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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

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.

valachio 5y ago
[Here's a popular viewpoint from the left about protests](https://twitter.com/aoc/status/1334184644707758080?lang=en https://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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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
    - michael1999 5y ago
      When you organize a large, funded protest, internal organization, tactics, and policing are definitely your responsibility. Unleashing an incoherent mob is just vandalism.
    - tekstar 5y ago
      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.
- armchairhacker 5y ago
  ok, just want to say i’ve heard this before and this is what i really hate about protests. You want politicians or big business to react but you’re pissing off small businesses and civilians. Even if I 100% agree with your protest, I don’t want you to blare loud music and block off roadways and generally be aggressive and obnoxious. In fact this kind of thing makes ordinary people go against you. If you can’t target the politicians and big businesses directly, if you want to get the people’s support, bring attention to your issue. If it’s a serious issue people will take interest themselves. Once you some support, then you can go out and protest and lead a huge rally, but don’t blatantly piss off bystanders.
  - cryptorules 5y ago
    [flagged]
giarc 5y ago
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 5y ago
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
- tekstar 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    >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 5y ago
      > 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
joe_the_user 5y ago
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-police-act-now-stop-truck-protest-82903633 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/canadian-official-po...
- tekstar 5y ago
  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.
loufe 5y ago
I also live in Ottawa, in fact in the downtown core. This was absolutely a protest. I didn't support the message they were pushing, but it was a protest. The horns were a nuisance (people ending up in the hospital unable to sleep) but they were a problem solved a little before the halfway mark. It's unfair to give the impression this was still a problem.
xdennis 5y ago
Governments have occupied people's lives for 2 years now. I think you can bear a few days of honking for freedom. Businesses weren't closed by protesters. That's what they were protesting FOR: to have things open up. The protesters weren't harassing people: the government has been doing it for 2 years.
- monkeybutton 5y ago
  These statements are easily falsifiable, why do you make them? The largest mall in Ottawa was shut down for nearly a month because of the demonstrator's antics! https://ottawa.citynews.ca/local-news/rideau-centre-reopens-to-public-tuesday-after-24-day-closure-5086247 https://ottawa.citynews.ca/local-news/rideau-centre-reopens-...
charlieyu1 5y ago
[flagged]

valachio 5y ago

[Here's a popular viewpoint from the left about protests](https://twitter.com/aoc/status/1334184644707758080?lang=en https://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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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
  - michael1999 5y ago
    When you organize a large, funded protest, internal organization, tactics, and policing are definitely your responsibility. Unleashing an incoherent mob is just vandalism.
  - tekstar 5y ago
    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.
armchairhacker 5y ago
ok, just want to say i’ve heard this before and this is what i really hate about protests. You want politicians or big business to react but you’re pissing off small businesses and civilians. Even if I 100% agree with your protest, I don’t want you to blare loud music and block off roadways and generally be aggressive and obnoxious. In fact this kind of thing makes ordinary people go against you. If you can’t target the politicians and big businesses directly, if you want to get the people’s support, bring attention to your issue. If it’s a serious issue people will take interest themselves. Once you some support, then you can go out and protest and lead a huge rally, but don’t blatantly piss off bystanders.
- cryptorules 5y ago
  [flagged]

giarc 5y ago

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 5y ago

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

tekstar 5y ago
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 5y ago
  >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 5y ago
    > 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

joe_the_user 5y ago

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-police-act-now-stop-truck-protest-82903633 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/canadian-official-po...

tekstar 5y ago
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.

loufe 5y ago

I also live in Ottawa, in fact in the downtown core. This was absolutely a protest. I didn't support the message they were pushing, but it was a protest. The horns were a nuisance (people ending up in the hospital unable to sleep) but they were a problem solved a little before the halfway mark. It's unfair to give the impression this was still a problem.

xdennis 5y ago

Governments have occupied people's lives for 2 years now. I think you can bear a few days of honking for freedom. Businesses weren't closed by protesters. That's what they were protesting FOR: to have things open up. The protesters weren't harassing people: the government has been doing it for 2 years.

monkeybutton 5y ago
These statements are easily falsifiable, why do you make them? The largest mall in Ottawa was shut down for nearly a month because of the demonstrator's antics! https://ottawa.citynews.ca/local-news/rideau-centre-reopens-to-public-tuesday-after-24-day-closure-5086247 https://ottawa.citynews.ca/local-news/rideau-centre-reopens-...

charlieyu1 5y ago

[flagged]