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That is an exaggerated headline. Accounts being used to fund illegal activities can be frozen. Protesting is not and will not be illegal. Blocking critical infr
by Jackim 5y ago
That is an exaggerated headline. Accounts being used to fund illegal activities can be frozen. Protesting is not and will not be illegal. Blocking critical infrastructure is illegal.
- colechristensen 5y agoThe adjective critical though has been used very broadly during the pandemic. It's clear that it needs a very specific definition or such language could be used to make any protest illegal because it blocked access to a pizza place, etc.
- ajross 5y ago> The adjective critical though has been used very broadly Access to most of Ottawa was been cut off, including one of the biggest border crossings in Canada, not a "pizza place". Deploying hyperbole like this isn't helping your case. Surely if the Ambassador Bridge doesn't qualify as critical infrastructure, nothing does.
- JacobThreeThree 5y agoShutting down the entire CN rail network apparently didn't qualify previously. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/marc-miller-path-forward-protests-1.5468176 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/marc-miller-path-forward-pr... These railway blockades forced layoffs, and the CBC also notes that rail carries three times more than what trucks do in Canada. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/rail-shutdown-propane-supply-runs-low-maritimes-1.5465865 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/rail-shutdown-pro... Instead, in this case, the Trudeau government met with the protestors and had a process of dialogue that resolved them peacefully after almost a year.
- defaultname 5y agoThere are a couple of rather large exaggerations in your post. It wasn't the "entire CN rail network" (instead it was the Eastern Canada segment, comprising maybe 15% of CN's network). They don't claim that rail carries three times more than trucks do, but instead simply note that one rail car carries as much as three trucks. And the blockade lasted approximately 2-3 weeks. Not sure what you mean by "after almost a year". But let's be clear -- most of Canada was enraged about that. It was hugely expensive to Trudeau politically, and was a tenterhooks [edit - thank you fennec] situation because of the aboriginal file. Yet most of Canada absolutely wanted a stronger response and it hurt Trudeau in the election. I honestly don't get these "but the rail blockade" or "but some BLM protest in some US city" responses.
- fennecfoxen 5y ago* tenterhooks https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/on-tenterhooks-origin-meaning-phrase https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/on-tenterhooks...
- dibujante 5y ago
- TeeMassive 5y ago> I honestly don't get these "but the rail blockade" or "but some BLM protest in some US city" responses. It's usually called integrity and honestty
- collegeburner 5y ago> I honestly don't get these... "but some BLM protest in some US city" responses I am ok with BLM blocking infrastructure and disripting things to spread an important message. But we have to give everybody the same ability then.
- JacobThreeThree 5y ago>It was hugely expensive to Trudeau politically, and was a tenterhooks [edit - thank you fennec] situation because of the aboriginal file. Yet most of Canada absolutely wanted a stronger response and it hurt Trudeau in the election. So as long as it's politically expedient for the sitting PM you would advocate using the emergencies act? Yikes.
- defaultname 5y ago> So as long as it's politically expedient for the sitting PM you would advocate using the emergencies act? Yikes. Can you point to the part of my post that said that? Anywhere? Yikes. Stronger response simply means demanding that police enforce existing laws and injunctions (where injunctions are often simply court orders saying "follow the law") instead of the conciliatory let-it-play-out messaging that Trudeau used at the time. Even in the case of the current protests the emergency act seems unnecessary, and is basically a failure condition for the Ottawa Police basically doing nothing and claiming that they're all out of ideas.
- colechristensen 5y agoI'm not saying what is currently being obstructed is wrong (or not) to include in a restriction on protest. I am saying that during the pandemic for the purposes of restrictions and exceptions, people who worked at grocery stores were "critical workers". It's a big old caution for using words like "critical" which are very vague in order to implement policy assuming it will be used for things you deem to be important, because you do things like that and now there's precedent. Grocery stores are critical infrastructure now so some picket line for a labor dispute at a grocery store is now legally arguably a banned protest. When opposed to things, people are usually very happy to give away freedoms they don't realize might have adverse consequences in the future.
- benatkin 5y agoWhere does it say "critical"? It seems to me like you replaced the word "essential" with "critical".
- nathanaldensr 5y agoBoth words are tools of propaganda nowadays. Define them to leave no doubt and I'll change my mind.
- colechristensen 5y agoIt does here, for example: https://covid19.ca.gov/essential-workforce/ https://covid19.ca.gov/essential-workforce/ > In accordance with this order, the State Public Health Officer has designated the following list of Essential Critical Infrastructure Workers to help state, local, tribal, and industry partners as they work to protect communities, while ensuring continuity of functions critical to public health and safety, as well as economic and national security.
- benatkin 5y agoNope, critical is attached to infrastructure there, not to workers.
- edmcnulty101 5y agoLocking bank accounts at all WITHOUT A TRIAL, seems dystopian. That's a lot of power for the state to have to be able to reach into some ones bank accounts with no due process. Edit: changed AT ALL to without a trial because on second thought resized it's possible that there are some legit uses for freezing bank accounts.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- WesternWind 5y agoBlocking bridges with trucks to protest public health members seems dystopian.
- edmcnulty101 5y agoClearly not everyone agrees that , what some consider medical tyranny, is a good thing.
- WesternWind 5y agoThank goodness I'm not trying to speak for everyone then, just for myself, because it doesn't seem like tyranny.
- edmcnulty101 5y agoDo you believe forcing women to wear burkhas is tyrannical? The forcing of wearing masks is a tyrannical action, whether it's for a 'good cause' or not. Some people view the ends do not justify tyrannical means.
- ric2b 5y agoTyrannical means " Unjust or oppressive governmental power.", so the justification for the mandate is important, not just the fact that a mandate exists. A mandate with a good justification is authoritarian but not tyrannical.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago> "Protesting is not and will not be illegal." The trick is to categorize the protest as something else.
- not2b 5y agoA "protest" that prevents people from crossing a border or shuts down a city isn't a protest. It is hostage-taking. The US First amendment has some good language on this: the people have a right to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Imposing a blockade does not qualify. If they just sit in front of Parliament and hold up signs and shout, but don't impede anyone going about their business, then they have a right to make their voices heard. But what about (some other protest)? Civil rights protesters are usually ordered to disperse after a short time and get arrested if they don't. Sometimes they engage in civil disobedience, but they can be arrested if they do that.
- anonporridge 5y agoThe trick is to categorize protestors as "domestic terroists", despite having not done any extreme violent actions, as the Canadian government seems to be doing here.
- slothtrop 5y agoThe govt didn't coin that, the public did, by virtue that protesters are terrorizing the residents. Harassment, 100+db horns at night, vandalization, etc.
- amscanne 5y agoAs usual, the devil is in the details. I would agree that the bridge is critical, and that forceful removal was justified. I’m less convinced that Wellington St. is critical, and I would be concerned that only the broadest brushes will be used to determine which accounts will be frozen and why.
- jsjsbdkj 5y agoIt's not just Wellington St, it's Ottawa from the Canal to Bronson, and Somerset to Welligton. On the weekend it's extended all the way up Bank St. A giant no-go zone where businesses and pedestrians aren't safe.
- mikefallen 5y agoDefine unsafe
- wyck 5y agoApparently bouncy playgrounds for kids, free food, dj's and people shoveling are unsafe.
- dicknuckle 5y ago
- jessaustin 5y agoDo you think Hitler is often invoked in good faith?
- slothtrop 5y agoHarassment. Have you not been paying attention?
- amscanne 5y agoAren’t MPs still coming and going each day in the midst of it? That’s hard to square with a “no-go zone”.
- slibhb 5y agoWe have a word for "blocking infrastructure" as a form of protest: civil disobedience. I'm sympathetic to (some) of the aims of the protesters but I think they've made their point and should go home. Still, this move by Trudeau seems like an overreaction considering there's been little/no violence.
- JamisonM 5y agoCivil disobedience as I support it is a non-violent action. A lot of people cite these protestors as "non-violent" but there have been many incidences of protestors attacking or intimidating residents as well as intimidating the police to resist enforcement actions so I don't regard the current occupation in Ottawa as meeting that threshold. I think that anyone following closely would have to concede that police conduct and the lack of enforcement is a product of the threat of violence, but I certainly concede that it might be the case that immediate enforcement /might/ result in nonviolent resolution - it just seems very unlikely.
- _-david-_ 5y agoCan you name a protest of this size that hasn't had a little bit of violence?
- JamisonM 5y agoThe funny thing about the occupation of Ottawa is that it is very small! There have been many protests on parliment hill itself with ten times the headcount without incident. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/photos-climate-strike-ottawa-1.5300353 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/photos-climate-strike-...
- _-david-_ 5y agoI missed a qualifier about the length. That protest appears to be a day. Most day rallies have no issues. It starts to have issues when they start to be a week or more. I would also note that some in this thread are claiming shutting down streets are violence. That protest shut down multiple streets.
- kerneloftruth 5y agoTrudeau is calling the whole protest illegal. Last week they arrested an old man for merely honking his horn to show support. So, anyone attending a protest is joining an illegal activity...and can have their accounts frozen. There's no guarantee of due process in Canada's constitution?
- SECProto 5y ago> Trudeau is calling the whole protest illegal. The whole protest has been illegal from the start (violating the highway traffic act) > Last week they arrested an old man for merely honking his horn to show support. Source? Either way, yes, there was an injunction granted specifically against honking horns. > So, anyone attending a protest is joining an illegal activity...and can have their accounts frozen. No, anyone attending this specific protest at this specific time when there is a provincial state of an emergency (and now the invoking of the federal emergencies act, which requires provincial assent) is joining an illegal activity, and anyone providing monetary support to said illegal activity may have their accounts frozen. > There's no guarantee of due process in Canada's constitution? There is indeed. The Emergencies Act is subject to the charter of rights and freedoms, section 7 of which covers legal rights[1] and section 1 of which lays out how these rights are subject to "such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society". It'll be up to the courts to decide after the fact whether these restrictions were demonstrably justified (hint: with the province declaring the protest illegal, declaring a state of emergency last week, and the protesters totally refusing to move: they will be found justified. Our court system is not nearly as politicized as our southern neighbours') [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms#Legal_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and...
- yonaguska 5y agohttps://youtu.be/Ea-7RKpRNIk https://youtu.be/Ea-7RKpRNIk Man arrested for honking
- abstract_put 5y ago
- daenz 5y agoThat's like saying civil forfeiture is ok because the police will only ever take things from people involved with actual crimes, and that if you're not doing crime you have nothing to worry about. Do you forget how things are manipulated by people with power?
- TheOtherHobbes 5y agoNo it isn't. And this is entire event has been orchestrated by "people with power" with a political agenda which is hostile to most of the population. It has almost exactly zero organic content. No amount of rhetoric and gaslighting is going to change that.
- 0cVlTeIATBs 5y agoCould you summarize who the "people in power" are and their agenda, in your opinion?
- _whiteCaps_ 5y agohttps://toronto.ctvnews.ca/anonymous-donations-to-convoy-as-high-as-215-000-concern-canadian-mps-1.5777497 https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/anonymous-donations-to-convoy-as-... > The top donation, $215,000, has a comment that says “processed but not recorded.” The next top donation, at $90,000, is listed as from Thomas M. Siebel. CTV News has reached out to the American billionaire by the same name but has not confirmed it is his donation.
- notjoemama 5y agoEh, never mind. In retrospect my previous thoughts add nothing. I apologize for wasting your time.
- DuskStar 5y agoShould we apply the same standards to things like BLM or Moms Demand Action? Those standards being "billionaires donated, therefore illegitimate" as far as I can tell.
- rubyist5eva 5y agoBecause these kinds of measure have never been abused, never, nope, not even once!
- partiallypro 5y agoYeah, when have governments ever abused civil forfeiture or called people terrorists in order to skirt the legal process?
- nathanaldensr 5y agoHow short the memories of our would-be overloads are.
- gwicks56 5y agoI'm sure Trump could have come up with reason BLM protesters were doing something illegal, and needed to shut down their bank accounts.
- klyrs 5y agoBLM protests happened in a completely different legal jurisdiction. Trump couldn't invoke the Emergencies Act, because that's a Canadian law.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- thesz 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests_in_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests_in_Canad... There were BLM protests in Canada.
- hindsightbias 5y agoThere was talk about the Insurrection Act. Ties to the Civil War probably made them a little weak in the knees.
- klyrs 5y agoOkay? There was talk about a law in the US that didn't get exercised. Facts and weasel words acknowledged. So what? I really don't understand why people insist on re-litigating the BLM riots, focused on what the American government did or did not do. This is a story about protests going down in Canada, and how the Canadian government is responding to them. The only connection is the huge infusion of American money into this Canadian protest, but instead, folks are doing whataboutism donuts on BLM's lawn. It doesn't apply here. Why are people doing this.
- thepasswordis 5y agoOkay now define "blocking" and "critical" and "infrastructure".
- listenallyall 5y agoEverything can be classified as "critical infrastructure" if your goal is to shut down a protest justified due to "blocking critical infrastructure".
- cevered 5y agoyeah who cares about due process lets freeze accounts anybody we dont like /s
- thawaya3113 5y agoAlso, the courts have already ruled against the blockades, including in Ottawa.
- listless 5y agoI agree with this and I generally support their cause. But you don’t have the right to shut down commerce and affect citizens ability to move across a border. IMO they have let this go on far too long.
- swader999 5y agoYet this is exactly what was being done to these truckers prior to their actions.
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y agoIsn’t that also the US side policy? That the United States demands that Canadian truckers also be vaccinated?
- swader999 5y agoYes but I don't see how that changes anything.
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y agoWhat I am pointing out is that it’s weird to protest Canada for having policies that limit the employment of unvaccinated truckers when it’s the Americans who had the vaccine mandates first.
- swader999 5y agoThe timing on our side was likely influenced by the election call in September this year.
- mostertoaster 5y agoAnd watch you’ll see mandates dropping in states where midterm elections are coming up for folks, cuz the mandates are stupid and people pretend to like them to impress the other people pretending to like them, but nearly everyone just wants to leave clown world.
- capybara_2020 5y agoI am not a north American so I just catch glimpses of what is happening in articles that pop up like this. So I am not taking sides here. Just making an observation about protests in general. With that being said, how do you get noticed? I remember there was a Wall Street protest of some kind right after the crash. They sat quietly in parks and protested because people got annoyed when they were "inconvenienced" when they protested outside buildings. Their protests fizzled out and was forgotten. Even though large swathes of people were pissed off with Wall Street. Back in college, we had a protest. Few people from the media were there and we were protesting on campus, doing it "right". The media people were like "go do something...we cannot cover a bunch of college kids sitting around!" Unfortunately protests(the ones you agree with and the ones your disagree with) run by smaller groups are going to get noticed only when they do "illegal" things.
- hindsightbias 5y agoOccupy Wall Street did not do a lot of shutdowns, they quickly migrated marches to sidewalks and sit downs to public spaces to the consternation of nypd. The reason they fizzled is they had absolutely zero marketing experience. When they finally got down to listing their demands, it was a 43 point manifesto from save the penquins to truther investigations. BLM really didn’t get anywhere (they initially had a ~14 point demands) until someone came up with “Defund!”. Marketers would get you down to 2 or 3 items, but two syllables was brilliant.
- southerntofu 5y agoThe reason Occupy failed is not because of marketing, it's because they were not organized to face the raw powers of the State protecting Wall Street moguls. By peacefully demonstrating on sidewalks, you're not having any meaningful impact and you're not being heard. Someone in this thread mentioned "civil disobedience" movements. Studying the history of such movements (anti-apartheid politics, workers movements, womens rights, anti-colonial struggles), we quickly realize although having a mass of non-violent protesters (popular support) is important, the actual balance of power lies with more militant groups putting actual pressure (sabotage, blockages, attacks) on our overlords to change things for the better.
- parineum 5y agoWill those accounts be frozen before or after trial?
- nathanaldensr 5y agoA better question: will there even be a trial?
- bluefirebrand 5y ago> Blocking critical infrastructure is illegal. Emergency powers weren't invoked in 2020 when Canada's railways were blocked for months. In fact, at the time Trudeau was quoted saying things like "Politicians should not be telling the police how to deal with protesters" The double standards in this country are staggering at times.
- wyager 5y agoIsn't it interesting how demonstrations contrary to the regime tend to be treated as criminal non-protests while demonstrations amenable to the regime tend to be treated as "legitimate" protests? Certainly this classification cannot be derived a priori in any other way; for example, the regime media generally treated vastly more disruptive and destructive demonstrations in 2020 as "legitimate" protests despite those demonstrations involving ex ante illegal activities like arson and theft.