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One of the most frustrating things about that whole situation with the Emergencies Act is the people simultaneously shouting "they have to use it, it's the only

One of the most frustrating things about that whole situation with the Emergencies Act is the people simultaneously shouting "they have to use it, it's the only way for them to have the power to shut it down!" and "no one's rights are being violated!" I found the final report on the whole EA invocation to be reasonable. It found that the use of the EA was warranted, but also made it crystal clear that a) other people could look at the same facts and come to a different conclusion, and b) that the only reason it got to the point where it needed to be invoked was due to government incompetence at the municipal, provincial, and federal level.

rhaway84773 4y ago
While I agree with most of your comment, I don’t think the application of emergency necessarily contradicts fundamental rights. For example, a truck may be allowed to park on a road for a while. They are allowed to honk occasionally as needed while driving. This is completely legal. However, that doesn’t mean they have a fundamental right to park private objects in public space and disturb the peace by honking unnecessarily for extended periods of time. Laws allow people to do a lot more than just what fundamental rights allow. Often those laws will never consider scenarios that are not fundamental rights but are possibly hurting the fundamental rights of others, and then for practical reasons, an emergency would be the only way to resolve the situation in a reasonable amount of time. If the emergency was abused to suspend fundamental rights that can be opposed in courts and at the ballot box. Emergencies don’t give the government carte blanche to abuse citizens’ rights. They give government a reprieve to act quickly, and let the legal system get involved later. In most jurisdictions (I don’t know if this is true in Canada, but it’s certainly true in the US, where courts required governments to overturn emergency laws during the pandemic), people can still petition the courts that their rights were suspended illegally. Emergency laws don’t eliminate rights. They suspend them and courts absolutely have the ability (at least in the US) to get involved and penalize the government if it finds the suspension of rights are unwarranted. I don’t believe any Canadian court has found that to be the case in the truckers blockade, which probably reflects that fundamental rights were not suppressed.
- tonyarkles 4y ago
  > Emergency laws don’t eliminate rights. They suspend them and courts absolutely have the ability (at least in the US) to get involved and penalize the government if it finds the suspension of rights are unwarranted. One of the key differences between the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the US Constitution is that the charter was an escape hatch right in section 1: > The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. When there’s an allegation that someone’s charter rights have been violated by the government, there’s a 3 part test known as the Oakes test that the courts use to determine whether or not the violation is appropriate per section 1. When an action by the government makes it to court and fails the Oakes test, the courts come up with a remedy. > I don’t believe any Canadian court has found that to be the case in the truckers blockade, which probably reflects that fundamental rights were not suppressed. I believe you are correct, but with a bit of nuance. From what I can tell, the convoy lawyers are somewhat incompetent. I don’t personally have much of a horse in this race, but as a citizen it would have been a really nice outcome for me to have seen some clarity and consistency come out of the Canadian courts on what exactly is or is not acceptable and when one side is doing a terrible job of arguing their case you end up with weak precedent. Beyond the trucker convoy, in the past couple of years we have also had several rail lines and an oil refinery blockaded for many weeks. National, provincial, and municipal police forces have handled these situations very differently, the courts have handled them differently, and the current legislative and precedent situation is very very hazy.
Pxtl 4y ago
I agree with all of this except the last bit: I don't think the federal government was incompetent, they simply don't have the tools to deal with that kind of policing crisis and rely on the lower tiers to provide policing, and have very few tools to deal with such a thing if they don't do it. Honestly I generally think Canadian federalism doesn't work anymore, at least in English Canada. Our media and voter landscape stubbornly refuses to understand and respect the separation of powers, so all it does is creat messes of misdirected blame and perverse incentives.
- tonyarkles 4y ago
  > I don't think the federal government was incompetent, they simply don't have the tools to deal with that kind of policing crisis It's not just about policing. For anyone who is looking for the document, see here: https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Final-Report/Vol-1-Report-of-the-Public-Inquiry-into-the-2022-Public-Order-Emergency.pdf https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Fi... Section 25.2 says this in the context of the "fringe minority" comments made by the Prime Minister early in the protests: > I expect that the Prime Minister was intending to refer to the small number of people who were expressing racist, extremist, or otherwise reprehensible views, rather than to all Freedom Convoy participants. It may well be that his comments were taken out of context, including by some media. However, in my view more of an effort should have been made by government leaders at all levels during the protests to acknowledge that the majority of protesters were exercising their fundamental democratic rights. And further in 25.3: > Had there been greater collaboration at the political level from the start, it could well have assisted in ironing out the communication, jurisdictional, and resourcing issues that plagued the early response to the protests. All in all I found it to be a really well written document that does a really good job of breaking down the timeline, the various players, the affected legislation, etc. The media headlines lost so much of the nuance of this report and I was pretty disappointed by the general reception of it.

rhaway84773 4y ago

While I agree with most of your comment, I don’t think the application of emergency necessarily contradicts fundamental rights. For example, a truck may be allowed to park on a road for a while. They are allowed to honk occasionally as needed while driving. This is completely legal. However, that doesn’t mean they have a fundamental right to park private objects in public space and disturb the peace by honking unnecessarily for extended periods of time. Laws allow people to do a lot more than just what fundamental rights allow. Often those laws will never consider scenarios that are not fundamental rights but are possibly hurting the fundamental rights of others, and then for practical reasons, an emergency would be the only way to resolve the situation in a reasonable amount of time. If the emergency was abused to suspend fundamental rights that can be opposed in courts and at the ballot box. Emergencies don’t give the government carte blanche to abuse citizens’ rights. They give government a reprieve to act quickly, and let the legal system get involved later. In most jurisdictions (I don’t know if this is true in Canada, but it’s certainly true in the US, where courts required governments to overturn emergency laws during the pandemic), people can still petition the courts that their rights were suspended illegally. Emergency laws don’t eliminate rights. They suspend them and courts absolutely have the ability (at least in the US) to get involved and penalize the government if it finds the suspension of rights are unwarranted. I don’t believe any Canadian court has found that to be the case in the truckers blockade, which probably reflects that fundamental rights were not suppressed.

tonyarkles 4y ago
> Emergency laws don’t eliminate rights. They suspend them and courts absolutely have the ability (at least in the US) to get involved and penalize the government if it finds the suspension of rights are unwarranted. One of the key differences between the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the US Constitution is that the charter was an escape hatch right in section 1: > The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. When there’s an allegation that someone’s charter rights have been violated by the government, there’s a 3 part test known as the Oakes test that the courts use to determine whether or not the violation is appropriate per section 1. When an action by the government makes it to court and fails the Oakes test, the courts come up with a remedy. > I don’t believe any Canadian court has found that to be the case in the truckers blockade, which probably reflects that fundamental rights were not suppressed. I believe you are correct, but with a bit of nuance. From what I can tell, the convoy lawyers are somewhat incompetent. I don’t personally have much of a horse in this race, but as a citizen it would have been a really nice outcome for me to have seen some clarity and consistency come out of the Canadian courts on what exactly is or is not acceptable and when one side is doing a terrible job of arguing their case you end up with weak precedent. Beyond the trucker convoy, in the past couple of years we have also had several rail lines and an oil refinery blockaded for many weeks. National, provincial, and municipal police forces have handled these situations very differently, the courts have handled them differently, and the current legislative and precedent situation is very very hazy.

Pxtl 4y ago

I agree with all of this except the last bit: I don't think the federal government was incompetent, they simply don't have the tools to deal with that kind of policing crisis and rely on the lower tiers to provide policing, and have very few tools to deal with such a thing if they don't do it. Honestly I generally think Canadian federalism doesn't work anymore, at least in English Canada. Our media and voter landscape stubbornly refuses to understand and respect the separation of powers, so all it does is creat messes of misdirected blame and perverse incentives.

tonyarkles 4y ago
> I don't think the federal government was incompetent, they simply don't have the tools to deal with that kind of policing crisis It's not just about policing. For anyone who is looking for the document, see here: https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Final-Report/Vol-1-Report-of-the-Public-Inquiry-into-the-2022-Public-Order-Emergency.pdf https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Fi... Section 25.2 says this in the context of the "fringe minority" comments made by the Prime Minister early in the protests: > I expect that the Prime Minister was intending to refer to the small number of people who were expressing racist, extremist, or otherwise reprehensible views, rather than to all Freedom Convoy participants. It may well be that his comments were taken out of context, including by some media. However, in my view more of an effort should have been made by government leaders at all levels during the protests to acknowledge that the majority of protesters were exercising their fundamental democratic rights. And further in 25.3: > Had there been greater collaboration at the political level from the start, it could well have assisted in ironing out the communication, jurisdictional, and resourcing issues that plagued the early response to the protests. All in all I found it to be a really well written document that does a really good job of breaking down the timeline, the various players, the affected legislation, etc. The media headlines lost so much of the nuance of this report and I was pretty disappointed by the general reception of it.