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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 nec

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).
      - Amezarak 2y ago
        But of course there's different demographics; nobody is the average person. And even people that had already been infected with COVID-19 were required to get the vaccine. But it's also interesting to think about it from the perspective of immune system compartments: the vaccine is effective in preventing severe illness and death because it's injected. But people with mild to asymptomatic cases only ever "fight it" in their mucosal immune compartment, which doesn't share antibody recipes, so people who have only received a vaccine can still spread COVID-19, because the mucosal immune compartment is not trained by the vaccine. (Hopefully, there'll be an intranasal vaccine soon.) In general, this may also be related to your general health; the stronger your immune system is overall, the less likely you're going to develop a severe infection (barring a thousand other variables) because the virus never makes it in real numbers to your bloodstream, but if you do get a severe infection the immune reaction by itself is likely to be dangerous. At least, that's why I assume two COVID infections prior to vaccination were barely noticeable, while the vaccination itself knocked me on my ass for days and also gave me a really weird neurological episode. If I had not been required to, I would not have gotten a vaccine, since I already had a verified COVID-19 infection and recovery. So unfortunately, our policy made me pretty sick for basically zero gain, and I knew going into it there was no real upside for me (but I didn't expect the downside.) ed: it's also worth noting that "in general" is not very useful; in this case we're talking about vaccines leveraging new technology to deliver their payload. It's not implausible to believe that the LNPs are not safe - it took several years to identify LNPs that were not obviously toxic, and it would not be wild to imagine that years down the line we find the LNPs used in the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are unsafe in the sense that you might be 20% more likely to develop RARE_CANCER_X 15 years from now. Great article on their development here: https://cen.acs.org/pharmaceuticals/drug-delivery/Without-lipid-shells-mRNA-vaccines/99/i8?PageSpeed=noscript https://cen.acs.org/pharmaceuticals/drug-delivery/Without-li...
    - sqeaky 2y ago
      > force me to take an untested shot You are simply not operating in reality. It wasn't untested, you weren't forced. You don't know how to model trust and because of that you distrust experts even trustworthy experts.
      - tracker1 2y ago
        Not forced, meaning you may be fired and potentially unable to find work.
        sqeaky 2y ago
        Somehow the people who often take umbrage at this are also the same sorts who are free market absolutists or oppose public health care, and then we are here on a VC discussion board which leans that way frequently. Explain to me how willingness to take disease preventing treatment isn't just a feature of Whatwhaaaaat as an employee, that makes one more or less desirable on the free market? We are able free to work "at will" most places and any employer who will have you based on your marketability and desirability. Whatwhaaaaat could even start your own company where you mandated people not be vaccinated (and then die the first time someone sneezes). More seriously, because this is a serious topic even if Whatwhaaaaat isn't a serious person: We should all have a right to be healthy, where such things are within our power to understand and effect. Whatwhaaaaat should have a right to opt out (even if I think it is childishly stupid). The only way to make those both fit in reality is to have those who opt out of the incredibly but not quite perfectly safe and life saving vaccine in contradiction to all the evidence, is to have them opt out of activities where safety is desired by the majority. So you have a choice: opt-out of both the vaccine and some professional activities, or opt-in to both. Note how this isn't a choice that Whatwhaaaaat, as a possible unknowing carrier of covid, is willing or even capable of offering immune compromised people in a work place. This is the only sensible way to structure a society that isn't literally forcing vaccines on people like Whatwhaaaaat.
        whatwhaaaaat 2y ago
        You can keep playing tribalism all you want. I voted in the primaries for Bernie. I’ve been advocating for a public option my whole life. I’d be willing to bet I am more active in progressive causes than you are. Everything in America is tied to one’s employment. It was take the shot or starve. Luckily I’m a decent enough engineer to be able to say go fuck yourself and they had no choice but to keep me. MANY of my co workers were not in that position. I will never vote for democrats again :-)
- AntiEgo 2y ago
  Under the grits, the rcmp have already been extremely aggressive with protestors. Look at land defenders in BC--they are being removed at gunpoint, having property wantonly destroyed, and having masks pulled of their faces to apply pepper spray point blank. The clownvoy got treaded with kidskin gloves.
  - AlexandrB 2y ago
    There's a case to be made that a naked display of force - at least in a democracy - is less authoritarian than quietly destroying someone's financial life. Spraying pepper spray and knocking heads creates some very unsavoury images that the government has to contend with during the next election and stokes outrage. Having a bunch of people's bank accounts frozen doesn't trigger the same visceral reaction.
- tivert 2y ago
  > ...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. That just means the conservatives can never be allowed to win elections...to protect Democracy!
  - nuclearwast 2y ago
    Hmm it looks like all protest are being dealt very softly now. Natives? We don't want another 1990 oka. Students? Don't want another 2012 printemps érable. Truckers? Well I'm not sure about that one. Was the majority of the police on the protester's side? A bunch sure. But most? Nah. Wasn't there like only 1% of all truckers there? They had the means but not the number. Also if freezing bank account ended it without any police lifting a finger, it's best no?
- rustcleaner 2y ago
  I am sure Canada has the progressivist ratchet like the US does: Left moves Overton Window never less than a click, Right moves it never more than a click (while looking like principled plausibly sub-malicious imbeciles in the moment).
  - mikem170 2y ago
    > I am sure Canada has the progressivist ratchet like the US does: Left moves Overton Window never less than a click, Right moves it never more than a click That's what happens when there is change in the world. Conservatives resist change, but change often has a momentum of it's own. The world has changed a lot recently. TV brought everyone together. Transportation made the world smaller place. The internet and social networks gave everyone a voice. These are all game changers. For better and worse. We can't un-invent all that stuff. The reason older people tend to be conservative is that they are used to the way things were when they grew up. They don't like the changes. They want the good old days back. Young people don't have these notions about the good old days, they weren't around. They started off with a different view of things. The Overton Window moves with them. Progress ratchets, as you said. p.s. None of this implies that I endorse how the protests were handled. I'm all for democracy and 100% against authoritarians - whether they are communists or fascists or whatever else.
- frabbit 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart Recently we've seen a functional alliance of those on the bottom half of the diagram.
burutthrow1234 2y ago
Clearing the people out of Ottawa took far too long. The local police were cozy with the truckers and the entire downtown of a metro area with a million people was shut down for a month. People complain about left-leaning protests taking over a public park - these guys took over multiple public spaces in multiple parts of the city. About a square mile in the middle of the city.
- whatwhaaaaat 2y ago
  Yes people complain about “left leaning protests”. People complain about all sorts of protests. I can’t recall a single protest that wasn’t complained about. Exactly when did the left leaning protestors have their bank accounts frozen? Exactly when did the left leaning protests get broken up. All I remember is canadas stupid government supporting the left leaning protests. In the states I remember fancy Nancy wearing an African shawl kneeling in the capital. This sort of stuff is too obvious not to see. Good luck.
  - nuclearwast 2y ago
    Spring 2012. Montréal. It was left leaning and Police were quite happy to handle it with all they got. Many hundreds or thounsands of protester everyday (or nights) for over 100 days. 17 years-old students being hit with Baton, pepper spray, , tears gas, rubber bullets, flashbang etc. It was so chaotic that vladimir fucking putin even call canada to sort its shit (!!!). Since then police really has dialed it back in the protest.
    - whatwhaaaaat 2y ago
      I don’t recall what the 2012 Canada protests were. Guessing OWS? OWS and the vaccine passport protestors have one thing in common - they challenge the ruling class. I wonder why the ruling class hasn’t opposed social mousetrap identity politics protests.
      - nuclearwast 2y ago
nahname 2y ago
Ottawa was tricky because the jurisdiction belongs to the OPS, which fumbled the entire situation from beginning to end. It wasn't entirely clear if that was intentional either. The RCMP (federal) was brought in to break up the protests, but there was a lot of stone walling from the conservative provincial government. There is also a world of difference between an organized protest with a specific purpose drawing awareness to a cause and thousands of people using commercial vehicles to hold a city hostage with no purpose or agenda other than a bunch of angry people unleashing their rage on the cities populous.
- idunnoman1222 2y ago
  No agenda? How many mandated shots before you join the protest? 5..10? these people were just protesting at >1
  - verandaguy 2y ago
    The shots weren't mandated. You couldn't enjoy services like cross-country travel by air or rail, but the shots were absolutely not mandated to do most things -- at least, not by the government. To the vast majority of Canadians, those are not essential services for survival, and to those Canadians for whom they are (mostly those living in northern communities), they got about the usual amount of support they get from any federal government (which is to say, not enough, and that probably merits more discussion than the convoy protesters). - If you worked from an office, you likely spent a good chunk of the first 12-24 months of Covid working from home. After that, it was up to your employer to put into place a policy about that. - Addendum: if you were in the federal government, you *were* required to get an initial shot plus a booster for most parts of the federal government. Failure to do so was dealt with in a few ways depending on department, but would usually result in your being placed on unpaid leave (PSAC has made it very difficult to fire someone in general, including under these circumstances). - If you worked a blue-collar job, what happened was massively up to your employer. Construction in particular slowed down in cities because of the extra precautions taken to avoid turning worksites into superspreader events. - If you worked in the Forces, I gather you really didn't have much of a say in the matter, but militaries worldwide have strict and extensive vaccine schedules for all enlisted staff (and often officers, too). The bodily autonomy argument holds some water, sure, to the same extent as you have the choice not to vaccinate your kid as they start going to school (but don't be surprised if they can't go, because we as a society have decided that things like polio don't deserve a repeat performance). You were at no point prohibited from leaving the country, though you could de facto end up so because other countries likely wouldn't allow you in, at least, not without a Covid test. If you were a Canadian citizen, you could not be legally denied entry into Canada, though because of the circumstances you may have been, at different points, required to either undergo a test or to go through a quarantine period. These people were protesting being denied the ability to pick and choose what they do in society while unilaterally picking and choosing how much additional risk they want to introduce to the rest of society. Frankly, this is probably best showcased by them deciding to just decide to take over the Ottawa baseball stadium (which is in a suburb and next to a highway) and use it and a few other places around downtown to store propane, gas, and other heating fluids since they decided to do this in the winter. They were, at best, hypocrites, and massively reckless in the face of what was at the time still relatively speaking a medical unknown. I'll also add, Re: the use of the Emergencies Act: regardless of what I think, a federal court has ruled it unconstitutional; the government has expressed interest in appealing the decision. I don't have a legal background, so I don't have a useful comment to add here. I will say that it came after several weeks of multiple levels of police (but most notably, OPS) failing to do anything about the protests while tensions escalated, so it didn't come out of nowhere, and it wasn't the first thing the government tried.
richardlblair 2y ago
There are a lot of problems with making this argument, though. Ultimately our government lacks the necessary powers. Remember, those people travelled to Ottawa with the stated mission of overthrowing the Government. They also used their horns in a densely populated area, which an ENT doctor confirmed exposed the citizens of Downtown Ottawa to volumes that can damage the inner ear. This is without taking into consideration those with disabilities, like Autism, which can make such sensations exceptionally difficult. Then things get super messy when you start to look at how the province deals with indigenous populations, their protests, versus a group of white nationalists attempting to overthrow the Government. The fact the emergency powers were used, to me, are a symptom of a broken system. Either way, opposing political powers are jumping all over the opportunity to leverage the situation for their own gain. I'm so sick of politics. They are all dishonest. No matter what, we lose.
- naasking 2y ago
  > Remember, those people travelled to Ottawa with the stated mission of overthrowing the Government. No. > versus a group of white nationalists attempting to overthrow the Government. Also no, not white nationalists.
- adamomada 2y ago
  The horns died down after a few short days, after a reasonable concession was made. I have a feeling hardly any Canadians at all know what really happened in Ottawa even though there was and is extensive live video evidence streamed and stored on YouTube.
  - richardlblair 2y ago
    Let's park 100 trucks outside your house for 'a few short days' and blast their horns. Then you can tell me if those days are short or not. I have friends who live downtown Ottawa. I know exactly what went on. I know what flags were on display. People need to stop down playing what happened.
    - adamomada 2y ago
barbazoo 2y ago
> Freezing the bank accounts of the trucker protest Just putting this into context: > Isabelle Jacques, assistant deputy minister of finance, told a committee of MPs that up to 210 bank accounts holding about $7.8 million were frozen under the financial measures contained in the Emergencies Act. > She also said the fact that more than 200 bank accounts were frozen did not necessarily mean that more than 200 people lost access to their funds. Jacques said that individuals may have held more than one account affected by the measures. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergency-bank-measures-finance-committee-1.6360769 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergency-bank-measures-fin...
- oldpersonintx 2y ago
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potterken 2y ago
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frabbit 2y ago
The Windsor bridge obviously had to be opened at any cost. US businesses and their representatives made it clear to the Canadian raw-resource suppliers that they needed to stop their silly little democratic protest.

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).
    - Amezarak 2y ago
      But of course there's different demographics; nobody is the average person. And even people that had already been infected with COVID-19 were required to get the vaccine. But it's also interesting to think about it from the perspective of immune system compartments: the vaccine is effective in preventing severe illness and death because it's injected. But people with mild to asymptomatic cases only ever "fight it" in their mucosal immune compartment, which doesn't share antibody recipes, so people who have only received a vaccine can still spread COVID-19, because the mucosal immune compartment is not trained by the vaccine. (Hopefully, there'll be an intranasal vaccine soon.) In general, this may also be related to your general health; the stronger your immune system is overall, the less likely you're going to develop a severe infection (barring a thousand other variables) because the virus never makes it in real numbers to your bloodstream, but if you do get a severe infection the immune reaction by itself is likely to be dangerous. At least, that's why I assume two COVID infections prior to vaccination were barely noticeable, while the vaccination itself knocked me on my ass for days and also gave me a really weird neurological episode. If I had not been required to, I would not have gotten a vaccine, since I already had a verified COVID-19 infection and recovery. So unfortunately, our policy made me pretty sick for basically zero gain, and I knew going into it there was no real upside for me (but I didn't expect the downside.) ed: it's also worth noting that "in general" is not very useful; in this case we're talking about vaccines leveraging new technology to deliver their payload. It's not implausible to believe that the LNPs are not safe - it took several years to identify LNPs that were not obviously toxic, and it would not be wild to imagine that years down the line we find the LNPs used in the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are unsafe in the sense that you might be 20% more likely to develop RARE_CANCER_X 15 years from now. Great article on their development here: https://cen.acs.org/pharmaceuticals/drug-delivery/Without-lipid-shells-mRNA-vaccines/99/i8?PageSpeed=noscript https://cen.acs.org/pharmaceuticals/drug-delivery/Without-li...
  - sqeaky 2y ago
    > force me to take an untested shot You are simply not operating in reality. It wasn't untested, you weren't forced. You don't know how to model trust and because of that you distrust experts even trustworthy experts.
    - tracker1 2y ago
      Not forced, meaning you may be fired and potentially unable to find work.
      - sqeaky 2y ago
        Somehow the people who often take umbrage at this are also the same sorts who are free market absolutists or oppose public health care, and then we are here on a VC discussion board which leans that way frequently. Explain to me how willingness to take disease preventing treatment isn't just a feature of Whatwhaaaaat as an employee, that makes one more or less desirable on the free market? We are able free to work "at will" most places and any employer who will have you based on your marketability and desirability. Whatwhaaaaat could even start your own company where you mandated people not be vaccinated (and then die the first time someone sneezes). More seriously, because this is a serious topic even if Whatwhaaaaat isn't a serious person: We should all have a right to be healthy, where such things are within our power to understand and effect. Whatwhaaaaat should have a right to opt out (even if I think it is childishly stupid). The only way to make those both fit in reality is to have those who opt out of the incredibly but not quite perfectly safe and life saving vaccine in contradiction to all the evidence, is to have them opt out of activities where safety is desired by the majority. So you have a choice: opt-out of both the vaccine and some professional activities, or opt-in to both. Note how this isn't a choice that Whatwhaaaaat, as a possible unknowing carrier of covid, is willing or even capable of offering immune compromised people in a work place. This is the only sensible way to structure a society that isn't literally forcing vaccines on people like Whatwhaaaaat.
        whatwhaaaaat 2y ago
        You can keep playing tribalism all you want. I voted in the primaries for Bernie. I’ve been advocating for a public option my whole life. I’d be willing to bet I am more active in progressive causes than you are. Everything in America is tied to one’s employment. It was take the shot or starve. Luckily I’m a decent enough engineer to be able to say go fuck yourself and they had no choice but to keep me. MANY of my co workers were not in that position. I will never vote for democrats again :-)
AntiEgo 2y ago
Under the grits, the rcmp have already been extremely aggressive with protestors. Look at land defenders in BC--they are being removed at gunpoint, having property wantonly destroyed, and having masks pulled of their faces to apply pepper spray point blank. The clownvoy got treaded with kidskin gloves.
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  There's a case to be made that a naked display of force - at least in a democracy - is less authoritarian than quietly destroying someone's financial life. Spraying pepper spray and knocking heads creates some very unsavoury images that the government has to contend with during the next election and stokes outrage. Having a bunch of people's bank accounts frozen doesn't trigger the same visceral reaction.
tivert 2y ago
> ...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. That just means the conservatives can never be allowed to win elections...to protect Democracy!
- nuclearwast 2y ago
  Hmm it looks like all protest are being dealt very softly now. Natives? We don't want another 1990 oka. Students? Don't want another 2012 printemps érable. Truckers? Well I'm not sure about that one. Was the majority of the police on the protester's side? A bunch sure. But most? Nah. Wasn't there like only 1% of all truckers there? They had the means but not the number. Also if freezing bank account ended it without any police lifting a finger, it's best no?
rustcleaner 2y ago
I am sure Canada has the progressivist ratchet like the US does: Left moves Overton Window never less than a click, Right moves it never more than a click (while looking like principled plausibly sub-malicious imbeciles in the moment).
- mikem170 2y ago
  > I am sure Canada has the progressivist ratchet like the US does: Left moves Overton Window never less than a click, Right moves it never more than a click That's what happens when there is change in the world. Conservatives resist change, but change often has a momentum of it's own. The world has changed a lot recently. TV brought everyone together. Transportation made the world smaller place. The internet and social networks gave everyone a voice. These are all game changers. For better and worse. We can't un-invent all that stuff. The reason older people tend to be conservative is that they are used to the way things were when they grew up. They don't like the changes. They want the good old days back. Young people don't have these notions about the good old days, they weren't around. They started off with a different view of things. The Overton Window moves with them. Progress ratchets, as you said. p.s. None of this implies that I endorse how the protests were handled. I'm all for democracy and 100% against authoritarians - whether they are communists or fascists or whatever else.
frabbit 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart Recently we've seen a functional alliance of those on the bottom half of the diagram.

burutthrow1234 2y ago

Clearing the people out of Ottawa took far too long. The local police were cozy with the truckers and the entire downtown of a metro area with a million people was shut down for a month. People complain about left-leaning protests taking over a public park - these guys took over multiple public spaces in multiple parts of the city. About a square mile in the middle of the city.

whatwhaaaaat 2y ago
Yes people complain about “left leaning protests”. People complain about all sorts of protests. I can’t recall a single protest that wasn’t complained about. Exactly when did the left leaning protestors have their bank accounts frozen? Exactly when did the left leaning protests get broken up. All I remember is canadas stupid government supporting the left leaning protests. In the states I remember fancy Nancy wearing an African shawl kneeling in the capital. This sort of stuff is too obvious not to see. Good luck.
- nuclearwast 2y ago
  Spring 2012. Montréal. It was left leaning and Police were quite happy to handle it with all they got. Many hundreds or thounsands of protester everyday (or nights) for over 100 days. 17 years-old students being hit with Baton, pepper spray, , tears gas, rubber bullets, flashbang etc. It was so chaotic that vladimir fucking putin even call canada to sort its shit (!!!). Since then police really has dialed it back in the protest.
  - whatwhaaaaat 2y ago
    I don’t recall what the 2012 Canada protests were. Guessing OWS? OWS and the vaccine passport protestors have one thing in common - they challenge the ruling class. I wonder why the ruling class hasn’t opposed social mousetrap identity politics protests.
    - nuclearwast 2y ago

nahname 2y ago

Ottawa was tricky because the jurisdiction belongs to the OPS, which fumbled the entire situation from beginning to end. It wasn't entirely clear if that was intentional either. The RCMP (federal) was brought in to break up the protests, but there was a lot of stone walling from the conservative provincial government. There is also a world of difference between an organized protest with a specific purpose drawing awareness to a cause and thousands of people using commercial vehicles to hold a city hostage with no purpose or agenda other than a bunch of angry people unleashing their rage on the cities populous.

idunnoman1222 2y ago
No agenda? How many mandated shots before you join the protest? 5..10? these people were just protesting at >1
- verandaguy 2y ago
  The shots weren't mandated. You couldn't enjoy services like cross-country travel by air or rail, but the shots were absolutely not mandated to do most things -- at least, not by the government. To the vast majority of Canadians, those are not essential services for survival, and to those Canadians for whom they are (mostly those living in northern communities), they got about the usual amount of support they get from any federal government (which is to say, not enough, and that probably merits more discussion than the convoy protesters). - If you worked from an office, you likely spent a good chunk of the first 12-24 months of Covid working from home. After that, it was up to your employer to put into place a policy about that. - Addendum: if you were in the federal government, you *were* required to get an initial shot plus a booster for most parts of the federal government. Failure to do so was dealt with in a few ways depending on department, but would usually result in your being placed on unpaid leave (PSAC has made it very difficult to fire someone in general, including under these circumstances). - If you worked a blue-collar job, what happened was massively up to your employer. Construction in particular slowed down in cities because of the extra precautions taken to avoid turning worksites into superspreader events. - If you worked in the Forces, I gather you really didn't have much of a say in the matter, but militaries worldwide have strict and extensive vaccine schedules for all enlisted staff (and often officers, too). The bodily autonomy argument holds some water, sure, to the same extent as you have the choice not to vaccinate your kid as they start going to school (but don't be surprised if they can't go, because we as a society have decided that things like polio don't deserve a repeat performance). You were at no point prohibited from leaving the country, though you could de facto end up so because other countries likely wouldn't allow you in, at least, not without a Covid test. If you were a Canadian citizen, you could not be legally denied entry into Canada, though because of the circumstances you may have been, at different points, required to either undergo a test or to go through a quarantine period. These people were protesting being denied the ability to pick and choose what they do in society while unilaterally picking and choosing how much additional risk they want to introduce to the rest of society. Frankly, this is probably best showcased by them deciding to just decide to take over the Ottawa baseball stadium (which is in a suburb and next to a highway) and use it and a few other places around downtown to store propane, gas, and other heating fluids since they decided to do this in the winter. They were, at best, hypocrites, and massively reckless in the face of what was at the time still relatively speaking a medical unknown. I'll also add, Re: the use of the Emergencies Act: regardless of what I think, a federal court has ruled it unconstitutional; the government has expressed interest in appealing the decision. I don't have a legal background, so I don't have a useful comment to add here. I will say that it came after several weeks of multiple levels of police (but most notably, OPS) failing to do anything about the protests while tensions escalated, so it didn't come out of nowhere, and it wasn't the first thing the government tried.

richardlblair 2y ago

There are a lot of problems with making this argument, though. Ultimately our government lacks the necessary powers. Remember, those people travelled to Ottawa with the stated mission of overthrowing the Government. They also used their horns in a densely populated area, which an ENT doctor confirmed exposed the citizens of Downtown Ottawa to volumes that can damage the inner ear. This is without taking into consideration those with disabilities, like Autism, which can make such sensations exceptionally difficult. Then things get super messy when you start to look at how the province deals with indigenous populations, their protests, versus a group of white nationalists attempting to overthrow the Government. The fact the emergency powers were used, to me, are a symptom of a broken system. Either way, opposing political powers are jumping all over the opportunity to leverage the situation for their own gain. I'm so sick of politics. They are all dishonest. No matter what, we lose.

naasking 2y ago
> Remember, those people travelled to Ottawa with the stated mission of overthrowing the Government. No. > versus a group of white nationalists attempting to overthrow the Government. Also no, not white nationalists.
adamomada 2y ago
The horns died down after a few short days, after a reasonable concession was made. I have a feeling hardly any Canadians at all know what really happened in Ottawa even though there was and is extensive live video evidence streamed and stored on YouTube.
- richardlblair 2y ago
  Let's park 100 trucks outside your house for 'a few short days' and blast their horns. Then you can tell me if those days are short or not. I have friends who live downtown Ottawa. I know exactly what went on. I know what flags were on display. People need to stop down playing what happened.
  - adamomada 2y ago

barbazoo 2y ago

> Freezing the bank accounts of the trucker protest Just putting this into context: > Isabelle Jacques, assistant deputy minister of finance, told a committee of MPs that up to 210 bank accounts holding about $7.8 million were frozen under the financial measures contained in the Emergencies Act. > She also said the fact that more than 200 bank accounts were frozen did not necessarily mean that more than 200 people lost access to their funds. Jacques said that individuals may have held more than one account affected by the measures. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergency-bank-measures-finance-committee-1.6360769 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergency-bank-measures-fin...

oldpersonintx 2y ago
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potterken 2y ago

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frabbit 2y ago

The Windsor bridge obviously had to be opened at any cost. US businesses and their representatives made it clear to the Canadian raw-resource suppliers that they needed to stop their silly little democratic protest.