legislation of the past.
Occupy Wall Street was started by a group of organized Canadians and they blocked access to NYSE facilities. OWS was obviously an occupation (it’s right there in the name), but the better question is: was OWS a protest, too? If so, why can’t this be called one as well?
There are generally more parallels between OWS and the truckers than people are willing to recognize, because there’s been a hell of an inversion: if you supported OWS 10 years ago you probably don’t like the truckers today and if you like the truckers you probably weren’t for OWS 10 years ago. There are a handful of Tim Pools that like both, and there are elites that disliked both, but the average person has to do some gymnastics.
All that I ask is that everyone is consistent: if OWS is a protest, then this is too. If you don’t like that Americans funded the truckers, you have to be willing to call out that OWS took place in NYC but formed from a Canadian nonprofit.
All that I ask is that everyone is consistent: if OWS is a protest, then this is too.
I have no idea why whether this event is a protest or not is considered the key question. Both movements could be protests and still be diametrically opposed in aims, approaches and broad political direction.
Protests often go beyond the legal bounds of free speech. Yeah. But obviously go far enough beyond legal bounds and you may find yourself in jail. And if you've done that in a fashion that's mostly oriented to harming the average person, then you may well deserve to be in jail by a strong concensus. But sure, you're still protesting.
Edit: A simple way to put that occurs to me is, sure, "people on the left support some protests that break some laws for some causes they consider important". But that doesn't mean they would or anyone would support "any protest that breaks any law for anything the protesters consider important"
Having been around OWS: I cannot recall a single time when NYC’s municipal functions and/or the activities of ordinary citizens were affected by the protests. The OWS protests were famously contained to a few small blocks, in a non-residential area, and constituted more of a “live-in.”
FiDi's residential population is about 60k now, which is triple what it was in the early 2000s (and probably around double what it was around OWS). Notably the US census includes Battery Park City in FiDi, which significantly skews the numbers versus the business streets (where the protest was).
By contrast, most of the residential neighborhoods in Manhattan easily clear 100k people, and are not as segregated in terms of business and residential streets.
If it hadn’t been for the honking and intimidation, I bet the party could still be going on. But the truckers imposed themselves on too many people to tolerate. They seemed to take pleasure in making Ottawa residents miserable. They had limited ability or willingness to police themselves which OWS at least tried to do.
> In particular, it was about giving the government of Canada the permanent power to freeze, without trial or legal recourse, all the bank accounts and other assets of anyone it decides was ‘directly or indirectly involved’ in an ‘illegal protest.’
Is this actually true? According to [0] "The Declaration expires after 30 days unless an extension is confirmed within specific timelines by both the House of Commons and the Senate.". I don't see how this would grant the government permanent powers unless the Emergencies Act gets renewed in perpetuity.
While I generally agree with the alarm raised by this article, I find it does itself a disservice by exaggerating and citing to Americans with, charitably, a passing understanding of Canadian law and government.
If people would like a dispassionate/neutral reading of the legal obligations imposed by the invocation of the Emergencies Act, I can recommend:
- a summary by Osler, a prestigious Canadian law firm [1]
- the order itself [2]
- the regulations themselves [3]
They are bad enough on their own without embellishment.
For additional context, I have never voted for the Liberal party. Federally, I have donated to and voted for Conservative and Green candidates my entire life. My current MP (a Green MP), voted against the Emergencies Act. I approved of that vote. But it is just absolutely bizarre to me to see people comparing Trudeau to Hitler, Stalin and Mao, as is done in the punk6529 Twitter thread that is embedded in this article. There is plenty to criticize without undermining yourself by using these stupidly emotive comparisons.
In addition this interview by en ex-CSIS (Canadian spycops agency) employee suggests that the funding is getting to the organizers by some means other than those which go directly through payment processors. It would be interesting if these measures were also actually ineffective. I was a bit skeptical of her claim that bitcoin ATMs in Ottawa were a likely source though:
I've commented on HN, mainly on controversial threads, for years. This is establishing status quo. When we are discussing an unprecedented ability to freeze users out of the financial system -- which the article accurately describes as a threat to constitutional democracy -- and someone claims that their PM isn't a dictator, their other dictatorial actions become relevant.
I didn't claim he wasn't a dictator. I claimed comparing him to Stalin, Mao and Hitler was bizarre. I still think that's bizarre, although I credit that some people may disagree sincerely. For me, it's bizarre because I think Stalin, Mao and Hitler are primarily known for being totalitarian rulers who each are responsible for the deaths of millions to tens of millions of people.
Trudeau, on the other hand, recently won re-election in what is generally accepted to have been a free and fair election and which was, in large part, a referendum on his handling of the coronavirus. This is relevant because his invocation of the Emergencies Act is related to protests about how he has handled coronavirus.
Even so, his invocation of the Emergencies Act was successful only because, in a minority parliament, he convinced another party to support him. Additionally, Doug Ford, a provincial premier of a third, different, party requested him to invoke it.
That's just... not dictatorial, totalitarian or mass murder-y to me. And again, I say this as someone who does not like Trudeau, does not generally like the Liberal party, and has never supported them.
The USA has a per capita death rate 300% that of Canada's. We have worked together here to keep one another safe, often at great personal sacrifice, and it has worked quite well all things considered. This is an expression of mutual solidarity and civic spirit, not evidence of stalinism.
I think this emergency act stuff is very bad, but Canada's response to Covid has been head and shoulders better than the USA and the death counts show it. I'm happy, as an American, to live up here where human life is valued.
Does that really matter though? The people whose bank accounts have been frozen won't automatically get their accounts back after 30 days, will they?
(And even if they do, 30 days is still a really long time not to have access to money, aside from whatever cash you happened to have on you at the time.)
It appears that accounts could have been frozen for as little as $20 according to the Finance Ministry, banks have apparently started unfreezing those accounts. Apparently the $20 freezes only happened rarely.
“Although not impossible that someone who gave $20 be captured and have their bank account frozen, I find that scenario…you know I think it would be in rare circumstances.”
In my opinion it's quite a leap to go from what Chrystia Freeland said in that video to "permanent power to freeze, without trial or legal recourse, all the bank accounts and other assets of anyone it decides was ‘directly or indirectly involved’ in an ‘illegal protest.'". Of the 3 measures she mentioned it isn't even clear which ones are supposed to be brought up to be made permanent and "Sharing of information between law enforcing and financial services" doesn't even sound like it's about the "freezing" of accounts. Did I miss anything here?
I think there was something missed. The specific "tools" that Freeland is referencing ARE the powers to freeze those bank accounts. That IS the major tool that the government did not have.
I understand why Freeland would not want to outright say "we want the permanent power to freeze funds with no recourse" - but that's the only conclusion I could reach based on that clip.
Keep in mind, the government had the power to seize/freeze assets, before this Emergency Act, as long as they had a court order. However, that low bar seemed to be too high a hurdle so the Liberals want to make this permanent.
The government already has these powers, but crowdfunding and cryptocurrency were missing. There's no good reason why we shouldn't include them in the existing laws.
There's no good reason that they couldn't have passed those measures on their own, without the power of freezing accounts with no due-process. This assuming that there are some "reasonable powers" they needed, which I don't agree with.
Further, the government always had the power to freeze the destination accounts as long as they were at a Canadian bank and had a court order. This is the only distinction.
The thing she is referring to making permanent is making FINTRAC cover crowdsourcing and payment provider platforms. That seems like standard government regulation stuff.
At the end of the video that you linked, she explicitly says that some of the emergency powers (suspending insurance for commercial vehicles involved in blockades) should not be available to governments in ordinary times.
The FINTRAC inclusion of crowdsourcing is clearly a response to foreigners outside of Canada sending millions of dollars to fund an occupation of Canada's capital city. This is a delicate issue: on the one hand political contributions are a form of speech, on the other hand I don't think a country needs to tolerate foreign political extremists from rich countries dumping money into domestic anti-government movements bent on forcing the gov't to resign etc.
Ezra Levant is a polemicist who frequently misstates or fabricates evidence. You shouldn't trust him. He's essentially Canada's Tucker Carlson. He's trying to be provocative, not do journalism.
Like how the USA's PATRIOT Act was supposed to sunset after 3 years but has been extended every 3 years forever? Canada isn't the USA but it's not that different.
> I don't see how this would grant the government permanent powers unless the Emergencies Act gets renewed in perpetuity.
Label any protest you don't like an "illegal protest". Then as long as there's less than one such protest every 30 days, it's not "permanent"... Yet it is.
Virtually all protests are "illegal". The problem is that the truckers figured out a way to make an illegal protest where the fines / jailtime is minimal compared to the effectiveness of the protest methodology.
Honking a horn carries very little penalty but is massively annoying if done in front of the PM's house. Parking your truck infront of a border crossing is similarly not very penalized, yet killing 25% of the trade between two countries is very damaging to the gov't.
The real reason we never saw these measures before is because of how brutally effective they are while being entirely non-violent.
This is very well put. The only acceptable protests seem to be those which are toothless. Somehow these people found an asymmetric cost situation and now the laws will be updated to take account of this edge case.
It's about whether there is a legitimate state of emergency. Therefore, the context of millions of people dying is relevant. But, you're right, their cause does seem rather counterproductive in this light.
In BC more people died of elevated levels of overdoses (eg. just what was above average) than COVID.
As of this post, 36,116 and not millions of people died of COVID in Canada, and the removal of vaccine mandates / mask mandates are inline with the recommendations of the Chief Public Health Officer. The people were pretty much protesting to get Trudeau to follow the medical recommendations of the Health Officer.
In most countries where masks and vaccine mandates have been eliminated, infections have gone down. Denmark's peak was the last day of restrictions.
Those countries already have > 90% vaccination rates, enough for the vaccines to be useful. They can get rid of their mandates because they statically are no longer necessary.
Yes, many of those countries have lower vaccination rates than Canada. 84% vs 81% in the case of Denmark. I wholeheartedly agree with you that our mandates are no longer necessary.
>Is this actually true? According to [0] "The Declaration expires after 30 days unless an extension is confirmed within specific timelines by both the House of Commons and the Senate.". I don't see how this would grant the government permanent powers unless the Emergencies Act gets renewed in perpetuity.
This is true. They have frozen the bank accounts of hundreds and you cannot do anything about it. You never got due process, there is no redress from the courts because you dont have a bank account to hire a lawyer.
Oh yes, poor Briane [0] from Chilliwack, single mother, minimum wage job, made $50 donation to the convoy. Of course that's the person the PM is targeting here. No source, no proof, nothing. This (unfortunately) is my MP and it's sad to say that he's contributing to the echo chamber of made up stories for the sole purpose of making people angry and voting for him.
Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. You can make your substantive points without doing that.
Unless the gov't is willing to publish the frozen accounts and the amounts any debate on what's going on will be lacking in facts that will be verified by the regime. We're going to have to wait at least 30 days for the first report to find out what's going on, we may never know.
Perhaps this is why freezing an account generally requires a court order, my guess is that no judge would approve based on the current jurisprudence and facts of the case.
> This (unfortunately) is my MP and it's sad to say that he's contributing to the echo chamber of made up stories for the sole purpose of making people angry and voting for him.
I said this about Mark Strahl, my MP, so no I didn't make the same "attack", sorry. As of now this story seems fabricated so I'll keep trying to hold my MP accountable.
This is incorrect. The lawyer is not confirming the story that people are having accounts frozen for donating. You'll note in that tweet they make zero reference to those donating.
It says they did provide a list of influencers, so perhaps they are just freezing the accounts of those who tweeted. I'm sure many of those who donated are also online influencers voicing their support for the freedom convoy.
I clicked on the link but it doesn’t seem to claim that he is representing anyone whose account was frozen for a donation. He states some of his clients are truck drivers/owners involved in the protest.
"In an e-mail about Mr. Strahl’s tweet, mistakenly forwarded to The Globe, an Ottawa police officer said they had sifted through the donor list and found two “Briannes,” neither of whom lived in B.C. “The information posted is false,” the e-mail said." https://twitter.com/MariekeWalsh/status/1496102089562468353
Any power given to government will be abused by them. It's sad that many Canadians support these clearly dangerous and totalitarian actions from their "leader".
Did you notice how "freedom" became a swear word over the last 5-6 years? With all these "muh freedoms", "what exact freedom have you lost?", "freedom of speech don't protect you from anything" it seems like any movement that fights for any "freedom" will be labeled as terrorist/nazi in next few years.
History repeats itself, and I'm sick of it. My country of origin and my country where I grew up, both turned to totalitarian hellholes, and now it's Canada's turn.
>Did you notice how "freedom" became a swear word over the last 5-6 years?
Because it's about "freedom" and not freedom.
Remember when the US called french fries freedom fries because France wasn't part of the coalition of the willing?
That's the same freedom.
Freedom also means responsibility, but some just want to do what ever they want and as soon as somebody demands from them to take responsibility they cry freedom.
People were drafted in wars and got killed and these guys whine about some pokes.
I want my freedom too but these guys showed me that that will never happen. I underestimated the number of stupid people.
We live in a society, your personal space and freedom intersects with the personal space and freedom of others. So yo have to compromise and jab is nothing too demanding. Especially when billions of people have already done it.
How much time is needed to jab everyone and how much for losing weight?
And if you are too overweight you are excluded from some activities and medical operations.
Just compare how much freedom was taken by things like the Patriot Act compared to mandatory vaccinations, not to mention the higher death toll of corona. A long it's only the freedom of others there is no problem but when it comes to themselves, they channel their inner William Wallace
You're moving the goalposts. If we're going to enact policy for the betterment of society let us not stop at jabs. Let us enact anti-obesity mandates. We'll check your weight at the entrance to bars and restaurants.
> 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?
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
It has become a pejorative precisely because it has been bandied about stupidly by people who aren't always arguing in good faith. At best, it's often invoked in an unsophisticated manner that assumes that individual freedom supersedes any other public good--i.e. during Covid.
In the American context, there's also a lot of hypocrisy on the right in terms of using that word, e.g. celebrating post 911 stuff like The Patriot Act and No Fly lists and Guantanamo, not caring about the conditions of immigration detention, but then bitching about having to wear cloth on one's face sometimes. Right-wingers literally cheered Joe Arpaio saying he runs concentration camps. So long as great atrocities befall minorities, they don't care. If they get minorly inconvenienced --> somehow it's a big deal.
I'd say more, but it's hard to discuss properly on phone. I would say there are reasonable libertarian concerns about this bill and Covid policies and a bunch of other stuff, but if you're wondering why so many of us reflexively distrust such arguments, you have to look at the cultural and political context in which we grew up. You're not seeing the full picture, to say the least.
I liked and upvoted your comment. This could be true, and yet it could also simultaneously be true that the people being reflexively skepticism about “freedom” don’t sufficiently understand the cultural and historical context in which that concept was formed - the history of struggles against tyranny in the 19th and 20th centuries, for example.
That includes not posting flamewar comments, not calling names, not crossing into personal attack, not being snarky, and not using the thread for political or ideological battle. You can make your substantive points without any of that, and we want curious conversation here.