11 ms·

Canada being totalitarian? I'm shocked.

tomComb 2y ago
I know that opponents of the current gov are enjoying this line recently, but our government is so far from totalitarianism that this seems silly to me. The real problem is oligopoly, not fascism or anything like that. The government puts most of its effort into protecting friendly companies and industries from competition and even funneling taxpayer money to them. In the case of Bell & Rogers this is billions of $ a year.
- johnny99k 2y ago
  Have we forgotten Covid so quickly? People involved in a legal protest had their bank accounts seized.
  - transcriptase 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - lupusreal 2y ago
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      - tensor 2y ago
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        deleted 2y ago
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        lupusreal 2y ago
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        tensor 2y ago
        I used to live in Toronto near queen's park. There were very frequent protests down yonge and in queens park. Never once in all the time I lived there was I prevented sleeping by protestors honking outside my building all night. I was also never once confronted, cornered, harassed, or yelled at by protestors. Not once. These actions are not ok and not typical of any protest. Yes I was frequently inconvenienced with the street blocked, but that's fine, the cost of living in a democracy. Protesting does not involve attacking fellow citizens.
        frabbit 2y ago
        Did the protests achieve anything besides re-affirming your perception that you live in a democracy?
        adamomada 2y ago
        The horn usage did not go on for weeks on end. It was an early concession to stop
        tensor 2y ago
        It was not a "concession" it was stopped by a judge issuing an injunction because the truckers were sued by locals. That lawsuit is still ongoing.
      - HappySweeney 2y ago
        [flagged]
        lupusreal 2y ago
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        mardifoufs 2y ago
        Is blocking a bridge also terrorism? Or is it just federal employees that get to not have anyone bothering them?
        pookha 2y ago
        Disagree with everything you're trying to say. Terrorism has evolved into a doublespeak term used to describe your systems' quasi enemy...This was just civil disobedience and like any form of civil disobedience (that isn't directly sanctioned by government actors) they got slaughtered. The government in Canada pushed through extremely draconian Wuhan-styled lockdown rules and, just like what Camus wax-philosophized over, there's a breaking point with subjugated humans and a price those subjugating put on their own "hurt". "The six thousand crosses which, after such a just rebellion, staked out the road from Capua to Rome demonstrated to the servile crowd that there is no equality in the world of power and that the masters calculate, at a usurious rate, the price of their own blood."
        Marsymars 2y ago
        > The government in Canada pushed through extremely draconian Wuhan-styled lockdown rules Pretty much none of "lockdown" rules were federal - and at least in my province, I never felt more than mildly inconvenienced. Literally the worst thing I experienced was a shutdown of indoor team sports for a season.
  - richardlblair 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - naasking 2y ago
      No it wasn't.
      - richardlblair 2y ago
        It absolutely was.
        adamomada 2y ago
        You weren’t there and are full of shit. What else have you been told?
        richardlblair 2y ago
        You have no idea if I'm full of shit or not.
        ImJamal 2y ago
        Then maybe you should provide a source as somebody else has asked you to do to show you are not full of shit?
        richardlblair 2y ago
        Whether convoy supporters think I'm right or not doesn't particularly matter to me. You all have an internet connection, look it up. It's not hard to find. Edit - a friend provided me with the following article. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00027642231166885#bibr42-00027642231166885 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00027642231166... Enjoy
        2y ago
  - tenpies 2y ago
    Not just seized: seized extra-judicially, and retro-actively. These two details are important because: 1) no laws were passed and no courts were involved. 2) activities that were perfectly legal at the time, were deemed retroactively illegal and persecuted (not prosecuted - no courts, remember?). The only regimes in which you see this are tinpot dictatorships and Trudeau's Canada. Just imagine how powerful those two precedents are for any future radical who seeks to follow on the footsteps of the petite tyrant Trudeau.
- nightowl_games 2y ago
  Freezing the bank accounts of the trucker protest and deploying the emergency powers _was_ a bit wild. Even our top court ruled the emergency powers weren't necessary. Opening the windsor bridge, yeah, lets arrest everyone immediately, but clearing the people out of ottawa? That ones not so clear. But no matter how you slice it, the bank account freezing was a precedent that probably shouldn't have been made.
  - canadiantim 2y ago
    On the plus side, now the conservatives can use emergency powers to deal with protests too. The cat's out of the bag, and people with left-leaning politics who were okay with the powers being applied to the trucker protest, I'm sure we'll find they're all of the sudden not so okay when it's applied to a protest they favour.
    - AlexandrB 2y ago
      I think the truckers were idiots and that their protest made no sense and probably made life for the average Ottawa resident very annoying at the time. I also think that freezing their bank accounts was huge government overreach and I'm sad that the consequence to the government for doing it have been basically non-existent. In both Canada and the US each "side" loves ratcheting up government power against what they perceive as their political enemies. It's going to end in tears.
      - whatwhaaaaat 2y ago
        [flagged]
        wizzwizz4 2y ago
        I don't think the "untested"* COVID-19 vaccine was given to anyone in the US, so if you "vote democrat" you wouldn't have been in any danger – except if you chose not to vaccinate yourself. Are you talking about something else? *: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford%E2%80%93AstraZeneca_COVID-19_vaccine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford%E2%80%93AstraZeneca_COV... actually was tested: they had suspicions it caused blood clots for a few people, then they found some slightly more suspicious data. Even then, taking it was better than taking nothing for the average person – just, there were other, safer vaccines available, so nobody informed would want to take it. Its administration was halted in most countries it was approved in, once there was some evidence of harm. But the correlation's still so weak that we're not really sure it's the vaccine causing it, or even if the effect is real. Blood clot risk is still higher if you get COVID-19 than if you get this vaccine. In general, the worst thing an uncontaminated vaccine can give you is mild symptoms of the disease it protects you against. We are very, very, very cautious about such things (I'd argue, too cautious, but when I take my utilitarian-debate-club hat off, I am similarly paranoid, so I don't begrudge them overmuch).
- poochipie 2y ago
  "The government should solve every problem" is a totalizing idea the Liberals have implemented though. We see this in the job growth numbers, for example, that show massive federal government hiring and anemic private sector growth. A market solution would have federal incentives create private sector growth to accomplish goals. And, yes: Canada badly needs some kind of antitrust regime. Perhaps the reward for monopolization of a Canadian market should be nationalization.
- rustcleaner 2y ago
  Governments have figured out they can affect their populations like a rancher affects cattle. Elections are no longer solemn rituals but instead are processes for manufacturing consent to be governed. Only through the magick of the social contract can your neighbors collectively eat you while individually they are prevented.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  > The government puts most of its effort into protecting friendly companies and industries from competition and even funneling taxpayer money to them. Somehow, the people rushing to use that "faccism" label tend to ignore this one property of the original ones.
- larater 2y ago
  As an American that has gone up to Canada thousands of times in my life, you have to be completely delusional to say this. The change in Canada from 20 years ago is just shocking. If you can't see this, it is because you don't want to see it. Canadians like you are why I think your country is utterly doomed.
Longhanks 2y ago
No need to worry, the EU tries the same every few weeks. https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/let-yourself-be-monitored-eu-governments-to-agree-on-chat-control-with-user-consent/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/let-yourself-be-monitored-e...
chongli 2y ago
Authoritarian. Totalitarianism requires a large mobilization of the population under a single ideology. Putin aspires to be a totalitarian leader but even he has not managed to pull it off. He depends quite heavily on a depoliticized "silent majority" of Russians who are too scared/complacent to challenge his security apparatus. If Russia were a totalitarian state then you'd see that majority rushing to join the military and join the government.
- lynx23 2y ago
  > Totalitarianism requires a large mobilization of the population under a single ideology. Either you forgot about COVID or you seem to have a case of Stockholm syndrom.e Those which haven't had an issue with mandates shots seem to totally ignore what a schock the sitaution was for those who didnt approve.
  - richardlblair 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - lynx23 2y ago
      Rape victims aside, what is medical autonomy to some is the right to kill unborn life for rather weak personal reasons to others. Thats how democracy works. People will have different opinions about things... Besides, I totally fail how you create that box. Not every anti-experimental-vaxer is anti abortion. Heck, most people I know who didn't approve of mandatory vaccination were always voting left. But sure, if you like to think that everyone with a different opinion then you can conveniently be put into the right-wing box, go ahead. You're being silly, though.
      - richardlblair 2y ago
        You spelled fetus wrong. The cognitive dissonance you Pee Pee followers have to navigate is incredible. Some people get medical autonomy, others don't. Makes sense.
markhahn 2y ago
This is pointless and ill-informed cynicism. Canada is not totalitarian. Frankly, I can't imagine claiming so unless you have quite an extreme view of politics (for instance, the appropriateness of blockading downtown Ottawa). There is plenty of MAGA-like conspiratory thinking in Canada, but it's relatively new for Canada, and definitely not widely-accepted.
- tavavex 2y ago
  People online are insanely cynical about Canada without having ever stepped one foot in the country. A ton of discourse regarding Canada happens in between non-Canadians, and I'm not sure if it's intentional at this point. Every scandal or disagreement gets blown up to an international stage, people eager to take party talking points as unquestionable truth. There's no shortage of Americans who wholeheartedly believe that Canada is an authoritarian regime. Given that the average HN user seems to be an older, conservative-leaning American I'm not really surprised by the sentiment, though I did hope for more level-headed discussions.
  - mardifoufs 2y ago
    What's this weird obsession with Americans? I'm Canadian, and it's only white liberal Canadians that have this super weird rose tinted look at their own country because they blame everything on the US. Maybe you're privileged enough to not relate with the issues highlighted, but that's just your own bubble.
- mardifoufs 2y ago
  I mean, Canada is the only country in the west that has used emergency powers not once but twice in 50 years. Either our country is unstable (it's not) or the federal government clearly doesn't give a shit about precedent and due process. It also doesn't help that the same government has admitted to a current genocide without basically doing anything about it. So yes, when you combine those two things criticism will happen.
verandaguy 2y ago
This is an awful take. At no point in the last several decades has any Canadian government come close to being totalitarian, authoritarian, or otherwise. The most recent example in living memory (which I don't intend to downplay) would've been residential schools, which were run by churches with supportive policies coming from the federal (and lower) governments. The last residential school closed in 1997. Canada is absolutely, beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt, a representative democracy falling under the broad umbrella of "Western (Neo)liberal democracies". There are legitimate criticisms of neoliberalism just as there are of neoconservativism, but totalitarian aspirations are exceptionally rarely a valid accusation. If anything, the biggest threat to Canadian democracy might be a decline in political literacy. We don't have an election where we vote for PMs, but many people still do. We don't have a two-party system; in practice, we have a multi-party system to the extent that minority governments are possible (we have one now!), but many people vote as though we're in a two-party system with a handful of "joke parties" that amount to wasting your vote. We have a bicameral parliament, but one of our chambers is made up purely of elected members who have so far mostly stayed level-headed through more or less sheer force of good will (which I don't consider a good enough protection in the long term, but that's another topic). How laws are introduced into parliament and passed is something most Canadians probably couldn't answer off the top of their heads in more detail than saying that there there are a few readings, and most of us aren't following what our MP or MPP is doing for your riding, because in real terms, most of us vote based on a party leader and their at-large actions in office.

I know that opponents of the current gov are enjoying this line recently, but our government is so far from totalitarianism that this seems silly to me. The real problem is oligopoly, not fascism or anything like that. The government puts most of its effort into protecting friendly companies and industries from competition and even funneling taxpayer money to them. In the case of Bell & Rogers this is billions of $ a year.

johnny99k 2y ago
Have we forgotten Covid so quickly? People involved in a legal protest had their bank accounts seized.
- transcriptase 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - lupusreal 2y ago
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    - tensor 2y ago
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      - deleted 2y ago
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      - lupusreal 2y ago
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        tensor 2y ago
        I used to live in Toronto near queen's park. There were very frequent protests down yonge and in queens park. Never once in all the time I lived there was I prevented sleeping by protestors honking outside my building all night. I was also never once confronted, cornered, harassed, or yelled at by protestors. Not once. These actions are not ok and not typical of any protest. Yes I was frequently inconvenienced with the street blocked, but that's fine, the cost of living in a democracy. Protesting does not involve attacking fellow citizens.
        frabbit 2y ago
        Did the protests achieve anything besides re-affirming your perception that you live in a democracy?
      - adamomada 2y ago
        The horn usage did not go on for weeks on end. It was an early concession to stop
        tensor 2y ago
        It was not a "concession" it was stopped by a judge issuing an injunction because the truckers were sued by locals. That lawsuit is still ongoing.
    - HappySweeney 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - lupusreal 2y ago
        [flagged]
      - mardifoufs 2y ago
        Is blocking a bridge also terrorism? Or is it just federal employees that get to not have anyone bothering them?
      - pookha 2y ago
        Disagree with everything you're trying to say. Terrorism has evolved into a doublespeak term used to describe your systems' quasi enemy...This was just civil disobedience and like any form of civil disobedience (that isn't directly sanctioned by government actors) they got slaughtered. The government in Canada pushed through extremely draconian Wuhan-styled lockdown rules and, just like what Camus wax-philosophized over, there's a breaking point with subjugated humans and a price those subjugating put on their own "hurt". "The six thousand crosses which, after such a just rebellion, staked out the road from Capua to Rome demonstrated to the servile crowd that there is no equality in the world of power and that the masters calculate, at a usurious rate, the price of their own blood."
        Marsymars 2y ago
        > The government in Canada pushed through extremely draconian Wuhan-styled lockdown rules Pretty much none of "lockdown" rules were federal - and at least in my province, I never felt more than mildly inconvenienced. Literally the worst thing I experienced was a shutdown of indoor team sports for a season.
- richardlblair 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - naasking 2y ago
    No it wasn't.
    - richardlblair 2y ago
      It absolutely was.
      - adamomada 2y ago
        You weren’t there and are full of shit. What else have you been told?
        richardlblair 2y ago
        You have no idea if I'm full of shit or not.
        ImJamal 2y ago
        Then maybe you should provide a source as somebody else has asked you to do to show you are not full of shit?
        richardlblair 2y ago
        Whether convoy supporters think I'm right or not doesn't particularly matter to me. You all have an internet connection, look it up. It's not hard to find. Edit - a friend provided me with the following article. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00027642231166885#bibr42-00027642231166885 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00027642231166... Enjoy
        2y ago
- tenpies 2y ago
  Not just seized: seized extra-judicially, and retro-actively. These two details are important because: 1) no laws were passed and no courts were involved. 2) activities that were perfectly legal at the time, were deemed retroactively illegal and persecuted (not prosecuted - no courts, remember?). The only regimes in which you see this are tinpot dictatorships and Trudeau's Canada. Just imagine how powerful those two precedents are for any future radical who seeks to follow on the footsteps of the petite tyrant Trudeau.
nightowl_games 2y ago
Freezing the bank accounts of the trucker protest and deploying the emergency powers _was_ a bit wild. Even our top court ruled the emergency powers weren't necessary. Opening the windsor bridge, yeah, lets arrest everyone immediately, but clearing the people out of ottawa? That ones not so clear. But no matter how you slice it, the bank account freezing was a precedent that probably shouldn't have been made.
- canadiantim 2y ago
  On the plus side, now the conservatives can use emergency powers to deal with protests too. The cat's out of the bag, and people with left-leaning politics who were okay with the powers being applied to the trucker protest, I'm sure we'll find they're all of the sudden not so okay when it's applied to a protest they favour.
  - AlexandrB 2y ago
    I think the truckers were idiots and that their protest made no sense and probably made life for the average Ottawa resident very annoying at the time. I also think that freezing their bank accounts was huge government overreach and I'm sad that the consequence to the government for doing it have been basically non-existent. In both Canada and the US each "side" loves ratcheting up government power against what they perceive as their political enemies. It's going to end in tears.
    - whatwhaaaaat 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - wizzwizz4 2y ago
        I don't think the "untested"* COVID-19 vaccine was given to anyone in the US, so if you "vote democrat" you wouldn't have been in any danger – except if you chose not to vaccinate yourself. Are you talking about something else? *: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford%E2%80%93AstraZeneca_COVID-19_vaccine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford%E2%80%93AstraZeneca_COV... actually was tested: they had suspicions it caused blood clots for a few people, then they found some slightly more suspicious data. Even then, taking it was better than taking nothing for the average person – just, there were other, safer vaccines available, so nobody informed would want to take it. Its administration was halted in most countries it was approved in, once there was some evidence of harm. But the correlation's still so weak that we're not really sure it's the vaccine causing it, or even if the effect is real. Blood clot risk is still higher if you get COVID-19 than if you get this vaccine. In general, the worst thing an uncontaminated vaccine can give you is mild symptoms of the disease it protects you against. We are very, very, very cautious about such things (I'd argue, too cautious, but when I take my utilitarian-debate-club hat off, I am similarly paranoid, so I don't begrudge them overmuch).
poochipie 2y ago
"The government should solve every problem" is a totalizing idea the Liberals have implemented though. We see this in the job growth numbers, for example, that show massive federal government hiring and anemic private sector growth. A market solution would have federal incentives create private sector growth to accomplish goals. And, yes: Canada badly needs some kind of antitrust regime. Perhaps the reward for monopolization of a Canadian market should be nationalization.
rustcleaner 2y ago
Governments have figured out they can affect their populations like a rancher affects cattle. Elections are no longer solemn rituals but instead are processes for manufacturing consent to be governed. Only through the magick of the social contract can your neighbors collectively eat you while individually they are prevented.
marcosdumay 2y ago
> The government puts most of its effort into protecting friendly companies and industries from competition and even funneling taxpayer money to them. Somehow, the people rushing to use that "faccism" label tend to ignore this one property of the original ones.
larater 2y ago
As an American that has gone up to Canada thousands of times in my life, you have to be completely delusional to say this. The change in Canada from 20 years ago is just shocking. If you can't see this, it is because you don't want to see it. Canadians like you are why I think your country is utterly doomed.

Longhanks 2y ago

No need to worry, the EU tries the same every few weeks. https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/let-yourself-be-monitored-eu-governments-to-agree-on-chat-control-with-user-consent/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/let-yourself-be-monitored-e...

chongli 2y ago

Authoritarian. Totalitarianism requires a large mobilization of the population under a single ideology. Putin aspires to be a totalitarian leader but even he has not managed to pull it off. He depends quite heavily on a depoliticized "silent majority" of Russians who are too scared/complacent to challenge his security apparatus. If Russia were a totalitarian state then you'd see that majority rushing to join the military and join the government.

lynx23 2y ago
> Totalitarianism requires a large mobilization of the population under a single ideology. Either you forgot about COVID or you seem to have a case of Stockholm syndrom.e Those which haven't had an issue with mandates shots seem to totally ignore what a schock the sitaution was for those who didnt approve.
- richardlblair 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - lynx23 2y ago
    Rape victims aside, what is medical autonomy to some is the right to kill unborn life for rather weak personal reasons to others. Thats how democracy works. People will have different opinions about things... Besides, I totally fail how you create that box. Not every anti-experimental-vaxer is anti abortion. Heck, most people I know who didn't approve of mandatory vaccination were always voting left. But sure, if you like to think that everyone with a different opinion then you can conveniently be put into the right-wing box, go ahead. You're being silly, though.
    - richardlblair 2y ago
      You spelled fetus wrong. The cognitive dissonance you Pee Pee followers have to navigate is incredible. Some people get medical autonomy, others don't. Makes sense.

markhahn 2y ago

This is pointless and ill-informed cynicism. Canada is not totalitarian. Frankly, I can't imagine claiming so unless you have quite an extreme view of politics (for instance, the appropriateness of blockading downtown Ottawa). There is plenty of MAGA-like conspiratory thinking in Canada, but it's relatively new for Canada, and definitely not widely-accepted.

tavavex 2y ago
People online are insanely cynical about Canada without having ever stepped one foot in the country. A ton of discourse regarding Canada happens in between non-Canadians, and I'm not sure if it's intentional at this point. Every scandal or disagreement gets blown up to an international stage, people eager to take party talking points as unquestionable truth. There's no shortage of Americans who wholeheartedly believe that Canada is an authoritarian regime. Given that the average HN user seems to be an older, conservative-leaning American I'm not really surprised by the sentiment, though I did hope for more level-headed discussions.
- mardifoufs 2y ago
  What's this weird obsession with Americans? I'm Canadian, and it's only white liberal Canadians that have this super weird rose tinted look at their own country because they blame everything on the US. Maybe you're privileged enough to not relate with the issues highlighted, but that's just your own bubble.
mardifoufs 2y ago
I mean, Canada is the only country in the west that has used emergency powers not once but twice in 50 years. Either our country is unstable (it's not) or the federal government clearly doesn't give a shit about precedent and due process. It also doesn't help that the same government has admitted to a current genocide without basically doing anything about it. So yes, when you combine those two things criticism will happen.

verandaguy 2y ago

This is an awful take. At no point in the last several decades has any Canadian government come close to being totalitarian, authoritarian, or otherwise. The most recent example in living memory (which I don't intend to downplay) would've been residential schools, which were run by churches with supportive policies coming from the federal (and lower) governments. The last residential school closed in 1997. Canada is absolutely, beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt, a representative democracy falling under the broad umbrella of "Western (Neo)liberal democracies". There are legitimate criticisms of neoliberalism just as there are of neoconservativism, but totalitarian aspirations are exceptionally rarely a valid accusation. If anything, the biggest threat to Canadian democracy might be a decline in political literacy. We don't have an election where we vote for PMs, but many people still do. We don't have a two-party system; in practice, we have a multi-party system to the extent that minority governments are possible (we have one now!), but many people vote as though we're in a two-party system with a handful of "joke parties" that amount to wasting your vote. We have a bicameral parliament, but one of our chambers is made up purely of elected members who have so far mostly stayed level-headed through more or less sheer force of good will (which I don't consider a good enough protection in the long term, but that's another topic). How laws are introduced into parliament and passed is something most Canadians probably couldn't answer off the top of their heads in more detail than saying that there there are a few readings, and most of us aren't following what our MP or MPP is doing for your riding, because in real terms, most of us vote based on a party leader and their at-large actions in office.