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Protesters are still allowed to protest peacefully, they just aren't allowed to occupy the area around parliament and shut down border crossings for weeks, and

Protesters are still allowed to protest peacefully, they just aren't allowed to occupy the area around parliament and shut down border crossings for weeks, and intimidate and enact violence against the citizens of Ottawa. Nobody is stopping anyone from peacefully protesting in Canada, give your head a shake.

busymom0 5y ago
> enact violence against the citizens of Ottawa That hasn't happened. Grossly exaggerated statements are not what I and my friends who have been at the Ottawa protest for 3 weeks have seen. We aren't living in 1950s. Everyone has a phone camera now a days and Ottawa, the capital, has security cameras everywhere and yet none of this ever gets captured on camera and nobody seems to capture the face of the people supposedly doing such things.
- Jackim 5y ago
  Personal anecdotal evidence does not disprove that very real violence has occurred and continues to occur in my city.
  - argvargc 5y ago
    Your original comment relayed anecdotal evidence. Are you now saying it doesn't prove anything? Violence does occur in cities, and it will continue to. I've seen no evidence protestors or attendees are violent or even aggressive, and livestreamers passing police and asking them impromptu specifically this confirms it. There's bouncy castles for kids to play on, multi-ethnic groups dancing together and holding native ceremonies or prayer, people giving out free food, public handing dollars directly to truckers because of the frozen funds - every weekend it's packed with families, smiles and good vibes. And then the "news" comes on and says it's an "insurrection" (yeah, don't they just always have bouncy castles) and Trudeau says they're all racist transphobes. It's laughable. If more violence/crime is occurring, a more likely explanation may be the friendly and busy atmosphere his driven drunks/addicts/homeless out of the city centre, and these people are now committing crimes they would ordinarily commit in the city centre in surrounding areas instead. That would suck for those affected, but all of this could be over in hours if Trudeau would simply remove the mandates and the passport. (Which are the Ottawa's protest organisers only demands, as they've reiterated multiple times.) The mandates clearly don't work for their intended purpose of coercing people, and instead just motivate people to fight back yet stronger, in this case harming the economy and causing inconvenience to some. That's squarely on Trudeau's governance, nowhere else. The passport is a completely silly idea given the facts regarding transmission, as many other countries have realised and since dropped. It's a no brainer on Trudeau's part to simply drop both things. But instead he's chosen to humiliate himself spreading nonsense lies about the truckers and the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Canadians who support them. If the disruption is causing you grief, maybe write to him or your local Liberal representative and suggest he/they drop those things? They're demonstrably no good anyway, so it'd be a pretty simple win-win for everybody.
  - busymom0 5y ago
    Like I said, we live in 2022. Everyone has a phone with video camera. How come such "violence" never gets captured on camera despite thousands of people there and several live streams?
tomohawk 5y ago
That's right. Only the government is allowed to shut everything down and put people out of work.
- joshlemer 5y ago
  Yes that's correct, our democratically elected government with a charter of rights and freedoms and independent judiciary is allowed to impose reasonable restrictions on citizens freedoms under specific circumstances. No, a mob of thugs who represent a minority public opinion are not allowed to impose their will on society. If that's supposed to be a mic-drop comment you're going to have to try harder.
  - ameminator 5y ago
    I think there's difference in what "reasonable" means here, regardless of what the issue is and who is doing it. My argument is that there must be some form of protest that is always legal (even if not sanctioned by the government) and that minimal form of protest must be public. That no restrictions can be reasonable on this minimal form of protest. All the people who are cheering this emergency powers move, have not made clear to me why this particular protest has surpassed that point outside of noise issues in private (and non-public) areas (which I do understand are difficult).
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      "Minimal" and "block important roads for weeks" don't intersect, in my view. Nobody said they can't protest. Nobody invoked the Emergencies Act when they initially blocked the roads. When they remained blocked for a week, still nobody invoked the Emergencies Act. Minimal protest? Sure, absolutely that should be allowed. Nobody's making it not allowed. But "minimal" isn't where these protest are, and they haven't been for a while.
      - dane-pgp 5y ago
        It's nice that the government gave them permission to protest for a week, sure. For comparison, though, the Tiananmen Square protests lasted over a month before Beijing invoked their equivalent of the Emergencies Act. According to the Wikipedia article: > The protests started on 15 April and were forcibly suppressed on 4 June when the government declared martial law and sent the People's Liberation Army to occupy parts of central Beijing.
ameminator 5y ago
But it seems that every time the "unpermitted location" changes with every protest! In this case, it's "the area around parliament" and "border crossings" - in Quebec it was "this particular road" or "these schools" during their "Red Square" tuition protests. In my opinion, Parliament is almost always a valid place to protest - outside a politician's or ordinary person's private home, much less so. By invoking these emergency powers, I think it's hard to dispute that the Prime Minister's Office is stopping a peaceful protest!
- joshlemer 5y ago
  If the protesters weren't blocking infrastructure with trucks, and were just gathering on parliament hill, it would be a different story.
  - tonfreed 5y ago
    Because Trudeau could have ignored that again. This is the action of people who are not being heard. Trudeau could have de-escalated by meeting with the protesters, but he instead essentially said they should shut up and go back to driving.
    - jsjsbdkj 5y ago
      Why do they think they aren't being heard? We've heard them, they're wrong, and we're not going to do what they want. The vast majority of canadian oppose the convoy and support public health measures. This is just a childish tantrum.
    - joshlemer 5y ago
      It is absolutely false that Trudeau could have deescalated by talking to the convoy leaders. This is demonstrably false, as the mayor of Ottawa set up a meeting with them to negotiate some terms where the convoy would be restricted to a specific area in Ottawa. A meeting with the mayor, exactly what the convoyers want right? Then at the last minute they backed out. This whole "meet with us" is a move to be recognized and the moment Trudeau met with them, they would ratchet up their demands to a higher level. These people are foaming at the mouth with hate for trudeau, they have "F*CK TRUDEAU" as their slogan and painted on their trucks, they don't want to meet with him.
stackedinserter 5y ago
Nobody intimidated or enact violence against Ottawa residents. Based on what I saw with my own eyes last week, protesters and truckers are friendly and peaceful. IDK maybe they turn to werewolves at night, but the most aggressive thing I saw there was "fuck trudeau" signs everywhere.
- pkd 5y ago
  My friend was accosted for wearing a mask on Saturday in a restaurant. One of the two downtown grocery stores had to close because the employees were being intimated by the protestors to let them inside without a mask. A neighborhood ice cream store employee was assaulted for wearing a mask while walking to work, and the store closed down. The biggest shopping center downtown has been closed for 3 weeks, putting over a thousand people out of a job because the protestors kept trying to force their way in to stores without wearing masks. These are not protests against the government. They harm actual people on the ground trying to get on with their lives. I'm sorry the YouTube streams have not shown any of this. Who'd have thought that even youtubers can have editorial intent!
  - ersii 5y ago
    What does being accosted entail? If it's a matter of being heckled or laughed at, surely one has to be able to deal with that and not scream bloody murder. (We haven't had mask mandates here in Sweden, so your situation with masks seems peculiar and a bit weird from here)
    - joshlemer 5y ago
      Practically speaking, a heckling and laughing at from a large group of angry protesters against a single person minding their own business is basically an unspoken threat of violence. It is definitely intimidation.
    - pkd 5y ago
      Being asked to take their mask off in a belligerent way. We can argue about the relativity of violence all day long - but the fact is that this behaviour was not really heard of before the protests began and can be traumatising. My friend was with a group so they were able to handle the situation but there have been incidents of things going worse. Moreover, the mask mandates are provincial, not federal. If people are opposed to that, they should go heckle at Doug Ford, the Ontario Premier in Toronto, not at Trudeau in Ottawa. The fact is that the protestors don't have a common coherent narrative.
Tiktaalik 5y ago
Pretty much this is the core difference here. Is this a protest or an occupation? No one is gonna bat an eye if you block and intersection or a bridge for a day (ok maybe if it's the ambassador bridge). But eventually, if you start occupying the space for days and weeks on end, there are limits to people's patience. When a protest becomes an occupation, there are impacts on those whose neighbourhood is being occupied. Downtown Ottawa residents ain't happy.

busymom0 5y ago

> enact violence against the citizens of Ottawa That hasn't happened. Grossly exaggerated statements are not what I and my friends who have been at the Ottawa protest for 3 weeks have seen. We aren't living in 1950s. Everyone has a phone camera now a days and Ottawa, the capital, has security cameras everywhere and yet none of this ever gets captured on camera and nobody seems to capture the face of the people supposedly doing such things.

Jackim 5y ago
Personal anecdotal evidence does not disprove that very real violence has occurred and continues to occur in my city.
- argvargc 5y ago
  Your original comment relayed anecdotal evidence. Are you now saying it doesn't prove anything? Violence does occur in cities, and it will continue to. I've seen no evidence protestors or attendees are violent or even aggressive, and livestreamers passing police and asking them impromptu specifically this confirms it. There's bouncy castles for kids to play on, multi-ethnic groups dancing together and holding native ceremonies or prayer, people giving out free food, public handing dollars directly to truckers because of the frozen funds - every weekend it's packed with families, smiles and good vibes. And then the "news" comes on and says it's an "insurrection" (yeah, don't they just always have bouncy castles) and Trudeau says they're all racist transphobes. It's laughable. If more violence/crime is occurring, a more likely explanation may be the friendly and busy atmosphere his driven drunks/addicts/homeless out of the city centre, and these people are now committing crimes they would ordinarily commit in the city centre in surrounding areas instead. That would suck for those affected, but all of this could be over in hours if Trudeau would simply remove the mandates and the passport. (Which are the Ottawa's protest organisers only demands, as they've reiterated multiple times.) The mandates clearly don't work for their intended purpose of coercing people, and instead just motivate people to fight back yet stronger, in this case harming the economy and causing inconvenience to some. That's squarely on Trudeau's governance, nowhere else. The passport is a completely silly idea given the facts regarding transmission, as many other countries have realised and since dropped. It's a no brainer on Trudeau's part to simply drop both things. But instead he's chosen to humiliate himself spreading nonsense lies about the truckers and the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Canadians who support them. If the disruption is causing you grief, maybe write to him or your local Liberal representative and suggest he/they drop those things? They're demonstrably no good anyway, so it'd be a pretty simple win-win for everybody.
- busymom0 5y ago
  Like I said, we live in 2022. Everyone has a phone with video camera. How come such "violence" never gets captured on camera despite thousands of people there and several live streams?

tomohawk 5y ago

That's right. Only the government is allowed to shut everything down and put people out of work.

joshlemer 5y ago
Yes that's correct, our democratically elected government with a charter of rights and freedoms and independent judiciary is allowed to impose reasonable restrictions on citizens freedoms under specific circumstances. No, a mob of thugs who represent a minority public opinion are not allowed to impose their will on society. If that's supposed to be a mic-drop comment you're going to have to try harder.
- ameminator 5y ago
  I think there's difference in what "reasonable" means here, regardless of what the issue is and who is doing it. My argument is that there must be some form of protest that is always legal (even if not sanctioned by the government) and that minimal form of protest must be public. That no restrictions can be reasonable on this minimal form of protest. All the people who are cheering this emergency powers move, have not made clear to me why this particular protest has surpassed that point outside of noise issues in private (and non-public) areas (which I do understand are difficult).
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    "Minimal" and "block important roads for weeks" don't intersect, in my view. Nobody said they can't protest. Nobody invoked the Emergencies Act when they initially blocked the roads. When they remained blocked for a week, still nobody invoked the Emergencies Act. Minimal protest? Sure, absolutely that should be allowed. Nobody's making it not allowed. But "minimal" isn't where these protest are, and they haven't been for a while.
    - dane-pgp 5y ago
      It's nice that the government gave them permission to protest for a week, sure. For comparison, though, the Tiananmen Square protests lasted over a month before Beijing invoked their equivalent of the Emergencies Act. According to the Wikipedia article: > The protests started on 15 April and were forcibly suppressed on 4 June when the government declared martial law and sent the People's Liberation Army to occupy parts of central Beijing.

ameminator 5y ago

But it seems that every time the "unpermitted location" changes with every protest! In this case, it's "the area around parliament" and "border crossings" - in Quebec it was "this particular road" or "these schools" during their "Red Square" tuition protests. In my opinion, Parliament is almost always a valid place to protest - outside a politician's or ordinary person's private home, much less so. By invoking these emergency powers, I think it's hard to dispute that the Prime Minister's Office is stopping a peaceful protest!

joshlemer 5y ago
If the protesters weren't blocking infrastructure with trucks, and were just gathering on parliament hill, it would be a different story.
- tonfreed 5y ago
  Because Trudeau could have ignored that again. This is the action of people who are not being heard. Trudeau could have de-escalated by meeting with the protesters, but he instead essentially said they should shut up and go back to driving.
  - jsjsbdkj 5y ago
    Why do they think they aren't being heard? We've heard them, they're wrong, and we're not going to do what they want. The vast majority of canadian oppose the convoy and support public health measures. This is just a childish tantrum.
  - joshlemer 5y ago
    It is absolutely false that Trudeau could have deescalated by talking to the convoy leaders. This is demonstrably false, as the mayor of Ottawa set up a meeting with them to negotiate some terms where the convoy would be restricted to a specific area in Ottawa. A meeting with the mayor, exactly what the convoyers want right? Then at the last minute they backed out. This whole "meet with us" is a move to be recognized and the moment Trudeau met with them, they would ratchet up their demands to a higher level. These people are foaming at the mouth with hate for trudeau, they have "F*CK TRUDEAU" as their slogan and painted on their trucks, they don't want to meet with him.

stackedinserter 5y ago

Nobody intimidated or enact violence against Ottawa residents. Based on what I saw with my own eyes last week, protesters and truckers are friendly and peaceful. IDK maybe they turn to werewolves at night, but the most aggressive thing I saw there was "fuck trudeau" signs everywhere.

pkd 5y ago
My friend was accosted for wearing a mask on Saturday in a restaurant. One of the two downtown grocery stores had to close because the employees were being intimated by the protestors to let them inside without a mask. A neighborhood ice cream store employee was assaulted for wearing a mask while walking to work, and the store closed down. The biggest shopping center downtown has been closed for 3 weeks, putting over a thousand people out of a job because the protestors kept trying to force their way in to stores without wearing masks. These are not protests against the government. They harm actual people on the ground trying to get on with their lives. I'm sorry the YouTube streams have not shown any of this. Who'd have thought that even youtubers can have editorial intent!
- ersii 5y ago
  What does being accosted entail? If it's a matter of being heckled or laughed at, surely one has to be able to deal with that and not scream bloody murder. (We haven't had mask mandates here in Sweden, so your situation with masks seems peculiar and a bit weird from here)
  - joshlemer 5y ago
    Practically speaking, a heckling and laughing at from a large group of angry protesters against a single person minding their own business is basically an unspoken threat of violence. It is definitely intimidation.
  - pkd 5y ago
    Being asked to take their mask off in a belligerent way. We can argue about the relativity of violence all day long - but the fact is that this behaviour was not really heard of before the protests began and can be traumatising. My friend was with a group so they were able to handle the situation but there have been incidents of things going worse. Moreover, the mask mandates are provincial, not federal. If people are opposed to that, they should go heckle at Doug Ford, the Ontario Premier in Toronto, not at Trudeau in Ottawa. The fact is that the protestors don't have a common coherent narrative.

Tiktaalik 5y ago

Pretty much this is the core difference here. Is this a protest or an occupation? No one is gonna bat an eye if you block and intersection or a bridge for a day (ok maybe if it's the ambassador bridge). But eventually, if you start occupying the space for days and weeks on end, there are limits to people's patience. When a protest becomes an occupation, there are impacts on those whose neighbourhood is being occupied. Downtown Ottawa residents ain't happy.