[HN Gopher] Convoy Crackdown - power to freeze bank accounts wit...
___________________________________________________________________
Convoy Crackdown - power to freeze bank accounts without trial or
legal recourse
Author : nokcha
Score : 254 points
Date : 2022-02-22 18:46 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thezvi.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thezvi.substack.com)
| nickysielicki wrote:
| 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.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| Another reason to have decentralisation in financial system. I'm
| not for cryptocurrency but this excess in democratic state is
| exactly what brings people to alternatives, ie Bitcoin.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| At best this is unsupported personal opinion and at worst a
| slippery slope fallacy.
| brightball wrote:
| Slippery Slope fallacy is one of those expressions that gets
| thrown around a lot when people want to believe the next
| logical step forward won't happen. When it constantly happens
| over and over again, it's no longer a fallacy...just the next
| logical step.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| While technically true, I get the feeling you must be new to
| government
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments,
| and please don't cross into personal attack. All that is
| directly destructive of what we're trying for on this site.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| I don't appreciate the condescending attitude, and I'm well
| aware of the extensive use of slippery slope fallacies to
| attack policies or legislation.
|
| It's cheap fear-mongering, getting people to associate an
| extreme outcome with a much more moderate proposed action.
|
| "If you allow bike lanes in our city, in a few years these
| bike commies will be trying to spend tax dollars on buying
| everyone bikes, and then make it illegal to drive your car in
| the road!"
| loki49152 wrote:
| You do realize that this is, in fact, very similar to what
| the people who stumped for "just letting us have bike
| lanes" have progressed to advocating, right? Totally car-
| free roads, roads that technically are car-usable but have
| been rigged so that they won't support normal traffic,
| various pushes to force (or "nudge" or "encourage") people
| to ride bikes or take mass transit instead of driving...
| etc.
|
| And they even helped with convenient tax credits for taking
| their preferred modes of transportation! (spending tax
| dollars)
| adamrezich wrote:
| > "If you allow bike lanes in our city, in a few years
| these bike commies will be trying to spend tax dollars on
| buying everyone bikes, and then make it illegal to drive
| your car in the road!"
|
| strawman fallacy (or "whataboutism" if you prefer (I
| don't))
| kelnos wrote:
| It seems pretty weird to try to equate an absurd scenario
| around bikes, to a situation where governments with track
| records of accumulating and abusing power might...
| accumulate and abuse more power. Asserting that "this time
| will be different" feels a bit naive, no?
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. Your GP
| comment was already unsubstantive, which is the main reason
| why we're getting a flamewar in this subthread, and it's
| also not cool to feed it as you're doing here. If a parent
| comment is breaking the site guidelines (which
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30432570 was), the
| thing to do is flag it, not reply by fueling the flames.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Edit: we've also had to ask you this kind of thing in the
| past.
| skellington wrote:
| Many long term political goals are achieved through
| incrementalism which others might call the "slippery
| slope." Incrementalism is a political tactic that is
| extremely effective. To dismiss it purely as an
| argumentative fallacy in all cases demonstrates naivety and
| the person who pointed out that you probably don't
| understand government was right to do so.
|
| There are probably very few cases where the government
| implemented a rule or regulation or tax or anything where
| it was eventually rolled back. The government has a long
| and documented track record of incrementally expanding its
| reach and power.
|
| The US homeland security act will never time out. The
| Canadian emergencies act will likely also continue on
| forever, but the act doesn't actually have to get worse to
| BE worse. The act is already dictatorial. The controlling
| government will just figure out how to apply the
| emergencies act more liberally against political opponents.
| That's how it will get worse.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Sometimes the slope actually is slippery, it's not always a
| fallacy.
|
| Remember the PATRIOT Act? It recently prevented me from buying
| a package of decongestants at Walgreens. I guess keeping my
| nose clogged helped America fight Al Qaeda or something.
|
| I think government overreach is basically the status quo. Or as
| the old saying goes, "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the
| needs of the expanding bureaucracy".
| ethanbond wrote:
| That is not at all an example of slippery slope. That's an
| example of bills being attached to other bills to increase
| their odds of getting passed. Different problem with
| different solutions. Has nothing to do and was never claimed
| to have anything to do with al Qaeda/terrorism/etc.
| creato wrote:
| You chose a funny example of "ever expanding bureaucracy",
| given that the patriot act is gone as of December 2020:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I believe that those sunset provisions you were referring
| to only applied to the surveillance parts of the bill, not
| the entire PATRIOT Act. Also, they were originally supposed
| to expire in 2005, so the government kept the power ~3
| times longer than the end date of the original bill.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| The Patriot Act expired almost three years ago and had
| nothing to do with purchasing cough medicine that can be used
| to manufacture meth.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| The Patriot Act banned OTC sales of pseudoephedrine. The
| "Sudafed" you can buy now uses phenylephrine, a drug whose
| effectiveness as a decongestant is somewhat controversial
| (quite a few studies have found that it does no better than
| a placebo)
| paganel wrote:
| There's nothing slippery slope-y about a political party
| freezing the bank accounts of the opponents that are protesting
| against its policies in the streets. Had this been happening in
| the countries we (meaning the West) don't like the press would
| have been up in arms about it, for obvious reasons.
| ethanbond wrote:
| The obvious reason being that the government in question is
| democratically elected and the ones that (probably) fall into
| "countries we don't like" aren't democratically elected?
| parthdesai wrote:
| Explain this then? And in case you weren't aware, India is
| the largest democracy in the world
|
| https://twitter.com/rahulbetgeri/status/1494963031847337985
| ethanbond wrote:
| What's there to explain? Are you under the impression
| that all protests are of equivalent legitimacy no matter
| what tactics they use, what their demands are, and what
| their non-protest alternatives are?
| parthdesai wrote:
| > The obvious reason being that the government in
| question is democratically elected and the ones that
| (probably) fall into "countries we don't like" aren't
| democratically elected?
|
| I mean India is the world's largest democracy, so clearly
| that's not the obvious reason.
|
| > Are you under the impression that all protests are of
| equivalent legitimacy no matter what tactics they use,
| what their demands are, and what their non-protest
| alternatives are?
|
| That doesn't justify freezing a person's bank account.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Yes, in the sense that all protests should be held to the
| same standard _by the government_ regardless of
| legimatcy. As in you can absolutely be against a portest
| that you don 't agree with and deem illegitimate. But,
| the government does not get to decide what cause is
| "legitimate" to forbid a group from doing what they
| encouraged another group to do. The point of protesting
| is to protest against those in power, not to show how
| much you agree with them
| bombcar wrote:
| Doesn't matter, all that matters is are they on "your side"
| or not. Had the USA froze assets of BLM and BLM-associated
| groups during 2020 the "democratically elected" wouldn't
| have stopped people complaining.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Right, nor is it stopping people from complaining now, is
| it?
| karaterobot wrote:
| I think it's fine to post personal opinions here, even
| speculation. I felt like this one was cynical, but not without
| precedent. Posting links to actions other governments have
| taken in the past would be nice, but it wouldn't prove the same
| thing would happen this time. So unless the counter-argument is
| "what you are saying might happen has never happened before,
| and could not conceivably happen now" then I don't think lack
| of support is damning either. Readers should take these rants
| with a healthy dose of salt, and those who won't probably don't
| care how they are presented anyway.
| donatj wrote:
| If the last couple years have taught anything, it's that the
| slippery slope fallacy is largely a fallacy.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30432317.
|
| Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30433141.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Slippery slope is only a fallacy when you have very limited,
| often a single, data point. You could say using the Emergencies
| Act is only a single data point or you could say giving in to
| the authoritarian nature of power hungry politicians has
| endless data points. If one sees the Emergencies Act as a
| subset of power hungry politicians, there are already more than
| enough data points to see where the slope leads. Even before
| the pandemic there were already plenty of data points to
| establish that PM Trudeau and his cabinet are power hungry
| authoritarians. It pretty much comes with the position.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > "A slippery slope argument (SSA), in logic, critical
| thinking, political rhetoric, and caselaw, is an argument in
| which a party asserts that a relatively small first step
| leads to a chain of related events culminating in some
| significant (usually negative) effect"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope
|
| > In a slippery slope argument, a course of action is
| rejected because, with little or no evidence, one insists
| that it will lead to a chain reaction resulting in an
| undesirable end or ends. The slippery slope involves an
| acceptance of a succession of events without direct evidence
| that this course of events will happen.
|
| https://www.txstate.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-
| definit...
|
| > The two primary forms of the slippery slope argument are
| the logical form, (in which acceptance of A must logically
| lead to acceptance of the undesirable B), and the
| psychological form, in which it is argued that the acceptance
| of A will, over time, lead people to be more willing to
| accept B.
|
| https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Slippery_slope
|
| Also: general hand-waving like "based on this government's
| track record" does not a pattern make. Like most of my cited
| sources say: "based on little or no supporting evidence."
| beardedetim wrote:
| I agree and am wondering for my own edification:
|
| What _would_ make a pattern? Is it possible to make any
| negative predictions without falling into the Slippery
| Slope?
| nostrebored wrote:
| The slippery slope argument requires a slope. In your
| opinion what the parent comment said is a radical departure
| from what's currently happening.
|
| Personally, I don't think that a government which stamps
| out protest and bank accounts of political rivals is
| anywhere but at the bottom of the slope. I've lived in
| Africa and I've seen how this goes.
| BoGs83 wrote:
| dang wrote:
| Would you please not post in the flamewar style and especially
| please not use HN primarily for political or ideological
| battle? All those things destroy what HN is supposed to be for.
| We want _curious_ conversation here.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the
| intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
| kelnos wrote:
| I've been very anti-cryptocurrency/anti-blockchain for years now.
| I'm still skeptical of them (possibly more due to their current
| implementations and the fanboy-ism that surrounds them), but this
| absolutely convinced me that we need non-custodial financial
| instruments. (Maybe that isn't crypto/blockchain stuff, who
| knows. Physical cash is annoying to deal with, though.)
|
| However, the problem is that you still need to convert this
| "uncontrollable" currency into fiat currency. At the very least,
| you need to pay your taxes. But if the governments decide that
| non-custodial currency is illegal, then everything from grocery
| stores to web hosts won't risk accepting anything but government-
| approved currency. Sure, we'll have black markets where people
| can convert things to fiat, but those will be expensive and
| risky.
|
| So I still don't see blockchain as a savior here. If the
| government can give themselves the power to freeze people's
| custodial assets on a whim, they can also make it illegal to deal
| in bitcoin or whatever. And I'm skeptical that this is the kind
| of issue that can be boiled down into easy-to-understand bits in
| order to generate a lot of public support. Blockchain already has
| an image problem, being full of "bros" and undeserved
| millionaires/billionaires. Most people are not going to put their
| political support behind this without a huge shift.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| There's no escape as long as the entire world relies on fiat
| currency. There has been a loud contingent of people pointing
| this out for decades now. Except in typical fashion, most
| people need something to _actually happen_ before acting on it.
| Well, now that something has happened.
| lawn wrote:
| Unfortunately, most cryptocurrency supporters have been more
| focused on increasing the fiat price (so they can cash out to
| fiat and become rich), than on increasing adoption so that
| you can spend your crypto directly.
|
| Sadly, as long as this hype fueled bubble remains, I doubt
| much will change.
| datadata wrote:
| I think it is not very important whether blockchain is actually
| the savior or not. Rather, it presents an alternative option
| that changes the landscape of the debate.
|
| In terms of the Overton window
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window), it moves the
| idea of decentralized, censure resistant money from
| "unthinkable" to merely being "radical", or even "sensible".
| This should cause a similar shift on the other side of the
| window-- rather than having fully censurable state controlled
| money as being obvious future policy, we are having a debate
| about the explicit tradeoffs of that choice. The system we get
| will probably be somewhere in the middle of this, so the
| shifting of the window matters a lot.
|
| So the existence of a technology can change the outcome merely
| by its existence, not by it's explicit adoption.
| ipaddr wrote:
| The proper balance is not to keep all of your eggs in one
| basket.
|
| In situations like this having a backup emergency supply of
| nok-fait money is critical. If your bank account is frozen for
| any reason.
| cal5k wrote:
| 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.
| dblohm7 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| ...and yet still subject to the constitution.
| ayngg wrote:
| 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.
| mmastrac wrote:
| 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.
| kaczordon wrote:
| 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.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| 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.
| 8note wrote:
| Canada has "peace, order and good government" where the
| US has "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"
|
| The governments actions meet at least 2/3 and most
| Canadians would say 3/3 of the main Canadian values.
| SECProto wrote:
| 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.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| > 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.
| gruez wrote:
| >I think Canadians have more faith in our institutions,
| particularly the courts, to remain apolitical.
|
| But in this case they're freezing bank accounts without
| even going through the courts.
| SECProto wrote:
| > But in this case they're freezing bank accounts without
| even going through the courts.
|
| And the emergencies act is being challenged in court,
| which will determine if this is lawful.
|
| Banks are private entities. They freeze accounts engaged
| in illegal activities regularly. The US does too - here's
| one random citation. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.kqed.org/news/11899955/when-banks-turned-
| their-b...
| smaryjerry wrote:
| 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.
| mmastrac wrote:
| 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.
| gruez wrote:
| >But they are engaged in illegal activities, which you
| can find with a cursory Google search.
|
| So were rapists and murderers, but even they have a right
| to a fair trial.
| lupire wrote:
| That has nothing to do with freezing accounts of donors,
| or blocking donations.
| SECProto wrote:
| > 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.
| lupire wrote:
| That has nothing to do with freezing accounts of donors,
| or blocking donations.
| SECProto wrote:
| > 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).
|
| [1] https://blockade.rcmp.ca/news-nouvelles/ncr-
| rcn211130-s-d-en...
| gruez wrote:
| >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.
| sofixa wrote:
| > 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)).
| gruez wrote:
| >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.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| 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.
| novok wrote:
| 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.
| lupire wrote:
| Where is towing tresspassing cars illegal?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| One of those institutions is freezing bank accounts.
|
| The courts now get to play a role.
| https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/kenney-to-
| launch-l...
| SECProto wrote:
| 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.
| dang wrote:
| 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.
| SECProto wrote:
| 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.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| 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
| ayngg wrote:
| 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.
| gruez wrote:
| >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."
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/06/01/4112
| 3...
|
| >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.
|
| Source for this?
| [deleted]
| novok wrote:
| 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.
| sofixa wrote:
| 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.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| >Canada is not America.
|
| I think this bears repeating. Especially when one of the
| protest organizers tried to cite their "first amendment
| rights" in court:
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/tamara-lich-bail-
| heari...
| rescripting wrote:
| Well they _do_ have the right to recognize Manitoba as a
| province, and many of them seem very vocal about it.
| gorwell wrote:
| From the Canadian Civil Liberties Association:
|
| Let's be clear: there is no legal justification for using
| the emergencies act.
|
| The broad powers the government has granted to police
| curtail Charter rights across the country.
|
| This risk of abuse is high.
|
| The emergency declaration should be immediately revoked.
|
| https://twitter.com/cancivlib/status/1495932825752809472
| mmastrac wrote:
| 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.
| sparrish wrote:
| Few things are as permanent as a temporary government program.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Or rather, a program that temporarily increases a
| government's power.
| mmastrac wrote:
| This bill has a time limit built in. It is literally
| temporary powers, especially so in a minority parliamentary
| government.
| gruez wrote:
| >This bill has a time limit built in. It is literally
| temporary powers
|
| You could say the same about the PATRIOT act, which has
| been around for a little under 2 decades.
| zeruch wrote:
| 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.
| mmastrac wrote:
| That's an American law, not a Canadian one.
| yifanl wrote:
| It's a bit stretching to take precedence from a foreign
| nation with different politics and different government
| structure.
| gruez wrote:
| 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.
| verisimi wrote:
| Have you seen the list of current US states of emergency?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_i...
|
| This is to say that 'states of emergency' can be renewed.....
| forever....
| 8note wrote:
| > 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
| srcreigh wrote:
| 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.
| wvenable wrote:
| 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.
| cal5k wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| robbedpeter wrote:
| 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.
| pasabagi wrote:
| > 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.
| verisimi wrote:
| Honestly, 1955 seems like a distant dream....
| zdragnar wrote:
| > 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.
| lupire wrote:
| 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?
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > 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.
| roenxi wrote:
| > 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.
|
| [0] https://bc.ctvnews.ca/social-media-post-from-b-c-
| politician-...
| verisimi wrote:
| "There is now a risk of being debanked for having the wrong
| sort of political opinions!"
|
| Not a risk, a reality.
| wvenable wrote:
| An article with a single _unconfirmed_ report.
|
| 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.
| dang wrote:
| Please make your substantive points without crossing into
| personal attack, regardless of how wrong someone is or
| you feel they are.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| version_five wrote:
| I agree with you, just because comments like this are not
| popular here doesn't make them untrue.
| j45 wrote:
| 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.
| lhorie wrote:
| 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.
|
| [0] https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/02/01/news/ottawa-
| offi...
| christkv wrote:
| 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.
| dmix wrote:
| 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.
| christkv wrote:
| 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.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| 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.
| christkv wrote:
| 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.
| Zachery wrote:
| Which rights were stripped of citizens exactly?
| srcreigh wrote:
| Do Canadians have a right to peaceful protest? Any form of
| protest is illegal on Ottawa right now (except I guess
| protest by citizens of Ottawa).
|
| Imo, the government must provide instructions for how to
| legally protest in Ottawa.
|
| (No I don't support the illegal activities. But the
| government in stopping illegal activities is also
| preventing peaceful protests.)
| rescripting wrote:
| 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.
| smaryjerry wrote:
| 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.
| gorwell wrote:
| If anyone is not terrified by the precedent being set here,
| then they haven't yet imagined it in the hands of their
| political opponents.
| mmastrac wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| j4kp07 wrote:
| damiante wrote:
| 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.
| cal5k wrote:
| 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.
| srcreigh wrote:
| Due to the minority government, I believe the Liberal
| party cannot extend on their own accord.
|
| The only reason it's ongoing is because NDP hesitantly
| voted to extend it too.
| [deleted]
| modzu wrote:
| its hard to fathom the case being made by canada's government
| that the 100,000 people who donated are accomplices to a crime.
| statistically, they would otherwise have to be average law
| abiding citizens. there was no violence in ottawa, no deaths;
| certainly nothing remotely worthy of invoking the emergency act;
| you can watch for yourself, if you can find feeds that werent
| deleted, many of the 170 arrests. they were mass arrests. i
| believe the most severe charge facing the organizer is conspiracy
| to commit... mischief. further, i have never witnessed such
| blatant, shameless propaganda combined with censorship in a
| western country. are there academic theories about why this is
| happening that don't veer into tinfoil hat territory?
| lovich wrote:
| Brah you can't claim it's "shameless propaganda" while also
| claiming there was no violence in ottawa
| modzu wrote:
| do you live here? who got hurt? i mostly saw a lot of hippies
| with canadian flags
| lovich wrote:
| Literally watched videos of violence. People throwing
| hands, and that's on top of the honking reaching hearing
| level damage inside peoples homes. I don't know about you
| but when someone does something that damages my body for
| weeks on end, I consider that violence
| CountDrewku wrote:
| nhunter wrote:
| I'm also concerned about the long term implications of using the
| Emergencies Act, particularly in the future when we have a
| majority parliament where attaching confidence wouldn't be as
| much of a mitigation. I'm okay with the use of it in this
| scenario since it's possible to connect the sources of money from
| foreign actors and some of the activities connected with the
| protests, particularly when the government committed to follow on
| with legislation that would serve the same function as what
| they're using in the act.
|
| One comment about the article tho: Quoting Ezra Lavant
| immediately destroys the credibility of the author due to his
| obvious and direct connection to misinformation and over all
| general grift by attaching himself to right wing causes. There
| are lots of strong credible sources that could back up the
| argument of government overreach with the EA, but Ezra is not one
| of them.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| My wife just asked me: haven't the truckers now basically been
| proven right?
|
| I mean: in the end what they were really protesting against were
| measures they did find totalitarian (btw I'm double vaccinated
| and so is my wife, out of our free will, so we're not anti-vaxx).
|
| The measures taken do not look like something normal to do in a
| democracy: invoking an emergency act and using laws meant for war
| times... Aren't some people who were not sympathetic to their
| cause now going to think they were right all along?
|
| I'm asking because I just explained the situation to my wife and
| her first reaction was precisely what I mentioned: _" so they
| were right all along?"_
|
| I didn't look at it from that angle but there are obviously
| people who will.
| vaidhy wrote:
| Is it a slightly different twist on the question of whether a
| tolerant society tolerate the intolerant? It seems to me like
| the protestors were already treated very liberally and their
| continued escalation and radicalization led to stronger
| response. On a smaller scale, you cannot sit on your
| neighbour's doorstep screaming they hate you and when you get
| evicted, claim you were right all along.
| _dain_ wrote:
| The way you deal with that is by arresting them and charging
| them with specific crimes.
|
| You do not just get to seize all of their assets without due
| process.
|
| The protest was already cleared away using conventional
| policing methods yet this law still remains on the books and
| they are going after protestors retroactively. It is
| vindictive and despotic.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Kinda scary use of power in a democracy
| robocat wrote:
| For anybody wondering about the meme terms wordcel and shape
| rotator that appear later in the article:
|
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cultures/wordcel-shape-rotato...
|
| https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/wordcels-numbercels-defi...
| NoPie wrote:
| This all madness started when Canadian government couldn't admit
| that with omicron vaccine mandates no longer make much sense.
| Even if they played some role previously, previous infection is
| functionally equivalent to vaccination. Most provinces had
| already implemented the plan to revoke them and many other
| countries are dropping them as well.
|
| This proves again and again that when the government implements a
| policy that is not based on science, the outcomes are very very
| bad.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| > This all madness started when Canadian government couldn't
| admit that with omicron vaccine mandates no longer make much
| sense.
|
| At the time this convoy began, Ontario was experiencing a surge
| in its hospitals with around 4000 hospital beds occupied by
| people with COVID.[1][2] Note, that's _from_ COVID, not _with_
| COVID.
|
| While it may turn out to be true that Omicron made mandates
| make no sense, keep in mind these rules were in response to the
| US' implementation, announced in October of last year.[3]
| Canada implemented these to sync up and provide clarity at the
| borders in January, when then American rules went into
| effect.[4]
|
| [1]: https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data/hospitalizations
|
| [2]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/covid-19-update-
| ontar...
|
| [3]: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2021/10/12/secretary-mayorkas-
| allow...
|
| [4]: https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canada-s-vaccine-mandate-
| for-c...
| NoPie wrote:
| Two remarks about this:
|
| 1) About half of those people in hospitals were vaccinated.
|
| 2) Vaccine mandates do not considerably improve vaccination
| update, especially among elderly who benefit the most from
| vaccination.
|
| As for the US rules, both countries ignore science on this.
| Nothing good came out of it.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > 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.
|
| [0] https://www.canada.ca/en/department-
| justice/news/2022/02/can...
| sleepingadmin wrote:
| >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.
| dblohm7 wrote:
| And that would never be allowed by Canadian courts. Perpetual
| renewal would not satisfy the Oakes Test [1].
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_1_of_the_Canadian_Char...
| _3u10 wrote:
| Yes, peoples bank accounts have been frozen for as little as
| $50 donation and the invocation allows for as freezing for as
| little as $25.
|
| There's also major overloading and frequent declines on the
| financial networks since the invocation as people withdraw
| their money.
| barbazoo wrote:
| 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.
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/markstrahl/status/1495472037438967808
| sleepingadmin wrote:
| Here's a constitutional lawyer confirming this story:
|
| https://twitter.com/ikwilson/status/1495841230315560962
|
| Sorry but you are the one in the echo chamber.
| javagram wrote:
| 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.
|
| Moreover, a reply to his tweet is a statement from the
| police that says they provided a list of truck drivers
| and "influencers", not donors, to the bank. https://twitt
| er.com/rcmpgrcpolice/status/1495813180983021575...
| barbazoo wrote:
| Could you point me to where it says who these people are
| or at least where they confirm that "Briane from
| Chilliwack" is one of them?
| dang wrote:
| Personal attacks will get you banned here. No more of
| this, please.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| sleepingadmin wrote:
| I apologize, I was wrong. I responded to the person who
| had said this same attack.
|
| I accept my ban.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > 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.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't perpetuate this kind of thing on HN. It only
| makes everything worse.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dang wrote:
| I didn't mean that we did ban you, only that if you keep
| posting like that, we will end up having to.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| 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.
|
| Here is the information directly from the RCMP, who say
| directly that they did not at any time provide a list of
| donors to banks: https://blockade.rcmp.ca/news-
| nouvelles/ncr-rcn211130-s-d-en...
| _3u10 wrote:
| 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.
| _3u10 wrote:
| 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.
| dang wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| BoGs83 wrote:
| swamp40 wrote:
| https://twitter.com/ScottGo70179464/status/1496130126169391
| 1...
|
| https://twitter.com/markstrahl/status/1495472037438967808
|
| https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet/status/1496104624490790918
|
| https://twitter.com/MarilynGladuSL/status/14955833153692876
| 8... etc.
|
| Which Twitter post is correct? You decide.
| barbazoo wrote:
| 3 of those 4 reference the same post by MP Mark Strahl.
| What do they all have in common? No sources or proof of
| any kind.
| fudged71 wrote:
| "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://t
| witter.com/MariekeWalsh/status/1496102089562468353
| barbazoo wrote:
| Thank you very much!
| _3u10 wrote:
| That's a tweet not an official govt doc. Which entities are
| targeted has not been released nor a list of the amounts
| donated.
|
| The text of the invocation allows for freezing of anything
| more than $25 which is a fact, not a tweet.
|
| If you want to believe an org that bombs people and blames
| it on farmers go right ahead.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_controversies_invol
| v...
| stronglikedan wrote:
| It's true that they're really trying.
| https://twitter.com/ezralevant/status/1494852056145969155
| barbazoo wrote:
| See [0], it seems far fetched to assume that from this video.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30432497
| kelnos wrote:
| 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.)
| superkuh wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| cldellow wrote:
| Your read is correct.
|
| 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.
|
| [1]: https://www.osler.com/en/blogs/risk/february-2022/new-
| emerge...
|
| [2]: https://www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-
| pr/p2/2022/2022-02-15-x1/html/s...
|
| [3]: https://www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-
| pr/p2/2022/2022-02-15-x1/html/s...
| nostrebored wrote:
| sequoia wrote:
| 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.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into ideological
| and/or nationalistic flamewar hell. Not what this site is
| for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| nostrebored wrote:
| 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.
| cldellow wrote:
| 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.
| dang wrote:
| Using HN primarily for political and/or ideological
| battle is actually a line at which we ban accounts, so
| please don't do that.
|
| Past explanations of why we have that rule:
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=co
| mme...
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&
| que...
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > 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.
| _3u10 wrote:
| 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.
| jorgesborges wrote:
| It's been explicitly stated that some of the financial measures
| will be made permanent. See Chrystia Freeland [0].
|
| [0]
| https://mobile.twitter.com/ezralevant/status/149485205614596...
| cldellow wrote:
| 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.
| sequoia wrote:
| 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.
| j4kp07 wrote:
| barbazoo wrote:
| 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?
| ameminator wrote:
| 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.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| No, she was taking about extending money laundering laws
| to cover crowd sourcing and Bitcoin.
| mmastrac wrote:
| 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.
| ameminator wrote:
| 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.
| fudged71 wrote:
| FINTRAC is good
| anamax wrote:
| I wonder what the reaction would have been if Trump had done
| something similar during the "mostly peaceful" protests about 18
| months ago?
|
| There wasn't much/any honking, but there was some looting and
| burning.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| IIRC, Trump offered to send in help, but his offers were
| declined. Any law enforcement failures back then should
| rightfully be placed on local and state authorities.
| hpkuarg wrote:
| Emergency powers that suspend fundamental civil liberties without
| judicial oversight are, in a democracy, only justifiable in times
| of an existential crisis of the nation. One can hardly see how
| the trucker protests qualify as such.
|
| Very disappointing to see.
| christkv wrote:
| Emergency powers passed by a simple majority is also
| ridiculous. How come it's not 2/3 or 3/4. So if you have a
| majority in parliament feel free to just declare emergencies at
| your leisure?
| nybble41 wrote:
| Agreed, a simple majority for emergency powers is ridiculous.
| I'd go with at least a 4/5 threshold myself. More than that,
| any invocation of emergency powers should force a public
| confidence vote for _every_ elected official when the
| (strictly limited & non-extensible) duration of the
| emergency powers expires, where any incumbent who can't
| achieve at least a simple majority of support following their
| handling of the emergency is barred from political office for
| life. _That_ ought to make them think twice about whether
| declaring an emergency is really worthwhile.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| You will undoubtedly be told to not believe your lying eyes.
| You will hear people describing protesters who didn't so much
| as throw a pebble at police or anyone else called terrorists,
| white supremacists, insurrectionists, etc. This is a calculated
| effort to change the meaning of words (again) in service of
| eliminating the basis of law in the West: individual freedom.
| threeseed wrote:
| > One can hardly see how the trucker protests qualify as such
|
| There are multiple facets to the protests.
|
| - Blocking the bridge that was responsible for a sizeable
| percentage of trade between US and Canada goes far beyond a
| protest and any government would be well within their right to
| classify this as an emergency.
|
| - You had US-based, armed, ultra-right wing militia elements
| who weren't trying to protest at all but rather sow discord.
| These were the types wanting to overthrow the government. Which
| meant that police weren't able to control the situation and
| there were legitimate concerns about it getting out of hand.
| cickpass_broken wrote:
| Wasn't the ambassador bridge cleared before the emergency was
| declared?
|
| To your second point.. I've watched mainstream media in
| Canada and watched livestreams coming out of Ottawa, and have
| no heard of this _at all_. Is there actual evidence of this?
| threeseed wrote:
| They left it up to local enforcement to clear the protest.
|
| When they were deemed unable to is when the emergency
| decree went into effect.
|
| And the Canadian government stated that some portion of the
| protests were either part of or linked to US militia
| groups:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/16/ottawa-
| blockad...
| Banana699 wrote:
| >You had US-based, armed, ultra-right wing militia elements
| who weren't trying to protest at all but rather sow discord
|
| Reputable source or it didn't happen.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| threeseed said it on the internet; therefore, it _must_ be
| true.
|
| Insane that people are making these wild claims and
| thinking they can get away with it.
| threeseed wrote:
| I posted the source above. It was an assertion from the
| Canadian government.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/16/ottawa-
| blockad...
| fudged71 wrote:
| I'm seeing a lot of terrible takes by Americans, and a lot of
| Canadians shaking their heads. It seems theres a lot of
| disinformation crossing the border.
|
| * Quoting Ezra Levant is just... hilarious. His news rag has been
| banned from so many press events.
|
| * We JUST had a federal election where these protesters could
| have made their point. Instead they chose to strangle the capitol
| and borders across the country.
|
| * Over a thousand donors to the Convoy have been linked to the
| Jan 6th capitol demonstration and attack.
|
| * 3 weeks of disruption to the nation's capital with horns
| blaring overnight, arson attempts, and weapons seizures is not
| "non-violent". There is not much difference between storming a
| capital and strangling one. Police and Military members were
| involved in creating supply lines and creating an occupation. And
| there were plans to block airport cargo terminals. The economic
| impacts across the nation are in the billions of dollars.
|
| * The freezing of finances IS NOT retroactive, thanks to our
| charter, meaning if you donated to the convoy before the
| invocation of the Emergencies Act, you won't be targeted. The
| only accounts were "individuals and companies suspected of
| involvement in illegal acts," such as "influencers in the illegal
| protest in Ottawa" and vehicle owners and drivers "who did not
| want to leave the area impacted by the protest."
|
| * It's hard to see the act as a tyrannical overreach if it can be
| challenged in court and has a public inquiry
|
| * Police didn't enforce the law which is why the feds needed to
| intervene. The public inquiry (required by the act) should reveal
| why police forces were unable to shut down these protests
| earlier, and where the money was flowing. If donor lists are to
| be believed, there was a significant amount of foreign funding
| into this operation, as well as members of the public service.
| kelnos wrote:
| I still don't get how this is all ok. The way to break up
| illegal behavior is to arrest those responsible, and then
| charge them and try them for crimes. Which in this case, should
| have been trivially easy, since the participants of main
| importance were there, in public, sitting in their trucks.
|
| Governments should not have tools so readily available that
| allow them to destroy a person's (or family's) finances without
| due process.
|
| > _Police didn 't enforce the law which is why the feds needed
| to intervene._
|
| That seems to be a pretty big problem. If the police aren't
| doing their job, fire their leadership and find people who will
| get it done. Does Canada have something analogous to the US
| National Guard that could have been brought in to deal with
| this if the local authorities were refusing to take action?
|
| The outrage here -- at least to me -- isn't about how many
| people were affected by this or about how the truckers could
| have better made their point. It's that governments just should
| not have the power to "solve" problems like this in this way.
| (And before anyone decides to jump into whataboutism territory,
| yes, I acknowledge that the US has similar problems, and we
| suck as well for letting authorities get away with it.)
| BeefWellington wrote:
| > I still don't get how this is all ok. The way to break up
| illegal behavior is to arrest those responsible, and then
| charge them and try them for crimes. Which in this case,
| should have been trivially easy, since the participants of
| main importance were there, in public, sitting in their
| trucks.
|
| They did this, once they had the additional support they
| needed.
|
| > That seems to be a pretty big problem. If the police aren't
| doing their job, fire their leadership and find people who
| will get it done. Does Canada have something analogous to the
| US National Guard that could have been brought in to deal
| with this if the local authorities were refusing to take
| action?
|
| Not really anything specifically the same as the National
| Guard in terms of policing actions. The closest you could
| argue is the RCMP.
|
| The city did _eventually_ fire the police chief, get extra
| resources, and make arrests, as I 'm sure if you've followed
| this story at all you'll have seen by now.
|
| > The outrage here -- at least to me -- isn't about how many
| people were affected by this or about how the truckers could
| have better made their point. It's that governments just
| should not have the power to "solve" problems like this in
| this way. (And before anyone decides to jump into
| whataboutism territory, yes, I acknowledge that the US has
| similar problems, and we suck as well for letting authorities
| get away with it.)
|
| I agree with you here. It should not have gotten to this
| point. Where do you draw the line though?
|
| At what point is a person's right to protest crossing a line?
|
| Is it blocking off roadways for several weeks?
|
| Is it shutting down businesses in a downtown core?
|
| Is it harassing people?
|
| Is it threatening people?
|
| Is it assaulting people?
|
| Is it attempted arson?
|
| I'm trying to envision where the line _should_ be drawn in a
| way that respects right to protest and allows the locals to
| not have to endure the above.
|
| At what point do you cut off their funding source(s)?
|
| The failure on the convoy organizer's part was placing the
| trucks where they did and deciding to harass the people who
| just live in downtown Ottawa. If they were up on Parliament
| hill for these three weeks and there weren't collections of
| stories of the above, nobody would really care.[1] As I've
| mentioned elsewhere, Ottawa is familiar with large protests
| and marches. The people calling it an occupation aren't
| wrong, from the video I've seen and the stories I've heard
| from friends and family living down there.
|
| [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/ontario/comments/sgcx4a/del_duc
| a_it...
| trainsarebetter wrote:
| * Over a thousand donors to the Convoy have been linked to the
| Jan 6th capitol demonstration and attack.
|
| are you able to provide sources? I've heard the exact opposite.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| https://www.adl.org/blog/adl-finds-1100-people-donated-to-
| bo...
| dzqhz wrote:
| Not that I trust the ADL, but it seems completely
| reasonable that there is an overlap.
| MrMan wrote:
| all very reasonable
|
| and curiously discussed, yes
| [deleted]
| modzu wrote:
| 1. with a sample size in the hundreds of thousands, even if its
| true, it's irrelevant.
|
| 2. the state of emergency could not be in response to the
| border closures, because they were cleared prior. one single
| cachet of weapons was found. per 100,000 criminals, gee, thats
| better than my hood. as for honking, it should be punishable by
| death or bankruptcy in any civilized country.
|
| 3. yes it is. override of the charter is precisely the power
| the emergency act seeks
|
| 4. have you ever donated to the world wildlife fund? sponsored
| a child in africa? the data has already made it clear that the
| majority of funding came from within canada in small amounts.
| occams razor: this is the result of frustrated citizens, not
| vladimir putin
| fudged71 wrote:
| 1. Canada's terrorism financing and anti-money laundering
| laws are very clear and very strict. The fact that they chose
| platforms that are not reporting to FINTRAC is suspect, and
| the leaked donor lists show roughly half of all donations
| were foreign.
|
| 2. The weapons themselves were not the problem. Gas canisters
| stockpiled unsafely near parliament is a huge concern. And
| weapons found in Coutts were directly linked to a credible
| threat of an attack on RCMP members (high-capacity magazines
| are extremely illegal).
|
| 3. The Emergencies Act is subject to the Charter of Rights
| and Freedoms. It is written into the Act itself. The Charter,
| which continues to be supreme to the Emergency Act, forbids
| retroactive punishment.
|
| 4. See above. This is not a charity or nonprofit. It is a
| criminal organization that is under investigation.
| modzu wrote:
| 3. of course the constitution (of which the charter is
| part) is the supreme law of canada. but, the rights and
| freedoms within the charter are not absolute; they can and
| have been been limited, as could be no more obvious than
| the clearing of the protest itself (the right to freedom of
| assembly)
| Zachery wrote:
| The Charter specifically protects peaceful assemblies.
| Which this was not by most measures.
|
| https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/how-
| righ...
| teunispeters wrote:
| See https://lois-laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/P-24.501/ this is
| covered by existing laws. Proceeds involved in crime. ( _) If it
| can be proven that those fund were not involved in criminal
| activity, the courts will unfreeze. (or at least that 's how it's
| intended to function).
|
| (_) that's up to courts, not public opinion. I'm in the public.
| totony wrote:
| >it can be proven
|
| The emergency act removes that requirement, which is what is
| scary. Not only can you not prove it, they don't even have to
| hold a trial (afaict)
|
| Also that law was clearly not intended to be used against
| protests. Seems more aimed at organized crime.
| teunispeters wrote:
| No they have to hold a trial - after the act ends. (the
| precise details are way above my level of understanding). But
| everyone gets held on trial - including government. (I have
| no idea what that means as yet)
|
| As to organised crime, there's strong accusation of exactly
| that involved here. But I suppose it'll sort in the trials of
| the leaders.
| barelysapient wrote:
| This article is an eye opener. A liberal modern economy de-
| platforming their citizens without due process. Gross.
| nickspacek wrote:
| Tweeted this the other day:
|
| Maybe it's just me, but it doesn't seem like that much to require
| that:
|
| > A person must not participate in a public assembly that may
| reasonably be expected to lead to a breach of the peace by: > >
| (a) the serious disruption of the movement of persons or goods or
| the serious interference with trade; > (b) the interference with
| the functioning of critical infrastructure; or > (c) the support
| of the threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons
| or property.
|
| I think it's possible to respect that approach, but still be mad
| as hell and get your point across.
| kelnos wrote:
| Not sure what your point is here, though. I agree with you, but
| the right way to deal with people who violate this is to arrest
| them, charge them with a crime, and put them on trial. Not
| freezing their bank accounts without due process or recourse.
| The latter is undemocratic and authoritarian.
| srcreigh wrote:
| Agreed. I've watched the news this past week. We somehow went
| from A) allowing most illegal activities to B) completely
| disallowing any form of actual protest.
|
| They are clearing the entire city. Anybody who doesn't work
| or live in Ottawa is not allowed to be there - you get
| arrested for being there. The new Ottawa police chief said
| something to the effect of "We are doing everything we can to
| ensure there are no more protests happening in Ottawa."
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRWygfG3D9g
|
| I wish all these law enforcement actions came along with
| official instructions for how to legally protest. Right now
| protesting is simply not allowed.
| h2odragon wrote:
| There are communities that live without access to the banking
| system already. Many of them do so from a philosophy of
| independence (in the old sense, they wish to limit their reliance
| on things _outside_ their community).
|
| Certainly some of their methods will be of great interest to the
| unpersons, perhaps some of the philosophy will be more appealing
| too.
| kelnos wrote:
| I can only assume that adopting this form of finance would
| involve a huge change in lifestyle for most people. Those
| changes should be adopted by choice, not because a government
| has capriciously pulled the rug out from under you.
| nati0n wrote:
| Very lengthy read, but worthwhile and stayed out of the politics
| well.
| ipaddr wrote:
| The people cheering for this are the ones who will be camplaining
| when it gets used against all future protests.
|
| Canada has dropped many rankings on the democracy scale.
| mywittyname wrote:
| This is the risk in protesting. Authorities have never been nice
| to protestors. Protesting has always carried the risk of assault
| and the loss of livelihood, wealth, freedom, or life. So before
| protesting, you need to ask yourself if what your protesting for
| is worth it.
|
| The state is fucking powerful. After all, the state is the one in
| charge of checking the state's power. If you piss off enough
| people, or merely the wrong people, you may discover that your
| rights only extend so far as other people are willing to protect
| them. The difference here is that _most_ protestors are punished
| via ass-kicking, seizure of personal belongings, a few nights
| being humiliated in a jail cell, and a bunch of fines.
|
| The people whose lives were interrupted by this are _pissed off_
| and out for blood. And Trudeau is going to give it to them, and
| be heralded as a hero while doing so. Especially after the
| perceived police incompetence in the matter (by failing to dole
| out the standard ass-kicking-jail-fine punishment).
| sleepingadmin wrote:
| >This is the risk in protesting. Authorities have never been
| nice to protestors. Protesting has always carried the risk of
| assault and the loss of livelihood, wealth, freedom, or life.
| So before protesting, you need to ask yourself if what your
| protesting for is worth it.
|
| This act has never been used before, it's predecessor was used
| only during serious war. This act being used against legitimate
| protest and then going forward banning all protest?
|
| Like say you want to protest the government based on one side
| of the Ukraine war? You can't, that's illegal.
|
| Say you want to go cover those illegal protests and report on
| it as a journalist? That's illegal.
|
| >Especially after the perceived police incompetence in the
| matter (by failing to dole out the standard ass-kicking-jail-
| fine punishment).
|
| The police couldn't touch the protest for weeks not because of
| inaction but because your right to protest is a human right.
| They required the national emergency to remove our right to
| protest in order to label the protest illegal.
| pylon wrote:
| >The police couldn't touch the protest for weeks not because
| of inaction but because your right to protest is a human
| right. They required the national emergency to remove our
| right to protest in order to label the protest illegal.
|
| So you are saying under Canadian law, if you protest and do
| something illegal like blocking roads, destroying property,
| etc then Canadian police can't do anything? So if I go back
| in history and look at other protests in Canada like the ones
| against the pipelines for example, then I will see that the
| police didn't act against them?
| Banana699 wrote:
| >you protest and do something illegal like blocking roads
|
| Any protest of any respectable size will block the roads it
| chooses to march in, every climate change protest and every
| gay pride blocks the roads, never see people complaining
| about those.
|
| >destroying property
|
| What is the property that was destroyed by the protest in
| question?
| tekstar wrote:
| > Any protest of any respectable size will block the
| roads it chooses to march in, every climate change
| protest and every gay pride blocks the roads, never see
| people complaining about those.
|
| Ottawa gets protests for left- and right- wing causes on
| a weekly basis. One of the biggest protests we see is a
| yearly "bus all the catholic school children to
| parliament hill to protest abortion", and it goes by
| without a hitch every year.
|
| Anyways, protests last for maybe an afternoon or day or
| two at most and involve people standing on parliament
| hill or marching around the downtown core, not blockading
| the city core and constantly harassing the people who
| live there for multiple weeks.
| Banana699 wrote:
| >constantly harassing
|
| I see this word used multiple times in people arguing
| against the protest, never with any details about the
| concrete instances of the supposed harassment. Noise is
| not harassment, any activity with a large group of people
| is going to annoy and disturb the place they happen to
| choose to congregate, this is not even specific to
| protests.
|
| Actually, just to be clear, what exactly did the
| protestors do besides blocking the road and making a lot
| of noise?
|
| >protests last for maybe an afternoon or day or two at
| most
|
| So
|
| (1) The duration of a protest and
|
| (2) How much inconvenience it causes to the locals
|
| are the two factors that determine whether it's a
| legitimate protest or not ?
| tekstar wrote:
| Noise is 100% absolutely _definitely_ harassment,
| especially when it is over 100dB within people 's homes,
| and every hour of the day for weeks on end. Why do you
| say it's not? It was loud enough to cause permanent
| damage and was unending for a significant portion of the
| occupation, until a citizen managed to get a court
| injunction.
|
| The level of noise, the duration of the noise, and the
| tools they were using to create that noise (including
| multiple actual train horns) were all illegal under
| existing laws, as well.
| the_why_of_y wrote:
| You mean they did this at night? Wow. And police let this
| go on for multiple nights? When sleep deprivation is done
| to alleged terrorists, Amnesty International calls it
| torture.
|
| https://www.smh.com.au/national/sleep-deprivation-is-
| torture...
| tekstar wrote:
| Yes. Exactly. They'd also put off fireworks at random
| hours of the night to add to it.
| ars wrote:
| So basically protests are OK as long as they are easy to
| ignore?
| tekstar wrote:
| Let's flip it - can your neighbour block the end your
| driveway and lay on their car horn 24/7 for weeks
| straight if they say they're protesting the government?
| Bonus points for harassing you if you walk by
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| > So you are saying under Canadian law, if you protest and
| do something illegal like blocking roads
|
| Every protest in history has "done something illegal" like
| blocking roads or disrupting access to public spaces, at an
| absolute minimum. So if you have the right to protest, then
| you have the right to do those things that would otherwise
| be illegal within the context of a protest, or you don't
| have the right to protest at all.
| pylon wrote:
| Right so then let's continue the thought process. You are
| saying under Canadian laws, if a group of people are
| protesting, they can break whatever laws they want within
| the context of the protest and the police can't do
| anything? And if we look historically within Canada, we
| will see that this holds true? That the police never shut
| down any protest without emergency laws being enabled?
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| I'm not saying that at all.
|
| I am saying that protest by its nature is supposed to be
| disruptive on some level, and laws prohibit the type of
| disruptive behaviour typical of a protest clearly don't
| apply _if_ you have a right to protest.
|
| Blocking roads and occupying public spaces are some of
| the most fundamental features of a protest, so if you
| have a right to protest, then you certainly have a right
| to do that within the context of a protest.
|
| If a protestor decides to commit a crime during their
| protesting, like destroying property, arson, assault...
| then they should still have full criminal liability for
| that. Nobody is disagreeing with you on that point. To me
| it seems you are simply trying to invent some contention
| out of nothing, in order to fit your view that the entire
| protest itself is illegal.
| pylon wrote:
| I never claimed the entire protest is illegal. I'm just
| trying to question the notion that in Canada when you
| protest and despite how disruptive you are, the Canadian
| police can't touch you or stop you without invoking
| emergency laws. I haven't seen it in recent history so I
| wonder why it's the case now.
| tekstar wrote:
| > The police couldn't touch the protest for weeks not because
| of inaction but because your right to protest is a human
| right. They required the national emergency to remove our
| right to protest in order to label the protest illegal.
|
| This is wholly incorrect. The Ottawa Police made a huge error
| at the beginning of the occupation, allowing the occupiers to
| entrench themselves in the city. Further disagreements in the
| police force and municipality extended the situation that all
| levels of government agreed was illegal from day 1.
|
| This wasn't a protest, it was an illegal occupation.
| tekstar wrote:
| I live in Ottawa. This was not a protest, it was an 21 day
| occupation, blocking the city core and removing citizen's
| ability to sleep in their own homes due to the constant
| excessive noise, (often at ear-damaging levels) or leave
| without harassment. Businesses in the area could not open.
|
| So to compare these occupiers with typical protestors does not
| make sense. Talking with other locals, the last time someone
| could remember a non-peaceful protest in Ottawa was around the
| beginning of the Iraq war, aside from when about a dozen BLM
| protestors occupied a single intersection overnight and were
| all arrested on day 2 of their attempt to keep the intersection
| shut down.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| As I understand things, a factor in how this has played out
| is that local (Ottawa) police essentially threw up their
| hands and said they couldn't do anything - when it was a
| matter of those police basically being sympathetic.
|
| Emergency powers were needed to force what would be the
| normal job of police.
|
| For example, they got rid of the police chief.
| https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/canadian-official-
| po...
| tekstar wrote:
| I agree - this would not be international news if the
| police had managed the situation appropriately in the early
| days. What happened within OPS, nobody fully knows yet. But
| apparently by enacting the federal Emergencies Act, an in-
| depth review of the events leading up to requiring the act
| will be a part of the aftermath.
| valachio wrote:
| [Here's a popular viewpoint from the left about protests](htt
| ps://twitter.com/aoc/status/1334184644707758080?lang=en).
|
| If protests were "comfortable", then there would be no
| pressure for the government to do anything. The point of a
| protest is to make enough noise (heh) so the government is
| forced to react.
|
| Look at protests like Euromaiden, or the recent protests in
| Kazakhstan with 200+ dead. If the Ukrainian people didn't
| protest at the levels they did, and occupy Kiev for as long
| as they did, would the government have done anything? I don't
| think anyone in Kiev was sleeping when people were building
| barricades and engaging in deadly firefights with the
| Ukrainian police & army.
| tekstar wrote:
| I don't hold that exact viewpoint, so I don't feel the need
| to defend it.
|
| There's varying levels of "uncomfortable", and a question
| of who is being made uncomfortable.
|
| If a protest is permanently damaging the hearing of regular
| people who are not in positions of leadership for 21 days
| straight, and subjecting them to significant harassment,
| some of them a botched arson attempt, and a whole litany of
| other assaults as have been documented in Centertowne
| Ottawa, I would argue it is more akin to holding them
| hostage.
| valachio wrote:
| Fair enough. I can sympathize if you had to endure 3
| weeks of loud noise. Frankly if I wasn't supportive of
| the Convoy, I would be pretty upset too.
|
| One more thing I would say is that the fault for how long
| the "Occupation" went on for isn't entirely with the
| Convoy. With a large protest like this, it's up to the
| government to deal with, one way or another.
|
| The authorities didn't take the right actions. They
| should either come out to negotiate with the protesters,
| or quickly utilise force to disperse them. Instead, they
| basically sat still for 3 weeks while Trudeau "fled"
| Ottawa to some undisclosed location.
|
| So I would lay some blame on the government in its
| tardiness in addressing the Convoy, as part of the reason
| it went on for so long. You can't expect angry people who
| are determined to change government policy to just pack
| up and go home when the government told them to
| tekstar wrote:
| Yeah the municipal government and police force were first
| to completely drop the ball. They didn't do their job and
| let our downtown become a parliament hill autonomous
| zone. Heck, they gave the convoy participants access to a
| city parking lot which was then set up as a forward
| operating base for their supply lines for the next 3
| weeks.
|
| If the police had managed this situation properly after
| the first weekend this would never have become an
| international issue. As a police force they basically
| completely failed to maintain order in the city, and
| that's a big part of why we required an eventual federal
| response to clean up the occupation that had free reign
| to establish itself for weeks.
|
| I'm not a Trudeau supporter but I'm not sure what he
| should have done differently in this situation - he
| apparently had covid on the first weekend, is that what
| you're referring to about him fleeing? Anyways, this
| should have been handled by the municipal police force
| with adequate support from the provincial police force
| within the first week. I hope that the eventual federal
| review that comes with enacting the EA will find the root
| cause why our police force failed so hard.
| baremetal wrote:
| it is, indeed, unfortunate that it happened near your
| residence.
| giarc wrote:
| I wonder if the government would have taken the same steps if
| these people simply protested on the lawn of Parliament or
| some other area that didn't block people from living their
| lives. I suspect not but I'm just a random Canadian.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Occupy Wall Street was a protest and an "occupation". CHAZ
| was literally people "occupying" a part of Seattle. Both of
| those protests were a good thing, but they were still
| protests. You don't get to decide what is and what isn't a
| protest just because you disagree with the message or the
| methods and the government's rhetoric in the past few weeks
| (calling it terrorism, occupation, foreign backed agitation)
| is very dangerous and should not be encouraged.
|
| It's literally straight out of a third world country's
| dictator textbook on how to discredit any opposition,
| especially the cold War Era style insanity around "foreign
| backing!!" by... Americans. I guess at least they didn't
| blame the Russians this time
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _Occupy Wall Street was a protest and an "occupation". CHAZ
| was literally people "occupying" a part of Seattle. Both of
| those protests were a good thing, but they were still
| protests._
|
| Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Movement basically just
| took over city parks and fed people. Occupy was basically a
| good. CHAZ is a kind of rolling disaster that involved
| over-anxious security killing a guy who'd stolen someone's
| car. A leftist who knows who were involved with it, I would
| say CHAZ was a very bad thing.
|
| Of course, a democratic society has to decide what sorts of
| disruptions are acceptable and which have to be stopped. Of
| course such a society is going to do that. Otherwise, the
| first extremist cult to field enough armed people to seize
| the state will win.
|
| _...just because you disagree with the message or the_
| METHODS _(emphasis added)..._
|
| If the trucker convoy was basically thugs who were breaking
| the law because they thought they could and because they
| thought doing this would force the rest of the nation to
| bow to their demands, I don't think anyone has an
| obligation to have the least respect for their efforts.
| tekstar wrote:
| I think it's necessary to draw the distinction between this
| occupation, and other protests, because other protests do
| not greatly impact the ongoing lives of random unrelated
| citizens in the city who just happen to live in the area
| for weeks on end.
|
| So sure, we can call both protests, but the important thing
| is that this was also a foreign-funded occupation. So there
| is no value in comparing this with the protests for both
| left- and right- wing causes that Ottawa sees on a weekly
| basis. Protests that get a permit, last an afternoon, and
| then go home and lets people live their lives without being
| harassed.
| totony wrote:
| >because other protests do not greatly impact the ongoing
| lives of random unrelated citizens in the city who just
| happen to live in the area for weeks on end.
|
| From my experience this is not true. Protests mostly
| involve discomfort to normal people.Be it BLM, occupy
| wall street, students manifestations, railroads blocking,
| etc
|
| Maybe the scales of some are different, but calling this
| a "foreign-founded occupation" is disingenuous.
| tekstar wrote:
| > Maybe the scales of some are different, but calling
| this a "foreign-founded occupation" is disingenuous.
|
| Weird since it was definitely foreign-funded and
| definitely an occupation, but okay
| [deleted]
| sofixa wrote:
| You're aware that Canada and the USA are different
| countries, right?
| desireco42 wrote:
| True but people should be able to protest and make politicians
| uncomfortable, which is what happened here. If we can't hear
| the other side, we go down quickly.
| dataminer wrote:
| Absolutely people have right to protest all they want, infact
| people are still protesting on side walks. But they don't
| have right to block whole city blocks for weeks, blocking
| paths of ambulances, jam 911 and block critical
| infrastructure.
| Banana699 wrote:
| How did protestors jam 911 ? and what is the critical
| infrastructure that they blocked other than roads ?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I think this is reasonable, but it's also problematic when
| the subject of the protests invokes _emergency powers_ to
| deal with his critics. That 's not a precedent you want to
| set over people blocking streets, never mind the
| functionally weak position the government was attempting to
| defend (vaccine mandates).
| dataminer wrote:
| I really wish that people would have protested without
| going overboard, the support would have grown a lot more.
| (Not making blanket statement that everyone who was part
| of protest went overboard)
|
| I am not supportive of vaccine mandates and fully support
| people's right to control what is injected in their
| bodies. I don't support people getting fired because they
| are unvaccinated and all the other negative consequences
| of mandates.
|
| We are in terrible and disappointing situation and can
| only hope that saner heads will prevail.
| valachio wrote:
| You sort of have to, if you want to actually make an
| impact.
|
| Look at what they did in Euromaiden, or the recent protests
| in Kazakhstan (200+ dead). If Ukrainian people resorted to
| peaceful protests, the pro-Russian government would have
| easily cracked down and suppressed the protests.
|
| If you want another even more brutal example - look at the
| Tiananmen Protests. Do you think peaceful protest will
| convince an authoritarian communist government to magically
| give up its powers?
|
| The government rarely listens to its people (yes that
| includes democratic countries). If you want the government
| to listen, you gotta make a lot of noise.
| dataminer wrote:
| Thank you for that perspective, fully support your right
| to peaceful protest.
|
| We live in a democracy with representatives. We may be
| approaching Kazakhstan but not there yet. Protests in
| Canada were allowed for weeks to go on without much
| interruption from government and there are still protests
| going on.
|
| I am against mandates, against vaccine passports, also
| against debanking people. I would argue better approach
| in democracy is to call your representatives phone rather
| than jam 911. You can also vote them out in the next
| election (there is an election coming up in Ontario,
| Canada, if you feel that mandates are wrong make sure
| people running for election understand that you don't
| want mandates).
|
| I hope we can see there is a way to peacefully coexist,
| by using tools available in democratic process.
| beardedetim wrote:
| Why not? I agree we currently don't but why shouldn't we?
| Banana699 wrote:
| This comment is weird, it appears to be a rehashing of the
| populist argument "If you go against the majority then you
| deserve whatever happens to you", as an atheist living in a
| majority-muslim intolerant country, that's familiar.
|
| And the kinds of people who say this are familiar too. They
| perceive themselves to be part of the majority (Or the "Right
| Side Of History", in other imaginations), they think it will
| never turn against them or - for that matter - that the people
| they're oppressing will never return the unpleasant favor and
| gang on them back.
|
| All those countless centuries of history and people still
| haven't fully grasped that Power and Oppression are completely
| symmetric tools, totally blind to the identities of those
| wielding them or those they're used against. The tyranny you so
| gleefully cheer now is going to turn against you (or an
| equivalent one will be constructed by the ones you oppressed
| one day and used against you) and you won't be laughing then.
| radu_floricica wrote:
| So she had it coming? Uh, they. It. Ze. whatever.
|
| Whether the protesters are right or wrong is completely
| immaterial here. The government is creating now tools which it
| will be able to use against anybody, from now on. The whole
| point of democracy is to pay attention to stuff like due
| process. That's why we don't have lynch mobs anymore. This is
| waaaay bigger than convoy protests.
| tistoon wrote:
| I tend to disagree. In democracy, the people is the state and,
| in extent, has the power. The government (elected people in
| place) is only temporary.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| In a lot of countries, "the people are the state" is only
| nominally true. Special interests often carry the day, and
| anyway in a partisan environment devoid of principles we need
| to protect against moments of passion where a 51% majority
| can infringe on the rights of 49% (or in my country, a
| largely elite 10%--which helms universities and media
| institutions and so on--can use the state to push their
| ideology on the other 90%).
| beardedetim wrote:
| I agree with you on paper but have a really hard time viewing
| my current relationship with any State as that of which I
| have power. Nor do I see myself with any _limited State_
| having any power. Nor do I see myself as having _any_ ability
| to legally inflict harm to others as the State has power to
| do.
|
| I totally agree that democracy on paper says the People have
| control but I am not seeing that play out at any real scale.
| dd36 wrote:
| Pardon my ignorance, absent any guise of protest, can people be
| paid to block bridges and roads? Is there any other legal
| mechanism to combat organized disruption?
| ipaddr wrote:
| Laws exist they were just not enforced until the act was
| called.
| eth0up wrote:
| It may seem stupid to state that such a practice will not be
| limited to a particular circumstance. It seems equally stupid to
| assume it would be.
|
| This is a new precedent. Expect it to proliferate, with
| virulence.
|
| I'm sure others will be addressing the subject of social credit.
| exabrial wrote:
| Nothing more than excuse to make dictatorship powers permanent.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| We're slowly seeing old and trusted democracies around the world
| adopting the methods of the CCP.
|
| This is frightening.
|
| I am way more upset by this string of events than by what any of
| what the Trump administration did, and to be clear I am the
| opposite of a Trump supporter.
|
| We're seeing the same trend in France, and I can only imagine
| this mess ending up with a far-right populist government taking
| the power.
| shagie wrote:
| Is the government that is being advocated for by the protesters
| more authoritarian than the one that currently in place _even
| with expansion of powers_ , is this a move to "adopting the
| methods of the CCP" or is this "realizing that the current
| tolerance promoted is not able to cope with philosophies
| espoused by the protesters"?
|
| My take on this is much of this is based on some form of
| accelerationism and a "burn it down and we'll build it again."
| And given the views of the people promoting this, I tend to
| doubt that they'll make something better afterwards either.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| This sort of stuff just has the same effect that the mandates did
| in the first place.
|
| Congratulations, now you've made it such that it would be
| _irresponsible_ for me to not keep a large amount of savings
| outside of the financial system.
| ipaddr wrote:
| This is the biggest benefit. This moves the conversation in
| many ways. Noting who is partipating and who is refusing helps
| map what services to use. The importance of avoiding
| exchanges/banks that require identifying information is on the
| back of everyone's mind.
| weeblewobble wrote:
| Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see any references to any
| specific incidences or examples of a person having their accounts
| frozen for simply _donating_ to the protest. Can anyone provide a
| reliable source of this happening? Since it 's the whole point of
| the alarmism in the article it seems an important thing to
| establish.
|
| This article https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2022/02/21/convoy-
| protesters-b... isn't quite a debunking but certainly throws some
| cold water on this claim. Although it's not really explicitly
| claimed in the article that this is actually happening, just
| strongly implied. I wonder if that is intentional.
| MaxMoney wrote:
| BoGs83 wrote:
| Exactly, the RCMP has not been guiding the banks to freeze the
| accounts [0]. RCMP and Banks state accounts for donors will not
| be frozen [1]. At worst RCMP can advise the banks which makes
| the decision (source from Federal MP) [2].
|
| The government is also working on a plan where you can appeal
| your account being frozen.
|
| [0] https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/rcmp-says-it-did-not-
| provide...
|
| [1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-rcmp-banks-
| an...
|
| [2]
| https://twitter.com/MarkGerretsen/status/1495381037274251268
| scohesc wrote:
| So the government rushes really hard to give themselves the
| power to freeze bank accounts, but they don't include a way
| to appeal your account being frozen until you're not able to
| use your funds for who knows how long.
|
| What a shame that Canada has come to this.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| Canadians have so far been majority in favor all measures,
| arbitrary or not, to wreck the convoys.
|
| The critics of the use of the Emergency Powers have been derided
| as cranks, and this is in line with the majority opinion of
| Canadians
|
| Canada simply does not have a heritage of individual rights.
| Their country, their rules.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Canada doesn't have a direct democracy because rule by opinion
| poll has well known dangers.
| mikem170 wrote:
| > rule by opinion poll
|
| Democracy doesn't have to be 51% majority rule. That would be
| quite unfair to the loosing minority. Consensus democracy is
| one alternative, preventing a majority from imposing on a
| minority. There's things like super majorities, also. Not
| just winner-take-all majority voting.
|
| Switzerland is a great example of a more direct democracy.
| Local canton governments control taxes, health care, etc. The
| people can petition for a referendum vote to overrule the
| politicians, adding or deleting laws. It's been working well
| for a while.
| 34679 wrote:
| >Canada simply does not have a heritage of individual rights.
| Their country, their rules.
|
| They absolutely do, and they changed "their rules" in 1982 to
| make it official.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and...
|
| > 2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
| (a) freedom of conscience and religion; (b)
| freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including
| freedom of the press and other media of communication;
| (c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and (d) freedom
| of association.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| I don't know where the pollsters find these respondents, but
| judging by the comments of any article that still allows them
| it's not the majority of politically engaged canadians. Not
| that the majority being okay with it would make it all right
| under the charter.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| > but judging by the comments of any article that still
| allows them it's not the majority of politically engaged
| canadians.
|
| Do you believe comments section on poll and news websites are
| an accurate representation of the wider populace?
| rubatuga wrote:
| The less we discuss and upvote this the longer it will stay on HN
| front page.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post unsubstantive and/or feed flamewars. Not
| what this site is for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| sleepingadmin wrote:
| There will be many history books written on what has happened and
| is about to happen. I hope I get to read them, maybe I will even
| write one.
|
| This will be an impossible subject to wade through due to the
| very charged reality of what has gone down. Preconceived
| perceptions are broken.
|
| I respect Bill Maher's opinion:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i72czkSUsM
|
| I respect Jimmy Dore's opinion:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUNnGdv8ceM
|
| One of the best objective timelines I have read on this subject
| to date: https://quillette.com/2022/02/21/the-ottawa-trucker-
| protest-...
| kelnos wrote:
| I was with you after watching the Maher video, but Dore is
| operating on false assumptions. Vaccine passports won't "track
| wherever you go for the rest of your life". Getting vaccinated
| doesn't "only protect you". Stopped watching after barely 30
| seconds.
| sleepingadmin wrote:
| >I was with you after watching the Maher video, but Dore is
| operating on false assumptions. Vaccine passports won't
| "track wherever you go for the rest of your life". Getting
| vaccinated doesn't "only protect you". Stopped watching after
| barely 30 seconds.
|
| 20 minute video, I'm sure he's going to say stuff. I'll even
| say that I tend not to agree with him on many things. He's a
| bernie bro and I'm certainly not.
|
| But the point I was making, the shit going down in Canada is
| real and hard pill to swallow.
|
| If you wish to ignore jimmy dore, fine. Did you read the
| article?
| stackedinserter wrote:
| 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.
| lovich wrote:
| > 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?
| ipaddr wrote:
| Then why wasn't a treason charge leveled? You are falling for
| the drama.
|
| People decide to protest about removing restrictions and the
| news tells you everyone is here trying overthrow the
| government.
|
| You now think unarmed people with a hottub, roasting a pig
| who made a big party in front of parliment were a threat to
| the Canadian government?
|
| Does that make sense?
| lovich wrote:
| > Then why wasn't a treason charge leveled?
|
| Because it didn't rise to the level of treason?
|
| 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?
| ipaddr wrote:
| 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.
|
| These were the two steps.
|
| Now we have this situation
| lovich wrote:
| 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?
| ipaddr wrote:
| They still don't. This was an Ottawa police lead
| operation. The federal government provided resources
| (officers) as they did before the emergency.
|
| If the prime minister didn't paint 40% or more of
| Canadians a certain way so many people wouldn't have
| joined.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| 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.
| croes wrote:
| Blocking a whole city isn't the same as making a big party.
|
| Occupy Wallstreet was treated harder for less. Tough
| truckers fearing a needle, hard to believe.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post flamebait or call names on HN. It's
| against the site guidelines, and you can make your
| substantive points without it.
|
| Your comment would be fine without the last sentence.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| ipaddr wrote:
| 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.
| croes wrote:
| 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.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| croes wrote:
| You do realize that you only need to block some roads to
| block a whole city?
|
| The other road users don't disappear. So stop downplaying
| what happened.
| dang wrote:
| Please do not take HN threads further into flamewar. It's
| not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is
| for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| hbn wrote:
| > 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.
| lovich wrote:
| It started as demands around mandate but then that Tamara
| Lich character gained prominence who is pushing an Albertan
| separatist movement
| hbn wrote:
| 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.
| lovich wrote:
| 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
| rescripting wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_convoy_protest#Plannin
| g
| stackedinserter wrote:
| > 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.
| ss108 wrote:
| I am personally glad Trudeau is channnelling his father in
| this.
| croes wrote:
| >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.
| ss108 wrote:
| 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.
| dash2 wrote:
| 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.
| motohagiography wrote:
| I'd like to be wrong, as I'm asserting this based on the logic of
| a known playbook for these kind of things. If I am not wrong, it
| would be evidence they are using that playbook with some implied
| ends in mind.
|
| The provisions expire ostensibly in 30 days, but what's pretty
| clear is there are exceptions for certain protests, and what I
| forsee occuring is there will be provocative so-called "counter
| protests," backed by the governing parties, which will result in
| "random" violence (some staged, some provoked), that will be used
| as a further pretext to extend and augment the powers into an
| indefinite emergency. (remind me: April 15, 2022) The playbook is
| a mix of colour revolution tactics with Arendt's description of
| totalitarian movements using absurdity and chaos via other
| movements to neutralize people at large.
|
| In case you were still catching up, it would now seem
| uncontroversial that the Emergencies Act is at least how far they
| are willing to go to implement digital identity via vaccine
| passports. Simply, the Canadian government has metastasized. I'm
| not neutral at all, but I like to constantly reassess whether my
| views have predictive power.
|
| The outs I see are:
|
| a) tension fizzles and cools off, vaccine passports get pulled as
| promised in 2 weeks, act expires in 30 days, life goes back to
| mostly normal, pandemic finished like it is in dozens of other
| countries around the world.
|
| b) narrative changes and now that truckers are moved, no reason
| to pull back vaccine passports anymore, and some excuse is
| contrived to maintain them - permanently divided society results.
|
| c) government becomes histrionic and starts escalating reaction
| to imaginary threats, adds additional powers, starts purging
| society groups from financial system and employment - result is
| decade+ of strife.
|
| d) government just says fuck it, Queen dies, Canada, Australia,
| New Zealand and potentially France form a new post-national bloc
| with only nominal local rule, similar to the EU, but mainly
| operated by a transnational committee that implements a social
| credit system to engineer a utopian experiment that accepts a lot
| of casulties.
|
| These are coarse grained scenarios, but as poles for likely
| outcomes, they're the waypoints I'm using. Most people think
| option a) is plausible, but I think their hope obscures their
| ability to see incentives. Option b) is a verifiable bet in a
| couple of weeks, and if b, then it's a quesiton of whether it's
| in service of c) or d).
| dang wrote:
| All: if you're going to post in this thread, please make sure
| you're up to date on the site guidelines:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
|
| 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.
| buraktamturk wrote:
| The same exact thing happened after 15 July 2016 (Erdogan staged
| a coup attempt on his own) in Turkey. To put it simply it was the
| beginning of the genocide of peaceful Gulen movement members or
| anyone who had any kind of connection with them in the past.
|
| The bank that I had account + credit card was shut down (stolen
| by Turkish state) with the decree laws. My brother had an
| additional account in another bank. That bank terminated his
| account and credit card using decree laws as a reason, no court
| order.
|
| We lost our jobs, money and freedom in a single night. Our
| company was shut down by the state without due process. My
| relatives, friends and colleagues got jailed and tortured by
| Turkish police and soldiers. We got fired and almost none of us
| were able to get employment (we got work permits revoked) code 36
| (fired due to decree laws) is on social insurance records.
| University degrees of some of us cancelled by the decree law.
| There are thousands of things I want to tell but it is too long.
| At the end my brother became a permanent resident in Canada via
| asylum and I am an asylum seeker in Greece (decisions take way
| long here). My relatives and friends still in jail in Turkey.
|
| To put it simply, what Canadian government is planning right now
| is a clear way to go for genocide. Killing people economically is
| a part of genocide method (don't ask me where I know it).
| ipaddr wrote:
| I remember when this happened but I was confused by the lack of
| western support either officially or through press coverage.
|
| When the Saudi prince locked up his brothers under false
| charged pulling a complete power coup and no one said much I
| wondered why.
| tradertef wrote:
| Why downvote? Everything he said is true except that Erdogan
| staged the coup attempt. He probably know about it much earlier
| and did not intervene, but it is too much to claim he staged
| it. Regardless, lots of people had their assets seized or
| frozen by government or people close to it without due process.
|
| Also equating what is happening in Turkey or Canada to Genocide
| is a bit too much :)
| dash2 wrote:
| Your comment is really interesting but it is probably getting
| downvoted because of the last paragraph. Accusing the Canadian
| government of planning genocide is way over the top.
| thepangolino wrote:
| YaBomm wrote:
| akimball wrote:
| The Canadian government's action is a human rights violation, on
| multiple grounds, per the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
| as ratified by the General Assembly of the United Nations.
| threeseed wrote:
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Is it common? My understanding is that freezing bank accounts
| is generally limited to things like financial crimes or drug
| dealing, where the account might contain money that you
| obtained unlawfully in the first place. Do people arrested
| for, say, murder usually have their bank accounts frozen?
| adamrezich wrote:
| there's a push both in Canada and here in the US to label
| these political undesirables as "domestic terrorists" as
| justification, because it makes sense to freeze the bank
| accounts of domestic terrorists. this is why they're trying
| to make a direct connection between the "January 6th
| Insurrection" and this incident, to portray both as
| connected instances of far-right-wing domestic
| terror/insurrectionism.
| threeseed wrote:
| At least some of the protestors have profited from their
| protests ie. we know that money has been flowing in
| courtesy of sites like GoFundMe.
|
| So there is a case that some of those protestors should
| have profits seized if they committed a crime (not claiming
| they did). The question is whether ordinary protestors will
| have the same process applied to them.
| wvenable wrote:
| Your bank will freeze your account if they detect
| suspicious activity. Your credit card agreement likely has
| a provision to allow them to freeze your bank account for
| non-payment.
|
| The underlying question is whether or not a financial crime
| is actually happening. The idea of a decentralized protest
| having some random "leaders" in-trusted with donations is
| in need of scrutiny. It doesn't matter if it's this or BLM.
| Where is this money coming from and who is it going to?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Which authorities specifically say that this is the
| underlying question? When Trudeau announced the policy,
| he said it was about "keeping Canadians safe, protecting
| people's jobs" (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-
| canada-60383385) - it doesn't really sound to me like his
| goal was to protect protest donors from potential fraud.
| wvenable wrote:
| The TD bank had already requested prior to the act some
| direction on what to do with the funds ""We are unable to
| release the funds without the court's direction because
| multiple parties, including the account holder, intended
| recipients and some donors, may be entitled to the
| funds," a TD spokesperson said."
|
| "The illegal blockades have highlighted the fact that
| crowdfunding platforms and some of the payment service
| providers they use are not fully captured under the
| proceeds of crime and terrorist financing act," said
| Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland.
|
| https://financialpost.com/fp-finance/banking/trudeau-
| gives-b...
|
| https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/trudeau-wants-the-
| for...
|
| It's far more exciting that Canada is turning into a
| communist hell hole than to just accept the situation as
| it is.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| "Are deemed?" By whom? You mean we can throw out all those
| pesky judges, trials, and juries of our peers? Cool.
| threeseed wrote:
| You are misrepresenting what I said. I simply said that
| seizing proceeds of crime is common, normal and not a human
| rights violation.
|
| I don't agree that it should be done with no oversight from
| the judicial system.
| kelnos wrote:
| How do we know any of these people committed a serious crime?
| They were not charged with anything or put on trial. A
| judge/jury has not (yet) found any of these people guilty of
| anything.
|
| Seizing money absolutely violates human rights when it's done
| without due process, as was the case here.
| threeseed wrote:
| I never argued that they committed a crime or not.
|
| But the concept of seizing proceeds of a crime is very
| common and not a human right violation.
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