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> A military investigation determined what the Canadian Forces public affairs leadership was doing was “incompatible with Government of Canada Communications Po

> A military investigation determined what the Canadian Forces public affairs leadership was doing was “incompatible with Government of Canada Communications Policy (and the) mission and principles of Public Affairs.” I would hope that deploying the military against your own citizens is against more than just an executive branch policy that can be changed at any moment.

grensley 5y ago
We have investigated ourselves and found that we did nothing wrong
arcticbull 5y ago
It's not, in Canada. The government may elect to invoke the War Measures Act [1]. Pierre Trudeau did this when he drove tanks into Montreal to quash the Québécois nationalist terrorist organization, the FLQ in the October Crisis of 1962 [2]. [edit] Posse Comitatus is more of an American thing - for the record the War Measures Act was subsequently replaced with the Emergencies Act [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Measures_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Measures_Act [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Crisis [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergencies_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergencies_Act
- etimberg 5y ago
  The war measures act was repealed in 1988
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    Indeed, it was replaced with the Emergenices Act as I mentioned. In fact Justin Trudeau considered invoking it for the first time since the replacement in the COVID situation. [edit] Between that and the Notwithstanding Clause [1] there's a lot of latitude here. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_Cha...
    - busymom0 5y ago
      Just want to mention that notwithstanding clause doesn’t apply to mobility rights for what it’s worth. Section 1 of the charter also allows a lot of latitude.
      - bawolff 5y ago
        There's already been a ruling on this https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/nl-travel-ban-supreme-court-decision-1.5727549 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/nl-trav...
        busymom0 5y ago
        The court used the section 1 of the charter in that case, not the notwithstanding clause. Also CCLA is appealing that case if I remember reading right.
        bawolff 5y ago
        I meant in response to your second part about sect. 1 applying.
        busymom0 5y ago
        Ah makes sense. My bad.
    - bawolff 5y ago
      The emergencies act doesn't allow for using military in the event of a public welfare emergency, as you seem to implying. It doesn't even allow for the federal government to order the police around > 9 (1) Nothing in a declaration of a public welfare emergency or in any order or regulation made pursuant thereto shall be construed or applied so as to derogate from, or to authorize the derogation from, the control or direction of the government of a province or a municipality over any police force over which it normally has control or direction. https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/E-4.5/page-1.html#h-213849 https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/E-4.5/page-1.html#h... [Provinces can request military help, but that's unrelated to either the emergencies act or the now repealed war measures act]
- dleslie 5y ago
  More recently, the military was deployed against citizens during the Oka Crisis. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oka_Crisis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oka_Crisis
  - honkdaddy 5y ago
    Highly recommend all Canadians take some time to read about the Oka Crisis, very interesting part of Canada's complicated history with indigenous relations. There's a 2020 film called Beans about a 12 year old Mohawk girl living through the heart of the crisis, thoughtful and powerful Canadian cinema.
- bawolff 5y ago
  > Pierre Trudeau did this when he drove tanks into Montreal to quash the Québécois nationalist terrorist organization, the FLQ in the October Crisis of 1962 [2]. Its been a while since my high school history class, but i don't think that's correct. If i remember correctly, the military troops involved in the flq crisis were at the request and under control of the province of quebec, not the federal government (under the constitution of canada, law and order is a provincial responsibility). Trudeau did temporarily suspend some civil liberties, in particular the right to habeaus corpus. However the tanks were entirely provincial not federal, so had nothing to do with trudeau and their deployment did not involve the war measures act. In fact, as far as i know, the prime minister isn't even allowed to prevent the province from requistioning military help, at most they can charge them money for it afterwards. IANAhistorian.
- subject119 5y ago
  Just FYI, FLQ was more socialist-marxist than they were nationalist which is why they had to be put to a stop for the safety of the people. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_de_lib%C3%A9ration_du_Qu%C3%A9bec https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_de_lib%C3%A9ration_du_Qu...
neom 5y ago
It seems like they were trying to boost the message of the government to the citizens. I'm not totally sure that's deploying the military against the citizens in a country that has a democratically elected government. I think the point here is that maybe they had good intentions, but the government didn't ask for the help, so it wasn't really "compatible" with the governments communications policy.
Goety 5y ago
>I would hope that deploying the military against your own citizens is against more than just an executive branch policy that can be changed at any moment. That's not reality
southerntofu 5y ago
It's worse than that. Of course the government can call the army against its own population, that's what armies were for before modern "crowd control". Counter-insurrection doctrines were specifically developed to reduce the bloodshed from military interventions so that social control and political repression would be more socially acceptable. Without even talking of the most famous colonial wars during which these techniques were developed (Indochine, Algeria), the French army has repeatedly massacred its citizens during the Paris commune in 1871 (10-50k dead) [0] or during the may first demonstration in Fourmies in 1891 (9 dead) [1]. Nowadays the army is still used against the population but rarely with actual bullets. The police has a much bigger killing record (including during demonstrations), but at least two anarchists i know of were killed by explosive grenades thrown by the military police (gendarmerie) during ecological protests: Vital Michalon in 1977 (physics teacher) [2] and Rémi Fraisse in 2014 (botanist) [3]. Even more recently, during the Gilets Jaunes protests, the army's anti-terrorist patrols (Sentinelle) were redeployed by the government to defend key buildings/institutions from a potential revolution. That move was criticized both by soldiers who said it was not their role, and by opposition parties. They even deployed the Gendarmerie's armored tanks in Paris, which was a first. [5] Despite teargas being banned by the Geneva convention against chemical weapons, these tanks were equipped with stronger chemicals, which the government denied, before acknowledging its existence (they did not use this "powder" during the protests). [6] On the countryside, especially in rural land occupations against GPII (Grands Projets Industriels et Imposées, or Grand and Imposed Industrial Projects), also known as ZADs [7], the Gendarmerie (military police) is heavily deployed, both regular "Gendarmerie Mobile" units as well as "PSIG". These units PSIG units, involved in fast deployment for crushing popular dissent on the countryside, were 37 in 1978, 138 in 1988, 310 in 2000 and 370 in 2015 [8], so we can say that aspect of counter-insurrection apparatus is growing. In Bure, where the local population is opposing the construction of an underground nuclear storage facility [9], there are more stationed gendarmes (both GM and PSIG) than there are inhabitants, and the operation has often been described as a military occupation [10] unseen since WWII. You have road blocks and mobile patrols doing ID checks on everyone, and the local forest has been privatized and is heavily guarded, and local residents have been regularly fined for just taking a walk in the forest. It is not uncommon for the local population to be ID-checked 3 times going to the supermarket and back. More information about this struggle against industrial capitalism can be found here [11]. This is just for France. In more democratic countries, the situation may be different. But i know in America (north and south) the situation is very similar with the national guard (or equivalent) called to crush popular insurrections against injustice, corruption police brutality, and privatization of public/indigenous land. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusillade_de_Fourmies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusillade_de_Fourmies [2] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vital_Michalon https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vital_Michalon [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9mi_Fraisse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9mi_Fraisse [4] https://www.francetvinfo.fr/economie/emploi/metiers/armee-et-securite/oui-malheureusement-il-risque-d-y-avoir-des-morts-les-militaires-tres-alarmistes-sur-leur-implication-dans-les-prochaines-mobilisations-des-gilets-jaunes_3244015.html https://www.francetvinfo.fr/economie/emploi/metiers/armee-et... [5] https://img.lemde.fr/2018/12/08/0/0/2000/1333/1872/1246/30/0/a77d59b_o7TR8LJXF6FaBiXoEjKf4bJ5.jpg https://img.lemde.fr/2018/12/08/0/0/2000/1333/1872/1246/30/0... [6] https://paris-luttes.info/macron-pret-a-utiliser-des-armes-11283?lang=fr https://paris-luttes.info/macron-pret-a-utiliser-des-armes-1... [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_to_Defend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_to_Defend [8] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloton_de_surveillance_et_d%27intervention_de_la_Gendarmerie https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloton_de_surveillance_et_d%2... [9] The storage is not operational yet, and there has already been serious injuries and collapses, so the inhabitants are concerned that the engineers promising the facility will store nuclear content safely for >10K years have no clue what they're talking about. [10] https://reporterre.net/Bure-En-Meuse-nous-vivons-sous-occupation-militaire https://reporterre.net/Bure-En-Meuse-nous-vivons-sous-occupa... [11] https://bureburebure.info/category/english/ https://bureburebure.info/category/english/

grensley 5y ago

We have investigated ourselves and found that we did nothing wrong

arcticbull 5y ago

It's not, in Canada. The government may elect to invoke the War Measures Act [1]. Pierre Trudeau did this when he drove tanks into Montreal to quash the Québécois nationalist terrorist organization, the FLQ in the October Crisis of 1962 [2]. [edit] Posse Comitatus is more of an American thing - for the record the War Measures Act was subsequently replaced with the Emergencies Act [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Measures_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Measures_Act [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Crisis [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergencies_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergencies_Act

etimberg 5y ago
The war measures act was repealed in 1988
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Indeed, it was replaced with the Emergenices Act as I mentioned. In fact Justin Trudeau considered invoking it for the first time since the replacement in the COVID situation. [edit] Between that and the Notwithstanding Clause [1] there's a lot of latitude here. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_Cha...
  - busymom0 5y ago
    Just want to mention that notwithstanding clause doesn’t apply to mobility rights for what it’s worth. Section 1 of the charter also allows a lot of latitude.
    - bawolff 5y ago
      There's already been a ruling on this https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/nl-travel-ban-supreme-court-decision-1.5727549 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/nl-trav...
      - busymom0 5y ago
        The court used the section 1 of the charter in that case, not the notwithstanding clause. Also CCLA is appealing that case if I remember reading right.
        bawolff 5y ago
        I meant in response to your second part about sect. 1 applying.
        busymom0 5y ago
        Ah makes sense. My bad.
  - bawolff 5y ago
    The emergencies act doesn't allow for using military in the event of a public welfare emergency, as you seem to implying. It doesn't even allow for the federal government to order the police around > 9 (1) Nothing in a declaration of a public welfare emergency or in any order or regulation made pursuant thereto shall be construed or applied so as to derogate from, or to authorize the derogation from, the control or direction of the government of a province or a municipality over any police force over which it normally has control or direction. https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/E-4.5/page-1.html#h-213849 https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/E-4.5/page-1.html#h... [Provinces can request military help, but that's unrelated to either the emergencies act or the now repealed war measures act]
dleslie 5y ago
More recently, the military was deployed against citizens during the Oka Crisis. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oka_Crisis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oka_Crisis
- honkdaddy 5y ago
  Highly recommend all Canadians take some time to read about the Oka Crisis, very interesting part of Canada's complicated history with indigenous relations. There's a 2020 film called Beans about a 12 year old Mohawk girl living through the heart of the crisis, thoughtful and powerful Canadian cinema.
bawolff 5y ago
> Pierre Trudeau did this when he drove tanks into Montreal to quash the Québécois nationalist terrorist organization, the FLQ in the October Crisis of 1962 [2]. Its been a while since my high school history class, but i don't think that's correct. If i remember correctly, the military troops involved in the flq crisis were at the request and under control of the province of quebec, not the federal government (under the constitution of canada, law and order is a provincial responsibility). Trudeau did temporarily suspend some civil liberties, in particular the right to habeaus corpus. However the tanks were entirely provincial not federal, so had nothing to do with trudeau and their deployment did not involve the war measures act. In fact, as far as i know, the prime minister isn't even allowed to prevent the province from requistioning military help, at most they can charge them money for it afterwards. IANAhistorian.
subject119 5y ago
Just FYI, FLQ was more socialist-marxist than they were nationalist which is why they had to be put to a stop for the safety of the people. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_de_lib%C3%A9ration_du_Qu%C3%A9bec https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_de_lib%C3%A9ration_du_Qu...

neom 5y ago

It seems like they were trying to boost the message of the government to the citizens. I'm not totally sure that's deploying the military against the citizens in a country that has a democratically elected government. I think the point here is that maybe they had good intentions, but the government didn't ask for the help, so it wasn't really "compatible" with the governments communications policy.

Goety 5y ago

>I would hope that deploying the military against your own citizens is against more than just an executive branch policy that can be changed at any moment. That's not reality

southerntofu 5y ago

It's worse than that. Of course the government can call the army against its own population, that's what armies were for before modern "crowd control". Counter-insurrection doctrines were specifically developed to reduce the bloodshed from military interventions so that social control and political repression would be more socially acceptable. Without even talking of the most famous colonial wars during which these techniques were developed (Indochine, Algeria), the French army has repeatedly massacred its citizens during the Paris commune in 1871 (10-50k dead) [0] or during the may first demonstration in Fourmies in 1891 (9 dead) [1]. Nowadays the army is still used against the population but rarely with actual bullets. The police has a much bigger killing record (including during demonstrations), but at least two anarchists i know of were killed by explosive grenades thrown by the military police (gendarmerie) during ecological protests: Vital Michalon in 1977 (physics teacher) [2] and Rémi Fraisse in 2014 (botanist) [3]. Even more recently, during the Gilets Jaunes protests, the army's anti-terrorist patrols (Sentinelle) were redeployed by the government to defend key buildings/institutions from a potential revolution. That move was criticized both by soldiers who said it was not their role, and by opposition parties. They even deployed the Gendarmerie's armored tanks in Paris, which was a first. [5] Despite teargas being banned by the Geneva convention against chemical weapons, these tanks were equipped with stronger chemicals, which the government denied, before acknowledging its existence (they did not use this "powder" during the protests). [6] On the countryside, especially in rural land occupations against GPII (Grands Projets Industriels et Imposées, or Grand and Imposed Industrial Projects), also known as ZADs [7], the Gendarmerie (military police) is heavily deployed, both regular "Gendarmerie Mobile" units as well as "PSIG". These units PSIG units, involved in fast deployment for crushing popular dissent on the countryside, were 37 in 1978, 138 in 1988, 310 in 2000 and 370 in 2015 [8], so we can say that aspect of counter-insurrection apparatus is growing. In Bure, where the local population is opposing the construction of an underground nuclear storage facility [9], there are more stationed gendarmes (both GM and PSIG) than there are inhabitants, and the operation has often been described as a military occupation [10] unseen since WWII. You have road blocks and mobile patrols doing ID checks on everyone, and the local forest has been privatized and is heavily guarded, and local residents have been regularly fined for just taking a walk in the forest. It is not uncommon for the local population to be ID-checked 3 times going to the supermarket and back. More information about this struggle against industrial capitalism can be found here [11]. This is just for France. In more democratic countries, the situation may be different. But i know in America (north and south) the situation is very similar with the national guard (or equivalent) called to crush popular insurrections against injustice, corruption police brutality, and privatization of public/indigenous land. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusillade_de_Fourmies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusillade_de_Fourmies [2] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vital_Michalon https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vital_Michalon [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9mi_Fraisse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9mi_Fraisse [4] https://www.francetvinfo.fr/economie/emploi/metiers/armee-et-securite/oui-malheureusement-il-risque-d-y-avoir-des-morts-les-militaires-tres-alarmistes-sur-leur-implication-dans-les-prochaines-mobilisations-des-gilets-jaunes_3244015.html https://www.francetvinfo.fr/economie/emploi/metiers/armee-et... [5] https://img.lemde.fr/2018/12/08/0/0/2000/1333/1872/1246/30/0/a77d59b_o7TR8LJXF6FaBiXoEjKf4bJ5.jpg https://img.lemde.fr/2018/12/08/0/0/2000/1333/1872/1246/30/0... [6] https://paris-luttes.info/macron-pret-a-utiliser-des-armes-11283?lang=fr https://paris-luttes.info/macron-pret-a-utiliser-des-armes-1... [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_to_Defend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_to_Defend [8] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloton_de_surveillance_et_d%27intervention_de_la_Gendarmerie https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloton_de_surveillance_et_d%2... [9] The storage is not operational yet, and there has already been serious injuries and collapses, so the inhabitants are concerned that the engineers promising the facility will store nuclear content safely for >10K years have no clue what they're talking about. [10] https://reporterre.net/Bure-En-Meuse-nous-vivons-sous-occupation-militaire https://reporterre.net/Bure-En-Meuse-nous-vivons-sous-occupa... [11] https://bureburebure.info/category/english/ https://bureburebure.info/category/english/