8 ms·

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 suspe

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  [deleted]
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  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 We need good faith debate and review of outdated laws, revision or excision of bad ideas - racial language, weird moral errata, and finally a sufficiently detailed and rigorous regulation of novel technology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 5y ago
    > 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 5y ago
      Honestly, 1955 seems like a distant dream....
      - kixiQu 5y ago
        Or, to others, a nightmare. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till
      - paulryanrogers 5y ago
        So long as you're a white, protestant, male adult with no significant or visible disabilities.
        throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        Every time someone says anything good about any year prior to 1980 or so someone shoots back with this low effort quip. I think it's obvious that anyone praising the 1950s in 2022 can be assumed to be saying "like that but for everybody" unless there is a specific reason to think they want to exclude certain groups.
        pasabagi 5y ago
roenxi 5y ago
> 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-claims-single-mom-s-bank-account-was-frozen-over-convoy-donation-1.5790682 https://bc.ctvnews.ca/social-media-post-from-b-c-politician-...
- wvenable 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- verisimi 5y ago
  "There is now a risk of being debanked for having the wrong sort of political opinions!" Not a risk, a reality.

cal5k 5y ago

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 5y ago
[deleted]
robbedpeter 5y ago
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 5y ago
  > 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 5y ago
    Honestly, 1955 seems like a distant dream....
    - kixiQu 5y ago
      Or, to others, a nightmare. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till
    - paulryanrogers 5y ago
      So long as you're a white, protestant, male adult with no significant or visible disabilities.
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        Every time someone says anything good about any year prior to 1980 or so someone shoots back with this low effort quip. I think it's obvious that anyone praising the 1950s in 2022 can be assumed to be saying "like that but for everybody" unless there is a specific reason to think they want to exclude certain groups.
        pasabagi 5y ago

roenxi 5y ago

> 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-claims-single-mom-s-bank-account-was-frozen-over-convoy-donation-1.5790682 https://bc.ctvnews.ca/social-media-post-from-b-c-politician-...

wvenable 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
verisimi 5y ago
"There is now a risk of being debanked for having the wrong sort of political opinions!" Not a risk, a reality.