> As of today, financial institutions with be “authorized or directed” to “prohibit the use of property” or freeze accounts - personal or corporate- if the institution suspects that the account holder is financing illegal blockades.
I am absolutely ashamed of what my Government is doing right now. Our PM was singing a different tune when the farmers in my home country were protesting in India. Or the Hong Kong protests. Or the pipeline protests in Canada.
There's no such thing as a "right" to use trucks to set up an illegal blockade. The trucker convoys are not protesting to fairly and legitimately raise awareness about their grievances; they're trying to get the upper hand by illegal means because much of public opinion clearly opposes their stance already. It's a simple matter, really. A response is quite appropriate.
Regardless of his comments on the Floyd protests (which I do not have in front of me), the Canadian situation is comparable only to other Canadian protests. We are not America, and we are a country that has its own way of doing things.
Using the phrase "tyrannical vaccine mandates" is not a great way to ensure a productive discussion, however.
>the Canadian situation is comparable only to other Canadian protests
selective parochialism; you would not hesitate to criticize brutal anti-protest measures in say, russia.
>Using the phrase "tyrannical vaccine mandates" is not a great way to ensure a productive discussion, however.
why should I mince words? that is what they are. just because the canadian ruling party has groupthinked themselves otherwise, does not mean it is not tyrannical. I will criticise the regime the same as I criticise other tyrannical despotisms.
I don't think we can have a productive conversation, but I thank you for teaching me the word "parochialism" (though I disagree with your characterization).
He must think these mandates are like violence. When it doesn't work, you have to double down and do more. You can't possibly take a step back and have a dialog.
He, triple vaxxed, tested positive for COVID but his mandates allow him to air travel. But I am not allowed even though I can prove via a PCR test that I am uninfected.
Tests aren't recognized in Canada. Nor is natural immunity recognized. It's asinine.
He's a spoiled brat that has never been told 'no' in his life in any meaningful way. Now he's an adult in a position of power, learning far too late what it means to compromise, have a dialog, or even bother understanding what others want. It's something he should have learned in his tween years instead of while leading a large industrialized country.
Then again, when he was a student, it didn't help even later in that regard having family give a huge shush payout to some underage girl's parent's for an undisclosed bad act.
"Trudeau expressed concern about the Indian security forces' attitude toward these peasant protesters and said that his government has always been a supporter of peaceful protests."
"Sikh vote bank politics matters in Canada. Sikh voters matter to Trudeau's Liberal Party, Conservative Party, and Jagmeet Singh's New Democratic Party. The Sikh population here is close to five lakhs. Sikh separatism or Khalistan has been an essential issue in the relations between India and Canada."
"Sikh, numbering less than half a million, form the largest ethnic group among Indian-origin Canadians. All four of Trudeau’s Indian-origin ministers are Sikh, and Trudeau has publicly boasted how he has more Sikh ministers than Modi. Amarinder Singh, chief minister of the Sikh-dominated state of Punjab and himself a Sikh, has publicly accused Trudeau’s ministers of having sympathies with Canadian Sikh extremists who would like to see Indian Punjab separated from India into the state of Khalistan. Last year, Singh had refused to meet Trudeau’s defense minister, Harjit Singh Sajjan. All four Sikh ministers have recently visited India, and New Delhi would have liked it if Trudeau didn’t bring them along again. But for Trudeau, this trip is all about the Sikh vote in Canada."
"Canada’s position is that it cannot curtail the right to freedom of speech and expression of its Sikh citizens, but New Delhi wants Trudeau to publicly distance himself from Sikh separatists. "
> It was reported that they were being attacked and beaten in India.
The videos and news reports I saw show protestors being violent. They were using tractors to attempt to run over cops, beating cops with batons, walking around with swords etc. Some examples:
If anyone has any videos of the protestors being attacked which would prompt leaders of other nations to condemn, please share. I am from South India, and police using batons/water canons/tear gas is a standard practice even for small protests.
> If anyone has any videos of the protestors being attacked which would prompt leaders of other nations to condemn, please share. I am from South India, and police using batons/water canons/tear gas is a standard practice even for small protests.
In the old days, police would fire live ammo at protests. I remember reading about "XX number of people shot in police firing" growing up all the time. Indian police of old didn't fuck around; they had been taught by the Brits how to crack down, and crack down hard they did.
There is a significant Indian diaspora that wants to split India living in Canada and the US. :) they were probably sponsoring his elections yester years.
The people who thinks this will degenerate to violence will be disappointed. The truckers are normal people with mouths to feed and a retirement plan to save, not a militia made of radicals, as we saw at the bridge.
What will happen however is that the problem just going to be moved elsewhere. Trucks might begin to slow down, citizens might continue to assemble, in Ottawa or elsewhere. How protesters are going to find other ways to protest will be very interesting to watch and how the government will respond will be terrifying.
Yes, it will show that you can’t really lead your people in this way. They are the people who run the society, and the government depends on the people, not the other way around.
Shay's rebellion consisted of veterans, still armed with their weapons from the rebellion they'd fought a few years ago, at a time where the US government didn't have a standing army. I don't think those lessons quite transfer over here.
On the other hand, the protestors are armed with thousands of cameras. Any violent act by the authorities will be quickly spread worldwide. They have to use kid gloves here or will quickly amplify the opposition to themselves. That the truckers won't get violent makes it even worse if the police do.
This is my guess. They’ve already blocked off another border crossing between BC and Washington State.
The government can come and clear it out, then they’ll be another assembly somewhere else by a different group. Unless Trudeau is willing to mass arrests of thousands of Canadians, he won’t stop it.
It seems to be the problem the government has is looking weak - but invoking an Emergencies Act only makes them look more desperate.
My guess is this goes on for a few more weeks while the Canadian gov’t and provinces declare “no more need for Covid restrictions thanks to our amazing handling of the situation”. The govt gets to save face while giving the protestors what they want.
> The Emergencies Act is the modern-day replacement to the War Measures Act. It allows the federal government to force companies to provide services, it can require public protests to end, and limit mobility rights by preventing people from moving to designating areas.
>
> The act also allows for the military to be used as police, but several sources said that is not under active consideration.
Not a good look for Trudeau. This definitely looks like an authoritarian response to a loss of mandate. The protestors will dig in more, the response will become harsher, and the government will be in deeper trouble.
Yeeeeeah, I don't know about that. Anyone with their truck there risks forfeiting the asset that was used in commission of a crime. AKA their livelihood and likely most expensive asset. There is certainly not a bottomless pit of people wishing to do that.
So, instead of stopping and blockading, people just start driving the minimum legal speed everywhere. Totally legal, but would totally get the point across. And you don't need a truck.
Confiscating peoples' assets does not exactly engender you to a lot of political support. You're risking a massive loss in the next elections if you do that, just like how Democrats in the US are also facing huge electoral pressures on crime and COVID restrictions [1].
This idea that there's a crime wave seems to be pushed here and on reddit by month old accounts with no real proof. The reality is that crime is down in most places.
Lets look at San Francisco. I'm going to get my stats right from the San Francisco Police Department.
Homocide - Down 20%
Rape - Down 23.8%
Robbery - Down 20.7%
Assault - Down 8.8%
Human Trafficking - Down 83.3%
Burglary - Down 45.4%
Motor Vehicle Theft - Down 6%
Arson - Down 7.9%
Larceny Theft - Up 12.8%
Year over year the only type of crime that is up is Larceny Theft, and most of that is shoplifting. Everything else is down, and some of it by significant margins. There is no real basis for this "crime wave" people keep talking about. That pressure is really just right wing propaganda.
Quick Edit: When I published this the stats were only current to February 6th, but they were updated after I posted with data up to the 13th. So my numbers above are going to be slightly off, but you can confirm them by changing the timeframe to end on the 6th.
It's funny you say that because many people I know said they've simply stopped recording or responding to crime because everyone knows there will be no consequences for arresting somebody and the risk isn't worth arresting people in most cases.
The prediction was that next people would use the evidence that there are fewer crimes being reported as proof that nothing is wrong. This does seem very much like what we are seeing here.
That's true, but if you don't focus on murders, 2020 was one of the lowest violent crime years on record looking at SF, CA as a whole, or the entire US, so 2021 having an increase in crime is nothing more than reversion to the mean.
Because it's least susceptible to reporting bias, and being an extreme, also offers a base point for interpolation, to independently estimate numbers of lessor crimes, especially violent ones.
If all crimes resulted in dead bodies in the aftermath, I would agree with your reasoning here. But even violent crimes, most of the time, do not produce a dead body.
So given how flawed that premise was to begin with, I don't think an explanation is needed for why your overall point is disingenuous at best.
I feel like from a criminological standpoint, we would have some understanding (or even a heuristic) about the reportedness of crimes and if they are rising/falling in proportion to reported crimes.
There is. For instance, you can look at other sources, such as insurance claims; people file them to get paid, they dont care if the party responsible is prosecuted.
People trying to hype up the crime thing deliberately ignore these sources because, as you can see, it allows them to make up as much crime as they can imagine and base their argument on that.
Motor vehicle theft is up, not down (even in your own data).
Infact from my own experience in Seattle area and the auto enthusiast groups I'm in, we've definitely seen an uptick in car prowling, smashed windows, cat thefts and outright vehicle/trailer thefts.
When I published this the stats were only current to February 6th, but they were updated after I posted with data up to the 13th. So my numbers above are going to be slightly off, but you can confirm them by changing the timeframe to end on the 6th.
Even for 2/6, the site says MVT was flat (0% change). But from what I have seen, policing has also taken a back seat during the pandemic especially for non-violent, non-urgent crimes.
Most thefts (robbery, etc) are not reported now because people know police don't care. You also need to adjust your numbers for decreased activity (people stopped going out during COVID!). Restaurant reservations are down by 50% or more in SF [1] even despite reopening. If you use restaurant reservations as a proxy for foot traffic in general, all your metrics are strongly up when you adjust for foot traffic.
The idea that larceny (petty) theft doesn't matter is also a big reason why you think there's no crime wave. Petty theft is the crime most often encountered by everyday citizens. People don't like having their property stolen. I don't know why you refuse to acknowledge that.
> Why? Crime is measured per capita, but you say it should be divided by 10,000 steps or something?
Why would petty theft and robbery be divided by population? My risk of getting my bike stolen is 0 or my phone taken at gunpoint if I stay inside my home. It is non-zero if I go out. And it increases the longer I stay out. So measuring crime per person-hour of going out makes intuitive sense. Restaurant reservations is merely an imperfect proxy for this.
> Straw man. Everyone knows that all crime creates anguish for the victim and is to be avoided. If a person compares the effects of the pandemic to the opportunity of types of crimes, it doesn't mean they love the idea of larceny. Come on. Better faith in arguing please
Except the causation for these crimes is lax prosecution caused by 1) DAs who are politically motivated and 2) Prop 47 / similar regulations in other states. Unemployment is at record lows and there's a record worker shortage driving up wages. You cannot possibly claim the "effects of the pandemic" are causing increased property crime when unemployment has been so low for so long.
> Better faith in arguing please
Ironic, coming from a 15 minute old account whose only comment is this response.
Can tell you this happened in my city. Anything not bolted down in your yard was getting stolen. Mayor gaslighting all of us saying the data doesn’t support a rise in property theft. The police had already publicly said they wouldn’t do any investigation for residential property loss under $10k, best you could do is report it and hope for recovery as piles of loot were periodically discovered. It caused a mild coordinated call on NextDoor for everyone to start reporting for the sake of the numbers but we knew we weren’t insane - we were living with it, and saw videos of it daily on NextDoor. In our town it’s calmed down quite a bit because it became an election issue, and looser bail policies were rescinded. Property crime still a problem though but nowhere near as bad. Here’s the basic law of the jungle - if you don’t have consequences for bad behavior, there will be more of it. Every city needs to decide where on the continuum they want to be, between Singapore and Liberia.
> best you could do is report it and hope for recovery
At the end of the day isn't that all you can do? File a report and hope for recovery? Is the complaint that you need to go to the station to file a report? That was already the reality for so many people. The police don't go to every neighborhood. Some neighborhoods, it's self-serve.
> Most thefts (robbery, etc) are not reported now because people know police don't care
Underreporting has always been an issue with crime data [1], but the change in the Larceny rate doesn't seem like it's caused by an increase in underreporting. The change in reported Larceny from 2020 seems fairly correlated with COVID restrictions.
Here is the monthly Y/Y change in Larceny Theft Reported incidents for SF, for each month in 2020 vs. 2019:
Larceny did go up in 2021, especially at the end of the year when COVID restrictions started to lift, but is still down ~20% relative to 2019. Other crimes went up in 2020, but then decreased or flattened in 2021.
I think you may have a point about Larceny being encountered more, especially with foot traffic + tourism way down in many SF neighborhoods. I'm not sure how exactly to use Open Table reservations as a proxy for that, so it's hard to say whether it's relatively up or relatively down.
And then I have to ask myself how is that possible in modern society? Train robberies seem shocking enough that they HAVE to be indicative of a broader crime wave. Is there something about the US context that I am missing?
>Union Pacific laid off an unspecified number of employees across the railroad system. Including members of its railroad-only police force. Despite record profits in the billions in the last quarter of 2021.
>According to the source, the number of patrolling officers has been cut from 50 to 60 agents to eight, which the worker thinks has led to an increase in train robberies.
It's possible because Union Pacific thinks they can get taxpayers to pay for their security, and they can funnel more profits to their shareholders.
If you haven't heard the term before, this kind of response is called called "whataboutism":
> Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in "what about…?") is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy, which attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving the argument.
I think it's worth reading the page - the definition is:
> Whataboutism ... is a ... logical fallacy, which attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving the argument
You've charged hypocrisy, I don't see a direct refutation of the argument. Given that, it seems like this situation exactly fits the definition of 'whataboutism'?
If you want to talk about people whose lives have been taken away - there are far more Ottawa residents in the streets defying the police than there are truckers. This occupation has galvanized a small segment of the population, but there's a much larger group that was not politically active before and now they hate anti-vaxxers.
There was nothing to debate - the convoy does not have a cohesive message. Some of them are sovereign citizens. Some of them want the government to be dissolved. Some of them want some weird QAnon stuff. The only thing that unites them is shitting in the streets and driving around waving flags and honking.
Sounds a little silly to confiscate the assets of the people bringing the food to your table. That and the towies in the area are refusing to move any of the trucks.
Trudeau just looks weak at this point, and for a prime minister that got in because of his good looks and his dad's popularity it's not a good omen.
Surprisingly, I still have food on my table even though none of these people have worked in 3 weeks. If you're going to have a strike, you need to actually have an impact.
Heavy equipment tow operators have recieved threats of violence, which is why at least some of them have not helped.
The vast majority of truckers understand the benefits of masks and vaccines to society as a whole.
The ones protesting are either uber-libertarians (and possibly also "sovereign citizens"), dis-educated, or have some sort of mental/emotional shortcoming where they will resist any sort of directive given to them even if it goes in their in their interest.
Sometimes people will lash out anyone who gives a helpful order because they feel like they're losing control.
The conflation of "anti-vax" and "anti-mandate" is absolutely infuriating, and I'm sad and upset that so many people are falling for it.
It is perfectly possible to be pro-vaccine and anti-mandate, because the case for mandates makes no scientific sense. Forcing the vaccines on people will create more anti-vaxxers, not fewer! The whole thing is completely counterproductive.
No, I'm pretty sure we got to 90% vaccination because of mandates. People want things to go back to normal, and most people don't care one way or the other about getting a shot. Giving them a little incentive helps.
Mandates make the remaining crazy people look more visibly crazy, but they were going to be there either way.
$100 is "a little incentive". Firing people from their jobs, threatening their livelihood, making them unable to put food on their table or a roof over their heads, and ostracizing them from society is brutal coercion, no matter how nicely you dress it up. Getting people vaccinated that way is not informed consent in any way, shape or form.
> People want things to go back to normal
The biggest problem is that people who defend the coercion believe that a higher vaccination rate will somehow end the pandemic. In Ontario, today, the majority of ICU cases, hospital cases, and cases cases are among the vaccinated.
It's the vaccinated who are driving the pandemic, and have been driving it the past few months. But all the blame is being heaped on the unvaccinated.
The Omicron wave will burn out, as waves do. The pandemic will end, as pandemics do. And the vaccination rate won't make one iota of difference in the long run.
To preface this, I am not bought in on the way the mandates have been done. I think there's huge room for improvement, and it feels a bit ham-fisted rather than well thought through. That said...
> In Ontario, today, the majority of ICU cases, hospital cases, and cases cases are among the vaccinated.
Looking at https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data/hospitalizations right now, the population of the ICU is 117 unvaccinated, 15 partially vaccinated, 150 fully vaccinated. Over 90% of Ontarians age 12+ are vaccinated. This says to me that the unvaccinated 10% of the population is making up over 40% of the ICU cases. While what you've said may be technically accurate, I think it's basically saying "most people are vaccinated" and the numbers suggest unvaccinated people are hugely more likely to end up in the ICU.
Am I misunderstanding the numbers? Or are we working off different numbers?
Yes, that's the source I was using as well. And yes, your conclusion is correct, you are more likely to end up in the ICU if you are unvaccinated. Both these things are true at the same time: The vaccines work, and the majority of cases and hospitalizations are among the vaccinated.
But the strain on the healthcare system and the pandemic as a whole is driven by total numbers, not relative numbers. The majority of cases are among the vaccinated, therefore vaccine mandates won't end the pandemic. But people who argue for the mandates argue as if it was a "pandemic of the unvaccinated", and that's simply not true.
Ah - I think I see what you're saying. At the same time, I don't think I agree with your premise. The numbers in front of us seem to indicate it's not just slightly different, it's dramatically more likely to end up in the ICU as an unvaccinated person. With that in mind, one of the cheapest/lowest impact avenues to reduce ICU bed usage is via vaccinations (acknowledging that's brushing aside the issue of forcing vaccines).
Do you think it was ever appropriate to have any mandates? If so, do you think the moment it passed 50/50 in terms of ICU beds (or other similar stat) was the appropriate time to repeal them? Or what should the "trigger" have been?
Given the 40:60 ratio of ICU cases and the 10:90 split of unvax/vax, I think here it's a pretty grey area. This still seems like "too many unvaccinated people in the ICU" to me, even though they're not the majority. I can definitely empathize with it becoming a judgement call now though, and on that I agree. At some point someone is making a decision about the magic number, and I'm not sold on the current government's strategy there.
> one of the cheapest/lowest impact avenues to reduce ICU bed usage is via vaccinations
Only if it's targeted. The people ending up at the ICU skew older and many of them are probably retired. But the issue that spawned the trucker protest is vaccine mandates for the truckers, who as a group are probably a lot younger than the people who are currently occupying ICUs in Canada due to covid.
Age is the single most important factor when it comes to determining the personal risk of covid. A healthy unvaccinated child is ~1000x less likely to have a bad outcome compared to a vaccinated 80-year-old. But this is completely ignored when it comes to the mandates, the mandates are the same whether you're a 20-year-old trucker or a 60-year-old trucker, even though forcing 20-year-olds to get vaccinated is completely useless from a public health standpoint.
The second most important factor is natural immunity, because it is stronger and longer-lasting than vaccinated immunity. Again, completely ignored. Forcing people with natural immunity to get vaccinated makes zero sense.
> Do you think it was ever appropriate to have any mandates?
No, never.
If the vaccines had been more effective and actually stopped transmission, we wouldn't be having this Omicron wave, so we wouldn't have lots of people in the ICUs in the first place, which is the current reason for the mandates. The main reason so many people are still unvaccinated is because they've made their own risk assessment and decided they're fine with not getting vaccinated.
If the virus had been deadlier, vaccination rates would have been higher anyway, because fewer people would have decided to take the risk to stay unvaccinated. If the virus had been less deadly, we would have had a lower vaccination rate, but also even less people in the ICUs.
No matter which parameter you hypothetically imagine to be different, we would probably have landed in a collective societal risk assessment that would have produced the same results anyway.
> Given the 40:60 ratio of ICU cases and the 10:90 split of unvax/vax, I think here it's a pretty grey area.
Right now that page shows ~78% total utilization, and a ~20% covid utilization. So one in four ICU patients are covid patients, which sounds like a lot. But if you could magically force-vaccinate everyone, and assuming there's a 50/50 split among vaccinated/unvaccinated in the US as well, that means you would reduce total utilization from ~78% to ~68%.
How the hell does it make sense to violate people's bodily autonomy, to force them or coerce them to get vaccinated, to increase people's distrust of government and public health, in order to have ~30% free ICU capacity instead of ~20%?
What the fuck? How about increasing ICU and hospital capacity instead?!? How about looking at the 3/4 of ICU patients that are there for something other than covid and see if there's any low-hanging fruit we can take care of there in order to reduce that number instead? Why would we curb people's freedoms and rights for a slight increase in potential ICU capacity? Why should ICU capacity decide whether or not people can go to a restaurant or not? That's a micro-managed technocratic bio-fascist dystopia! The healthcare system should serve the people, not the other way around!
Firstly, he has a timeline for removing most restrictions, so there should be progress there, and secondly, why should he have to promise that? In case conditions change, say a much more deadly form of COVID, those restrictions may be needed. That demand seems unreasonable.
And the truckers and everyone else on their side feels that leaving the emergency powers in the hands of the government is unreasonable. Thus why the two respective sides are at an impasse.
Put the measures being protested directly up for a vote by the Canadian legislature (so they're not just executive actions), if they're not struck down the government should resign / do a no confidence vote, let people elect a new government. Let the people have their voice. If protests continue take actions that let them protest but reduce their ability to be disruptive.
With the current dynamics of the disease though, authoritarian medical requirements are making much less sense over time. Vaccination doesn't really help curb transmission much and omicron is considerably less dangerous than previous variants. SARS2 was originally pretty near the threshold where government might not need to do anything forced and the new variant and ineffectiveness of the vaccine against is is pushing it further lower.
If the greatest flexibility a government can offer its people is the ability to vote every few years then that government does not work for the people.
I wasn't attempting to negate what you said, merely commenting on the inadequacies of a government that rigid.
I think protesting is not only valid, but necessary to keep centralized powers from growing too complacent. The growth of freedom globally and the birth of democracy was not on the back of elections or playing by the rules defined by the class of people in centralized power.
and obviously Canada's democracy has begun to erode if their leader is calling for a state of emergency completely bypassing the democratic process using old laws meant only to be enacted in extreme circumstances...certainly not to punish protests that have at worst blocked major roads for days - all the critical roads of which have already been cleared.
I think invoking the act is well within the democratic framework. The act mandates that there be an inquiry after to assess the validity etc. That will all come in time and I am sure lawsuits will follow too.
That said, there is definitely something going wrong with a portion of Canadian society because they trust Rebel News and Infowars more than any legitimate media organisation. Getting to the root of it will be crucial in figuring out what went wrong.
He did win, but the majority voted against him. He won the plurality of seats, giving him a minority government, but with 33% of the popular vote. Another party got fewer seats with 34%. Canada’s electoral system sometimes works like that. Changing the system was one of Trudeau’s campaign promises in 2015!
If you want to argue about the popular vote, the NDP + Liberals combined got 48% of the vote. Electoral reform is only going to reflect Canada's desire to move further left - it would actually make it harder for the conservatives to win.
There's not a "guarantee" but this is the well known behavior of the evolution of diseases. There is strong evolutionary pressure to become less deadly and more infectious.
Plus a future variant is likely to be even less affected by vaccination status.
> There's not a "guarantee" but this is the well known behavior of the evolution of diseases. There is strong evolutionary pressure to become less deadly and more infectious.
Do you know of any evidence that would support this hypothesis? Especially when talking about evolution over short periods of time (years, not centuries or millennia)?
An article in the Guardian published several months ago argued the opposite[0]; and while the Guardian is certainly no authority on scientific matters, and could well have its own narratives to push, their article suggests that this is not a well-known behaviour of pathogens.
The 1918 (Spanish) flu has descendants still circulating. During its peak it killed up to 5% of population (statistics vary, usually numbers land between 1 and 5%, in some places much more).
With all the covid talk, it is hard to quickly find a good source for the theory and verification of the evolutionary dynamics of diseases I mentioned, but as can be seen with variants (and how Omicron clearly wiped out Delta by overcompeting it) evolution of viruses absolutely does not need thousands or millions of years.
> but as can be seen with variants (and how Omicron clearly wiped out Delta by overcompeting it) evolution of viruses absolutely does not need thousands or millions of years.
Yes. I included thousands of years to accommodate the co-evolution of both the pathogen and the host, which, obviously, evolves at a much slower rate.
And since you mention how omicron wiped out delta, hadn't delta in its turn wiped out alpha, while being (I don't remember, was there a consensus on this?) a more dangerous variant?
If we break this down to basics, the selection pressure for a virus' survival is the host surviving long enough to spread the virus to another host, and ensuring enough hosts are available to continue this.
A new variant could kill every single last human and remain successful by infecting animal populations (SARS-COV-2 is doing the latter).
SARS-COV-2 and its descendants seem to me somewhat uniquely qualified to pull this off as they're one of the few viruses that are asymptomatically spread, meaning you can be infected, pass the virus on, then die for all it cares.
The above however, is not reason for us as a species to endlessly pursue locking down and pushing for restrictive measures when we see the situation clearing up and the above not being the case. When the time comes restrictions will be removed (this was already being discussed in a bunch of places) and hopefully we can just get back to the normal worries of the day such as impending climate disaster and war.
The conservative party forced a vote today to drop the mandates by the end of the month. It failed 151 to 185, with MPs voting along party lines (Conservatives and Bloc Québécois in favour; Liberals, NDP, and Green opposed) with a couple of abstentions.
Unless I misunderstand what the motion text means, it did not force a vote on mandates but on whether to come up with a plan to do so!
> That, given that provinces are lifting COVID-19 restrictions and that Dr. Theresa Tam has said that all existing public health measures need to be "re-evaluated" so that we can "get back to some normalcy", the House call on the government to table a plan for the lifting of all federal mandates and restrictions, and to table that plan by February 28, 2022.
You can't do that because 5000 people have blocked essential roads with big trucks. That's tyranny man.
Just because you support the end of restrictions doesn't mean you should support people getting what they want through illegal methods. This is supposed to be a democracy.
Canada just had an election, and the people pro-vaccine and pro-mandates were elected.
Yes, durect democracy and being allowed to all vote on all issues is a nice dream, but for now the system is a representative democracy. And it's not okay to force things through keeping people hostage.
Would you be similarly supportive if 5000 people blocked essential infrastructure with big trucks everytime they want something?
In my opinion, if we were to see a really large gathering, of the kind that BLM saw, then if say, ok, it does seem there's a lot of people who really care about this so maybe have a direct referendum, but this one hasn't met the threshold in my opinion.
The irony is this is exactly why the US is a republic and not a democracy.
Direct democracy is 100% mob rule but no one really cares to read the Federalist Papers or the mountain of thought that was put into this at the start of the US.
> Put the measures being protested directly up for a vote by the Canadian legislature (so they're not just executive actions), if they're not struck down the government should resign / do a no confidence vote
Wtf, you want them to vote, and if trudeau wins the vote, you want him to resign? Really a heads i win tails you lose sort of plan.
Besides,its a minority government, trudeau doesn't have to put it up for a vote, if he was going to lose, the opposition would put it to a vote.
And that's ignoring that 95% of what they are protesting isn't even federal juridsiction and has nothing to do with trudeau. He wouldn't be able to interfere if he wanted to.
Pierre Trudeau did far worse with the War Measures Act, which gave the government sweeping powers of arrest and detention without trial. Whether this will be a bad look on the government's part (from the public's perspective) depends on whether they can resolve this without incident. Unclear if the protestors will be able to dig in further if they're arrested for the various city laws they've broken.
I suspect that if Trudeau enforces Ottawa laws (which the police haven't), then stands down, this won't hurt public perception.
To add on to this, the Emergency Act was designed to replace the War Measures Act explicitly because of what Trudeau Senior did. It has a TON of caveats to it and requires ongoing review and is time limited. Nothing that is done under the Emergency Act is allowed to contravene the constitution.
The posters here decrying this as authoritarian don't understand anything about Canadian law, experience, or mindset and are going by what they're fed by their individual media source of choice. The War Measures Act invocation by Pierre Trudeau was one of the most singularly divisive moments (some would argue it was necessary, some would argue the opposite) in Canadian history, and made parliament realize they needed to rein in the Prime Minister's powers.
“ The poll was conducted Feb. 9 and 10, 2022 among a random selection of 1,506 Canadian adults who are Maru Voice Canada panelists and is accurate within +/- 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20.”
Two thirds doesn't seem like a particularly significant majority for such an authoritarian measure, and moreover the masses will always trade principle and liberty for a mere moment of catharsis--that's the whole reason we elect representative politicians: to be the prevailing cool heads who look out for our rights and liberties and not just the emotion of the moment.
Admittedly that group of 11 people weren’t protesting peacefully, but one group acting in concert doesn’t indict the wider movement.
On the scope of major protests in the last several decades in western democracies, this one definitely is about as close to the “peaceful” extreme as any have been.
As a society, we should also strive for fairness in our rhetoric. It betrays our credibility to describe a riot which leaves a city in ashes as “mostly peaceful protest” simply because we agree with the cause and then to characterize these protests as “violent” because we don’t agree with them.
It's a manipulation of language, and one that is becoming more obvious to more people by the day. Remember, the internet never forgets. Remember when the definition of vaccine was changed? The internet remembers. These tactics don't work anymore.
These truckers did nothing other than grease the wheels of authoritarianism anyway.
This is the last real protest in Canada. Next time, these "emergency" powers will either be immediate or these new powers are just new permanent government powers.
2/3rds the citizens will practically be demanding that this never happens again.
A lesson in why Ben Franklin said that democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Greasing the wheels of authoritarianism by peacefully protesting—that seems a lot like victim blaming to me. Something is really wrong if our democracies can’t handle peaceful protest.
Polling whether rights should be suspended is dangerous. I know nothing of Canadian law, but in the US if 2/3 polled said a peaceful protest should be broken up by the military. The response should condemnation and reassertion of our unalienable rights.
This is not a peaceful protest. There have been multiple documented assaults on the street and of people in the service industry. There were several attempts to burn down residential buildings full of people. The protestors have violated injunctions against making noises at volumes that are harmful to people's hearing, and depriving people of sleep.
I’ve been a lurker for many years, but felt I needed to make an account to counter you here.
What about X or Y is not a valid response to this argument. You can have no public opinion on antifa or BLM in another country to have the opinion that activity in your own community is not okay. We can compare this to BLM or antifa, but we can also compare BLM or antifa to the Arab spring or French revolution to say that they’re relatively peaceful too.
The fact is this entire thing has been horribly covered by the media.
There are a lot of groups and factions involved in the protest. The main leadership group is organized (and fundraised) by Canada Unity, and their original demands were to overthrow the democratically elected government to install themselves as government and rule through the senate and governer general. You can look that up in their original MOU on the way back machine.
The means of the protest was to park heavy equipment and harass the citizens of downtown Ottawa (via keeping them awake 24/7 with train horns, arguably a form of warfare) until the federal government capitulated to demands. This is essentially the “I’m not touching you, but my hand is directly in front of your face” form of harassment. Later that evolved into blocking border crossings, which is explicitly illegal and explicitly under the criminal code listed as not an acceptable form of protest.
The complications of this issue are confounded by the fact that more than half the donated funds are foreign funds to a protest that was deemed an illegal action.
I personally support the spirit of the protest (i.e. the vaccines should be optional for most jobs and the vaccine mandate should be relaxed) but not the tools they are using, in particular blocking a vital bridge and the honking shenanigans.
I personally have no problem in expressing a nuanced point of view or accepting that I got something wrong. Truth is a very elusive concept. And I rather learn than argue.
The person I was replying to however is aggressively partisan in his opinions. And while it's true that my comment wasn't a proper rebuttal, it does address his lack of credibility for arguing a one sided view of the world.
That’s it? That many people are there and this is the rampant violence? Lol. This is tame as hell. We’re you clutching your pearls this much during the violent BLM protests where people actually died and buildings burned to the ground with bodies later found inside?
The only reason for the act is because of the illegal blockades which is affecting essential services, goods and livelihood of local business and citizens.
A peaceful protest cannot hold people hostage by blocking their access to essential services and goods, and trapping them in.
If the protest stopped doing that, then it's fine to continue as long as it wants.
You can't have a very small minority get its way by simply holding others hostage to their services and goods. The point of a protest is to be heard and get people to consider your cause, not to consider your demands through extraction.
A strike is a bunch of people refusing to work, not a bunch of people blocking access to unrelated essential services. They do things like overwhelm the 911 service with spurious calls and circling their trucks around schools. This is not a strike, this is outright terrorism. Someone will die (or already has) because they don’t have access to an essential service.
I've watched 40 hours of multiple live streams at night and in the morning, it is peaceful. I have gone to events myself and it was peaceful. A lot of families brought kids there, doubt you'd see so many children if it was not peaceful.
It's like saying that locking you inside your house is peaceful, because all I did was put a big truck in front of your door which didn't physically harm you.
You're only including direct physical violence as part of your "not peaceful" definition. But blocking major road arteries and bridges that are essential to the economy and to bringing in/out services and goods to the people of Ontario is also an act that a peaceful protest wouldn't do.
I'm very pro-protest by the way. Including for people I disagree with. A few broken windows, some small contained fires in trash cans, and just the general side effects of having a thousand+ people in a small city space all protesting I'm absolutely okay with, even a few little breakout fights, I still would consider that a peaceful protest.
Blocking major roads using heavy machinery with no alternate route that can meet the needs of the local population, that goes beyond peaceful in my opinion.
P.S.: I've also watched live streams, I always do, I've seen BLM protests first hand for example, and all media always exaggerate a protest, so I'm the last person who'd believe the headlines at first. In this case though, I know even the truckers probably don't think it's that big a deal that they have their trucks blocking roads, but given the already stretched crisis of the Pandemic, the second order effects on supply is a big deal. Please keep protesting, but don't block those major roads. Move to smaller roads even if you want.
They know what's coming, when they decided to block those roads, they knew they didn't leave people a choice, they are cutting off a supply line, this is beyond protest, it's an attempt to say, if you want your supply back, do what we want. I'm sorry, that's beyond: We won't stop voicing our concerns and expressing our rights to protest.
When one side shows up to block a street to draw attention, and the other shows up to loot a Best Buy to get a new PlayStation, it’s not really an apples to apples.
Funny how you seem to have forgot the highway shutdowns that BLM pulled in multiple cities, buildings burnt down with bodies later discovered inside. Yeah totally way more chill than some scary trucks idling in a street.
I recommend reading the bottom of the article and then googling the Maru Voice Canada the people who ran the poll. They are an organization who's members they poll. A rather small one at that with a probably very high self selection bias. Calling this a survey of Canadians is blatantly false.
It doesn't look like, it is authoritarian response to something which should be protected.
Using government power intended for things like war to suppress a protest is ridiculous, if this is what being "liberal" is about, I'm out.
I hope the response is a protest escalation. Not my country, not my protest, but I know who I'm rooting for.
Contrast this to what was happening in Minneapolis a couple of summers ago... people burning down buildings, shops, and police stations and the fire and police literally afraid to go places in the city until we had armed forces marching through the streets. Those are the kind of popular uprisings that need to be dealt with, not streets being blocked by unhappy people.
Damage in Minneapolis was mostly confined to a singular street.
Singular.
At no point were fire and police “afraid” to go places in the city either, though I can imagine you may have been watching certain “news” coverage that may have claimed that.
I've spent more than a decade living in Minneapolis, I wasn't confused by crazy news sources.
>At no point were fire and police “afraid” to go places in the city either
The police abandoned the 3rd precinct station which was burned down later that night. How's that for being afraid to be in a place?
There were plenty of stories of fire trucks not going places for security reasons, and eventually firemen had national guard escorts. I don't know what that is besides "being afraid" to go places in the city.
>>“We were faced with these fail fail fail options,” Mr. Frey (Minneapolis mayor) said. “We were literally having to choose between preventing additional looting, protecting a precinct and providing escorts to firefighters to put out fires. There was no way we could do all three.”
>Damage in Minneapolis was mostly confined to a singular street.
A main street which crossed the cities, miles long. And damage wasn't at all confined there. There were several hot spots around the cities.
>I can imagine you may have been watching certain “news” coverage that may have claimed that.
Well, here's the New York Times backing up my claims.
I hope you’re just as outraged by the removal of first nations protesters blockading pipelines last year - because those were more peaceful than the trucker stuff and they were crushed with pretty extreme force by the rcmp
Truckers as a group are not what most people would call privileged! Hard work, long hours away from their family, and not great pay. Most of them aren’t very educated and came from humble homes.
The protesters are, by and large, not truckers. There are some 300000 truckers (most of them vaccinated) in Canada. A few hundred of them are involved in the protests. It is not a truckers protest, it’s a people in pickups and passenger cars protest.
As for pay, I’m seeing wages of $85K + bennies advertised around here. That’s not a bad wage.
One group is protesting a permanent degradation of their home for the rich to get richer. The other is protesting temporary measures to protect the most vulnerable among us. Yeah, my sympathies are a not exactly even. Either way, invoking the emergencies act is stupid - if it wasn’t needed to arrest and remove pipeline protesters, it’s just theatrics now.
Another way to look at it is energy, especially affordable energy is an essential service that many many people rely on, especially in a cold place like Canada.
Regardless, I agree that the emergencies act is overkill. I think the Canadian government should sit down with the protestors and come up with a plan that alleviates the situation. I don't think a police vs protestor clash in the streets is going to end well for anyone.
They didn’t sit down with pipeline protesters, why should they sit down with this mob?
“You need to get vaccinated, or you can’t work in cross border trucking or go to restaurants for a year or two” is an infinitely smaller ask than “give up control of your land to us, also your drinking water is poison”
Serious question though, which applies to both the Canadian truckers case and the Minneapolis example above - does a right to protest an issue also include a right to inflict economic harm (on broader society, in poorly-targeted fashion) in order to raise awareness? Is the amount of economic harm (say, %GDP of the town, region, or country) or how broadly it's targeted ("random retail stores"? "Anything that relies on ground-based trade between Canada and the US"?) a factor in how allowable it is? Where does one draw a line of reasonability here?
"Economic harm" is a really weak criterion all around for restricting protest rights and one ripe for abuse. I'm not sure if this is the only impact that a line should be drawn at all.
"Public safety" is a good one, you're free to protest but there has to be adequate access for emergency services to get to people in need.
"No significant destruction" is a good one, not just making a mess in the streets but when your movement starts actively destroying property, looting, etc.
If you keep doing economic harm, your movement will tend to get pretty unpopular pretty quickly and the social pressure instead of government force will likely get to you in the end.
Lots of people walking of the job will do significant amounts of economic harm, I don't want people in certain jobs to become effective slaves because their job is important to the economy. And also a general strike is a very powerful action which should be done from time to time, explicitly very economically powerful and definitely should be protected.
> No significant destruction" is a good one, not just making a mess in the streets but when your movement starts actively destroying property, looting, etc
This one is also ripe for abuse - outside forces have been using agents provocateurs for centuries, often undercover cops.
Notably the Canadian government has numerous examples of employing agents provocateurs, enough examples that there is a section of the Wikipedia article dedicated to examples from the Canadian government. [0]
Serious question- how many rights are ok to trample, and how much economic harm is ok for a government to inflict upon its people? I can't take the claims of economic harm from the protests seriously when the govt itself inflicted unnecessary measures that destroyed lives that far outweigh the economic costs of these protests. Besides, the govt can end this issue as well, just end the mandates. The vaccines don't work against Omicron anyways.
Although not as well as they did on previous variants of the virus, the vaccines continue to work extraordinarily well against Omicron. For example, consider the latest data from California (https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/):
* "From January 17, 2022 to January 23, 2022, unvaccinated people were 5.9 times more likely to get COVID-19 than people who received their booster dose."
* "From January 17, 2022 to January 23, 2022, unvaccinated people were 11.4 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than people who received their booster dose."
* "From January 10, 2022 to January 16, 2022, unvaccinated people were 21.8 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than people who received their booster dose."
None of those three points should warrant a mandate.
For the first point, I have some doubt as many covid infections go entirely undetected. If you don't have symptoms you don't get tested and don't end up a statistic. Even the CDC says it expects there have been 4x as many infections as reported.
For the next two, those aren't things which need government compelled vaccinations. You're taking a risk with your own health, I don't care if you take a risk and it kills you.
If hospitals aren't able to handle the wave of patients, put government weight behind staffing hospitals better and creating temporary hospitals for overflow.
The only metric that should require vaccination should be to prevent public spread, and then only if the risk to other people is beyond a threshold. It is pretty clear that omicron burned through populations regardless of vaccination status or previous infection. Forcing vaccinations could have lowered this rate a bit, but doubtfully enough to prevent everyone who was going to be exposed from being exposed anyway at a slightly later date.
If you're forcing vaccinations so somebody is more likely to get infected in March rather than January, it is not worth it or a justifiable action. That seems to be the situation with the current vaccine and current dominant variant. Infection is inevitable, short term delay is the only achievable goal, therefore mandates are no longer an acceptable use of government power. Omicron isn't in decline because people were smart or safe or did what they were told, it declined because it ran out of people to infect, vaccination rate didn't seem to significantly alter this pattern around the world except for when the peak happened and perhaps how wide and tall it was.
> You're taking a risk with your own health, I don't care if you take a risk and it kills you.
> If hospitals aren't able to handle the wave of patients, put government weight behind staffing hospitals better and creating temporary hospitals for overflow.
You just immediately contradicted yourself. "It's only a risk to you", but also the government needs to find more hospital staff to take care of you. The fact is, nurses and doctors are burnt out and they're leaving the field because of this bullshit. They don't have enough people to train new health care workers, and even if they did it takes years before they're qualified. You can't just throw money at a staffing issue like this.
Even if you could throw money at a staffing issue, I still would rather mandate vaccines than require the government to vacuum up/print tons of money to treat illness that's trivially preventable. COVID vaccination is leagues cheaper than COVID hospitalization, and that cost affects everyone.
It would be! And if banning cheeseburgers had remotely the same material consequences as vaccination (i.e. virtually none), and would be remotely as effective for preserving public health, we could seriously consider the notion that we should go ahead and do it. But since it would, in fact, not be nearly as effective (because if I stopped eating cheeseburgers alone I wouldn’t be 16x less likely to die of an obesity related condition), and because it would make everyone besides vegans very sad and do terrible harm to lots of industries, whereas vaccination mostly just harms the funeral business and only makes people very very bad at statistics unhappy, it is, in fact - like all comparisons between obesity and vaccination status I’ve seen people who think they’re clever whip out - a completely ridiculous comparison.
Both types of action aren't stupid. One is, because it would have deleterious consequences with little benefit; one isn't, because it has very positive consequences with little cost. I already said that, but maybe if I say it again it'll register?
Frankly, I'd be more than happy forcing everyone to inject saline once if it saved everyone $10...but I do well, I'm not especially concerned about "a few tax dollars" and I'm happy to pay my taxes. But inflation from printing money hurts everyone, as do cuts from other government programs meant to help those in need, and both are likely. Maybe over-taxing the rich would too, but that'll never happen, so I'm not sweating that. Still, I think it's disgusting that you'd rather let people be homeless, starve to death, or die from lack of access to medical care than that we just demand that the members of society stop being anti-social. Alternatively, I think it's disgusting that you think you're entitled to everyone's money for treatment that a simple 15 minute trip to the pharmacy could have prevented, which you avoided just to spite all of those people who now have to pay the tab. If we could exclude the voluntarily unvaccinated from COVID-related medical treatment, that'd be a good and fair compromise, but for some reason anti-vaxxers throw a tantrum when that's suggested too.
> Frankly, I'd be more than happy forcing everyone to inject saline once if it saved everyone $10
Twice right? And then a saline booster every 6 months too right?
> I'm not especially concerned about "a few tax dollars" and I'm happy to pay my taxes.
Your lead argument for mandating vaccination was the potential cost of care.
> But inflation from printing money hurts everyone, as do cuts from other government programs meant to help those in need, and both are likely. Maybe over-taxing the rich would too, but that'll never happen, so I'm not sweating that.
I have no clue what you’re talking about here.
> Still, I think it's disgusting that you'd rather let people be homeless, starve to death, or die from lack of access to medical care than that we just demand that the members of society stop being anti-social.
I said no such thing.
There’s a world of difference between opposing a mandate that everybody take a vaccine and opposing vaccines.
Everybody who wants one should get one. They’re free, available on just about every corner, and I’m not aware of anyone right now who wants one who can’t get one.
I’m also not aware of anyone except the most paranoid triple vaxed that still wear a mask outdoors. Now thats anti-social. Not “following the science” either.
> Alternatively, I think it's disgusting that you think you're entitled to everyone's money for treatment that a simple 15 minute trip to the pharmacy could have prevented, which you avoided just to spite all of those people who now have to pay the tab. If we could exclude the voluntarily unvaccinated from COVID-related medical treatment, that'd be a good and fair compromise, but for some reason anti-vaxxers throw a tantrum when that's suggested too.
We do it for smoking. For obesity. For just about every other choice a person can make. There’s nothing special about covid that you should give up dominion over your own body. Hell, for the vast majority of non-obese under 50, it’s barely a flu.
> We do it for smoking. For obesity. For just about every other choice a person can make. There’s nothing special about covid that you should give up dominion over your own body. Hell, for the vast majority of non-obese under 50, it’s barely a flu.
For posterity, for the third time: obesity is not comparable to COVID, because obesity is not a problem which is instantly resolvable for almost no cost and no effort.
Smoking is also not comparable to COVID, because nicotine addiction is also not a problem that is instantly resolvable, for almost no cost. We also tax the hell out of nicotine, which helps offset the burden smokers place on society. If you're content with how we treat smokers, is there some way we could analogously tax the voluntarily unvaccinated to help offset the burden they're placing on the rest of us that you'd be happy with?
Anyway, that's what's special about COVID and vaccination: it is a problem that is almost instantly resolvable for almost no cost.
I understand you're arguing from a principle: you think that, no matter how costly it is for society for someone to be unvaccinated, no matter how ridiculous their reasons are for being unvaccinated, we still cannot punish anyone for it any way. There's literally no practical fact that could change your mind on that - it could be the case that unless everyone got vaccinated the Earth would explode and all our souls would be subject to infinite torment, and you'd still insist Trucker Joe has the right not to get vaccinated and cast all of humanity into eternal damnation. You can argue from that, if you want; but if you're going to try arguing from specifics, by analogy to specific things, you need to actually think those specifics out.
For posterity, I'll also try to clarify what I meant about taxes, and why what you're advocating for precisely leads to the consequences you claim not to support:
A COVID hospitalization costs the government something like 1000x more than a round of COVID vaccinations. There's no real economic benefit to spending that extra money, and that money needs to come from somewhere. It could come from debt or printing money, but that leads to inflation. Inflation makes everyone poorer; it makes it harder to afford basic necessities like housing and food, almost inevitably leading to some degree of starvation and homelessness. It could come from reallocating money that the government spends on programs elsewhere - but those programs generally exist for a reason, usually to help the people in the most dire of straits, and cutting funding to those programs is going to hurt those people - often leading to, you guessed it, consequences like starvation and homelessness. Or it could come from raising taxes - on the poor and middle class, which is awful, because generally speaking those people need that money (and guess what happens when people don't have money they need); or on the rich, which is probably the least awful option, Laffer curve be damned, but is also the least likely to happen, and is still wholly unnecessary. And of course: this ignores what was mentioned above, which is that there's no amount of money the government could throw at hospitals to let them instantaneously increase their capacity 50x over, because the staff literally doesn't exist. So it's an inevitability that the unvaccinated are clogging our hospitals, leading people to die due to treatable conditions.
> Anyway, that's what's special about COVID and vaccination: it is a problem that is almost instantly resolvable for almost no cost.
That you consider giving up body autonomy "almost no cost" is what's simply insane.
It's not a sliding scale where $X of savings for Y% of personal choice. It's a black and white line that involves someone else, whether elected or appointed, deciding that you must inject this into your body for the good of society.
> I understand you're arguing from a principle: you think that, no matter how costly it is for society for someone to be unvaccinated, no matter how ridiculous their reasons are for being unvaccinated, we still cannot punish anyone for it any way.
Damn right.
> There's literally no practical fact that could change your mind on that - it could be the case that unless everyone got vaccinated the Earth would explode and all our souls would be subject to infinite torment, and you'd still insist Trucker Joe has the right not to get vaccinated and cast all of humanity into eternal damnation.
The only people that think the world is going to end if Trucker Joe does not get vaccinated are the same triple vaxed ones that are still wearing masks outdoors.
> A COVID hospitalization costs the government something like 1000x more than a round of COVID vaccinations...
That doesn't matter and claiming that you could use the same money for $PULL_HEARTSTRINGS does not make the argument any more valid.
People who give up individual freedoms to save a buck will end both enslaved and penniless.
> Serious question though, which applies to both the Canadian truckers case and the Minneapolis example above - does a right to protest an issue also include a right to inflict economic harm (on broader society, in poorly-targeted fashion) in order to raise awareness?
Almost unexceptionally yes?
Arab Spring in Egypt, civil rights lunch counter sit-ins, the protests in East Germany in 89...
I'm actually having a hard time thinking of historic protests which didn't inflict economic harm.
I'm not asking whether significant protests tend to cause economic harm. I'm asking whether there should be reasonable limits. I think it's easy to come up with a feel-good answer like "the economic impact of the protest should match the severity and importance of the thing bring protested", but it's hard to have good rules for where that line of reasonable-ness is.
Hyperbolic example: If there was a 0.01% minority in your country/region which was violently opposed to some existing minor local law or regulation, would it be ok for them to shut down half the economy over it? Think of all the secondary damage that's doing every time someone gets upset over something relatively-small in the big picture. I think most would think that's unreasonable. It's this question that gets at the heart of when and/or if it's ok for a heavy-handed government to come in and put a stop to things. When is it reasonable for the powers that be to intervene and "stop a protest" because the toll is too high for the weight and/or popularity of the matter at hand?
This is the irony here in that in the situations recently where environmentalists and indigenous protestors halted pipeline construction the Conservatives in parliament railed against these actions, citing economic harms.
Now with these protests, causing even more incredibly severe economic harms they've demurred from criticizing the protestors.
"Using government power intended for things like war"
This isn't the war measures act. It is a response specifically targeted to situations like this.
"I hope the response is a protest escalation"
That's neat. I hope that every protester that misused a privilege of their CDL lose their truck license, lose insurance, have their bank accounts locked, and face enormous fines. I guess we have differing hopes.
Sign petitions. Make a new political party. Lobby. Do a campaign. But if you try to force your political will through force -- which parking large trucks throughout cities and on border crossings is -- you have crossed a line and need to be reigned in.
"Not my country"
Oh gosh, what a surprise...
And then, of course, a comparison with completely irrelevant other events that most of us also found reprehensible.
I hate when the protests appear on HN because it makes me realize how terrible "right wing" so many on here are (not conservative -- I'm conservative -- but rather a particularly...stupid and angry version that now parades as right wing in the US), and how absolutely reprehensible opinions are. A sort of "look someone previously in a different country and a completely different event tore stuff down so let them go wild in another country to own the libs". Just garbage takes that should be embarrassing to the speaker.
> But if you try to force your political will through force [...] you have crossed a line and need to be reigned in
Like forcing people out of their job for refusing a vaccine?
Disclaimer: I'm vaccinated and I encourage everyone to do it. But no one should have to under threat to their livelihood, especially given the absurd logical inconsistencies of the mandate rules.
> Like forcing people out of their job for refusing a vaccine?
Before vaccination was politicized in the US (bizarrely, I must say, through mechanisms that I find absolutely baffling), many jobs had mandatory vaccinations. Most healthcare setting have mandatory yearly flu vaccinations, for instance. The military has a whole plethora of mandatory vaccinations, including some pretty crazy ones. And of course schools, daycare, etc have forced vaccinations.
Suddenly it's a big issue. Ask yourself why.
And for what it's worth, I've been against mandates since omicron made it evident that they were no longer useful. I have zero tolerance for these protests, though, and would like to see them absolutely stomped.
I would say the difference is many of the other vaccines actually work. You won’t catch the disease if you get them. The covid vaccine does not do that. Also they fired people for not taking it but now require those who took it but are sick to work anyways. It’s no longer about protecting the population but rather forcing people to do what they are told. Forcing us back to work while sick was the line crossed that changed my mind this vaccine is not about public safety.
5x more likely to die while unvaccinated than vaccinated.
Side effects of getting covid are significantly worse than any real reported side effects as well. Which at this point you will get covid if you haven't had it already.
All the sick people piling up in the hospital ruins care for others who are in ER for other reasons, this isn't about control, it's about doing whats best for everyone.
We've had vaccine mandates for decades at this point, if it wasn't for the Fox News & the Murdoch Cinematic Universe this would really be a non-issue.
Here's the why: all of those vaccination requirements are known to people before they enter the job/school/military. That is wholly different from being in a profession and then one day being told you have to get vaccinated or get fired.
I'm curious what your answer is. To me its obvious: people don't trust these vaccines (or these authorities) the way that they have trusted other vaccines with much longer histories of use.
The next why is a hairier question that a lot of people will have different answers for, but it all stems from that lack of trust.
There are traditional anti-vaxxers of the "my body is my temple" ilk: Organic food, often vegan or vegetarian, against all vaccines and with an often bizarre notion of what is a "chemical" or not. Usually super fit. No one is surprised when these people are against COVID vaccines as it's consistent with everything else they stand for.
But there is a whole new army of anti-vaxxers who don't care what they eat, vape, smoke, or whether they or their children are standing in a plume of diesel exhaust 24/7. Often very unhealthy. They've never had the slightest concern or attention for any vaccine or medication, including novel, experimental medications (including those which they'll eagerly accept when they get COVID). New vaccines like the HPV vaccine, or yearly flu vaccine changes that have whatever random assortment of other ingredients, have never been of any concern or earned even a moment of their concern.
But suddenly they have very specific thoughts about this vaccine? Come on. And if it's the scary "changes your DNA" (but actually doesn't) bit, there are alternative, less effective more traditional vaccines which they also refuse.
It's tribalism. Early on their group ("conservatives") took some positions about responding to COVID -- anti-masking, anti-lockdowns, etc -- and that cemented into positions that somehow morphed into being anti-vaccine (basically anti anything seen as controlling or responding to COVID), despite there being literally nothing from a values or political perspective that would explain it (indeed, there are loads of classic conservative tenets that would directly oppose this anti-vax position). Then loads of people realized they could grift off of exploiting this divide, politicians -- most of whom are vaccinated -- saw an opening to pander, etc.
It is baffling and needs to be studied in depth. Tens to hundreds of millions of people could self-destructively be turned against something simply because they saw it as outside their tribe and messaging.
> But there is a whole new army of anti-vaxxers who don't care what they eat, vape, smoke, or whether they or their children are standing in a plume of diesel exhaust 24/7.
You're making some pretty specific assertions here that your whole rant seems to hinge on. Source?
Dismissing a considered response to a question as a "rant" is such lame trolling.
As to your demand for a "source" -- as if there's a scientific paper I can cite -- there are zero rational people who can read what I wrote and seriously question it, beyond weak HN trolls who have nothing.
It's uncomfortable for sure, though: Knowing that one's entire position about complex topics (vaccines, AGW, etc) is dictated by tribalism is pretty embarrassing when one really thinks about it. Particularly if one has blanketed it in lots of ridiculous rationalizations and explanations -- a legacy of nonsense -- carefully curating their YouTube channels of disinformation.
So, no source? You wrote a lot of text attacking a certain type of person; I'm just wondering if that type of person reflects reality, or if it's just something you made up to be angry at?
> You wrote a lot of text attacking a certain type of person
I "attacked" no one. If you feel an attack in it, you really need to reflect on why that makes you feel persecuted. Why a political demographic with zero historic interest in vaccines suddenly feels very opinionated about it is fascinating and disturbing.
I made a broad societal observation -- a plainly evident observation -- about tribalism overriding rational thought. And it's important to note that tribalism cuts all ways, and there are many cases of the "left" polarizing around something that is in no way a liberal or leftist value specifically because it's the tribal position.
I had a similar reaction to your post as blindmute. I don't feel attacked, as I don't see myself in the people you're talking about. But I also don't take for granted that those people even exist in the way that you described them.
> But there is a whole new army of anti-vaxxers who don't care what they eat, vape, smoke, or whether they or their children are standing in a plume of diesel exhaust 24/7.
So not to speak for the other poster, but I think another way to phrase their comment would be: what makes you believe this army exists? How many of them have you personally interacted with vs saw in some form of infotainment?
I ask because your description sounds like the kind of political cartoon you'd see in a news rag, and might be bolstered by that guy you remember from highschool or that crazy uncle that you can't stand. But I don't think its plainly evident that these people actually exist in great numbers.
I strongly believe what you're saying about tribalism. I just think your comment is another example of it.
Have you ever done what you're talking about? I have. It's borderline impossible to get even 100 votes and you have to start by cold calling minimum 100 people to sign consent to candidacy. If you actually believe anything you've said you're completely out to lunch.
> That's neat. I hope that every protester that misused a privilege of their CDL lose their truck license, lose insurance, have their bank accounts locked, and face enormous fines. I guess we have differing hopes.
Yeah. Ruining people's lives is a weird desire that somehow became very popular in recent years among the same people who usually criticized punitive justice.
> Sign petitions. Make a new political party. Lobby. Do a campaign. But if you try to force your political will through force -- which parking large trucks throughout cities and on border crossings is -- you have crossed a line and need to be reigned in.
Signing petitions and lobbying is a privilege of people with power. Neither the US nor France became a republic by signing petitions. Those are, of course, extremes, but those events are the basis of the liberal democracy, so it is quite ridiculous to dismiss everything beyond petitions and parties as crossing a line. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 wasn't enacted because someone signed a petition either. In fact, the protests were widely unpopular among people (https://imgur.com/4GYbaDt). Gene Sharp, a political scientists that studied nonviolent struggle, described in his book (http://www.aeinstein.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/TARA.pdf ) 198 methods of nonviolent actions, and they include far more possibilities than meek petitions.
>A sort of "look someone previously in a different country and a completely different event tore stuff down so let them go wild in another country to own the libs". Just garbage takes that should be embarrassing to the speaker.
And there is a vicious cycle where people are trying to one-up garbage takes by coming up with more and more ridiculous responses to each other.
There is no loss of mandate, if the opinion polls are anything to go by. Besides, the Canadian people chose the government in the middle of the pandemic last year. Is there a more comprehensive definition of a "mandate" than a federal election?
Whether the response is authoritarian depends on how it is enforced. The police have basically failed to enforce any law on the occupiers on parliament hill (I live here). If the local enforcement had happened preemptively and as per the law, the situation wouldn't have escalated as far as it has done.
Well that’s a silly thing to say. I don’t like governments elected on Tuesday. I’d prefer Wednesday. See that’s another silly thing said. Your opinions of FPTP voting have absolutely nothing to do with anything. The government was elected as per the defined rules.
And yet somehow there is regular turnover of the governing party approximately every 10 years, and the dominant parties have almost to a one been centrist. Not a terrible system.
Centrist by definition or by some objective measure? In the U.S. for example, the "center" is quite conservative compared to some other western nations.
If people could vote as they truly wanted without fear of throwing away their votes, the center would almost certainly move.
As to the back and forth between two major parties, that's hardly surprising. I'm not sure that indicates much in terms of what people actually want.
The idea is that parties have to appeal to a various groups in society in order to win elections, preventing them from taking any position that is too obnoxious to any one group. Thus, centrism.
Systems with ranked choice or similar measures to encourage smaller parties end up with a similar situation, but with less stability. Since those parties appeal to narrower bands of society, they are unable to form a government. Eventually they are forced into coalition, which brings them to the same place as the major parties in FPTP: compromise. Yet, since coalitions are inherently more fragile than parties, you get less stability, and less institutional pressure on individuals in government and cabinet to represent wider interests.
FPTP is really quite common in the western world. Going so far as to say it makes the government “barely legitimate” is a strong claim. Without other evidence, this claim relies entirely on how much we trust your sense of proportion.
Your comparison to North Korea casts doubt on your sense of proportion.
> FPTP is really quite common in the western world.
I don’t think this is true outside the English-speaking countries. Most “Western” countries are in Europe and have systems with some degree of proportionality where coalition governments are the norm.
> Your comparison to North Korea casts doubt on your sense of proportion.
It was an intentionally extreme comparison to show that “operates according to the rules” is not sufficient for a system to count as democratic. Of course Canada is much closer to counting as a liberal democracy than North Korea is, but for reasons other than “it operates according to its own internal rules”.
Perhaps a better analogy would have been Hong Kong a few years ago (before the situation there became worse and things became more directly controlled by the central Chinese state). Hong Kong has never been a democracy by any reasonable definition, but did have robust rule of law and liberal rights, despite elections being basically rigged due to the functional constituencies system.
> If we had ranked choice you'd have a Liberal/NDP supermajority.
That's unlikely to be true, because there would be way more viable parties. Maybe you would indeed have a supermajority of left-of-center parties but you can't conclude that they'd all have the same Covid restriction policies as the current ones.
> That's unlikely to be true, because there would be way more viable parties
Ranked choice (any form, not just IRV) voting systems without proportional allocation (whether multimember districts with STV, mixed member proportional, or party-list proportional, or something else) do not significantly increase the number of viable parties.
On the other hand, I'm amazed that 5% of the population voted for the People's Party of Canada -- a party which had no hope of winning. This absolutely split the vote on the right enough to make the CPC lose seats.
I did as a protest to both left and right malaise. In Canada a party gets a certain level of funding based on their popular vote which is another reason I voted for them.
There are decent arguments that that wasn't the case - that rather the PPC drew out a lot of anti-institution voters who would've voted not just for the CPC, but also the Greens, and those who would've spoiled their ballots or not voted at all.
I agree with your criticism of first past the post.
The the proposal of the convoy occupiers is that their organization picks a committee to run the country. That's a significantly less legitimate government with absolutely no claim at a mandate.
Indeed, I don’t think such a government would be democratically legitimate either. The point is that we simply can’t rely on the composition of the parliament to determine what most Canadians believe about any particular issue.
The best we can do is look at opinion polls, which suggest that most people want to get rid of most Covid restrictions, but also don’t support the trucker protest.
It was a snap election was it not? To me it seemed like the Canadian government was trying to take advantage of some weird timing/power trick to remain in government. Instead of waiting for the normal time to re-elect they saw an opportunity to stay in power. I am uneducated on Canadian politics so I could be seeing it wrong
Canada got vaccine way after the US because they simply wouldn’t help companies pay for R&D and secure orders earlier, like the US did. So while you could get a walk-in vaccine at Wallmart here in America people were waiting in line for weeks for a chance at an appointment in Canada.
Imagine how many lives it could have saved instead had they just put that money toward getting vaccines earlier.
> At the federal level, a vote of no confidence is a motion presented by a member of the House of Commons that explicitly states the House has no confidence in the incumbent government.[3] The government may also declare any bill or motion to be a question of confidence.
Major bills like budgets are automatically confidence votes as well. I think you need to get into the parliamentary minutiae to understand when other votes could cause an election.
No it’s not a trick it’s a feature of the parliamentary system. Arguably it’s much more Democratic in that you enable voters to choose whether they would like a change of leadership, anytime a Legislature is unable to function.
OTOH in a Presidential system you get no such opportunity to get the public’s opinion. You have to wait until the end of terms (congressional or presidential or both).
That makes sense to me. But which people get to choose when to re-elect a government? I read that the Governor General was the one to call this last election. Do only certain elected officials get the power to call this or can anyone?
Technically, the Governor General calls the electuin, but in practice it's not his or her choice, unless something unusual happens. Just a rubber stamp.
If a majority of Members of Parliament vote yes on a no-confidence vote, that will trigger an election. Otherwise the prime minister chooses when an election will happen, within 5 years. If the government is a minority, it is likely it will call an election within a year or two if they're confident they could get a majority (this happened last year). Otherwise, with a majority government, they tend to wait longer before calling an election.
This is how basically all elections involving a minority government happen here. They’re always trying to game the election timing to upgrade to a majority. Stephen Harper did it too (minority in 2006, majority in 2008).
My comment was a nitpick about how the Canadian electoral system works: no one outside of that particular riding voted for Justin Trudeau, they only voted for their own member of parliament.
He wouldn't have had to invoke emergency act if the Ottawa municipal police, the ones responsible for maintaining order in the city of Ottawa, did anything at all. They sat on their asses for weeks. The municipal leadership was non-existent, the ontario provincial leadership was non-existent, so what's left?
There's no "loss of mandate". The Canadian people are overwhelmingly vaccinated and don't mind wearing masks. 90+% of truckers are fully vaccinated. Canadians re-elected Trudeau during the pandemic.
The issue is that Ottawa Police were afraid of media backlash if they did any crowd control for the initial "protest" weekend. This allowed the occupiers to move in heavy machinery as barricades. When the weekend ended and the trucks didn't move, they realized they were dealing with something closer to an insurrection than a protest, and they've been impotent to stop it since.
THe people of Ottawa overwhelmingly support ending the occupation. It has terrorized women, queer people and people of color on the streets. They've been violent and confrontational with front-line workers, which forced two grocery stores to close their doors, plus a large mall. There have been two documented attempts to burn down residential apartment buildings and trap the occupants inside.
This weekend hundreds of Ottawa residents marched in a counter-protest, and also blocked the road and held up a convoy of trucks for more than 8 hours. The occupiers are a small group of people who are acting badly - shitting in the streets, getting drunk, blaring their horns, and using their children as human shields. Everyone will celebrate when they're gone for good.
"A new Angus Reid poll showed that 54% of Canadians support an immediate halt to all pandemic restrictions, a stark contrast to the 56% who said as recently as in December they would have supported another round of lockdowns over Omicron."
You didn't actually link to an article on Angus Reid. Here's one:
> As the country rolls into another week of uncertainty, nearly three-quarters of Canadians (72%) say the time has come for protesters to “go home, they have made their point.”
That's a editorialized quote. The source survey didn't say anything about "immediately" or "all" restrictions.
The specific question was "It’s time to end restrictions and let people self isolate if they’re at risk.", which describes basically the process that basically all provinces were going through prior to the protests.
Their core demand up until two days ago was to depose our current federal government and replace it with a their own government. When is a cat not a cat? How clear must it be for you to understand?
Name me a protest since 2020 that had a specific and documented demand to appeal to a head of state to remove a democratically elected government and replace it with a "people's council" composed entirely of the protestors?
That seems completely unrelated - it's a fair comparison to the actions of the protest itself (occupying a section of a downtown), but I'm not aware of any specific CHAZ / CHOP demands to permanently change the makeup or structure of any level of government, especially federal.
Because otherwise there is approximately nothing the federal government can do to end the blockade if the protestor don't leave by themselves. No matter if most of the population want it to end.
This allows the federal government to send the army if necessary (although Trudeau said they wouldn't), allows the police to fine and detain protestor that do not want to leave the blockade. And allows the federal government to require private companies to provide services, in this case towing companies to tow the rigs.
It also allows for freezing bank accounts of e.g. companies that have trucks participating in the blockade without a court mandate.
I think, but I am not sure, that this only applies to "strategic sites", in this case the border and maybe highways. Protester blocking a random street in Ottawa may not be concerned.
So, why require the mandate: To prevent the slim minority of truckers participating in the blockade from impacting everyone else for months.
A proper answer would be to lift the mandate to vaccinate all truckers, because it doesn't make any sense anyway, give them 2 days to clear the roads, and bring in troops if they refuse. Problem is, Trudeau's ego is too big to yield to a bunch of unwashed truckers.
Except Trudeau lifting the mandate would not change anything since this is also a requirements by the US for truckers to cross.
But sure, it's all because of Trudeau's ego.
"beginning in early January 2022, DHS will require that all inbound foreign national travelers crossing U.S. land or ferry POEs – whether for essential or non-essential reasons – be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 and provide related proof of vaccination. This approach will provide ample time for essential travelers such as truckers, students, and healthcare workers to get vaccinated."
Except Trudeau lifting the mandate would not change anything
So it causes no harmful change for Canadians in general, for as you say, nothing changes.
So... why not give in to this demand then?
As an aside, forcing truckers to get vaccinated makes no sense. They mostly work in isolation, and it isn't like blocking the virus at borders really helps these days.
I support forced vaccination for front line health care workers, those caring for the elderly, where it matters.
Because the few who don’t comply to public health recommendations/orders are responsible for the greater share of the economic burden of disease, and this burden was totally preventable.
That is not true at all. The greatest burden on the economy was the lockdowns and extreme countermeasures. People choosing not to get vaccinated may have caused unnecessary burden on the healthcare system, but to blame them for the struggling economy is just wrong.
I am a life scientist, and with respect, you're flatly incorrect. The first-order costs of public health measures scale linearly, and the first-order costs of infectious diseases scale exponentially. Higher-order costs are at least comparable between the two, and I would argue much higher in the case of covid than in the case of lockdowns.
(This being said, very few governments did lockdowns properly, and therefore almost every half-measure taken was ineffective and wasteful.)
A vast majority of people who contract COVID recover without any treatment. Are you arguing that the minority who don't impose higher costs than locking down the entire country?
Over 900k dead in the US alone from covid. Sure, that's a minority, but can you really shrug your shoulders at that number and say it's just a minority, no big deal?
Did I say that it wasn’t a big deal? Nobody is denying that. I cringe at the number of people who die every year due to smoking, car accidents, etc. But I certainly wouldn’t recommend mandating anything that gets in the way of people taking those risks if they choose to.
Like seatbelt mandates, taxes on tobacco products, food safety regulation (preventing the importation of certain hazardous foods), environmental regulation, or any other sort of coercive action (either against individuals, against corporations, or against government itself) taken by government to protect people?
It’s obviously a rhetorical question. I’d suggest that in all cases whether such mandates are appropriate depends on their proportionality relative to the harms they prevent.
> Did I say that it wasn’t a big deal? Nobody is denying that. I cringe at the number of people who die every year due to smoking, car accidents, etc.
Car accidents are 30-40k/year in the US, so 10% of covid. And the number of measures taken to reduce car accidents is extraordinary - age limits, compulsory driver's licenses, city design rules (roads, pedestrian crossings, etc, etc), speed limits, car construction regulations, compulsory insurance, and more. Given that, what's the appropriate level of regulation you suggest for covid?
I take the blame for originally mentioning car accidents, but this is not really something you can compare to COVID especially when you are talking about government mandates. A serious car accident is deadly for anyone, including teenagers or young working-aged adults. A COVID infection is not even close to as deadly for those age groups.
Lets assume that the only cost associated with covid is lost work. So lets weight death rate by age group and years to retirement i.e. if you're in the 50-59 age group you have a 1.3 percent death rate and we'll say 10 years till retirement, 20-29 0.2% and 40 years (we'll exclude people from 60 up as they obviously contribute nothing to society and their deaths are meaningless especially in a economic sense /s). We'll ignore age distribution as we're talking about Canada which has a population pyramid which is pretty much square accross ages 10-60 (similiar to US FYI).
So as a napkin calculation how many normalised years of lost labour do we have from the deaths... 0.13 years from the 50-59 year olds, 40-49 0.08, 30-39 0.06, 20-29 0.08, 10-19 0.1, for a total of 0.45 years of lost labour from deaths if the whole country caught covid.
In a world were all economic activity can be turned on and off like a lightswitch it would make economic sense for Canada to flick that switch and leave it off for up to 5 months (of absolutely zero economic activity which is not the actual level of lockdown as essentials still run) to irradicate covid, from the impact of deaths on work produced alone.
So yes as a general rule I would argue that locking down entire countries can make great economic sense if you can lower your death rate (say by using the time where covid spread is reduced by rolling out a vacine that would reduce the lost time to 0.0045 years if everyone got it). Though of course you'd need to get into the nitty gritty of stunted business growth and if killing off 8% of people over 60 is a good way to reduce taxes needed to support them to have a definitive answer.
NB: I'll add that I'm replying to your question on the economic sense. Personally I find reducing the pandemic to this view deplorable but as some do argue it I thought I'd argue the countercase along those lines. I.E. Even if you're a heartless bastard only interested in money you should still be enforcing strict controls until your population is aproaching as vaccinated as it's going to get.
This is obviously a gross oversimplification, but it's exactly the kind of napkin maths that people need to make before they pass judgment based on no more than gut-feeling and misguided suggestions from the internet.
Add to that that the true cost of Covid-19 in survivors (including asymptomatic and mild cases) remains to be seen in terms of DALYs/QALYs, and is known to be significantly greater than zero. [1]
Exactly. In Canada, $40,000 per person was spent on lockdowns most of which went to large companies posting record profits. Zilch on making an ICU room for every Canadian which is what that money could have bought should it have been spent responsibly.
I am prepared to believe this number, but I think a citation would be very helpful here. In any case, have you bothered to also look up the economic burden of disease of covid-19 in Canada, in terms of QALYs and/or DALYs?
QALYs and DALYs are how you measure the burden of health.
Quality-Adjusted Life Years, and Disability Affected Life Years, respectively. Without an understanding of them, you can't actually have an objective conversation about measuring the impact of any kind of illness.
It’s pretty easy. Mandating people get vaccinated for diseases they already had is the height of dumb. That’s what this protest is about, does the govt have the right to force your employer to fire you if you don’t get vaccinated for a disease you already have.
Attempting to have a conversation about long distances whilst not learning the terms for either miles or kilometers is also dumb. You need to be able to talk in something more than allegory at some point.
The health impacts of vaccinated, and unvaccinated, have been measured according to current models. And in current models, getting the disease does not offer as much protection as also getting the vaccine - and thus protecting the wider population is best done with a mandate. A minuscule number of individuals is posing a threat to the rest of the population. The freedoms of the individual end where society begins. One doesn't get to walk down the street threatening to punch everyone they meet, even if they never throw a punch.
Without QALYs and DALYs, any comparison or weighing of dollars and health outcomes are meaningless. Wiki has enough to point you in the right general direction!
The poster's assertion that none of the pandemic money was spent on increasing ICU capacity is false, capacities were increased in every province, in mine by about 35-40%.
That said you can't healthcare-capacity your way out of a pandemic, the USA has managed to overwhelm its capacity in numerous jurisdictions despite having much higher baseline capacity than any Canadian jurisdiction. It is not an honest argument worth engaging with.
I said $40k per person was enough to build an ICU bed for everyone in Canada. My assertion is honest. And you’ve provided no data / argument to refute it.
Not sure what province you are in but using the Canadian average and a 40% increase in beds, that’s roughly $50 million per bed. That is quite frankly a colossal waste of money. Do you feel that this is money well spent?
If you think that increasing hospital capacity scales infinitely with the money spent then I think your model of the healthcare system is incorrect and as such the premise of your question is incorrect.
Likewise if you think that the healthcare system capacity was the only limiting factor with respect to COVID-19 public health measures that reduced transmission your model of the epidemiology of SARS-Cov-2 is incorrect.
"I said $40k per person was enough to build an ICU bed for everyone in Canada."
You didn't say that in the comment I replied to, maybe you said it elsewhere?
$40k per person in Canada is 37 million X 40,000 - that's 1.5 trillion CAD, right? Is my math correct on that? That's 2 years of the entire federal budget where did you get that number from?
It is wild to me that people don't understand that with infinite funds spent the day the first wave hit the first fully qualified nurses that would be hitting the hospitals would just be arriving now at the earliest. And those wouldn't have spent a day on a ward or in an ICU yet... and you would be years away from more doctors. Not to mention physical infrastructure.. all the while the virus scales exponentially!
What extreme countermeasures were done in BC? Closing Yoga studios for 4 weeks? Our economy has done pretty well during the pandemic. Is it all fun and games, nope.
As a vaccinated person I flat out blame the people that didn't get vaccinated for making the last year much worse than it'd had to be. If we had better vaccine coverage we wouldn't need the restrictions that we had to put in place. They don't only put burden on the healthcare system (which they do), preventing people that need care from getting it (which they do), but they also mean the rest of us have to do more because they're not willing to do their share. I guess the bright side is that this is a tiny minority around these parts.
For my part, while I do blame the unvaccinated at least in part, I place even greater blame on all the anti-mask and anti-social-distancing insanity we’ve seen in both Canada and the US. (In many cases these are the same groups of people, it seems... But I believe in being specific in my accusations.)
While we developed vaccines at an impressive speed, governments royally screwed up the rollouts and logistics. Had we all done real proper lockdowns and taken public health recommendations seriously for a few weeks, and had governments been properly supportive (ie.: enabling) of that, our current vaccination uptake might have been enough to eradicate covid-19.
You really don’t need to be omnipotent to know it. For months, Canada was hovering at an Rt just above 1.0. Very little more would have been required to tip the balance.
Canada would also have to be okay with completely closed borders for the rest of its existence. Either that or come up with some way to unilaterally enforce COVID countermeasures in every country on Earth simultaneously until it is completely eradicated. I'm sure it was a nice thought when infection rates were low enough, but after thinking long-term about the problem it becomes clear that government mandates can only do much for so long.
There were no orders but recommendations only in regards to vaccines. I understand you realize the difference between the order and recommendation. Recommendation does not require compliance.
And the burden was caused by lockdowns and complete absence of vaccines in Canada for a big while
In the context of public health, "compliance" is a word that is used to refer to the percentage of people who follow expert advice. The same word, "compliance", is used to describe how many people take their prescribed pills properly and on schedule. The word doesn't only apply for "mandates" or "orders", and as you correctly pointed out, what ultimately matters is what people do.
Do you understand how public health works? The vaccine does not 100% prevent any infection, it reduces the odds and intensity. Some people cannot be vaccinated for legitimate medical reasons. You would think computer people would understand "defense in depth".
Meanwhile, anti-vaccine people are single-handedly working to revive diseases that were almost eradicated:
it sounds like you’re using the post covid-19 definition of Vaccine.
It’s amazing that the definition of a word like vaccine could change suddenly, because it is was incompatible to one virus — a mysterious super virus whose origin is still unknown, according to the WHO.
Is the science settled on whether 90% vs 100% has an impact on the health of society given omicron?
> Meanwhile, anti-vaccine people are single-handedly working to revive diseases that were almost eradicated
Conflating traditional anti vaxers with the new COVID anti vaxers is dishonest, they actually usually come from different parts of the political spectrum.
Please stay home forever and never get out because some people cannot get vaccinated. No exceptions. I hope those unvaccinated prove scientists right some day. It would take decades.
You don't have your facts correct because the vaccine does not inhibit transmission. Some argue it reduces the risk but the data is inconclusive.
It is militancy like yours that is elevating opposition.
I am vaccinated but support anyone that stands up to a mandate, vaccination passes or emergency powers. I don't really have to justify that any further.
Omicron may be "mild" to healthy, vaccinated people, but it's a serious, deadly health threat to the unvaccinated elderly.
Accordingly places where transmission is likely (eg. a small intimate restaurant) are serious and potentially deadly health risks to the elderly, unvaccinated part of the population.
So long as our hospitals are overwhelmed (as they currently are) it's a very bad idea to open up these high transmission areas to unvaccinated people, as they'll inevitably catch the disease and are so much more likely to end up in the hospital in ICU.
This is why restaurants/bars/etc should continue to have vaccine mandates even though so many people are vaccinated.
The point isn't to coerce the last 10% into getting vaccinated. It's to protect the hospitals from being overwhelmed by new cases from the unvaccinated.
In all provinces, the elderly were the very first to get vaccinated. First. First to get second vaccinations, and for a long time, the only group allowed to even get a third shot.
There are no unvaccinated elderly people running around, unless they insist on not being vaccinated. In such cases, that's their choice, and no one should take additional precautions for those opting out.
There's plenty of unvaccinated elderly getting themselves killed. This article has charts showing deaths/ICU/hospitalized over the last 120 days. The elderly and unvaccinated are particularily impacted. https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/covid-19-in-alberta-788-weekend-...
> In such cases, that's their choice, and no one should take additional precautions for those opting out.
Yeah it's getting to the point where if stubborn old people want to meet their maker sooner than later, well sure that's their choice and we should let them, but at the moment the hospitals are overwhelmed and this has negative impacts on everyone, as it delays all the other surgeries and other work that the hospital needs to do.
I'm fine with lifting vaccine mandates once hospitals are unlikely to get overwhelmed, but it's not at all clear we're at this point yet.
Going to be very interesting to see what happens in Alberta and Sask over the next little while as they're lifting the vaccine passports.
> A death resulting from a clinically compatible illness, in a probable or confirmed COVID-19 case, unless there is a clear alternative cause of death identified…
notice the probable or confirmed case and know that hospitals (US) are eligible for additional reimbursement with covid “case” patient from a $100 Billion CARES act fund (at minimum)
>Individuals who received at least one dose was calculated as (# of individuals who received at least one dose) / (population estimate).
Deaths are also only attributed to Vaccinated category after 14 days from the second dose, else it’s a “unvaccinated” death.
This is the first vaccine ever where you can die 13 days after a vaccine, and be classified unvaccinated. It’s just magical how “science” to advance “public health” works.
You've made a lot of claims on this post, but can you cite a source behind your statement of "This is the first vaccine ever where you can die 13 days after a vaccine, and be classified unvaccinated."? It also makes sense, since you've taken a vaccine, but you have not developed the expected antibodies until ~14 days.
This doesn't change anything in terms of hospital capacities here. The surgery backlog is massive, the hospitals are overrun with covid patients. Taking additional precautions is an attempt to try to protect the larger populations access to healthcare.
I'm pretty sure the decision to require truckers to be vaccinated at the border crossing or quarantine (no, they're not forced to vaccinate) came about around Nov 18th when Delta was ramping up. It's just that the implementation was not immediate. I think it made sense back then to try and figure out ways to generally increase the vaccine coverage. By the way the US has the exact same requirement (so even getting the Canadian Federal government to reverse its position here wouldn't change anything for those truckers).
Now with Omicron (for the last few weeks at least) it's clearly not needed any more, but governments move slowly, so it'd take a few more weeks. There's other restrictions that were put in around that timeframe that no longer make sense, like requiring PCR tests, and all those are on their way out.
This protest makes no sense except as a way of sowing chaos and seeking to destabilize the country.
> PAT KING: Pat King is a far-right protester who has said in videos posted to social media that there may be future plans to target politicians' homes and that "the only way that this is going to be solved is with bullets." He has called for the arrest of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly.
> King has gained attention online for a video posted to Twitter in which he decries the "depopulation" of white people, as well as another video posted in 2019 in which he makes racist remarks about Jewish, Muslim, and Chinese people.
> Police have said they are concerned about how the convoy has attracted far-right and extremist elements, and on Sunday confirmed they were dealing with more than 60 criminal investigations, with alleged offences including "mischief, thefts, hate crimes and property damage". - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60281088
The Nazi flags, the Gadsden flags, the Trump flags, the fact that they're saying racist, sexist, homopobic stuff in the Zello? The fact that their contributions are from right-wing US sources and the extreme right press is giving them publicity? How about the fact that they love Pat King?
I've been living in downtown Ottawa for weeks, I've been harassed.
The harassment of ordinary citizens has been pretty well documented by the press and cursory search would give you all the evidence you need to see the OPs anecdote aligns well with what has been reported.
“define harassment” is neither a good argument nor a discussion in good faith.
> The Nazi flags, the Gadsden flags, the Trump flags, the fact that they're saying racist, sexist, homopobic stuff in the Zello? The fact that their contributions are from right-wing US sources and the extreme right press is giving them publicity? How about the fact that they love Pat King?
From a distance it's very hard to judge what's true and what isn't. My level of trust in the media these days is extremely low so reading stories about Nazi Flags I'm thinking "click bait". Meanwhile forums like reddit - and slowly HN as well - are clearly filled with "paid shill" accounts. So what to trust?
> I've been living in downtown Ottawa for weeks, I've been harassed.
I'm sorry to hear that. I did check your HN profile briefly and you "seem legit"
I have yet to see any data that supports the assertion that Canadians are still happy with masks and other restrictions. The few polls in the news tend to be small sample sizes, and tend to be from biased pools of respondents. Basically it’s not good data it’s just politically manipulated numbers to support their policy.
None of us are happy with masks and restrictions. We all want them to end. That doesn't mean we're in a hurry to cull the weak, the elderly, and the infirm rapidly by exposing them to this virus a quickly and easily, which is what would still happen at this point in the pandemic.
I don't know that you'd ever find a poll that claimed Canadians are "happy with masks and other restrictions." Believing something to be necessary to minimize death toll and being happy about it are VASTLY different things.
Liberals ran on passports/restrictions and lost seats.
The majority just took the injections to keep the job. Booster uptake is below 50%, because it’s not required.
Pretty much every business in deep-liberal cities at this point simply ignores restrictions.
What mandate? Seems like there wasn’t one in the first place.
You're being mislead by corporate and party line propaganda.
Over 1.6 million people tweeted about the Canadian trucker protests over the country’s vaccine mandates, reaching about 330 million users. Of the top 100 most retweeted tweets on the topic, 79% were in support of the protests.
It really reminds me of the situation in the USSR in the 1991. Trudeau will call in the army, what the army will do is not what he expects I suspect. He is digging his own grave. Hopefully it will not come down to Ceaușescu resolution
On COVID issues the NDP, Bloc and Libs are aligned which is a significant majority. Also we just had an election and nothing changed. The Liberals with a minority is actually an indication that Canada wants to be further left than Trudeau, but we haven't gotten there yet.
The entirety of the Bloc just voted yea on the motion with the conservatives for the government to propose a concrete plan to end covid mandates today, along with 1 Liberal that Joel guy who dissented from his party.
Shameful that a peaceful protest is met with this response. How can a person protest meaningfully if any peaceful protest can be called illegal?
I do understand that the truckers were disturbing the peace of ordinary people - I think this should be discouraged. However there must be a way to peacefully assemble without the government's approval.
I don't see how we can have meaningful civil discourse if you need permission to protest at all.
Protesters are still allowed to protest peacefully, they just aren't allowed to occupy the area around parliament and shut down border crossings for weeks, and intimidate and enact violence against the citizens of Ottawa. Nobody is stopping anyone from peacefully protesting in Canada, give your head a shake.
That hasn't happened. Grossly exaggerated statements are not what I and my friends who have been at the Ottawa protest for 3 weeks have seen.
We aren't living in 1950s. Everyone has a phone camera now a days and Ottawa, the capital, has security cameras everywhere and yet none of this ever gets captured on camera and nobody seems to capture the face of the people supposedly doing such things.
Your original comment relayed anecdotal evidence. Are you now saying it doesn't prove anything?
Violence does occur in cities, and it will continue to. I've seen no evidence protestors or attendees are violent or even aggressive, and livestreamers passing police and asking them impromptu specifically this confirms it.
There's bouncy castles for kids to play on, multi-ethnic groups dancing together and holding native ceremonies or prayer, people giving out free food, public handing dollars directly to truckers because of the frozen funds - every weekend it's packed with families, smiles and good vibes. And then the "news" comes on and says it's an "insurrection" (yeah, don't they just always have bouncy castles) and Trudeau says they're all racist transphobes.
It's laughable.
If more violence/crime is occurring, a more likely explanation may be the friendly and busy atmosphere his driven drunks/addicts/homeless out of the city centre, and these people are now committing crimes they would ordinarily commit in the city centre in surrounding areas instead.
That would suck for those affected, but all of this could be over in hours if Trudeau would simply remove the mandates and the passport. (Which are the Ottawa's protest organisers only demands, as they've reiterated multiple times.)
The mandates clearly don't work for their intended purpose of coercing people, and instead just motivate people to fight back yet stronger, in this case harming the economy and causing inconvenience to some. That's squarely on Trudeau's governance, nowhere else.
The passport is a completely silly idea given the facts regarding transmission, as many other countries have realised and since dropped.
It's a no brainer on Trudeau's part to simply drop both things. But instead he's chosen to humiliate himself spreading nonsense lies about the truckers and the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Canadians who support them.
If the disruption is causing you grief, maybe write to him or your local Liberal representative and suggest he/they drop those things? They're demonstrably no good anyway, so it'd be a pretty simple win-win for everybody.
Like I said, we live in 2022. Everyone has a phone with video camera. How come such "violence" never gets captured on camera despite thousands of people there and several live streams?
Yes that's correct, our democratically elected government with a charter of rights and freedoms and independent judiciary is allowed to impose reasonable restrictions on citizens freedoms under specific circumstances. No, a mob of thugs who represent a minority public opinion are not allowed to impose their will on society. If that's supposed to be a mic-drop comment you're going to have to try harder.
I think there's difference in what "reasonable" means here, regardless of what the issue is and who is doing it. My argument is that there must be some form of protest that is always legal (even if not sanctioned by the government) and that minimal form of protest must be public. That no restrictions can be reasonable on this minimal form of protest.
All the people who are cheering this emergency powers move, have not made clear to me why this particular protest has surpassed that point outside of noise issues in private (and non-public) areas (which I do understand are difficult).
"Minimal" and "block important roads for weeks" don't intersect, in my view.
Nobody said they can't protest. Nobody invoked the Emergencies Act when they initially blocked the roads. When they remained blocked for a week, still nobody invoked the Emergencies Act.
Minimal protest? Sure, absolutely that should be allowed. Nobody's making it not allowed. But "minimal" isn't where these protest are, and they haven't been for a while.
It's nice that the government gave them permission to protest for a week, sure. For comparison, though, the Tiananmen Square protests lasted over a month before Beijing invoked their equivalent of the Emergencies Act. According to the Wikipedia article:
> The protests started on 15 April and were forcibly suppressed on 4 June when the government declared martial law and sent the People's Liberation Army to occupy parts of central Beijing.
The protests have been going on longer than that. The judicial injunctions have been violated for more than a week, however, and the protesters continue to violate them and the police continue not enforcing them. That is the reason we have escalated to the next step (for which Trudeau will pay at least some political price for).
Why bring up Tiananmen Square when this is Canada? We have plenty of comparable protests.
You're right, it would have been more helpful of me to find an example of a protest in Canada that blocked roads for more than a week, which would prove Trudeau's response is disproportionate by Canadian standards. I don't know of any example of that, or of judicial injunctions being violated for a week, so I accept your point.
The inability or unwillingness of the Ottawa police force to enforce the court-ordered injunction, and the additional inability or unwillingness of other provinces - like Alberta - from re-opening the border is the reason for this.
If the protests were in-person, not causing major, disproportionate interference with the Canadian economy and all injunctions were being both obeyed and enforced, there would be no need for this act.
The rule of law is breaking down and this is required to ensure that the fabric of Canadian society does not deteriorate.
"A mob of thugs"? Really? Type ottawa livestream into youtube, filter by Live and watch. You won't see "a mob of thugs" or even the remotest resemblance, even if you watch for hours. These are ordinary people and their kids.
Almost three straight weeks of multiple livestreamers documenting every aspect of the protest non-stop for hours unedited all day and all night, of thousands of highly-skilled resourceful people with a deep knowledge of logistics and shipping - including of dangerous goods, and including possessing truckloads of fuel - and the best you can come up with is one clearly-unassociated utterly moronic lone actor supposedly attempting to "burn down a building" by lighting a few bits of paper in the middle of a hard floor of a building filled with smoke alarms and sprinklers and in clear view of a security camera and the building residents?
1. This was not a lone actor, you can see two men in the footage!
2. This is not clearly-unassociated, this happened as a result of an interaction between residents in the building and protesters!
3. Stop downplaying attempted mass murder you ass, the two men clearly attempted to burn the entire building and kill all of its inhabitants. You can see in the footage that they attempted to tie the exit shut so that residents couldn't escape. Shame on you for defending this.
Do not accuse me of defending this/these persons actions. I am not "defending", and did not, "defend" the actions of this person or persons.
It's a completely abhorrent and utterly stupid and harmful action whether or not it was motivated to intentionally physically kill anyone or not.
As for whether it's one or two people, I make no apology for paying less attention when watching something from legacy media sources who I've witnessed continually falsifying stories on this subject.
I honestly thought I saw one man twice but if it's two it's two, and I update my statement to "lone actors". I'm not going to watch that crap again so I'll just have to take your word for it.
And yes, I did see someone attempt to tie a door shut with what looked like an old t-shirt, it seemed to me much more like someone trying to create the appearance of an attempt at mass murder (and always in the direct line of sight of a camera).
Regardless, the motivations of this person or persons, whether your interpretation or mine, either way does not at all fit the profile of the truckers as I and many others have experienced it.
Anyone who spends any time watching their official announcements, or independent unedited livestreams of what's happening there, can instantly see that setting fire to apartment buildings is not remotely something they'd want to do, nor would it at all serve any of their stated goals and instead only work to utterly dismantle them.
They have bouncy castles for kids to play on. They hold multi-ethnic prayer sessions. They're voluntarily cleaning the streets of snow and ice, laying flowers on monuments, and having hockey games police. In Coutts yesterday the police hugged and shook hands with the protestors (and their kids) and they all sang the national anthem together. Look it up, some of us watched it happen live.
Hence my interpretation that whoever did this crap at the apartment building evidently aren't the same people.
Their most recent announcement was that they have moved some of their trucks closer to the city centre in order to cause less disturbance to residential areas. That's hardly characteristic of murderous terrorists.
They also stopped honking, initially between the hours of 8pm and 8am, and since mostly altogether, and if you bother to watch any of their official announcements they are clearly reasonable and intelligent people - the "story" presented by your "news" source simply doesn't fit. (And the pathetic attempt to portray that story by filming two random people disagreeing on a city street really didn't make the case.)
The truckers stated goals are that they want the (useless, and clearly not-working) vaccine mandates dropped so they can return to work, not to overthrow the government or even cause any further disruption. They've been explicit about this many times. Specifically they've said they want to go home, and when the mandates are dropped they immediately will. But backed into a corner as they feel they are, they're not moving until that happens.
Half of Europe and UK has already dropped the mandates, so it's not at all an unreasonable request given the present situation.
You come across as never having actually investigated or even heard anything they've put out as an official statement. Probably this is because they justifiably refuse to speak to the legacy media that continually mis-portrays them.
But if you search (easier to locate on bitchute or rumble), you'll find their press conferences and quickly realise the characterisation by the legacy media and trudeau, as many here have pointed out, is entirely incorrect.
Love it or hate it, the pandemic has caused the loss of life and economic activity. You can't shoot or offload guilt on the virus, so you'll move to someone or something you can blame. I putty the politicians that have lived just as miserable lives putting up with armchair dictators without any real power but to complain about how others do their jobs
This virus will continue to cycle through our world and continue to kill millions of people. Checked or no, this will continue until the virus dies or the vast majority are dead/immune. Nobody wants this; it's literally bad for everyone.
The gov has pumped billions to prop up the economy. Did you get your bail-out? I certainly didn't get 1 cent. I did my job without a belly ache; I've taken the inflation hit like everyone else. The least that I want to hear is selfish blow-hards complaining about governments putting a cap on their selfishness. We all hurt, and only working together will we heal.
But it seems that every time the "unpermitted location" changes with every protest! In this case, it's "the area around parliament" and "border crossings" - in Quebec it was "this particular road" or "these schools" during their "Red Square" tuition protests.
In my opinion, Parliament is almost always a valid place to protest - outside a politician's or ordinary person's private home, much less so.
By invoking these emergency powers, I think it's hard to dispute that the Prime Minister's Office is stopping a peaceful protest!
This is the action of people who are not being heard. Trudeau could have de-escalated by meeting with the protesters, but he instead essentially said they should shut up and go back to driving.
Why do they think they aren't being heard? We've heard them, they're wrong, and we're not going to do what they want. The vast majority of canadian oppose the convoy and support public health measures. This is just a childish tantrum.
It is absolutely false that Trudeau could have deescalated by talking to the convoy leaders. This is demonstrably false, as the mayor of Ottawa set up a meeting with them to negotiate some terms where the convoy would be restricted to a specific area in Ottawa. A meeting with the mayor, exactly what the convoyers want right? Then at the last minute they backed out. This whole "meet with us" is a move to be recognized and the moment Trudeau met with them, they would ratchet up their demands to a higher level. These people are foaming at the mouth with hate for trudeau, they have "F*CK TRUDEAU" as their slogan and painted on their trucks, they don't want to meet with him.
Nobody intimidated or enact violence against Ottawa residents. Based on what I saw with my own eyes last week, protesters and truckers are friendly and peaceful. IDK maybe they turn to werewolves at night, but the most aggressive thing I saw there was "fuck trudeau" signs everywhere.
My friend was accosted for wearing a mask on Saturday in a restaurant. One of the two downtown grocery stores had to close because the employees were being intimated by the protestors to let them inside without a mask. A neighborhood ice cream store employee was assaulted for wearing a mask while walking to work, and the store closed down. The biggest shopping center downtown has been closed for 3 weeks, putting over a thousand people out of a job because the protestors kept trying to force their way in to stores without wearing masks.
These are not protests against the government. They harm actual people on the ground trying to get on with their lives.
I'm sorry the YouTube streams have not shown any of this. Who'd have thought that even youtubers can have editorial intent!
Being asked to take their mask off in a belligerent way. We can argue about the relativity of violence all day long - but the fact is that this behaviour was not really heard of before the protests began and can be traumatising. My friend was with a group so they were able to handle the situation but there have been incidents of things going worse.
Moreover, the mask mandates are provincial, not federal. If people are opposed to that, they should go heckle at Doug Ford, the Ontario Premier in Toronto, not at Trudeau in Ottawa. The fact is that the protestors don't have a common coherent narrative.
Practically speaking, a heckling and laughing at from a large group of angry protesters against a single person minding their own business is basically an unspoken threat of violence. It is definitely intimidation.
Both of the grocery stores downtown closed because of alteractions with protestors. Front-line workers have been affected the most because they can't avoid going out. The rest of us are mostly not going downtown because there's rampant harassment if you're a woman, queer, POC, etc.
I live in Ottawa and I assure you that this protest is not peaceful. I've had friends physically assaulted, spit on, and yelled at just for wearing a mask into a business. Not to mention the constant honking that was reaching levels above 100db inside people's homes.
Homeless shelters were raided by protestors, businesses have been forced to close due to threats, and people are afraid to leave their homes.
I and my friends have been there for 3 weekends and haven't seen any of that.
> Homeless shelters were raided by protestors, businesses have been forced to close due to threats, and people are afraid to leave their homes.
This is hilariously inaccurate. Everyone's bringing food TO the truckers and there's so much food there that truckers are refusing to take more.
Amazingly, we live in 2022 where everyone has a phone camera and Ottawa, the capital, has security cameras everywhere and yet none of this ever gets captured on camera and nobody seems to capture the face of the people supposedly doing such things.
Here's one actual violence which did get captured on video:
I'm happy that you haven't experienced any of that. None of what I said is untrue. I'm glad there has been lots of support from this protest to attempt to make up for some of the damage. It is still an illegal occupation that is costing my city millions every day, thousands of people are out of work at the Rideau Centre alone, libraries have been shut down, school children are being intimidated...
I see you are concerned with the protest having the effects of
> Costing millions
> Putting people out of work
> Shutting down civic functions
> intimidating school children
I don't know anything about Canadian government's response to the virus, but would it be fair to characterize the effects of the response as any or all of the above? Or if not affecting you directly, then those you may personally know or simply your fellow countrymen?
Canadian here. To my knowledge the federal government did not intimidate children, and people who were forced to stop working were compensated.
People do feel irritation when we have done so much collectively, only for a small minority to pee in the pool.
It's a war against the health system. It's on the verge of collapsing in many provinces because of Covid, and folks like Maxime Bernier want it privatized. Ideological and manipulative greed.
> It's a war against the health system. It's on the verge of collapsing in many provinces because of Covid
This is extremely disingenuous and ill-informed. I would recommend people do a google search for "Ontario hospital overcrowd" and set the date filter to be before 2020 (before COVID). You will find articles for every single year in past decade where hospitals were overcrowded because of flu.
Ontario ranks the 3rd last in the world in terms of hospital beds per 1000 (only mexico and chile are behind us) and absolute last within Canada. We used to have almost double the hospital beds per 1000 back in 1990s but since then our population has exploded and also gotten older but we haven't done much to increase the beds until last year when we added a few beds but still nowhere near to what it is supposed to be and what it used to be in 1990s.
A well functioning health care system is required to operate at 85% maximum but Ontario has been running at over 100% in most hospitals majority of the time BEFORE covid.
Ontario has the fewest hospital beds per capita in the country at 1.4 per 1,000 people. That compares to the national average of 2.0.
In 1990, Ontario had around 50000 hospital beds. Now, we only have around 34000 despite our population exploding and also getting older.
Many hospitals in Ontario operated at above 100% capacity in 2019. According to the Ontario Hospital Association, Ontario’s hospitals have faced low or nearly flat funding for years — with only an increase of 5.4% from 2012-19, compared to an average of 12.9% among other provinces while population increased and hospitals absorbed inflationary costs. Ontario’s Ministry of Health’s own numbers show the province has the lowest per capita health spending in Canada. The Registered Nurses Association of Ontario notes this also held true in 2018, and that the province had the lowest registered nurses per capita and the second-lowest hospital spending per capita rate in the country, after Quebec.
CBC News in January 2020 (before COVID) found 32 of Ontario’s hospitals were filled beyond 100% occupancy nearly every day in the first half of 2019 — including Ontario’s 10 biggest hospitals.
A study of 169 of Ontario’s acute care hospital sites during the same period found:
- 83 hospitals were beyond 100% capacity for more than 30 days.
- 39 hospitals hit 120% capacity or higher for at least one day.
I share the sentiment of busymom0 and can relate how bad the healthcare is here in Quebec.
The hospitals have been overloaded and badly managed for a long time, way before the pandemic.
Most hospitals here have been operating above 100% capacity for many years. Waiting time to see a doctor have been reported to take in average 15 hours and up to 20 hours (pre-covid data in 2019) [1]. God forbid if you need to be hospitalized, as it can reach 24-48 hours sometimes.
Firing nurses over COVID measures before Christmas certainly didn't help, which is worth pointing out.
The politicians are trying to shift the blame of the bad healthcare systems happening under their watch to COVID.
> if its existence is fundamentally incompatible with the human spirit.
Agree we designed systems that could barely handle the flu, and we are paying the price. I'm not defending the politicians, certainly not Legault.
Where do we go from here? Fund back to average OECD levels, raise taxes, or honk and yell freedom while healthcare workers burnout?
And yes, a tiny number of nurses were suspended, but it's noticing compared to those who left the field from exhaustion from mandatory overtime and rigid scheduling.
The protestors on the first weekend going to the Shepherds of Good Hope homeless shelter and taking food (and being violent with staff) was extremely well documented.
I literally heard honking today. The only reason there is less honking is because there is a legal injuction and truckers who honk can now be sued civilly. But they still persist.
This seems incredible peaceful for it's scale then? Pretty much every major protest I've seen over this COVID period had significant looting, vandalism, and actually setting fire to stuff. This seems just well insignificant compared to the scale of the protest.
I don't feel like that's the point you're trying to make but with such minimal activities you can link too and even less with confirmed links it really feels like you're stretching.
> You mean surveillance footage like this, of a protestor trying to lock the doors to an apartmnent building and start a fire?
You do know that they were NOT the protestors right? And even the Ottawa Deputy Police Chief has debunked it. The supposed "arsonist" was someone who was wearing face masks, had purple hair was was in his early 20s as max. You really think that's a trucker protester?
> Ottawa Deputy Police Chief on the alleged arson in Ottawa: “We don’t have any direct linkage between the occupation—the demonstrators—and that act.”
Like I said, somehow the "homeless shelter" has zero videos of anything happening. We are living in 2022, not 1950s. Everyone has a video camera phone now a days and somehow not a single person captured such thing?
Your instagram link has not a single video of violence. You really are stretching your narrative.
Honking injunction was ONLY for continuous honking. Despite that, when I was there on Saturday after 9pm, there was no honking. Even if there were, you really think honking is violence?
The problem for your narrative is that there are dozens of livestreamers showing the exact opposite of what you claim. Unless YouTube shuts them down, you cannot control the narrative no matter what story you spin. It's a new age, stop playing cards from an old one if you want to be believed.
I understand that many, many people are having fun, being kind, and are generally enjoying the party atmosphere. That does not discount the fact that people are being intimidated, put out of work, and assaulted every day since this has begun.
Do you forget that many of these truckers and their many supporters have also been put out of work by COVID policies? The hypocrisy there is palpable.
If you're concerned about getting Canadians back to work, should you not also be concerned with the economic damage done by mandates and lockdowns with no end in sight?
Coffee shop with the window smashed (speculated it was because of the visible pride flag)
These trucks are extremely difficult to remove. And while you can still remove them if the air brakes are on it takes longer. Not only that, most rig towing companies won't do anything for fear of reprisal.
Ironic that you're complaining about violence in the context of a protest against forcibly jabbing people with a vaccine they don't want. The government's policy here is violence in itself.
If you truly were concerned about violence against innocent people, you'd be on the side of the protesters, not spreading unsourced lies in effort to have them silenced.
If someone doesn't want to get vaccinated, they're very welcome to go work in a job that doesn't require it; I know people that are happily earning a living while unvaccinated. There is no right to be able to work exactly the job you want on your own terms.
I along with my friends (who are vaxxed but only did so because their work coerced them) have been at the protest in Ottawa for 3 weekends. It's always been peaceful, friendly and almost like Canada day celebrations.
It was loud the first week due to honking but even that's stopped. And even if there were honking, that's not violence.
I am brown and my buddy is black and neither of us met with anything other than friendly hugs and fist bumps. Then we get home and see an entirely different reporting on media and by government.
Here's an article written by a government employee who lives right above the protests:
EDIT: Reply to comment below, I was personally there because of the air-travel mandate by the Feds and restaurant/gym mandates by my province. Triple vaxxed Trudeau can fly even while he caught COVID. Triple vaxxed Mayor Jim Watson can go to restaurants and gyms despite being COVID+. But I am not allowed to fly or go to restaurants and gyms even if I can show a negative COVID test.
I also talked to nurses there who worked for 2 years taking care of COVID patients, caught COVID along with their entire family, got natural immunity which is superior, and then got fired for not taking the shots. Yet Ontario and Quebec is letting COVID+ nurses to work if they are vaxxed.
Also women are a lot more against the mandates than men based on my impression which seems to match the surveys.
Attacking another user will get you banned here, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. Perhaps you don't feel you owe political opponents better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
The guy being interviewed is just a dude, not a leader in the movement AFAIK. But he’s probably a good representation of what the average person attending the protests wants.
"It was loud the first week due to honking but even that's stopped. And even if there were honking, that's not violence."
Some trucks had train horns installed, significantly louder than regular horns. Trucks were honking continuously, all night. There is a line where too much noise can be considered violence. Certainly, if I was downtown and had a baby trying to sleep during that shit I'd be throwing rocks at trucks at 2am.
"got natural immunity which is superior" is factually incorrect, at least to every statistical study done by national health orgs.
I see many people say "this person, who is vaccinated but got COVID anyways, is allowed to do X. Other person, who has a negative COVID test but am not vaccinated, cannot. That is hypocritical." Can someone explain the hypocrisy?
People do get that negative COVID tests have relatively little proof value after a day or so right?
So many rules have been dubious and nonsensical. I don't recall the specifics, but it seems like at one time in Alberta you could get together with 20 people, but you could only have ten people get together for a funeral.
The point of allowing a person to do X is based on the safety of them doing X. If we are preventing X due to fear of covid, then it makes sense to prevent people from doing X if they have covid, regardless of their vaccination status, and allowing them to do it if they do not have covid, regardless of their vaccination status.
Some of the rules appear to be punitive towards people who have chosen not to be vaccinated, and not designed to curb the spread of the disease; that is why hypocrisy is being called out.
>Some of the rules appear to be punitive towards people who have chosen not to be vaccinated, and not designed to curb the spread of the disease; that is why hypocrisy is being called out.
If more of the population were vaccinated the spread of the disease would be curbed (there are still places under 60% vaccination in the US, for example). It would not be sufficient, but yes the point is to create spaces where you have less risk.
The rule is designed to get more people to be vaccinated. It is accomplishing that objective.
(more nuanced is that I don't believe "vaccinated means everything is OK" is the right position either, and that "vaccinate, but also try to do stuff at half capacity" etc etc would be better but...)
A room with 100% vaccinated people is going to be safer than a room with 100% of people showing up with day-old negative covid tests. (EDIT: actually not sure of this as much now that I'm thinking about it...)
Ultimately the rules forcing vaccination are a result of a huge part of the population refusing vaccination, which is the single most effective policy. It's roundabout because governments don't have the courage to just force the issue (or waited too long and now there's a coalesced movement against it).
Sorry if unvaccinated people feel bad because of it. If they cared about not getting people sick they would vaccinate. Taking covid tests every day doesn't improve your immunity.
Yes, I am. That's why I said that I don't believe that vaccination is a magic bullet and that it doesn't magically make everything safe.
But the argument isn't "does vaccination magically solve everything", it's "does it make things better relative to the costs", and that seems absolutely unobjectionable. We can walk and chew bubblegum here, but antivax positions seem to be to do neither out of some vague principle of freedom.
If there was a free test of COVID that could judge with a high degree of certainty tell if you were infected or not, this would go a long way to assert your point. But since rapid tests are expensive, hard to come by, and not free (for the gov), we have to live with trade-offs.
The sad point off this is that you're contagious when you're still asymatic, so even those wanting to do the right thing cant prevent accidental spreading. All we can do is reduce our transmission rates as low as possible. Vaccines did a great job of that pre-omicron and though Omicron seems to spread just as freely in vaccinated populations, those with vaccines had far better health outcomes. Who knows what date will throw at us if/when another significant variant mutates into our lives.
> "got natural immunity which is superior" is factually incorrect, at least to every statistical study done by national health orgs.
Natural immunity of an unvaccinated person is superior to a vaccinated person without natural immunity, all else equal, and the difference isn't even close. It concerns me that people still don't accept this.
See https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v... for conclusive proof of this. I don't have my notes on that study in front of me right now but off the top of my head natural immunity was at least 7x superior when compared to people who were double-vaccinated but with no exposure to the actual virus.
- previous COVID exposure + no vaccination is 3x smaller incidence than vaccination without covid exposure
BUT
- previous COVID exposure + vaccination is 2x smaller incidence than without vaccination
arguing that "I got exposed to Covid so the vaccine is not useful for me" is factually incorrect. I had not been clear enough in my objection. So protesting vax mandates have even one less leg to stand on.
Are you friends federal government employees? If not, then the vaccination policy is enacted by the corporation they work for, not the government.
I'm glad you have felt at home at the protests, I'm sure if you tried to ask critical questions about vaccine efficiency and the active participation of far right extremists like Pat King in the protests, you'd have received a much colder welcome.
Thousands of people in Ottawa have been affected by the occupation. At least 1000 workers of the Rideau Center are out of a job because the protestors kept trying to force their way into the shops without masks. Covid is a respiratory disease and the use of well fitting masks are shown to significantly reduce transmission. Why are the protestors ignoring the science behind the policies?
If the protestors are rational, why haven't the protestors called out the loud lunatics amongst them who are on bullhorns shouting how Trudeau is a devil worshipper and pedophile?
Why have white supremacists like Pat King been allowed key roles in the protests, and allowed to - literally - dance on the sound stage set up on parliament hill?
Why did the organisers refuse to answer - earlier today - the simple question from a reporter if there were any firearms present amongst the protestors?
What was the rationale behind the "MoU" that called for the democratically elected government to be deposed and replaced with a junta composed of the protest organizers? That wasn't even a fringe demand, it was front and center.
Nobody from the protests has had any rational answers for these questions. I'm sorry, but for the residents to be able to accept the inconvenience of being occupied, they have to sympathise with the elements of the protests.
> At least 1000 workers of the Rideau Center are out of a job because the protestors kept trying to force their way into the shops without masks.
Those workers are "out of a job" because of the very COVID policies that the truckers et al are rallying against. COVID did not take away those jobs. COVID policies did.
I think it stops being a peaceful protest if you erect structure and continually inconvenience residents by blasting your horns 24/7. Go on the street, show what you protest against, what you want. But don't permanently take over a part of the city, let alone start swearing in your own peace officers [0].
I'm going to be honest, that seems remarkably peaceful, even when compared to the BLM protests from 2 years ago or especially the FLQ crisis of Pierre Trudeau. I don't think the truckers should be going into residential neighborhoods and making noise at all hours - but it's hard to argue that it's violent.
It's not at all hard to argue. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you are not and have not been the parent of a small child. The psychological suffering the noise is causing is acute.
BLM protests in Ottawa were extremely peaceful, and met with harsh police retaliation. Protestors blocked _one_ intersection for one day, and they were all rounded up and arrested by dozens of police officers in the middle of the night.
Uh, how is someone supposed to protest? I mean, I see clear differences between going up to someone's home or into someone's workplace and making noise in the street. Any protest is almost guaranteed to inconvenience someone, unless you want to limit a "protester" to yelling in their own home. So what would you suggest is the line?
Work with the city to park in a designated spot and then protest on foot in front of parliament. Not 'move-in' and set up hot tubs, saunas, and sleep in your truck on Wellington.
What if the city doesn't want to work with the protesters? Do the protesters have to prove that they tried to work with the city? What if the protest is against the city itself?
I have issues with asking permission to protest, even if it's an issue I don't support.
There have been regular anti-vax protests throughout the pandemic. They are afforded time to disrupt traffic with a procession that usually ends in parking at a central district and legitimately ends that day. No cities have blocked their rights to protest within the legal construct they've been afforded. If this is too authoritarian for balancing the rights of protestors and the rights of everyone else, I recommend finding a new place to live. This is a sad but necessary limit of protest to distinguish protest from occupation. Even "occupy NY" largely allowed people to live their lives without significant burdens (though I'm sure some were unfortunately affected).
Honestly, if they had moved in _purely_ on foot, we would not have gotten to this point. We've had anti-vaccine/anti-mask/anti-mandate protests weekly in most major Canadian cities and they've been untouched, no matter how annoying or inconvenient the population finds them.
The blockades of the border and overwhelming presence of truck/train horns at all hours of the day were the tipping point.
You get to make your point in a protest, but the society has the right - and should have the practical ability - to ignore your protest if they wish to do so.
You get to make your point heard to anyone who cares - both to the government and other people - but they don't have to care. If it turns out that general public does not want to hear and support your protest, then you simply wait until elections, and either get what you request or watch your candidate lose and peacefully accept that your requests are simply not going to be met. You don't get to stop the rest of the society until your demands are met, they don't owe you that. If the other voters disagree with your opinion and don't want to listen to it, you don't get to make them listen.
>You get to make your point in a protest, but the society has the right - and should have the practical ability - to ignore your protest if they wish to do so.
I dare say, if you've got things escalating to the point where people from all over your country plop themselves on the Federal government's front door
.. do you not realize how much that actually takes?
If one is so eager to dismiss the minority, then pray tell, how does anyone propose getting any change done? Further, why are you blaming the protesters for making your life more inconvenient when the only person who has been harmed already is...wait for it...them?
Because until that road got blocked, nobody gave a care 1.
That is successful protest. That is the consequence of Statecraft failure.
My key point is not all requests for change should result in any change. Some do, but not most, and definitely not all. Protests draw attention to some issue, and a protest is essentially a show of hands, demonstrating how many people care about the issue. It may reveal that there are very many supporters and the public wants something that the government does not provide - but that's not always the case, and certainly does not seem to be the case here, as the majority of Canadian voters seem to oppose their requirements. It does not necessarily raise support to that issue, it's perfectly reasonable for the public to decide that nope, they still oppose what the protesters request, perhaps even more than before as they're annoyed by the protests.
I mean, for every contentious issue there's going to be a part of the population which does not get their way. The whole point of democracy is that in such situations we discuss the issue, vote on the issue, and then the losers accept the decision and go home without escalating to action. The fact that some people are extremely dissatisfied with some decision does not necessarily imply that the decision should be changed nor does it imply a statecraft failure - how about all the people who supported the decision? Like, if the vote was somehow fake and misrepresents reality, then a protest can show that no, the majority does think differently; but if the protests simply confirm that yes, x% people are opposed, then the protest does not provide any information that deserves attention, the decision was made (and had the right to be made!) already knowing that those people oppose it.
The final escalation point of an ignored protest should be a call for general election if the public believes that circumstances have changed and the current government does not represent the will of the people anymore. However, if elections do not get what the protesters want, they should simply not get what they wanted because "we the people" have spoken that they don't want that. And, crucially, they can continue to peacefully request change and wait for public viewpoints to change, but certainly they have no right to disrupt others unless the demands are met, at some point the society has the right to say "we heard your arguments but made the choice to move on", and require you (with force, if necessary) to stop disrupting normal activities of the society.
And my main point is: if whatever compromise that has been enacted, still manages to draw enough crowd to clog up your Federal seat of power's streets, your job as a Statesman/woman has not finished. You're just moving the goalposts and going, "meh, good enough."
I think you've got your view backwards in the sense that every protest you've experienced up until now has been small enough to not be majorly disruptive because that crowd of "I will not accept this" hardliners was small enough where it would literally be folly to belabor the point further. That does not place an effective ceiling on legitimate vs. illegitimate protest, rather it puts a floor on the quality of your Statespeople at doing their jobs in a way that gets enough people not feeling marginalized.
That is clearly not the case here. Each of these protestors is someone feeling they are not being represented. They have the right to hold everything the bugger on up until some level of reasonability comes around. That is the fundamental dimension and action of politics. Just because it's been a good many years since the consent of the governed was pulled back doesn't mean it can't still be.
The number of people pounding the drum of "well these miscreants better watch out, the will of Canada is going to steamroll them!" or "It is the will of Canada that these people be pushed out of the limelight and ignored, so cut off their logistics, make it easier to enact financial violence (fines), and imprison them!" instead of "Well, shit, maybe we did go overboard a bit, didn't we?" disturbs me.
At the end of the day, those people are Canadians too. The mark of a country is how they treat their conscientious objectors.
And yes... I say that with a straight face accepting where the U.S. is on that scale recently. I just hope Canada doesn't follow our lead down the road to hell.
Okay, what would be the good response in your opinion in an ideal world for the scenario when a substantial number of people really, really (to the extent of putting lots of effort and risk) want something that even more people don't want? I mean, accepting their request is obviously not an option, that would be an even worse steamrolling over even more people.
As far as I understand your position, expecting the protesters to back down without satisfying their requests is also not okay - so what would be okay?
Freezing the accounts of the people you just disenfranchised enough to park on your doorstep, especially in the height of winter, and when you expect them to pick up and go away under their own power isn't it. That's just creating even more problems.
I'll be frank. The government committed the first overreach here. These people were hard working, contributing members of society when they were free to do so. That was taken away, and no equitable exchange offered, or convincing justification given besides "father knows best", so I'm not surprised this has blown up as spectacularly as it has. They've been painted with broad strokes by the media as nuisances for making themselves collectively heard. That's what you do in a democracy. The ball is in the government's court to come back to the table, because those prople will still be Canadians at the end of this. So ignoring or squashing the problem won't make it go away.
If the government really has as much support as they think they do, they don't need formal policy, everyone will just do as they do; they just need best practices in place, and people to continue following them. If they actually don't, and the polling has methodology problems, then you're taking a step back toward normalcy and getting people back to work. The fact supposedly, what, two thirds, approve of the measures wasn't necessarily framed in a way where people are taking into account the overall cost in liberties in the long run. I'd have to review methodology.
I'm increasingly finding that as much of a hardline idealist as I tend to be, when dealing with the masses of dissatisfied people, pragmatism is often the better way to go. Get enough of them to leave to decrease the size of the protest. But if you double down on the authoritarian streak, get ready to hemorrhage support. This isn't the kind of thing you get the chance to do twice.
This isn't about protesting "at all" it's about protesting in a way that stings the government. You can protest in a legal way but then you're dismissed. The Truckers are protesting in a way that can't be dismissed. They've chosen to risk serious consequences because to them the status quo is worse. Protests like this are a sign of a failure of leadership and representation.
Then let's hope for serious consequences so that the message is loud and clear, minority positions can't and shouldn't be allowed to overrule the majority in a democracy. Their voice is heard through their elected representatives.
Sometimes that means you don't get your way. Right now in my country the government in power acts in ways I really don't agree with but unfortunately they won fair and square and clearly have the support of the majority. For me that is disappointing and somewhat embarassing but I wouldn't dream of claiming that elections were fraudulent (USA) or simply ignoring mandate and consensus and trying to blackmail the government (CA).
There seems to be a trend in our newly tyrannical governments of using war and terrorism acts on their own citizens. It feels strange being subject tyranny for the first time in my life here in Australia. It is the first time in my life I have felt a government just threaten and bully people to get whatever it wants. There is no going back from this, whoever may win.
Didn't the Howard government enact the Anti-Terrorism Act 2005, which was your lot's equivalent to the PATRIOT Act? And other acts since then [0]. You've been subjected to tyranny all this time, you just weren't paying attention.
Yeah. The sedition portions of the laws he passed have been toned down somewhat, but in exchange, we have clauses with many terror-related offences, even down to possessing banned literature, which eschew due process and force the defendant to prove their own innocence and that they had no intention to commit a crime, rather than the courts and police prove that the items are linked to intent to commit terrorism.
Really goes to show that observations of "newly tyrannical governments" are made by those who have had the good fortune to not be of demographics on the receiving end of these draconian laws. Decades of complacency and the weed of crime bitter fruit. Chickens come home to roost.
"Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said politicians should not be telling the police how to deal with protesters and that resolution should come through dialogue"
Millions of dollars in damage by these protestors (railway above). Protests for me, but not for thee.
Vaguely remember stuff like:
"Your right to freedom of speech stops where it harms others" (hate speech)
"Your right to bodily autonomy stops where you can harm others" (vax mandates)
"Your right to protest stops where ... ?"
These are all nuanced, sadly the Canadian government can override its Bill of Rights whenever they please under temporary 3 year Emergency Measures.
The CORAF covers federal and provincial governance, while the earlier Bill Of Rights (1960) was only federal. The latter has very limited usefulness today on its own, so has essentially been subsumed by the former. I'm not sure what you mean by the Constitution being "messy" so I cannot comment on that.
On the video of the announcement you can clearly see & hear them state that all actions will be subject to the Charter Of Rights And Freedoms. Go look/listen.
We don’t have a constitution. We have a loophole ridden document that allows each Premier in the nation to disregard Charter Rights via the Notwithstanding Clause.
It’s time for Canada to rewrite the Constitution and to enshrine some inalienable rights and freedoms.
Good luck with the rewrite - Meech Lake and Charlottetown showed that getting the consensus needed for constitutional amendment won't be easy.
You might also find that Canadians as a whole want a balance between public order and individual freedom that tilts more toward the public order end of the spectrum than you'd like.
It seems like (maybe it's a polarization thing) its becoming more common for all sides to want to go straight to the (thankfully only metaphorical) nuclear option to try and end situations. Everything is framed as an emergency or a human right or some other category that means its supposed to be dealt with in the harshest possible terms and admit no discussion. I don't just mean by government or a particular side, it's the kind of rhetoric used in every argument now.
It seems like (maybe it's a polarization thing) its becoming
more common for all sides to want to go straight to the
(thankfully only metaphorical) nuclear option to try and
end situations.
It may "seem like" that to you but that's factually incorrect, at least in this case.
This blockade has been ongoing for weeks. Maybe you only just heard about today, but they certainly didn't go "straight to the nuclear option."
Also, what do you mean by "nuclear option" anyway? To me, that would be the most extreme possible response. Nobody is saying the current situation is great, but there is clearly a lot of room left for escalation. (May it never come to that)
Calling the current state of affairs "the nuclear option" is disingenuous at best.
> Calling the current state of affairs "the nuclear option" is disingenuous at best.
Could be, but to extend the metaphor giving yourself the political option to call in the military is certainly taking the safety off the big red button.
Vaccines work, they work extremely well. You are literally making it up.
Restrictions have come and gone across the world as case numbers and hospital capacity go up and down. Most European countries have plans to drop mandates or are in the process as case numbers go down. This logic is repeating pretty much everywhere.
Your post is a textbook example of a slippery slope fallacy. I just went to a night club yesterday for the first time in two years - completely allowed by my government, in line with lowering case numbers, in a country with far less democratic tradition than Canada.
Stop the paranoia and understand the nobody's out to get you.
>Vaccines work, they work extremely well. You are literally making it up.
If it so then why there have been so many breakthrough infections ? (30-40% of the new infections for delta at the 60-70% vaccination rate and 80% for omicron at 80% vaccination rate, and that is as reported which is given lighter symptoms means severe undercounting) While the vaccines failure to control the infectious spread has been obvious from the publicly available numbers at least since the Spring of 2021, that is bona-fide scientific result which naturally took several months (
it is about delta, and with omicron situation is significantly worse)
" A person who was fully vaccinated and then had a ‘breakthrough’ Delta infection was almost twice as likely to pass on the virus as someone who was infected with Alpha."
"Unfortunately, the vaccine’s beneficial effect on Delta transmission waned to almost negligible levels over time. In people infected 2 weeks after receiving the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, both in the UK, the chance that an unvaccinated close contact would test positive was 57%, but 3 months later, that chance rose to 67%. The latter figure is on par with the likelihood that an unvaccinated person will spread the virus."
Vaccines cut down the hospitalization and death rate 20 to 60-fold. They reduce transmission by a substantial amount. That means they work. Why are you nitpicking and purposely ignoring the titanic scientific achievement of developing cheap vaccines, deployed by the billions in the span of a year, that literally avoided tens of millions of deaths?
It's clear you're not here to make good-faith arguments.
>Vaccines cut down the hospitalization and death rate 20 to 60-fold.
Yes, for very specific groups of people. For the majority though it did practically nothing which makes forced vaccination of that majority immoral and illegal.
>They reduce transmission by a substantial amount.
No. As the numbers and the link I provided show.
>literally avoided tens of millions of deaths?
Forced vaccination of the very low risk majority has nothing to do with it. Even more - if those wasted vaccine doses were instead used to vaccinate high-risk people in poor countries then even more lives would have been saved.
> Yes, for very specific groups of people. For the majority though it did practically nothing which makes forced vaccination of that majority immoral and illegal.
You're discounting the effects of long-covid. You discount the health burden of millions of people catching this disease at the same time. You discount the long-term effects and the fact that a substantial amount of the healthy population has symptoms 3 and 6 months after catching the disease. You discount that perfectly healthy young people have died. You discount the effects on the workforce and the rates of permanently disabled. You discount the hospital burden and the fact that saturated hospitales mean triaging and people dying of easily treatable causes.
> Forced vaccination of the very low risk majority has nothing to do with it.
You don't have a right to not be vaccinated to participate in society. Your profound ignorance on this as if the standard vaccination schedule for children doesn't have dozens of vaccines necessary to reach the modern standards of quality of life means you have nothing to add to this.
Your arguments are just one ridiculous, ignorance-ridden point after another.
It's a good thing that the people making most of these decisions, unlike you, have century-years of experience on these topics and have assessed the health burden on the population.
And most of us consider that a disease that's the 3rd to 4th highest cause of death, even at this point in the pandemic, is worth treating with extreme measures, lest we lose half a decade of life expectancy, not even getting into the effects for the survivors.
>You're discounting the effects of long-covid. ... You discount the hospital burden and the fact that saturated hospitales mean triaging and people dying of easily treatable causes.
vaccinating low risk people has no effect on all of this. The close to 0 risk of hospitalization becoming 20 times closer to 0 doesn't affect the total hospitalization numbers, at best it is a noise.
> if the standard vaccination schedule for children doesn't have dozens of vaccines
i have said nothing about the well proven working vaccines. You're advancing anti-vax movement position by mixing together the working vaccines with the zero effect for the most people covid vaccines.
>century-years of experience on these topics
the covid is 2 years old. The mRNA covid vaccines is even less than that.
> is worth treating with extreme measures
wasting resources on the measures that don't work makes things naturally worse.
This feels downright dystopian, especially if the move away from cash and towards centrally-controlled electronic payment systems is anywhere near as widespread in Canada as elsewhere.
That is an exaggerated headline. Accounts being used to fund illegal activities can be frozen. Protesting is not and will not be illegal. Blocking critical infrastructure is illegal.
The adjective critical though has been used very broadly during the pandemic. It's clear that it needs a very specific definition or such language could be used to make any protest illegal because it blocked access to a pizza place, etc.
> The adjective critical though has been used very broadly
Access to most of Ottawa was been cut off, including one of the biggest border crossings in Canada, not a "pizza place". Deploying hyperbole like this isn't helping your case. Surely if the Ambassador Bridge doesn't qualify as critical infrastructure, nothing does.
There are a couple of rather large exaggerations in your post.
It wasn't the "entire CN rail network" (instead it was the Eastern Canada segment, comprising maybe 15% of CN's network). They don't claim that rail carries three times more than trucks do, but instead simply note that one rail car carries as much as three trucks.
And the blockade lasted approximately 2-3 weeks. Not sure what you mean by "after almost a year".
But let's be clear -- most of Canada was enraged about that. It was hugely expensive to Trudeau politically, and was a tenterhooks [edit - thank you fennec] situation because of the aboriginal file. Yet most of Canada absolutely wanted a stronger response and it hurt Trudeau in the election.
I honestly don't get these "but the rail blockade" or "but some BLM protest in some US city" responses.
>It was hugely expensive to Trudeau politically, and was a tenterhooks [edit - thank you fennec] situation because of the aboriginal file. Yet most of Canada absolutely wanted a stronger response and it hurt Trudeau in the election.
So as long as it's politically expedient for the sitting PM you would advocate using the emergencies act? Yikes.
> So as long as it's politically expedient for the sitting PM you would advocate using the emergencies act? Yikes.
Can you point to the part of my post that said that? Anywhere?
Yikes.
Stronger response simply means demanding that police enforce existing laws and injunctions (where injunctions are often simply court orders saying "follow the law") instead of the conciliatory let-it-play-out messaging that Trudeau used at the time. Even in the case of the current protests the emergency act seems unnecessary, and is basically a failure condition for the Ottawa Police basically doing nothing and claiming that they're all out of ideas.
I'm not saying what is currently being obstructed is wrong (or not) to include in a restriction on protest.
I am saying that during the pandemic for the purposes of restrictions and exceptions, people who worked at grocery stores were "critical workers". It's a big old caution for using words like "critical" which are very vague in order to implement policy assuming it will be used for things you deem to be important, because you do things like that and now there's precedent. Grocery stores are critical infrastructure now so some picket line for a labor dispute at a grocery store is now legally arguably a banned protest.
When opposed to things, people are usually very happy to give away freedoms they don't realize might have adverse consequences in the future.
> In accordance with this order, the State Public Health Officer has designated the following list of Essential Critical Infrastructure Workers to help state, local, tribal, and industry partners as they work to protect communities, while ensuring continuity of functions critical to public health and safety, as well as economic and national security.
and pointing out that there are an enormous number of things which were labeled critical infrastructure during the pandemic, like any store that sells food.
You’re splitting hairs in an unhelpful way which distracts from the point entirely.
I think the stores are critical infrastructure for food but that individual staff issues is not so critical, and more on the lines of essential.
However, enough grocery stores have to be kept running, or else people could run out of food, or the food supply chain could be disrupted.
So, "essential workers" means that they have to be protected and encouraged to work as a group, but that if some individual ones quit or have to take time off work, it will be OK. Whereas in this crisis, if even one grocery store closed, that could, depending on the area, cause a problem.
Locking bank accounts at all WITHOUT A TRIAL, seems dystopian. That's a lot of power for the state to have to be able to reach into some ones bank accounts with no due process.
Edit: changed AT ALL to without a trial because on second thought resized it's possible that there are some legit uses for freezing bank accounts.
Tyrannical means " Unjust or oppressive governmental power.", so the justification for the mandate is important, not just the fact that a mandate exists.
A mandate with a good justification is authoritarian but not tyrannical.
Translation: "If it's for a Just Cause, then anything goes. If it's for a Unjust Cause, then we should arrest you at the slightest infraction of the law and punish you to the fullest extent of the law".
This is hilariously backwards. Black protestors in Ottawa are arrested all the time. These people have been paralyzing a massive part of downtown and violating the law for 3 weeks and they're finally now seeing some consequences.
Also, yes, some protests are moral and some aren't. If there's a Nazi march shutting down main street I have no objections to shutting it down. It's not logically inconsistent to say that people shitting in the streets, having drunken discos and harassing people day and night aren't really "protesting" at this point.
>This is hilariously backwards. Black protestors in Ottawa are arrested all the time.
I was making fun of the parent poster's normative theories, not describing how police in ottawa actually behave.
>These people have been paralyzing a massive part of downtown and violating the law for 3 weeks and they're finally now seeing some consequences.
I'm sure you could say the same for hong kong protesters. I'm going to go on a limb that flooding the entire island with millions of protesters is pretty "paralyzing", if not more.
>Also, yes, some protests are moral and some aren't. If there's a Nazi march shutting down main street I have no objections to shutting it down.
Sounds like you're agreeing with my previous comment?
>It's not logically inconsistent to say that people shitting in the streets, having drunken discos and harassing people day and night aren't really "protesting" at this point.
I have family who live in an authoritarian dictatorship and there is a lot of news coverage of Trudeau's decision - why? Because they parade it around as "evidence that allowing protest is dangerous to a countries stability" and "see what hypocrites the so-called democracies are?"
And the next time farmers protest because their land is being taken away and given to multinational corporations, they crackdown and say "see? we're just like Canada, these people are criminals and we need to restore order".
Being admired by thuggish dictatorships doesn't exactly reflect well on Canada.
So all causes are equal? Is it bad to apply informed judgement on society issues? If you go by that, then the US revolution should have been a bad and illegal thing.
>So all causes are equal? Is it bad to apply informed judgement on society issues?
Are all speech created equal? Is it bad to apply informed judgement on society issues? I mean, why do we want Bad Speech to proliferate? The government should ensure only Good Speech is allowed!
>If you go by that, then the US revolution should have been a bad and illegal thing.
"all causes are equal" =/= "all causes are a bad and illegal thing".
Justice means appropriate measures for relevant actions. Not wanting to take responsibility for your own decisions like these truckers is a far cry from being repressed and abused because you look like someone the men who control the money don't like. The tolerable level of their civil disobedience should be commensurate with the severity and legitimacy of their complaint.
Or perhaps it’s because on the one hand we have a cause which seeks to protect marginalized groups, and on the other hand we have a cause which opposes the protection of marginalized groups.
1. this sounds awfully like to the "modern" definition of racism, which basically justifies any sort of action as long it's for the "marginalized" group.
2. What counts as "marginalized" here? I could plausibly make the argument that anti-vaxxers are marginalized because the government is cutting off their access to common services and threatening their livelihoods.
1. On the contrary, this is about giving everyone a fair chance. In no universe are protections for marginalized groups "racism". I would strongly encourage you to read about John Rawl's "veil of ignorance" concept. [1]
2. Pretty much 1:1 correspondence with the social determinants of health. [2]
>1. On the contrary, this is about giving everyone a fair chance. In no universe are protections for marginalized groups "racism".
this is exactly my point. back in the day "racism" really did mean "treating people differently based on race". https://web.archive.org/web/20071014174747/https://www.merri.... under that definition, "giving everybody a fair chance" or "protections for marginalized groups" could count as racism in certain cases. eg. "this scholarship is for black students only", or "you can't apply for this scholarship if you're asian or jewish".
>2. Pretty much 1:1 correspondence with the social determinants of health.[1]
So going off that list:
1. if you're a rich person protesting then that's bad because you're not marginalized
2. if you're employed and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.
3. if you're well educated and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.
4. if you haven't suffered childhood trauma and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.
5. if you didn't grow up on the wrong side of the tracks and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.
6. if you have social support and coping skills and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.
7. if you have a healthy diet and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.
8. if you have "access to health services" (live near a hospital and can easily take time off work?) and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.
9. if you have better than average genes and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.
10, 11, 12. if you're [redacted] and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized
If we're talking about truckers, we can definitely check off #3, and probably check off 1, 5, 7, and 8 as well. Does that check enough boxes to earn them "marginalized" status?
So protests are only just if they are against the 14 things listed by the government? I thought "free speech zones" were ridiculous, but this idea of approved protest topics takes the cake.
>and about how they do it
What does "marginalized groups" have to do with "how they do it"? Are you saying that if you're protesting against the 14 approved protest topics, you get additional leeway regarding illegal things to do?
If people blockade an important international crossing or trying to deny access to government buildings I expect that the authorities will promptly clear it, even if they are doing it in the name of a cause I support.
Yes, BLM sometimes blocked roads. In every case they were promptly removed if they did not disperse when ordered to.
2 women were killed in Seattle when BLM and police shutdown a highway for a protest: https://www.fox5dc.com/news/police-2-women-hit-by-car-on-clo...
>Protesters had shut down the interstate for 19 days in a row, Mead said at a press conference. The State Patrol responded by closing sections of the interstate to keep drivers and protesters safe.
I recall the police responding to the protests in Portland and working hard to shut them down as a result. The Ottawa police have declined to take action.
I agree. I have no idea how Canada's legal system works but I would not trust the american executive branch with this power without the authorization of a judge. Even then it feels too easily abused, but you can already do a lot worse with a judge's sign off and there are certainly cases where the power makes sense.
Yes. Trudeau's father did the same thing (look up "Just watch me"). Anyway, there's no such thing as separation of powers in Canada. It's called Parliamentary Sovereignty.
I mean, Trudeau's father called in the military because a terrorist group kidnapped a government minister and set off multiple bombs. This is pretty small potatoes compared to the FLQ.
We don't have the concept of co-equal branches of government, but the judiciary can declare acts of parliament to violate the charter of rights and freedoms. The Emergencies Act explicitly says it does not supercede any constitutional rights.
There was concern of over-reach when Pierre invoke the War Measures Act also. The War Measures Act included all of Canada, not just the geography the FLQ was operating in. I was fairly young at the time but I still have a recollection of the bombing, kidnapping and murder. I can't reconcile the current protest demands with say the FLQ manifesto[0]
Here is a quote from Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland:
“The government is issuing an order with immediate effect under the Emergencies Act, authorizing Canadian financial institutions to temporarily cease providing financial services where the institution suspects that an account is being used to further the illegal blockades and occupations,” she said. “This order covers both personal and corporate accounts.”
—-
Under Canadian law, the Liberal government has to put this before both the House of Commons and Senate within 7 days.
Just to clarify, under Canadian law the government has to put the use of the Emergencies Act before the House and Senate withing 7 days. It doesn't matter what colour the government is. The law itself was passed by a Progressive Conservative government to whom it would have applied exactly the same way.
Yes, of course it is. I replied to someone who said they have no idea how Canadian law worked. Commons/Senate approval is part of the Emergency Act and the current government has to follow it.
Say what? Those two are literally polar opposites. I guess they can be progressive on the social scale and conservative on the economic one, but there's got to be a better name for that.
So Canada used to have a party called the Conservative Party (they do now too again). They wanted a guy named John Bracken who was Premier of Manitoba under the Progressive party of Manitoba to be leader. He wouldn't agree until they put Progressive in their name. So they did and Conservative Party became the Progressive Conservative Party until they merged with the Reform Party and went back to being called the Conservative Party. Some provinces still have a PC party.
Here and now is a different place and time than when that political party was named during the merger of the Progressives and the Conservatives in an effort to defeat the incumbent Liberals. Being a "liberal" was a term for a supporter of the right-wing moneyed establishment at the time because of their demand for laissez-faire economics and reciprocity in international trade. A lot can change over a century.
That's unfortunately true, however those cases are frequently reversed and returned by judges (though the burden is entirely on the asset owners to bring the case). We definitely need legislation to invert the process though, law enforcement should be going to a judge before they can seize the assets.
Seizing funds from criminals to restrict their ability to perpetrate and profit from crime is a tool used by law enforcement in essentially every country, and has been happening for a long time.
There’s plenty of areas of this that are misused (see things like civil asset forfeiture), but the overarching strategy of freezing bank accounts isn’t novel or dystopian.
Edit: it’s a bit sneaky to change “AT ALL” to “WITHOUT A TRIAL” without calling out the change.
Yeah, but in most countries there is due process in front of a judge to do that.
You can't just have the executive decide they can do that using pure administrative action to seize property. Also, you generally also have to prove in a court of law there was a crime before you can do anything at all.
The US civilian asset forfeiture (and now in Canada too, it seems) are actually quite unique in that regard outside of maybe China (not sure even you can do that there anymore), and at most couple other dystopian very authoritarian nations.
As has now been called out by the person I replied to, when I typed my reply, they said seizing funds “at all” was dystopian. They’ve now amended the comment to specify without the involvement of the judiciary.
Note that this is not asset forfeiture. The order only authorizes financially institutions to temporarily freeze accounts if they suspect they’re being used to fund illegal blockades. They can temporarily freeze accounts without a court order without any fear of legal liability.
That’s it. It’s a time out, not a forfeiture. The Emergency Act is powerful, but this invocation isn’t that powerful.
Ah, perfect, the corporations are free to do the govt bidding without explicit pressure from the govt. They'll work hand in hand though. This feels like they are just making what GoFundMe did, legal after the fact.
Well, the big corporations and the government have always worked hand in hand. What they do under the covers when they're in bed with each other is their business.
My point was only that this is a temporary denial of service, not an asset forfeiture. Finally, do you have experience with Canadian banks? Temporary account suspensions are relatively common for unpaid debt. There are defined processes, federally regulated banks have a position called ombudsperson and there is always the OBSI.
Moral is, don’t ignore court orders in democratic countries.
What is according to you the legal link (or logical construction), in between an order to disperse, or not support somebody not dispersing, and a freezing of said person's assets ?
It doesn't exist in the normal course of judicial business, how does it get created here ?
I'm not an expert in this field, I just tried to correct one word. This is a freeze not a forfeiture.
My understanding is that the legal link was created by the Emergencies Act. The government believes that it will be able to calm the situation faster if they can track and cut off the flow of money. This invocation gives the government increased powers to track (they ordered crowdfunding platforms/payment processors to register with FINTRAC). And increased powers to cut off funds (through freezing bank accounts).
Edit:
Here's a relevant quote from Canada's Deputy PM:
“The government is issuing an order with immediate effect under the Emergencies Act, authorizing Canadian financial institutions to temporarily cease providing financial services where the institution suspects that an account is being used to further the illegal blockades and occupations,” she said. “This order covers both personal and corporate accounts.”
> My understanding is that the legal link was created by the Emergencies Act. The government believes that it will be able to calm the situation faster if they can track and cut off the flow of money.
They created a power of themselves, out of expedience, but there still doesn't seem to be any justification or grounds for it according to the basic principles of the Canadian legal order, except it formally comes from the PM, and he has cops.
They created a false legal reality (grave danger of violence to Canada and its people), which isn't objectively observable, to justify a power to solve that false reality, where in fact they are using it for something else (forcing people to move parked trucks).
They could have just arrested all the truckers for a variety of traffic laws or public-order laws (honking, noise), and then moved the trucks one by one. Instead, Emergency powers...
As my administrative and fiscal law professor taught us, after listing for two weeks all the principles which can be used to craft a law (not Canadian law school, European) :
There's one very old legal principle left, according to which laws are sometimes made, wrongly, but well, that's the real world for you : "I'mma the state, I do it because I can, or I'mma gonna crush you".
Locking bank accounts without a trial happens every single day in every democracy in the world. Any legal process where money is suspected of being dirty but is allowed to flow freely through the banking system until the conclusion of a trial would be completely useless - I believe this is fairly obvious if you think about it.
Due process should be quicker, I wish more people would vote based on making the courts more responsive, but unfortunately no one does.
A "protest" that prevents people from crossing a border or shuts down a city isn't a protest. It is hostage-taking.
The US First amendment has some good language on this: the people have a right to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Imposing a blockade does not qualify. If they just sit in front of Parliament and hold up signs and shout, but don't impede anyone going about their business, then they have a right to make their voices heard.
But what about (some other protest)? Civil rights protesters are usually ordered to disperse after a short time and get arrested if they don't. Sometimes they engage in civil disobedience, but they can be arrested if they do that.
The trick is to categorize protestors as "domestic terroists", despite having not done any extreme violent actions, as the Canadian government seems to be doing here.
The govt didn't coin that, the public did, by virtue that protesters are terrorizing the residents. Harassment, 100+db horns at night, vandalization, etc.
A common misconception is that anyone who terrorises someone is a terrorist. It's an understandable mistake but it's wrong. Terrorism has quite a specific definition.
As usual, the devil is in the details. I would agree that the bridge is critical, and that forceful removal was justified. I’m less convinced that Wellington St. is critical, and I would be concerned that only the broadest brushes will be used to determine which accounts will be frozen and why.
It's not just Wellington St, it's Ottawa from the Canal to Bronson, and Somerset to Welligton. On the weekend it's extended all the way up Bank St. A giant no-go zone where businesses and pedestrians aren't safe.
We have a word for "blocking infrastructure" as a form of protest: civil disobedience.
I'm sympathetic to (some) of the aims of the protesters but I think they've made their point and should go home. Still, this move by Trudeau seems like an overreaction considering there's been little/no violence.
Civil disobedience as I support it is a non-violent action. A lot of people cite these protestors as "non-violent" but there have been many incidences of protestors attacking or intimidating residents as well as intimidating the police to resist enforcement actions so I don't regard the current occupation in Ottawa as meeting that threshold.
I think that anyone following closely would have to concede that police conduct and the lack of enforcement is a product of the threat of violence, but I certainly concede that it might be the case that immediate enforcement /might/ result in nonviolent resolution - it just seems very unlikely.
I'm not following these protests closely, but aren't you going to have a minority of violent people in any protest? That's just the nature of argry, large groups.
If that's your bar for "violent protest", then it's trivial for anyone to disrupt any protest by injecting interlopers to try to trigger an explosion. There's evidence that undercover police tried to instigate violence and looting in the BLM protests. Couldn't that be happening here too?
I agree that in any large group there can and will be agitators, but given the dug-in nature of the Ottawa protest it is reasonable to consider the relationship between the lack of enforcement, the relatively small number of participants, and the intimidation that has occurred (as testified to by the OPS).
I think it is lost on most people not following closely that the day-to-day protest headcount is quite low, easily under 1,000 people, probably well under 500. Any normal crowd control policing unit could disperse such a small group, the police do not do so despite many instances of having done so and clear legal authority to do so.
The funny thing about the occupation of Ottawa is that it is very small! There have been many protests on parliment hill itself with ten times the headcount without incident.
I missed a qualifier about the length. That protest appears to be a day. Most day rallies have no issues. It starts to have issues when they start to be a week or more.
I would also note that some in this thread are claiming shutting down streets are violence. That protest shut down multiple streets.
Can you offer an example of a protest you would consider comparable?
Obviously shutting down streets for hours or a day is not "violence" but preventing people from enjoying public roadways for 17+ days in their own neighbourhood is a violation of their liberities. Just the same a single day horn-honking protest would not be the same as weeks unending.
But language-lawyering about the word "violence" isn't really the point anyway, this is more about the right to protest being in tension with the rights of nearby residents and workers to live peacefully.
As far as I know every protest that was a week or longer had some sort of real violence (not just road closures) so you can probably just choose any protest and compare it. I am not very familiar with Canadian protests, but Occupy and BLM are the biggest examples of large multi day protests that I can think of and both had some level of violence.
At what point does shutting down a street go too far? 1 day, 2 days, a week? It seems somewhat arbitrary to me, and that is what I was trying to convey. I think any obstruction of a road is an inconvenience. Does that mean it is too much of a tension and is causing me to not be able to live peacefully? I don't think so.
I would also say that the point of the protest is to inconvenience people. If the truckers blocked roads in the middle of the Yukon nobody would care. The reason they are doing it in Ottawa is because it is capital and because it is populated.
I guess I wouldn't have as much of an issue if there was a clear standard, but as far as I can tell there isn't.
I think that we can rely on the courts to assess the situation and make an assessment, you can't codify into law the exact criteria. There are always tensions between rights, some combination of the laws, the courts, and the compliance and tolerance of the public has to settle on a decision on a case-by-case basis.
I think OWS is a good example, they got a lot of publicity and staged long term protests and demonstrations that indeed inconvenienced people, in a two month occupation there certainly was some disruption but I would invite you to compare the two events closely and I think you will see that this Ottawa situation is quite different both in the level of disruption and the quantity of arrests.
Of course in Canada we have lots of great examples of roads being blocked in isolated areas because of logging and pipeline protests, they draw a lot of the comparisons because despite their impact being very limited in terms of the people effected they are cleared out much more violently than has occurred in any instance here. Fairy Creek is something you can look into, the RCMP happily arrested journalists covering the protest crackdown in a gross violation of civil liberties and the rule of law.
I think if your impression of the protests in Ottawa is that they have simply "shut down a street" you should look into it in more detail. (For example the mayor tried to negotiate a deal to get the trucks to stop overnighting and honking in residential areas but failed to get it to stick, that's not related to blocking off one street downtown.) I know a few people that have been hassled on the street in a manner that resulting in them regarding the area unsafe and not a public space for them anymore.
One thing I've never understood about protests of the "you've made your point" variety is what they're supposed to do. I'm thinking of the Women's March and things like that, where there's a scheduled day and people walk around and then they are done. What is that supposed to do? It's less of a protest and more of a parade in my opinion.
The trucker protest, on the other hand, I can understand what it is supposed to do. Make people uncomfortable, block critical infrastructure, force the government to do what you want. But, if truckers just leave, then we're back to "What's the point of this?"
A protest is a sign of disagreement, and a signal for change... not a "We are a small, non-representative but loud group. Now give us what we want."
If the point of a protect is go 'get your way', it's essentially a crappy "Might makes right" play. Might as well not vote, ignore all the rules etc. Society doesn't work if you pick-and-choose at scale.
Civil rights protests against segregation, for example, would see protesters filling up or blocking restaurants that would refuse to serve black customers. Basically - you won't serve black people, we will put you out of business. Sometimes the police would come and arrest people, and that would win sympathy for the protesters, because even people who thought "Maybe black people shouldn't eat be allowed to eat at restaurants" might feel pangs of sympathy at seeing people arrested for just sitting at a restaurant counter.
Now, you can say "The trucker protest isn't as important as civil rights" but that's just a "You shouldn't be protesting" argument. Racists thought civil rights protesters shouldn't be protesting too. If the protesters believe their cause is actually important then it makes sense to protest. But, it only makes sense to protest in ways that are likely to result in changes. Symbols are fine, but empty symbolism isn't enough for something you think is really important.
Exactly and the vast majority of people were racists at the time who I am sure did not agree with the protests.
Something has gone wrong though with this trucker protest because people should have already been arrested. LBJ wasn't granting himself power to deal with civil rights protests.
IMO now it is going to turn into some kind of Canadian Reichstag fire.
Some headline like 2/3rds of Canadians want the government to make sure there is never another Reichstag fire is just a matter of time.
Sure, it makes sense to protest if the issue is important and overlooked enough to pay the price of cracked skulls and prison sentences to raise awareness. Civil rights seems like it fit the bill - I grew up later but at least with my modern sensibilities I'd have happily gone up against the police for that cause. The right to skip just another vaccination (probably the sixth or seventh that you've been forced to take in your life) without losing your job doesn't seem comparable to me, but if people want to make this their hill to die on, sure...
Oh that’s right because you can’t get or transmit COVID if you’re vaccinated…
For most of us COVID is like a cold or at worse a flu if not vaccinated, and likely absolutely nothing if you are vaccinated. So the need to force people to get vaccinated is pointless because they’re only harming themselves, but it’s their own damn choice.
I doubt that one can make a universal case for a whole class of actions that always works. If you block critical infrastructure to 'have your way' because of a luxury position you're not trying to 'fix an institutional problem', you're being a dick to everyone around you while they can't fix anything for you anyway.
Imagine someone honking their horn at your bedroom window all night because they wanted a McFlurry but "the machine was broken".
If all a protest does is mess with society, it'll just end up with counter-protests and civil war light edition.
One thing they do is raise the bar for "public interest" scales used in legal matters. For example, protests make it more difficult for a government agency to claim information retrieval is "unduly burdensome" when compared against the public's interest. That reinforces the capabilities of journalism and so their message is more easily consumed by a wider public. In theory, anyway.
Trudeau is calling the whole protest illegal. Last week they arrested an old man for merely honking his horn to show support. So, anyone attending a protest is joining an illegal activity...and can have their accounts frozen.
There's no guarantee of due process in Canada's constitution?
The whole protest has been illegal from the start (violating the highway traffic act)
> Last week they arrested an old man for merely honking his horn to show support.
Source? Either way, yes, there was an injunction granted specifically against honking horns.
> So, anyone attending a protest is joining an illegal activity...and can have their accounts frozen.
No, anyone attending this specific protest at this specific time when there is a provincial state of an emergency (and now the invoking of the federal emergencies act, which requires provincial assent) is joining an illegal activity, and anyone providing monetary support to said illegal activity may have their accounts frozen.
> There's no guarantee of due process in Canada's constitution?
There is indeed. The Emergencies Act is subject to the charter of rights and freedoms, section 7 of which covers legal rights[1] and section 1 of which lays out how these rights are subject to "such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society". It'll be up to the courts to decide after the fact whether these restrictions were demonstrably justified (hint: with the province declaring the protest illegal, declaring a state of emergency last week, and the protesters totally refusing to move: they will be found justified. Our court system is not nearly as politicized as our southern neighbours')
It looks like the old man was stopped for honking. Not sure on the timing of everything, there was an injunction granted against honking downtown Ottawa.
He appears to have been arrested for refusing to identify himself when stopped (it looks like he was intending to, then emboldened by the cameraman opted not to). That's bog standard highway traffic act stuff - if you're stopped driving, you have to show your license, registration and proof of insurance if asked.
To say "arrested for honking" feels misleading - it seems reasonable to suggest that if he followed standard Highway Traffic Act stuff he would have been on his way with a warning/ticket/whatever is done presently to stop the honking, doesn't it? I'm open to have misunderstood, I'm not even qualified to be an armchair lawyer.
Then write to your selected member of parliament and complain about it, help campaigns and candidates next election who better align with your view, or run yourself!
But you might be better served to first examine the reasons why so many Canadians are in favour of various restrictions that have been introduced (and eventually once again withdrawn), by every party and every level of government in the last two years. It's mostly because we have much more faith than our American counterparts that our institutions will do what's right for all Canadians.
> Then write to your selected member of parliament and complain about it, help campaigns and candidates next election who better align with your view, or run yourself!
What about an online petition or a bake sale?
Less sarcastically: there are frequently situations in which a majority may democratically decide to make a minority behave in a certain way. I think it is relatively clear from opinion polls that a majority of Canadians do not agree with the behavior of the truckers. So writing to an MP or running for parliament will probably be a fruitless strategy. Hence the protests.
It would be trivial to find unpleasant, widely-condemned situations in which you and I would probably be united in our opposition.
The difficulty comes when the minority being forced to behave in a certain way are non-appealing in some way. Democracies need to find a way of dealing with them. It will be horse-trading, negotiation, cajoling, appealing and arguing.
None of those strategies were applied by the Trudeau government before they became hysterical and tried to claim they were having a Canadian version of Jan 6th.
I am certain that many Canadians both do not agree with the apparent demands of the truckers and simultaneously do not agree with the application of the Emergencies Act.
The only thing that's sad is that a bunch of enraged people aren't getting vaccinated during an ongoing pandemic and instead decide to break the law and cause untold sums in economic damage.
Getting these people off the street isn't authoritarianism, it's preventing the inmates from running the asylum.
Getting protesters at Parliament Hill arrested, fined, bank accounts frozen, and other people who support them (fining those who brings food and gas), isn't authoritarian?
Can't you make a distinction with the bridge blockade and the rest?
I think you can and should make a distinction between protests that are lawful and those that are illegal. If a protest isn't lawful any more, aiding it isn't either.
To me the Canadian government doesn't look authoritarian, it looks weak. For weeks you have people threatening public order as well as public health. To accommodate this implies that a minority can intimidate the majority of the population and legitimate authority through use of force.
Exactly right. We should allow protests, but only the ones that don't make the government look weak. As soon as the protest starts gaining traction, it needs to be declared illegal so that the minority cannot intimidate legitimate authority.
Like the Hong Kong protests? Those are illegal. I don't think your distinction is useful or clarifying. All that being illegal says is that the state has decided its not allowed.
This is a parody post, right? Like your claims are so absurd as to convince readers the government has overreached, yes?
> violating the highway traffic act
Show me the man, and I'll find you a crime. Seriously man, what the fuck is the "Highway Traffic Act."
> an injunction granted specifically against honking horns
Let's simply declare a benign activity that people do thousands of times per day in every city, illegal!
> this specific protest at this specific time
But also, you better not show up at similar protests at other times either
> provincial state of an emergency
Yep, the blanket "emergency declaration" that makes virtually everything we don't like, illegal
> joining an illegal activity
because we just declared whatever you are doing to be illegal
> anyone providing monetary support to said illegal activity may have their accounts frozen
so you don't have to be a protester to be engulfed by this, just offering $5 so someone can get a coffee means you could have your accounts frozen. Cast a wide net, indeed!
> It'll be up to the courts to decide after the fact
Yes, by judges who are appointed by Canada's federal government!
Arrested for refusing to identify himself. He had been blowing the horn in a residential area for quite a long time. Cops came by to tell him to knock it off, he refused to cooperate with them.
> Last week they arrested an old man for merely honking his horn to show support
Managed to hurt him too.
Imagine being in law enforcement. Coming home to your family and brag about how you physically hurt an old man and bullied him out of his constitutional rights.
That's like saying civil forfeiture is ok because the police will only ever take things from people involved with actual crimes, and that if you're not doing crime you have nothing to worry about. Do you forget how things are manipulated by people with power?
> The top donation, $215,000, has a comment that says “processed but not recorded.” The next top donation, at $90,000, is listed as from Thomas M. Siebel. CTV News has reached out to the American billionaire by the same name but has not confirmed it is his donation.
BLM protesters have been promptly arrested when they blocked streets or failed to disperse when the police ordered it, often rather violently. If these protesters want to get the same treatment BLM protesters got, they may well regret it.
In fairness BLM was far more violent. Neighborhoods were burned to the ground, businesses were looted, people were injured, and several people were killed. Moreover, the BLM protests involved millions of people, so 14K arrests seems believable. Moreover, how many of the arrested were charged (getting arrested on its own isn’t that big of a deal).
Various parts of Kenosha off the top of my head. Most other arson cases were isolated businesses, police precincts, etc. There were also entire neighborhoods in which virtually every business was looted. We had at least a few such neighborhoods in Chicago, and there were many others across the country including many of the communities that BLM folks purport to care about.
Sure but that was in a very liberal city. The USA is a very large country with a full spectrum of reactions. If they would have tried that in say a large city in Texas or Montana the state police would have busted it up within a couple days.
In Portland Oregon, BLM spray painted buildings, burnt many things in the middle of the road and sidewalks, destroyed property, physically assaulted, broke windows, and ripped down bus stops and statues. They formulated an incursion into a state building putting the lives of Oregon's law officers in jeopardy (Molotov cocktails throw at them).
Depending on your persuasion, you might argue some justification occurred in Minneapolis Minnesota. But there are clearly limits when destruction of property and looting fall far outside of any tenuous reflection of social unrest. (Target?)
Seattle Washington was worse. Much much worse. The city directed their police force to yield a central block of the city to armed rebellion. People, one as I recall completely innocent, were shot and killed.
There was not the immediacy nor the widespread arrests to match the level of violence and destruction in these three locations. In terms of accuracy and spirit I believe you have missed the mark in your description of action and response.
There have been some good points in this thread otherwise and I'm still thinking about them. But you would be better served by re-evaluating your position on this topic.
Mid-level police commanders unilaterally decided to abandon the precinct, which allowed CHAZ to form. Not “the city,” and not in the face of “armed rebellion.”
(Yes, there were guns and unfortunate violence later: after the police left. Their job is maintaining public order; they failed.)
The police job in the history of modern republics was never to maintain "public order", unless by that you mean preventing disruption of existing systems of privilege. I can only recommend reading Michel Foucault "Discipline and Punish" about the society of control, and the roles of the police and judicial system.
Hello, that's a good point! We should always point out pedophilia where it's hiding. However, from previous readings and from following the linked sources of that Wikipedia article, i don't think that Foucault was a pedophile. He did (like many other thinkers of the time) sign a petition defending someone who didn't deserve it, but it's easy to judge in retrospect as the precise context of the case was not publicly known at the time of the petition. But nowhere could i read him arguing for pedophilia or suggesting he himself engaged in such abhorrent behavior.
Thank you gammarator, you are correct, that is how it initiated. I believe what I'm recalling, and I apologize for not remembering specifics as clearly, was a couple different events after CHAZ was...let's say "established". I believe there was more than one armed stand off, one in particular a organized force (but was it national guard or city police?) and the mayor (in my previous comment referred to as "the city") directed officers to yield the area. The occupiers formed an armed militia and the city ceded control of the block to them. I unfortunately misremembered the timeline and characterized it by stating it the way that I did. Thanks for pointing that out.
It seems like BLM is the new Godwin's Law of protesting. This is like inappropriately invoking the Holocaust.
BLM arose from several extrajudicial murders by police after a history of racism and mistreatment by the state. The trucker protest is essentially about commerce policy in an already very heavily regulated industry. It's hard to imagine other similar jobs where mandating your hours of sleep is discussed by a federal legislature (possibly international treaty too?).
The perspective is important because these are obviously not the same thing.
> The inquiry launched by Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s government into the scale of foreign funds aimed at damaging the province’s oil and gas industry has issued its long-awaited report, finding that foreign donors provided nearly $1.3 billion in funds for Canadian environmental campaigns between 2003 and 2019.
Why is it wrong? When Indian farmers started theirs money poured in from all over the world. When Nigerians started theirs same thing happened. Why should Canada be different?
What’s the distribution? What are the median and 95th percentile donations? It’s impossible to tell if those donations are indicative of anything or merely outliers.
Okay? There was talk about a law in the US that didn't get exercised. Facts and weasel words acknowledged. So what? I really don't understand why people insist on re-litigating the BLM riots, focused on what the American government did or did not do. This is a story about protests going down in Canada, and how the Canadian government is responding to them. The only connection is the huge infusion of American money into this Canadian protest, but instead, folks are doing whataboutism donuts on BLM's lawn. It doesn't apply here. Why are people doing this.
I agree with this and I generally support their cause. But you don’t have the right to shut down commerce and affect citizens ability to move across a border. IMO they have let this go on far too long.
What I am pointing out is that it’s weird to protest Canada for having policies that limit the employment of unvaccinated truckers when it’s the Americans who had the vaccine mandates first.
And watch you’ll see mandates dropping in states where midterm elections are coming up for folks, cuz the mandates are stupid and people pretend to like them to impress the other people pretending to like them, but nearly everyone just wants to leave clown world.
Canada was already on track to open up. It follows Europe. People are already quipping about protestors wanting to take credit by likening it to protesting the darkness at midnight and claiming victory at 6 am.
I too don't believe that the protests should get all the credit.
But its not Gov following science, at best it's Gov following sentiment. People are right fed up of the overreach and want no more rules around masks, passports and lockdowns. There's no more tolerating restrictions for something that's a minor cold, can be vaccinated against if you are worried or early treated with antiviral using both new and repurposed drugs.
The govt is following advice from scientific advisors. People don't seem to appreciate that much of the weighting for these decisions have to do with hospital capacity, and also that decisions don't shift at a drop of a hat. Your notion of following "sentiment" is complete projection rooted in discontent. It has no basis in reality, and you have fuck all to back it up.
The restrictions have already been poised to be lifted on the strength of said advice. This was already on the horizon and one can only imagine that protestors purposefully decided to move on this on the tail end of these policies.
I am not a north American so I just catch glimpses of what is happening in articles that pop up like this. So I am not taking sides here. Just making an observation about protests in general.
With that being said, how do you get noticed? I remember there was a Wall Street protest of some kind right after the crash. They sat quietly in parks and protested because people got annoyed when they were "inconvenienced" when they protested outside buildings. Their protests fizzled out and was forgotten. Even though large swathes of people were pissed off with Wall Street.
Back in college, we had a protest. Few people from the media were there and we were protesting on campus, doing it "right". The media people were like "go do something...we cannot cover a bunch of college kids sitting around!"
Unfortunately protests(the ones you agree with and the ones your disagree with) run by smaller groups are going to get noticed only when they do "illegal" things.
Occupy Wall Street did not do a lot of shutdowns, they quickly migrated marches to sidewalks and sit downs to public spaces to the consternation of nypd.
The reason they fizzled is they had absolutely zero marketing experience. When they finally got down to listing their demands, it was a 43 point manifesto from save the penquins to truther investigations.
BLM really didn’t get anywhere (they initially had a ~14 point demands) until someone came up with “Defund!”. Marketers would get you down to 2 or 3 items, but two syllables was brilliant.
The reason Occupy failed is not because of marketing, it's because they were not organized to face the raw powers of the State protecting Wall Street moguls. By peacefully demonstrating on sidewalks, you're not having any meaningful impact and you're not being heard.
Someone in this thread mentioned "civil disobedience" movements. Studying the history of such movements (anti-apartheid politics, workers movements, womens rights, anti-colonial struggles), we quickly realize although having a mass of non-violent protesters (popular support) is important, the actual balance of power lies with more militant groups putting actual pressure (sabotage, blockages, attacks) on our overlords to change things for the better.
This is revisionist. They could not sustain a united front, it quickly deteriorated and was diffused with people supporting various agendas. It was important for the message to reach people in order to ramp up support and for the movement to sustain itself, that was a colossal failure.
> was diffused with people supporting various agendas
That sounds pretty healthy. I mean, having a central authority deciding for everyone else is precisely what's wrong with our society.
It also doesn't help to keep a unified front when you have many people injured/traumatized/incarcerated due to police actions (political repression). So while i agree the Occupy movement was a colossal failure, i don't agree with your interpretation of why.
If a large movement doesn't converge on a common purpose, it falls apart, simple as that. There is no need for a "central authority", just message discipline. People may have different gripes and ideas, that doesn't matter - they ought to be able to agree on some things to make that work. Effective labor movements have pretty clear purposes.
> Effective labor movements have pretty clear purposes.
I don't think that is true. I've personally witnessed several major movements in France which involved literally millions of people on the streets, some of which were successful and some not. Let's look over the past 20 years:
- the anti-CPE movement (CPE was a reform for quasi-slave labor for people fresh out of studies) won after months of intense and violent struggle (think molotov cocktails) and university occupations
- the national suburbs riots of 2005 (caused by cops murdering two kids, and Sarkozy raging racist discourse) failed after weeks of intense and violent struggle ; nothing changed except some people were jailed
- in 2010-2011, the protests against retirement reform gathered over a million people every week and the government was on the verge of collapse (we no longer has gas in the petrol stations) yet the movement was never very violent, the government never ceded and so the movement lost
- in 2016, millions of people demonstrated and blockaded for months against working law reform, yet Macron (at the time "socialist" minister of economy) passed it without a vote (article 49-3 of the constitution allows the government to bypass the parliament, and it had not been used in decades) ; this was the first mass movement after the State of emergency (2015) and we can see the fascist cops were on free wheels as we started getting serious life-threatening injuries at every demo even in smaller cities
- in 2018, with the gilets jaunes, despite approval by a vast majority of the population and the protests spreading to even the tiniest countryside cities for over a year and half, the movement failed as it was teargased/grenaded/batoned to hospital (or to death, as with Zineb Redouane) and MANY people were either jailed for extensive periods of time or crippled for life
All of these protests i've noted had very clear objectives and were very massive. Some succeeded, some not. What's the difference between those cases? The only difference is the decisions by the government and the amount of blood they were willing to spill. If you want to know what kind of blood spilling i'm talking about, there's a gilets jaunes collection here: TRIGGER WARNING http://lemurjaune.fr/
On the other hand, studying the history of political repression gives us much clearer ideas on how/why social movements can succeed or fail. The fact that INTERPOL started with a "international police conference on the peril of anarchism" for example, or early collaboration between french/russian/american services to hunt down radical troublemakers. Or the Church committee investigation about FBI's COINTELPRO. Or in France, the many post-WWII scandals involving pro-nazi police prefects (like Maurice Papon who ordered to kill and deports hundreds-to-thousands of algerians in a single week of october 1961). Or the fascist militias organized by De Gaulle (Services d'Action Civique) to attack May 68 demos. Or... and the list goes on.
Modern States have spend considerable resources on counter-insurgency strategies because that's how they hold power. Whether opposition movements have a common purpose is irrelevant as long as the State has the powers and is willing to cripple or kill a significant portion of the demonstrators should their organizing start to be effective.
Disclaimer: i was not in NY and have never resided in NY.
> The masters of Wall Street didn’t have to lift a finger.
No, because they had their obedient militia (the police) teargas, beat up and arrest everyone for them. And the media to spew lies along the lines of "we don't know what these people want" because their desires can't be confined in a single bill/reform.
These people wanted what Barack Obama promised and denied them: hope and change. Food & housing & healthcare for free for all. Putting an end to racial policing. Etc. They were met with rubber bullets and detention. And now clueless people like you who were not on the ground (i personally was involved with other Occupy movements in Europe at the same time) now judge them based on State/corporate propaganda.
That's pretty representative of any form of collective organizing defying the status quo. The civil rights activists of the 60s in the USA were equally derided by the media and repressed by the police in their day, just like the gilets jaunes of today's France.
> Best of luck with projection and raging about conspiracies on the internets.
You've mentioned "conspiracy theory" twice now. What's a conspiracy theory about what i said? Are you implying police/political repression does not exist and we all live in a free and democratic society? Or something else entirely?
We quickly forget that many civil rights protests were illegal, or at least, highly disruptive to the normal function of society, as were the BLM protests.
Nobody is owed attention - most small protests that stay legal are ignored because nobody gives a damn about the causes. Which is fine, we don't as a society have any obligation to pay attention to every fringe thing if it doesn't rise to the level where the legal system is activated and lawsuits or prosecutions are on the table.
Doing illegal stuff to get attention only makes me less supportive of any cause, personally, whether it's lefty or righty bullshit - I don't like this, I didn't like the Jan 6 riots, and I don't like a lot of what I saw from BLM, Occupy Wall Street, and many others over the years. Even if I agreed with a few of the underlying demands or issues (I'm against vax mandates, I do think Derek Chauvin should be in prison, there was a ton of bank fraud in the 00s and high level people should have been jailed, etc).
So if you agree with the cause (whichever it is) but disagree with the methods, what should we do? Parading down the streets once a year with signs never did anything for people's rights. Only through massive organized struggles and sabotage actions have workers, women, colonized peoples (etc) ever obtained something.
Emergency powers weren't invoked in 2020 when Canada's railways were blocked for months. In fact, at the time Trudeau was quoted saying things like "Politicians should not be telling the police how to deal with protesters"
The double standards in this country are staggering at times.
Isn't it interesting how demonstrations contrary to the regime tend to be treated as criminal non-protests while demonstrations amenable to the regime tend to be treated as "legitimate" protests? Certainly this classification cannot be derived a priori in any other way; for example, the regime media generally treated vastly more disruptive and destructive demonstrations in 2020 as "legitimate" protests despite those demonstrations involving ex ante illegal activities like arson and theft.
This is what happens when the person in charge is under confident. He's lost control by trying to exercise too much control for too long, and is obviously now desperate to get that back. Such pride and arrogance.
Thank you! Now you're starting to get what people have been making such a fuss about in the U.S.! The moment you can unilaterally freeze bank accounts of your own citizens, you're basically putting fundamental restrictions on what they can and cannot do! If citizens can't even fund raise for their own protests, you have a problem.
...Now the fact a bunch of donors are American and not Canadian is... Fascinating...
I'm not sure what to do about that little chestnut... Sorry Canada. Welcome to politics by free trade I guess???
>...Now the fact a bunch of donors are American and not Canadian is... Fascinating...
>I'm not sure what to do about that little chestnut... Sorry Canada. Welcome to politics by free trade I guess???
That'd make sense if they were only freezing the funds that were received from outside the country, but according to the article they're freezing the accounts of "anyone linked with the protests".
...Yeaaaaaah. that's jumping the shark for me. Give em' hell in that case, I suppose.
Taking a second look through the media coverage, I've gotta laugh though... To think that your Federal capital should be immune from a glorified sit in, and to go and make a big fluff about demanding to "take it back"
...Yet no moment of reflection in this is a symbolic gesture to the people of Ottawa on what the Federal mandates have taken from the protestors. It's like people are shouting completely past one another. It's one of the most sublime examples of dysfunction writ large I've lived through to date.
Due to layout, there was a line break for me at the end of “Trudeau vows to freeze anti-mandate protesters” which, given that it’s Canada in the winter, seemed eminently plausible, if a little bit cruel.
It's been going below -25 C at night for the past few days in Ottawa and the truckers are sleeping in their cabs. I have no doubt there will be some who blame Trudeau.
As I wrote elsewhere in this thread [1], I recommend taking a look at this channel or other extended livestreams to get a view from the ground if your impression of this event has been mostly shaped by articles. That recommendation goes for all major protests, especially if you think you disagree with the people protesting.
You should be upfront about his political bias (which is in his best interest as it is his source of revenue).
Don't get me wrong I like his videos but I also like hearing from the other side for good measure. Perhaps it is pedantic to point out that everyone has a political leaning but I think it is good to be upfront so that people can consider the biases of the input in order to make a more informed opinion. Or perhaps others should gauge the political bias themselves? That's a question of philosophy and ethics. I wish that everyone had enough skepticism and critical thinking to question everything and be conscious of their measures of validity and invalidity.
I appear to have rate-limited from editing that comment after double clicking on mobile, but this is what I was going to add:
Edit: As I note in the linked comment, this channel is openly supportive of the protests. As I also write there, a quick YouTube search will yield a large variety of other sources. The important thing is finding sources with long and unedited footage. As Jacques Ellul observed, "propaganda ceases where simple dialogue begins." (This seems to be the primary driver of interest in long-form podcasts.)
I chose to share a channel with a positive bias because 1.) in my view Frei does a respectable job engaging counter-protestors with opposing views and 2.) in my view, mainstream coverage of this skews more negative than is warranted based on having watched many hours of livestream footage.
Honest question: why is it sad? There’s another thread[0] going on here right now about how human processes shouldn’t manage pathological cases with policy and procedure. Moderation is all about pathological and edge cases. Mod actions that work on some users every time may not work at all on others. I don’t believe treating us all the same is the best way to get quality discussion, and transparency is not an end in itself outside of government.
So how… how would a moderation log and strict policies make HN a better place?
What gives you that impression? If we're talking about the same thing, rate limiting occurs when you post multiple comments right after each other. It will usually make you wait a minute before the next post.
This doesn't happen to me often, but does happen when I comment in rapid succession.
Hi dang, my mistake on the diagnosis, then. I thought that because I saw an error message that said " Sorry, we're not able to serve your requests this quickly." and after that the edit button was no longer visible for me on my comments. I often access this site through a ProtonVPN connection, so maybe there was some suspicious IP address heuristic involved?
The edit button is still not showing up for me, though. Do you have any idea why that might be or if there's something I can do to fix it?
"Sorry, we're not able to serve your requests this quickly" is our little server process saying "help, I only have a single core and I'm out of breath here". If your account were rate limited it would say something like "You're posting too fast, please slow down."
Another YT channel that records videos of street view of public protests or events. They don't have any narrative to push, they instead license the content to the media.
I don’t think blocking up and honking in a random city where the politicians don’t actually live will do all that much, just expressing frustration at other citizens who have done nothing to harm them. I think those citizens in turn are right to be angry and upset and feel they are being disrupted because they are. I don’t begrudge them this and I don’t think it has anything to do with social betters or not. Having spoken to folks who live there, it apparently really is super disruptive, one person reportedly couldn’t get chemo because of the disruption.
Not many of us up here are too concerned with American protests and quotes from American politicians. I don't mean to take anything away from them - just that I'm not sure how applicable they are here. Most Canadians I know (whether on the left or right of the political spectrum) would find those quotes from AOC and Waters to be profoundly un-Canadian. I realize I don't know everyone and can't speak for everything, though.
The BLM protest in Ottawa showed up, stayed peaceful, protested, and left. As did all of the many protests I saw while living in downtown Ottawa.
I have friends living in the area still and they were subjected to a sleepless week of harassment by damagingly loud train horns and people giving them shit for choosing to wear a mask.
That's not a peaceful protest. It's not just discomfort. It's a crime. And the fact they're behaving better now doesn't erase their past behaviour. I think that having a discussion on ending mandates is fine. It's a good time for that.
But I also want to see them face legal consequences for their behaviour toward the innocent citizens of Centretown. And I don't like how they tried to blackmail the government into making changes by hurting their fellow citizens. I think that is undemocratic.
Honking regular horns? No. Annoying, but not violent.
These were train horns that were well over 100db outside and still over 80db inside people's apartments. Loud enough to cause permanent hearing damage. So yes, if you're doing something that can cause lasting damage, it's violence.
There's a wide gulf between honking loudly enough to annoy and honking loudly enough to injure. It's really not that hard to not cross it, but they did, for days on end.
As I said - they seem to be behaving better now. Maybe it's petty and vindictive, but I don't think it's okay to just let that kind of thing pass without consequences for the perpetrators.
That’s a lot of rhetoric but not a lot of substance. My position is an extremely milquetoast “people are allowed to be upset when upsetting things happen to them; this doesn’t make them elitist”.
You think that the onus is on the sleepers rather than the protestors? Why should the sleepers have to put up with endless noise (along with the damage that sleeplessness brings) just so another person can exercise their right to free speech?
What makes you think they’re honking all through the night? From what I’ve heard they stop at 8:00pm. Claims to the contrary do not come with corresponding evidence.
Anyone here with on the ground experience about the nighttime situation?
> What makes you think they’re honking all through the night? From what I’ve heard they stop at 8:00pm. Claims to the contrary do not come with corresponding evidence.
Perhaps reading the comment in context of the comment chain is necessary. I am making no claims as to the truckers, I am stating that the onus is on those who are causing damage by their "Free Speech" to adjust to avoid causing that damage, rather than on the people suffering the damage.
Sadly, I doubt you even recognize your small contribution to, and complicity with, the normalization of an Orwellian, dystopian society.
Look at how casually you make these connections: speech -> noise -> sleeplessness -> damage ... therefore implying, purposefully or not, that speech = violence.
No. Speech is NOT violence. I suggest you get a pair of earplugs.
> Threats. That's one form of violence. Yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, that's another.
Threat is instigating fear of injury. Violence is causing injury. You can have your own personal definition, but from a legal perspective, threat is not a violent crime.
Yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre isn't even illegal. Let alone a violence. Inciting panic is illegal. If you incite panic through yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre, you'll answer for inciting panic and will bear responsibility for the actual consequences, if any, not for the yelling.
this violence is not confined to an actual assault of the person, [..] whatever goes to intimidate or overawe, by the apprehension of personal violence, or by fear of life [..] equally falls within its limits
That's pretty creative editing there. Everything you quoted (and omitted via ellipse) is prefaced by "In cases of robbery". The part about intimidation only counts when it is "to compel the delivery of property." Since this isn't a discussion about a robbery or theft or possession of property, the entirety of your quote is irrelevant.
Instead, read a little further: The term “violence” is synonymous with “physical force,” and the two are used interchangeably, in relation to assaults
Speech is not physical force, and is not an assault, and is not violence.
I just don't think we have to take away their right of free speech in order to protect other people's rights to peace in their homes.
It doesn't have to be either one or the other. A more conciliatory approach by the Canadian government would pay off better. My personal opinion, only. I might be wrong, who knows?...
It is the middle of a city, there is going to be some honking, but it's not as bad as the media is making out. And as crime is down there are fewer sirens. The truckers aren't trying to anger residents, they want them on board, which is why they have always kept lanes open for people to get around.
I think the commenter is exactly saying that they would accept a common ground that accommodates free speech and allowing residents to live in peace free of noise pollution, they are complaining that this common ground does not currently exist.
I don't think you understand the concept of free speech. It allows you the right to express your opinion without fear of government oppression. It does not allow you to yell your opinion through a megaphone, in front of my house, at all hours of day and night.
Yeah I don't understand how people don't understand this. If I were to go outside your house and lay on my horn for a few days I'd expect to get arrested.
Vaccine mandates are a huge deal. You think they aren't a big deal because you ignore all the evidence and testimonies of people who have been injured by them.
"Most likely the blockades will be shut down and everyone else will be able to get on with life."
Except for all people who can't because they got unlucky in the vaccine lottery, like Maddie de Garay:
Note: de Garay is a child. Zero benefit from Covid vaccines to her or anyone else. It's bad enough when parents submit their children for medical experimentation like that, but when governments force them to do so it's even worse.
You're probably mis-reading my (in fairness badly worded) sentence. I mean there are no medical benefits to vaccinating children, including no benefits of vaccinating her to e.g. her parents or teachers. Not that there are no benefits of vaccines to anyone at all.
The benefits to vaccinating children are less clear relative to the obvious benefits to vaccinating adults, but if the protection rate is on-par with adults, there will be more benefit to vaccinating children than not.
An absolute handful of children have been (possibly; causality unclear) sickened by the COVID-19 vaccine.
The exact details of why the virus hits children less hard are unclear; one theory is that the primary cause of lung-failure death in adults is a cytokine storm (i.e. the immune system reacting to the virus by attacking too many healthy cells at a rate the body can't repair), and a younger, more naive immune system is less likely to have picked up whatever environmentally-primed triggers COVID-19 aggravates to kick off a cytokine storm.
... but sadly, "less likely" isn't "didn't happen," and if that causality is correct, some thousand unlucky kids have gotten snake-eyes on the immune dice and died of a disease that we can now vaccinate for. That's an order of magnitude more children than the number we even suspect of being sickened by the vaccine.
We should vaccinate those who haven't been vaccinated because the risk balance is pretty clear at this point from the gross numbers we have on under-18 vaccination already.
A fringe minority wouldn't be greeted by people lining highways and overpasses in freezing cold. [1] It wouldn't raise over nine million dollars in crowd funding, twice. [2] At the very least we're talking about a very large minority. It could even be the (previously silent) majority. And the issue is not just border crossing mandates, but all the rules (often absurd and arbitrary) that piled up over the last two years in Canada. Like curfews and prohibitions on shopping in Quebec. The border requirements were just the last straw that catalyzed a particular group of people to express the growing public discontent.
The cause that raised 9 million dollars in a few days is a "a tiny minority of truckers [...] making a huge fuss over really very little"... because someone somewhere claims that they've seen a data dump of hacked donation data... and their "analysis" demonstrates that the movement has wide international support. Reddit logic at its finest.
Respectfully, nine million is fuck all. And no, it doesn't have to be any size of minority at all, just a few loud arseholes, some of whom appear to have openly identified as white supremacists, others of whom have urinated on war memorials - https://metro.co.uk/2022/01/31/war-memorial-urinated-on-by-a...
This doesn't look like public discontent, it looks like a small group of motivated contrarians and their international backers.
It doesn’t matter. They can now quickly join in a Signal group and use a private, untraceable cryptocurrency called MobileCoin to send money to each other without the government knowing since it is all E2EE.
After all, extremists either left or right, terrorists and criminals have been doing that for years on Signal.
They will not be forced to get vaccinated. No one has been forced to get vaccinated yet, and the provincial governments (it's not a federal jurisdiction) are unlikely to start doing so now.
Canada has never had a vaccination mandate for truckers and in all likelihood never will. It has a requirement that truckers crossing the border are vaccinated which reciprocates a requirement first put in place by the US.
It seems like these protests ought to be solvable by the police, using normal police powers, without resorting to emergency measures or doing things like freezing accounts and suspending truckers' licenses.
Why not do the obvious thing: send the police in to arrest people who won't leave. Tow their trucks. That worked at the border the other day -- why wouldn't it work in Ottawa too? It's not like the Canadian police haven't dealt with large protests in the capital before.
If that approach doesn't work, then it might make sense use emergency powers. But why go straight to emergency powers without trying to clear people out the normal way?
For me the main takeaway from the protests so far is that the Canadian police are either afraid to, or unwilling to, enforce the law, and the government at all levels is afraid to make the police do their jobs.
Watch the Toronto Police Service handle the trucker convoy/protests. No emergency powers needed. Police in Canada are generally well trained so I am baffled by what is going on in Ottawa only a few hours drive away.
https://www.cp24.com/video?clipId=2376560
They claimed they didn't have enough manpower and needed help from the provincial and federal governments.
Why they were so poorly prepared when the convoy was broadcasting its intentions in advance is a great question, but it also doesn't help now.
The Ottawa Police Service abandoned the people of the city for weeks and now can't resolve the problem on its own.
So I guess the answer to "why go straight to emergency powers without trying to clear people out the normal way?" is because the people whose job it was to handle this the normal way raised the white flag about 24 hours in and haven't done much about it since.
This is not correct. The Ottawa police have repeatedly said that they're ready to arrest anyone breaking the law but currently it is not illegal to park in public roads with trucks and the truck drivers are mostly abiding by all laws. Less than half a dozen people have been arrested because there's no laws being broken.
The reason they are not doing any enforcement is because they have no legal authority to kick out the bulk of the protestors.
Ottawa resident here, this is so far off base I’d call it propaganda.
Fireworks in the downtown core nightly. Air horns for days on end. Harassment, assaults and intimidation targeted towards minorities or those wearing a mask. Public urination, defication.
Even “it’s not illegal to park on public roads” is false because they’re parked across all lanes, blocking north/south access to several blocks.
He said they cannot respond to incidents reported on social media, so please call them in. This was in response to a question from a reporter about an incident they saw on social media.
Enforcement is non existent. The police are so afraid of escalating what are clearly a volatile group that they’ve opted to arrest only when it’s unavoidable. Whether or not that I keeping a lid on the situation is up for debate, but what isn’t up for debate is that laws are being broken and it’s making life hell for residents.
Oh, also, three days ago protestors jammed the emergency lines with phony calls. It would ring until the line disconnected. It’s a miracle no deaths were directly attributed to this.
This makes more sense than GP. I can't imagine it's legal to block traffic in Canada. If a car breaks down on a Canadian highway, do the authorities throw up their hands and say "If only we could do something!" I imagine they tow the car pretty quickly.
Note that the Criminal Code defines "highway" as "a road to which the public has the right of access, and includes bridges over which or tunnels through which a road passes."
They've certainly interfered with Centretown residents' lawful enjoyment of their property.
Not to mention Highway Traffic Act violations. Plus other Criminal Code violations for the train horns (and while we're at it, even by-law violations). The reality is that the Ottawa Police have had plenty of tools at their disposal but have chosen not to. I don't mean to blame the individual officers - I've seen quite a few of them on the live streams trying their best. I see it more as a failure of leadership.
And I get that during a protest, it's better for police to err on the side of not nailing people for every infraction they can. But it seems like they have the tools to do a lot of than they've done - and have had these tools available since the beginning.
Also, in fairness - it could be they have intel about weapons like the ones the RCMP seized at the Alberta blockade today. That would explain their reluctance, and would mean they are really stuck between a rock and a hard place because if they step up enforcement and kick off an armed conflict, they'll get blamed for that, too. So it might be a bit of a no-win situation.
But if that's the case, it's not very visible from the outside - making the whole situation understandably frustrating for citizens who feel like they are paying $350mil a year and not getting enough protection in return.
Scapegoated you mean. There's been no shortage of pleading and complaints from residents, police refuse to comply. To call it "begging" on the police's behalf is a farce.
> You can't arrest people that have not broken any laws.
Train horns in residential areas, let alone at night, are against the law. Harassment is against the law. Parking vehicles in intersections is against the law. Do I need to go on? Stop pretending this isn't what residents are taking issue with, no one gives a fuck about protesting in and of itself.
I'm not pretending anything. All I'm saying is that honking horns is not an arrestable offense. Parking in intersections is not an arrestable offense. These are tickets and fines.
Refusing to move out of the intersection, for weeks, probably is arrestable. They'll find something to charge you with. Refusal to disperse, if nothing else.
Early on, you could maybe argue you came to protest and there was really nowhere else to park. But after a few days, given the convoy's stated intent was to shut down Ottawa, it's difficult to argue that you're not trying to make residents abstain from their lawful right to drive down Kent St. or Wellington St if you're still blocking the roads when there are plenty of other places you could park and then walk or bus to the hill to protest.
They're abstaining from ticketing and fining. From doing anything, in most cases. Making this about purely "arrests" is playing coy, but notwithstanding, if offenders persist they can be arrested.
It is an arrestable offense and it's not even borderline. Honking air horns and train horns in (or near) a residential area is an easy mischief charge under the criminal code, as mentioned above.
Plenty of truck horns, a train horn, and someone continually engaging his Jake brake. There are apartments 50 meters away on Sparks St. And if memory serves, there are plenty more on Queen St. close enough to be kept awake by that much noise at that time of night. It's difficult to see how that's not depriving residents of lawful enjoyment of their property.
That's an indictable offense, which makes it an arrestable offense as per the code:
495 (1) A peace officer may arrest without warrant
(a) a person who has committed an indictable offence or who, on reasonable grounds, he believes has committed or is about to commit an indictable offence;
I realize this isn't what you want, but the law means what it says, not what you think it should mean. If you want to change it, you're free to run for political office.
But on that note, a big issue we face is that while anyone can decide to run for election in theory, in practice it's way, way easier to become an MP if you're already wealthy and can afford to take the time away from work to run a successful campaign.
So in reality, running to become a member of Parliament is least accessible to those whose voices need to be heard to most. I don't know what the right answer is, but I don't think that harassing your fellow citizens to try and blackmail the government into doing what you want is the way to go.
I was physically in the downtown core in Ottawa last week. There are plenty of roads with no lanes open for emergency vehicles. My bank is closed because employees can't get into the parking lots they normally use. One of the restaurants a monthly meetup I am part of frequents doesn't feel safe opening up.
If I left my car parked in the middle of the road in Ottawa it would be towed within a couple of hours. It's complete bullshit that there are no laws for the police to enforce.
I don't even think the officers' politics matters all that much. The primary motivation of my cop friends is to get home safe at the end of the day. Gigantic disruptions that have the potential to turn violent are a bad thing.
Tow truck companies at a blocked Alberta border crossing were reporting death threats from American extremists when their companies appeared on video recordings of the blockade. The RCMP reported they were unable to contract towing companies, apparently out of fear of retribution from 20 miles south.
The Ottawa police haven't been able to get any towing companies to come in and tow away any of the heavy trucks. From the articles I've read, the trucks at the border crossing were lighter pickup trucks, which can be towed away with regular tow trucks.
Some of the reasons listed as to the reluctance of towing companies to participate:
- the heavy truck towing companies get much of their business from the truck industry. If these towing companies were to tow away these heavy trucks, they may lose much of that business.
- many of the towing companies support the freedom convoy and their participants
- fear of violence against tow truck operators if they try to tow away these trucks
In this case wouldn't it be fairly straightforward to just have the city buy a tow truck, paint without branding and have a worker of the city just tow? I mean I'd suggest having any department do this.
There must be day to day things disrupted enough that someone's job has been disrupted with this all going on that can be reallocated to this.
from the above CBC article, there are 500 (down to 360 as of today, Feb 15) heavy trucks in the "red zone" - one or even a handful of heavy truck towers is not enough.
also from the CBC article, excerpts:
====
While the city likely has some vehicles with heavy-duty towing capacity for large OC Transpo vehicles, they also did not provide a response when asked how many they had.
Hooking up a commercial truck to a heavy-duty tower — sometimes called a "wrecker" — takes at least 30 minutes, Whan said.
It also takes time to tow the trucks to wherever they're being relocated to, and if the City of Ottawa did attempt it, they'd need to find a sizable space to put them.
Police don't think towing the trucks is an effective solution, said Matt Skof, president of the Ottawa Police Association.
"You can tow all you want — they're just going to return to the location, so it hasn't resolved the issue," Skof said. "And where are you putting all these vehicles?"
Well, at least for this matter, having crypto in a blockchain would be a good protection. Good luck for Trudeau to convince the entire Bitcoin or Ethereum network to freeze any particular wallet.
He direct quotes:
“They don’t believe in science/progress and are very often misogynistic and racist. It’s a very small group of people, but that doesn’t shy away from the fact that they take up some space.”
“This leads us, as a leader and as a country, to make a choice: Do we tolerate these people? Over 80% of the population of Quebec have done their duty by getting the shot. They are obviously not the issue in this situation.”- this is according to this article: https://thepulse.one/2022/01/03/prime-minister-justin-trudea...
This is the real danger of the administrative state. Arresting you requires actual police officers to go out and physically do the act of arresting you.
The bureaucratic state can freeze your bank account, revoke your license, and shut down your life, all remotely.
And now they've set precedent for future protests. I don't know how anyone who considers themselves a liberal or Leftist can support this.
Exactly what's bothering me about this. I think you should get vaccinated. I think most of these truckers probably have very stupid reasons for not wanting to get vaccinated. But how can it not scare you to see the government wield power against demonstrations like this? Next time we're protesting an oil pipeline, what's to stop them from saying that these protests jeopardize Canada's energy security; It's disrupting critical infrastructure. They don't even have to arrest people anymore. Freeze your bank accounts, suspend your phone service, cancel your license. Without legal protections in our modern world, it wouldn't take a week for a government to turn you into a penniless vagrant.
well, if some protestors are causing 50 million in lost business per day, its a cause for concern. US keeps their stuff local, built in USA, and Canadas economy and trade relations become weaker with its neighbour to the south
Not sure what your point is. At least 90% of Canadians use fossil fuels. Next time there is a protest against an oil pipeline is it okay to freeze their bank accounts?
Assuming both police force (as many minorities have experienced) and administrative force can be abused, is one worse for society or more susceptible to abuse?
This is definately going to back fire on him and his administration. There weren't any major incidence of violence or rioting. They got the bridge cleared. He should've left it at that and let it fizzle out.
Unproductive though it may be, consider the (extreme) hypothetical of a government arresting someone and forcing a needle into their arm, administering a biological agent against the recipient's will. I believe that would satisfy a literal (if unconventional) definition of "political violence".
So, what's left to litigate is whether the threat/coercion of "you will lose your job unless you let us do this to you" makes the definition no longer apply.
I would say that (hypothetical) refugees fleeing a government-orchestrated pogrom are still victims of "political violence" even though they had the "choice" of leaving the country (and their job); but perhaps some would argue they are merely choosing to avoid a mandate passed by their democratic government.
I agree with you on both of those statements. Unfortunately that doesn't resolve the thorny issue of whether forced or coerced vaccination can count as political violence, but perhaps this thread will not uncover a unanimously accepted answer to that contentious question.
"smash through" is not consistent with "avoid the collision". I don't see any evidence of your claim of smashing through. Did you embellish the story in your head and only realized you'd been fooling yourself when somebody asked for evidence? Isn't that a red flag that you may have been misled in many other aspects of this topic?
Now you're claiming it was "forcible"? What does that mean? With the application of force? It's not forcible if there's no contact. You really did make a misleading claim about smashing through barricades which shows you are either trying to mislead people with false information or have been misled yourself.
well back when government buildings were being burned down and people were getting shot - it was commonly and correctly referred to as "mostly peaceful protesting"
The presence of the vehicles themselves is an act of intimidation. This could be a reason why Ottawa police have been so timid. Not hard at all to drive forward and injure and kill someone. There's video footage from the Vancouver protest that shows a truck attempting this, and the counter protestor attempting to block the truck had to step aside.
This novel use of trucks for protest has been enormously effective and I expect we'll see this replicated all over from now on.
Whereas in the past it took a mass movement of thousand upon thousands to block a bridge, now a few dozen people in trucks can do the same thing.
Trucks enable a protest to be incredibly paralyzing with a fraction of the amount of protestors.
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, using 2016 to argue polls are massively off is basically admitting you don't understand what you're talking about.
The article lists other sources and a quick search will get you a lot further than wanting me to be AI to fulfill your every request. Point being they were wrong and surveys are not as reliable as fact and can be manipulated.
You're talking about completely different things. Odds are an estimate of who will come out over the line quicker, polls are the underlying data used to calibrate that model.
The odds set in 2016 by various groups were often wildly bearish on Trump winning, the polls were not so much. Political polls and surveys are usually not off the mark by all that much, especially if you have good demography data.
Surveys can be manipulated but they are also much better than flying blind with no data at all.
I can see why you used a throwaway. No need to godwin this up. It’s already clearly been stated the military will not be used. This is about enforcing laws which have been flouted for weeks, to the significant harm of citizens and industry.
People support military force until they see the consequences of it, then it turns on its head. If 90% of the truckers are vaccinated, then what is the point of the mandate at this point anyhow? It's a lose/lose for the administration. It's also weird to see how so many people freaked out about Tom Cotton's Op-Ed about getting the military to restore order to cities that were being ransacked every day (to such a degree that the NYT's apologized)...and now suddenly those same people supporting military action to restore order.
In the early 20th century, eugenic policies were considered progressive among many Canadians, including some socialists, feminists, farmers and psychiatrists. Their assumption was that Canadian society could be improved by encouraging reproduction among certain groups — particularly Anglo-Saxon Protestants — and discouraging or limiting reproduction among other groups, including Eastern European immigrants and, increasingly, Indigenous people. (Similarly, immigration policies like the Chinese head tax were aimed at limiting the population of Asian Canadians.)
Many prominent Canadians of that era were advocates of eugenics philosophy and eugenic sterilization, including Dr. E.W. McBride, Professor Carrie Derick and Dr. Helen MacMurchy. Support for eugenic sterilization was also expressed in the 1920s by many prominent Alberta women, including Emily Murphy and Nellie McClung. Maternal feminists like McClung, for example, argued that women were the mothers and guardians of their “race.” They therefore championed legislation, including sterilization, which aimed to curtail prostitution, alcoholism and “mental defectiveness.”"
Eugenics was part of a first utopian thought wave for an optimized, managed populace, which fell out of fashion due to the events of WW2. It is being woven back into the political conversation in the name of medical security.
I got upvoted a couple times, then downvoted a couple times, I guess there's a bit of an even split between smart people on whether or not you should be "punished" for talking about these kinds of realities. I think for the sake of marketing, the powers that be will want a new word, for what we're going to be doing as a society to the human genome. Something that means eugenics, but sounds different, somehow safer, and altogether moral, and encompasses traditional eugenics, but also extends to edits made to already living organisms through tools like CRISPR.
How about... Life-Safe Code. DNA is effectively code, code is editable for the betterment of people, riiiight? And it's Life-Safe - like if you wanted to oppose Life-Safe Code you're saying "I want code that isn't safe for life to promulgate", which should help diminish the effectiveness of any rhetoric towards enshrining inherent rights that protect people's read/write/execution permissions over their own genetic code. And if you want Free Lifeware, or whatever, well, do you have problems with seatbelts? Because clearly there is a major inconsistency to your worldview if you accept seatbelts but won't promote the deployment of Life-Safe Code to all humans by any means deemed necessary.
We could engineer new sub-races of human beings, starting from ethnic templates that are already healthier and more Life-Safe, and edit them responsibly to optimize them for performance, health and safety in their specific work environments, phasing out all but a small helpful "stock" of the "heirloom races" to copy-paste from as needed like a genetic palette. All disease could be completely eliminated, with Life-Safe Code and a healthy, well-maintained walled-garden of people-platforms. "Terroristic" enemies of the state-corp agglomeration who politically threaten our health and safety with their enclaves of unedited harmful genomes could all be converted into slug-things (a form fitting of their pathetic, childish tantrums) with a totally sound-proof membrane over their mouth; after all they have a right to speak, but there's nothing about a right to be heard.
I feel like there were a decent amount of people, blocking various places, that said the only way this was ending/they were being moved was in a violent shootout.
Do you understand how much $ worth of mobilization has to happen to safely attempt to deal with people who say they’re going to start shooting at you in a city?
It’s a lot of time, money, & other resources. You can choose to cognitive dissonance this fact, but it doesn’t change it.
IMO, Canada didn’t use as much force as they should’ve to remove people who literally told them they were going to fight to the death instead of moving. Pretty big threat.
I’m not in Ottowa and I feel like I’m not sure what to believe here.
On one hand, if the protests really were peaceful, I do not believe the government should shut them down.
On the other hand, I’ve heard the protests have caused millions in trade to be shut down which I would not consider a peaceful act. If some non-citizen entity shut down millions in trade, I don’t think it would be viewed as peaceful.
Should the right to peaceful protest include the right to halt trade at this scale? Are the reports of halted trade overblown?
> On the other hand, I’ve heard the protests have caused millions in trade to be shut down which I would not consider a peaceful act.
Since when did economic disruption become violence? I just don't understand. It makes zero sense to redefine violence to mean "something that inconveniences me, that I disagree with", Where does that end?
When next the liberals want to protest something - an oil pipeline for instance (economic disruption) - would that also be called violence?
> When next the liberals want to protest something - an oil pipeline for instance (economic disruption) - would that also be called violence?
Just so it's clear, there were environmental protests that _were_ cleared out for the same economic disruption reasons. There were concerns that it was not the right thing to do and too aggressive at the time, but I believe in retrospect that many consider it to have been the right course of action.
Over a quarter of trade between the US and Canada goes between Detroit and Windsor, so the scale hasn't been overblown but there's a question as to why is blocking trade off the table? Seems like another case of things being ok if they impact humans but as soon as corporations are inconvenienced, the gloves have to come off and the humans treated as terrorists. If the humans would go back to their gated free speech zones, then everything would be good?
Would you not agree that there are people behind the economic damage? Just calling it hurting corporations dehumanizes the automotive works that have been put out of work due to the temporary plant closures that the blockade has caused.
The thing is, if you don't disrupt the chain, status quo is maintained.
...This is also why JIT logistics is incredibly fragile. Our economic sects have been shirking the inherent risk of long tail disruptive events for the better part of my life.
There is a certain schadenfreude to seeing the come-uppances.
The border blockade quickly put thousands out auto workers out of work.
Let that happen for long and you'll quickly have thousands of workers who need to feed their families converging in the blockade to take matters into their own hands.
It's not just the immediate impact, either. Canadian manufacturers who sell to the U.S. (which is pretty much all of them) are constantly fighting against 'buy American' legislation that makes it more likely companies will shift production out of Ontario - and trade disruptions make it even harder to compete if Canada looks like a flaky trading partner that can't even keep its own border open. And manufacturing workers know what's at stake, and things would get ugly quickly.
So it's not just inconveniencing corporations - it's threatening the short and long term viability of tend of thousands of jobs and the people working those jobs aren't likely to take it laying down.
So blocking trade isn't off the table, but anyone who does it had better expect the government to treat it as a public order emergency because if they don't, it will very quickly become a public order emergency on its own.
Well according to the protesters, the Canadian and provincial governments have also cost the economy millions of dollars in losses due to their lockdowns and restrictions.
>On one hand, if the protests really were peaceful, I do not believe the government should shut them down.
Our charter right is peaceful assembly. If the protests were not peaceful, the police would be right to shut them down. The reason the Ottawa police cannot do anything for weeks is because they are peaceful.
>On the other hand, I’ve heard the protests have caused millions in trade to be shut down which I would not consider a peaceful act.
Furthermore, a blockade that isn't violent... isn't violence.
>If some non-citizen entity shut down millions in trade, I don’t think it would be viewed as peaceful.
Yes Trudeau has alleged that these blockades/occupations/sieges are in fact the US government. Even using the name occupation is a international definition. Military occupations would certainly justify the measures being taken by the Canadian governments.
I even agree, if the USA has a military occupation over Canada. Trudeau is right to do what he has done.
That's not what is happening. Trudeau is looking to squash peaceful political protests and the propaganda of calling the protesters racists and white supremacists is insane.
>Should the right to peaceful protest include the right to halt trade at this scale? Are the reports of halted trade overblown?
If the protests 'are at this scale' absolutely. Though yes, clearly the detroit tunnel was open. They even had 1 lane open for the bridge. It's completely overblown.
The correct action for the governments to do when protesters are blockading isn't to send in the guns and tear them down. It's to open conversation with the peaceful protesters. Liberal MP Joel Lightbound is a smart man. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-mp-politicization-p...
the protesters just need a roadmap to no restrictions and human rights being returned.
Trudeau has taken this action because there is no roadmap. He wishes to keep the totalitarian state.
While I still think this is not the ideal move and am in general skeptical of government claims that their invoking martial law-ish privileged comes with self control, I feel there is some nuance missing in the comments so far, particularly that this is not calling in the military and as of now not limiting "authorized protests" according to TFA, but about strengthening the executives ability to enforce the laws that are being civil disobedienced. I'm personally not a fan of law-and-order rhetoric or politics, but if you are, I feel like you should be in favour of this - and think about supporting civil right and increasing checks on the executive and judicative after Trudeau's tenure as well.
---
Trudeau will not be calling in the military, he said.(...)
The move will “supplement provincial and territorial capacity to address the blockades,” Trudeau said, and will afford more powers to local police forces.(...)
The police will be given more tools to restore order in places where public assemblies can constitute illegal and dangerous activities, such as blockades and occupations as seen in Ottawa, the Ambassador Bridge and elsewhere. These tools include strengthening their ability to impose fines or imprisonment,” he said.
(...)
The measures will be “time-limited, geographically targeted as well as reasonable and proportionate to the threats they are meant to address,” he said. “The Emergencies Act will be used to strengthen and support law enforcement agencies at all levels across the country. This is about keeping Canadians safe, protecting people’s jobs and restoring confidence in our institutions.”
Trudeau said the move could be used to render “essential services” such as contracting trucks to tow vehicles blocking streets.(..)
Financial institutions will be “authorized or directed to take measures, including regulating and prohibiting the use of property to fund or support illegal blockades,” Trudeau said.
(...)
The act will also enable the RCMP to enforce municipal bylaws and provincial offences, Trudeau said.
(..)
Trudeau said he wanted to be “equally clear” about what the act does not entail, and said he would not be calling in the Canadian Forces.(..)
“We’re not suspending the fundamental rights or overriding the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we are not limiting people’s freedom of speech, we are not limiting freedom of peaceful assembly (or) preventing people from exercising their right to protest legally,” Trudeau said.
> We’re not suspending the fundamental rights or overriding the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we are not limiting people’s freedom of speech, we are not limiting freedom of peaceful assembly (or) preventing people from exercising their right to protest legally
Pretending to express concern about charter rights with respect to towing some trucks away is quite the theatre.
Meanwhile, Canada spent the last two years stomping on charter rights: mobility (provincial borders closed, unjustified quarantine requirements even for vaccinated Canadians), free expression (court orders to silence anti-vaxxers), and free assembly (unvaccinated in Quebec are unable to attend weddings, funerals, religious services or pretty much anything with over 25 people) to name a few. Ironically, a lot of these are the things that actually caused the protests.
It’s been disappointing to see judges go along with it all (Canada has a big opt-out for charter rights, in that “reasonable limits” are allowed if they can be “demonstrably justified”), but quite ridiculous to see that statement in this context.
I read a couple of the decisions from challenges to the rules that I thought were overreaching (for example: the hotel quarantine requirement even for vaccinated Canadians), and the bar held by the judges seemed incredibly low — merely that it was “necessary” for public health. No data needed, the mere assertion is enough.
I feel like in the US, states, the federal government and the judiciary tend to be more adversarial and this can be quite useful.
If you’re hep on freedom, tool on up the road to Quebec and protest their legalized discrimination based on language, religion and probably gender. Laws that violate their own charter passed via the notwithstanding clause. This is an anti Trudeau protest by the 35% of the population that is right wing. With some “get the Governor General to disband the government” throw in. Some folks just hate being told what to do.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. I’m not in favor of the Quebec language laws or more recent laws regarding religious symbols. However, I’m not sure how whataboutism helps.
> Meanwhile, Canada spent the last two years stomping on charter rights: mobility (provincial borders closed, unjustified quarantine requirements even for vaccinated Canadians), free expression (court orders to silence anti-vaxxers), and free assembly (unvaccinated in Quebec are unable to attend weddings, funerals, religious services or pretty much anything with over 25 people) to name a few. Ironically, a lot of these are the things that actually caused the protests.
Apart from the quarantine requirements and possibly your point about free expression (though I'm not sure which incident that refers to and you provided no references), none of the rest of that list is under the purview of the federal government and is instead decided upon by the provinces.
In case you aren't familiar, Canadian provinces have near total control over most areas, with the federal government typically stepping in only in areas that were explicitly granted to it. The provinces, for instance, are responsible for all healthcare related decisions within their borders. The federal government licenses drugs and treatments as a centralized body for all provinces, though I believe here too the provinces can take some steps on their own. Provinces can equally ignore the charter rights of citizens for a set period of time by invoking a specific clause when passing legislation (it's been done several times recently). Provinces wholly own their mineral rights, including into the waters on their borders.
The point I am making with this explanation is that the issues the convoy began protesting (that truckers had to be vaccinated to cross the US/Canada border) made sense to protest federally. Once it was apparent the US had implemented the same rule (coming into effect before Canada, if I remember rightly), the protest became about other mandates. These other mandates are purely provincial jurisdiction and the federal government could only hope to convince the Premiers to do what they ask. The protest is misplaced in its entirety at this point, which is why there is no cohesive direction.
I’m aware of these facts. Although the charter is a federal document, my disappointment does indeed lie in mostly provincial judges and legislatures. This recent article [1] provides a few good examples.
In terms of the targeting of the protests — I agree, it makes little sense. But it’s a bunch of angry, not-so-rational people. In any case, I suspect the federal government does have a lot of sway, and would still be able influence quite a lot. Trudeau has a pen and a phone, as Obama would say. I’m sure that the lifting of the border exemptions was not unilateral on either side, and there are symbolic things that federal government could do (such as setting an expiration vaccine requirements for domestic air travel).
In the end, I think Trudeau has backed himself into a corner. He probably could have preempted this by “listening to the science” and recommending a relaxation plan with a reasonable timeframe (even if it relied on provincial cooperation) before the convoy reached Ottawa — for example, the UK announced exactly this in mid-January (well before the convoy). Instead he politicized the issue with his “unacceptable views” speech, and pissed a lot of people off. Now, he has little that he can do directly (and the things above are probably off the table, since they require back-tracking) and is arguably making an even bigger mess of it (refusal to meet, going into hiding, now declaring emergency measures).
I suspect that the current rush to open in many US states is a recognition of the same underlying sentiment, and a desire to avoid political issues.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 478 ms ] threadhttps://twitter.com/TrueNorthCentre/status/14933475618764718...
> As of today, financial institutions with be “authorized or directed” to “prohibit the use of property” or freeze accounts - personal or corporate- if the institution suspects that the account holder is financing illegal blockades.
https://twitter.com/TheMarieOakes/status/1493344048932966405
I am absolutely ashamed of what my Government is doing right now. Our PM was singing a different tune when the farmers in my home country were protesting in India. Or the Hong Kong protests. Or the pipeline protests in Canada.
It would be more apt to compare to the recent environmental occupations in _Canada_ over the last few years, as we are not the United States.
need I even bother digging up trudeau's statements of support re: american floyd protests?
come on, you know this is a feeble distinction.
other countries (like my own) never needed or implemented these crude, tyrannical vaccine mandates. trudeau is an international laughing stock.
Using the phrase "tyrannical vaccine mandates" is not a great way to ensure a productive discussion, however.
selective parochialism; you would not hesitate to criticize brutal anti-protest measures in say, russia.
>Using the phrase "tyrannical vaccine mandates" is not a great way to ensure a productive discussion, however.
why should I mince words? that is what they are. just because the canadian ruling party has groupthinked themselves otherwise, does not mean it is not tyrannical. I will criticise the regime the same as I criticise other tyrannical despotisms.
This is in conflict with the message he gave to Indian farmers.
Canada has lost a virtue leg to stand on.
Tests aren't recognized in Canada. Nor is natural immunity recognized. It's asinine.
Then again, when he was a student, it didn't help even later in that regard having family give a huge shush payout to some underage girl's parent's for an undisclosed bad act.
From https://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/news-why-did-justin-trudea...
"Trudeau expressed concern about the Indian security forces' attitude toward these peasant protesters and said that his government has always been a supporter of peaceful protests."
"Sikh vote bank politics matters in Canada. Sikh voters matter to Trudeau's Liberal Party, Conservative Party, and Jagmeet Singh's New Democratic Party. The Sikh population here is close to five lakhs. Sikh separatism or Khalistan has been an essential issue in the relations between India and Canada."
From https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/...
"Sikh, numbering less than half a million, form the largest ethnic group among Indian-origin Canadians. All four of Trudeau’s Indian-origin ministers are Sikh, and Trudeau has publicly boasted how he has more Sikh ministers than Modi. Amarinder Singh, chief minister of the Sikh-dominated state of Punjab and himself a Sikh, has publicly accused Trudeau’s ministers of having sympathies with Canadian Sikh extremists who would like to see Indian Punjab separated from India into the state of Khalistan. Last year, Singh had refused to meet Trudeau’s defense minister, Harjit Singh Sajjan. All four Sikh ministers have recently visited India, and New Delhi would have liked it if Trudeau didn’t bring them along again. But for Trudeau, this trip is all about the Sikh vote in Canada."
"Canada’s position is that it cannot curtail the right to freedom of speech and expression of its Sikh citizens, but New Delhi wants Trudeau to publicly distance himself from Sikh separatists. "
> It was reported that they were being attacked and beaten in India.
The videos and news reports I saw show protestors being violent. They were using tractors to attempt to run over cops, beating cops with batons, walking around with swords etc. Some examples:
Cops jump off wall to escape protestors at Red Fort: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1qFKUtfvMc
Protestors using tractors against cops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7so5TwIMyM
Protestor attacking cop with sword: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEzMEzzb-94&t=53s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9feGjEr95nM
If anyone has any videos of the protestors being attacked which would prompt leaders of other nations to condemn, please share. I am from South India, and police using batons/water canons/tear gas is a standard practice even for small protests.
In the old days, police would fire live ammo at protests. I remember reading about "XX number of people shot in police firing" growing up all the time. Indian police of old didn't fuck around; they had been taught by the Brits how to crack down, and crack down hard they did.
If by "they" you mean the cops, then yes.
See this, for instance: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/11-held-...
What will happen however is that the problem just going to be moved elsewhere. Trucks might begin to slow down, citizens might continue to assemble, in Ottawa or elsewhere. How protesters are going to find other ways to protest will be very interesting to watch and how the government will respond will be terrifying.
The truckers assert their livelihoods are already heavily impacted. This crowd appears to be much larger than simply anti-vaxxers.
Also at the time the government didn't have critical infrastructure
Funny how blocking the arteries of power projection by authority always seems to garner a quick response innit?
The government can come and clear it out, then they’ll be another assembly somewhere else by a different group. Unless Trudeau is willing to mass arrests of thousands of Canadians, he won’t stop it.
It seems to be the problem the government has is looking weak - but invoking an Emergencies Act only makes them look more desperate.
My guess is this goes on for a few more weeks while the Canadian gov’t and provinces declare “no more need for Covid restrictions thanks to our amazing handling of the situation”. The govt gets to save face while giving the protestors what they want.
>
> The act also allows for the military to be used as police, but several sources said that is not under active consideration.
Not a good look for Trudeau. This definitely looks like an authoritarian response to a loss of mandate. The protestors will dig in more, the response will become harsher, and the government will be in deeper trouble.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/08/us/politics/new-york-mask...
Lets look at San Francisco. I'm going to get my stats right from the San Francisco Police Department.
Homocide - Down 20%
Rape - Down 23.8%
Robbery - Down 20.7%
Assault - Down 8.8%
Human Trafficking - Down 83.3%
Burglary - Down 45.4%
Motor Vehicle Theft - Down 6%
Arson - Down 7.9%
Larceny Theft - Up 12.8%
Year over year the only type of crime that is up is Larceny Theft, and most of that is shoplifting. Everything else is down, and some of it by significant margins. There is no real basis for this "crime wave" people keep talking about. That pressure is really just right wing propaganda.
https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim...
Quick Edit: When I published this the stats were only current to February 6th, but they were updated after I posted with data up to the 13th. So my numbers above are going to be slightly off, but you can confirm them by changing the timeframe to end on the 6th.
The prediction was that next people would use the evidence that there are fewer crimes being reported as proof that nothing is wrong. This does seem very much like what we are seeing here.
According to the SFPD link above, homicides in SF rose from 48 to 56 over the entire year 2021 vs 2020.
So given how flawed that premise was to begin with, I don't think an explanation is needed for why your overall point is disingenuous at best.
People trying to hype up the crime thing deliberately ignore these sources because, as you can see, it allows them to make up as much crime as they can imagine and base their argument on that.
Some "right wing propaganda" from the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/18/briefing/crime-surge-homi...
And WaPo: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/01/21/homicide-ra...
And The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/28/san-francisc...
Later edit: This chart [1] taken from said article maybe will clarify some of the ongoing discussions.
[1] https://archive.fo/78rGz/270f56724e7a40242b6639537e4183aea3b...
Infact from my own experience in Seattle area and the auto enthusiast groups I'm in, we've definitely seen an uptick in car prowling, smashed windows, cat thefts and outright vehicle/trailer thefts.
Motor Vehicle Theft is now up by 0.3%.
The idea that larceny (petty) theft doesn't matter is also a big reason why you think there's no crime wave. Petty theft is the crime most often encountered by everyday citizens. People don't like having their property stolen. I don't know why you refuse to acknowledge that.
[1]: https://www.opentable.com/state-of-industry
Why would petty theft and robbery be divided by population? My risk of getting my bike stolen is 0 or my phone taken at gunpoint if I stay inside my home. It is non-zero if I go out. And it increases the longer I stay out. So measuring crime per person-hour of going out makes intuitive sense. Restaurant reservations is merely an imperfect proxy for this.
> Straw man. Everyone knows that all crime creates anguish for the victim and is to be avoided. If a person compares the effects of the pandemic to the opportunity of types of crimes, it doesn't mean they love the idea of larceny. Come on. Better faith in arguing please
Except the causation for these crimes is lax prosecution caused by 1) DAs who are politically motivated and 2) Prop 47 / similar regulations in other states. Unemployment is at record lows and there's a record worker shortage driving up wages. You cannot possibly claim the "effects of the pandemic" are causing increased property crime when unemployment has been so low for so long.
> Better faith in arguing please
Ironic, coming from a 15 minute old account whose only comment is this response.
It just means I couldn't let it go how hand-wavy your comment was. Sometimes you don't want to sit on the sidelines and watch others get hand-waved at
At the end of the day isn't that all you can do? File a report and hope for recovery? Is the complaint that you need to go to the station to file a report? That was already the reality for so many people. The police don't go to every neighborhood. Some neighborhoods, it's self-serve.
Underreporting has always been an issue with crime data [1], but the change in the Larceny rate doesn't seem like it's caused by an increase in underreporting. The change in reported Larceny from 2020 seems fairly correlated with COVID restrictions.
Here is the monthly Y/Y change in Larceny Theft Reported incidents for SF, for each month in 2020 vs. 2019:
Jan: +15.7% Feb: +5.4% March: -28.7% (SF Shelter In Place) April: -47.1% May: -45.6% June: -48.9% July: -51.8% August: -50.1% September: -54.5% October: -54.9% November: -39.2% December: -46.7%
Larceny did go up in 2021, especially at the end of the year when COVID restrictions started to lift, but is still down ~20% relative to 2019. Other crimes went up in 2020, but then decreased or flattened in 2021.
I think you may have a point about Larceny being encountered more, especially with foot traffic + tourism way down in many SF neighborhoods. I'm not sure how exactly to use Open Table reservations as a proxy for that, so it's hard to say whether it's relatively up or relatively down.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/20/facts-about...
There definitely has been a surge of crime after the pandemic.
I see clips of train robberies in LA like this https://edition.cnn.com/videos/business/2022/01/14/train-the...
And then I have to ask myself how is that possible in modern society? Train robberies seem shocking enough that they HAVE to be indicative of a broader crime wave. Is there something about the US context that I am missing?
>According to the source, the number of patrolling officers has been cut from 50 to 60 agents to eight, which the worker thinks has led to an increase in train robberies.
It's possible because Union Pacific thinks they can get taxpayers to pay for their security, and they can funnel more profits to their shareholders.
https://www.lataco.com/union-pacific-theft-police-laid-off/
You think most Canadians support the illegal blockade? Really? Evidence please.
If Trudeau opened debate weeks ago I wonder where we would be today.
> Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in "what about…?") is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy, which attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving the argument.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
I think it's worth reading the page - the definition is:
> Whataboutism ... is a ... logical fallacy, which attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving the argument
You've charged hypocrisy, I don't see a direct refutation of the argument. Given that, it seems like this situation exactly fits the definition of 'whataboutism'?
There was nothing to debate - the convoy does not have a cohesive message. Some of them are sovereign citizens. Some of them want the government to be dissolved. Some of them want some weird QAnon stuff. The only thing that unites them is shitting in the streets and driving around waving flags and honking.
Trudeau just looks weak at this point, and for a prime minister that got in because of his good looks and his dad's popularity it's not a good omen.
Heavy equipment tow operators have recieved threats of violence, which is why at least some of them have not helped.
The ones protesting are either uber-libertarians (and possibly also "sovereign citizens"), dis-educated, or have some sort of mental/emotional shortcoming where they will resist any sort of directive given to them even if it goes in their in their interest.
Sometimes people will lash out anyone who gives a helpful order because they feel like they're losing control.
This isn't "truckers" protesting, this is the radical fringe.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/28/canada-truck...
It is perfectly possible to be pro-vaccine and anti-mandate, because the case for mandates makes no scientific sense. Forcing the vaccines on people will create more anti-vaxxers, not fewer! The whole thing is completely counterproductive.
Mandates make the remaining crazy people look more visibly crazy, but they were going to be there either way.
> People want things to go back to normal
The biggest problem is that people who defend the coercion believe that a higher vaccination rate will somehow end the pandemic. In Ontario, today, the majority of ICU cases, hospital cases, and cases cases are among the vaccinated.
It's the vaccinated who are driving the pandemic, and have been driving it the past few months. But all the blame is being heaped on the unvaccinated.
The Omicron wave will burn out, as waves do. The pandemic will end, as pandemics do. And the vaccination rate won't make one iota of difference in the long run.
> In Ontario, today, the majority of ICU cases, hospital cases, and cases cases are among the vaccinated.
Looking at https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data/hospitalizations right now, the population of the ICU is 117 unvaccinated, 15 partially vaccinated, 150 fully vaccinated. Over 90% of Ontarians age 12+ are vaccinated. This says to me that the unvaccinated 10% of the population is making up over 40% of the ICU cases. While what you've said may be technically accurate, I think it's basically saying "most people are vaccinated" and the numbers suggest unvaccinated people are hugely more likely to end up in the ICU.
Am I misunderstanding the numbers? Or are we working off different numbers?
But the strain on the healthcare system and the pandemic as a whole is driven by total numbers, not relative numbers. The majority of cases are among the vaccinated, therefore vaccine mandates won't end the pandemic. But people who argue for the mandates argue as if it was a "pandemic of the unvaccinated", and that's simply not true.
Do you think it was ever appropriate to have any mandates? If so, do you think the moment it passed 50/50 in terms of ICU beds (or other similar stat) was the appropriate time to repeal them? Or what should the "trigger" have been?
Given the 40:60 ratio of ICU cases and the 10:90 split of unvax/vax, I think here it's a pretty grey area. This still seems like "too many unvaccinated people in the ICU" to me, even though they're not the majority. I can definitely empathize with it becoming a judgement call now though, and on that I agree. At some point someone is making a decision about the magic number, and I'm not sold on the current government's strategy there.
Only if it's targeted. The people ending up at the ICU skew older and many of them are probably retired. But the issue that spawned the trucker protest is vaccine mandates for the truckers, who as a group are probably a lot younger than the people who are currently occupying ICUs in Canada due to covid.
Age is the single most important factor when it comes to determining the personal risk of covid. A healthy unvaccinated child is ~1000x less likely to have a bad outcome compared to a vaccinated 80-year-old. But this is completely ignored when it comes to the mandates, the mandates are the same whether you're a 20-year-old trucker or a 60-year-old trucker, even though forcing 20-year-olds to get vaccinated is completely useless from a public health standpoint.
The second most important factor is natural immunity, because it is stronger and longer-lasting than vaccinated immunity. Again, completely ignored. Forcing people with natural immunity to get vaccinated makes zero sense.
> Do you think it was ever appropriate to have any mandates?
No, never.
If the vaccines had been more effective and actually stopped transmission, we wouldn't be having this Omicron wave, so we wouldn't have lots of people in the ICUs in the first place, which is the current reason for the mandates. The main reason so many people are still unvaccinated is because they've made their own risk assessment and decided they're fine with not getting vaccinated.
If the virus had been deadlier, vaccination rates would have been higher anyway, because fewer people would have decided to take the risk to stay unvaccinated. If the virus had been less deadly, we would have had a lower vaccination rate, but also even less people in the ICUs.
No matter which parameter you hypothetically imagine to be different, we would probably have landed in a collective societal risk assessment that would have produced the same results anyway.
> Given the 40:60 ratio of ICU cases and the 10:90 split of unvax/vax, I think here it's a pretty grey area.
I don't have this data for Canada, but here's the current ICU utilization in the US: https://protect-public.hhs.gov/pages/hospital-utilization
Right now that page shows ~78% total utilization, and a ~20% covid utilization. So one in four ICU patients are covid patients, which sounds like a lot. But if you could magically force-vaccinate everyone, and assuming there's a 50/50 split among vaccinated/unvaccinated in the US as well, that means you would reduce total utilization from ~78% to ~68%.
How the hell does it make sense to violate people's bodily autonomy, to force them or coerce them to get vaccinated, to increase people's distrust of government and public health, in order to have ~30% free ICU capacity instead of ~20%?
What the fuck? How about increasing ICU and hospital capacity instead?!? How about looking at the 3/4 of ICU patients that are there for something other than covid and see if there's any low-hanging fruit we can take care of there in order to reduce that number instead? Why would we curb people's freedoms and rights for a slight increase in potential ICU capacity? Why should ICU capacity decide whether or not people can go to a restaurant or not? That's a micro-managed technocratic bio-fascist dystopia! The healthcare system should serve the people, not the other way around!
With the current dynamics of the disease though, authoritarian medical requirements are making much less sense over time. Vaccination doesn't really help curb transmission much and omicron is considerably less dangerous than previous variants. SARS2 was originally pretty near the threshold where government might not need to do anything forced and the new variant and ineffectiveness of the vaccine against is is pushing it further lower.
Do you think this protest is a more valid representation of Canadian democratic opinion than a federal election?
I think protesting is not only valid, but necessary to keep centralized powers from growing too complacent. The growth of freedom globally and the birth of democracy was not on the back of elections or playing by the rules defined by the class of people in centralized power.
and obviously Canada's democracy has begun to erode if their leader is calling for a state of emergency completely bypassing the democratic process using old laws meant only to be enacted in extreme circumstances...certainly not to punish protests that have at worst blocked major roads for days - all the critical roads of which have already been cleared.
That said, there is definitely something going wrong with a portion of Canadian society because they trust Rebel News and Infowars more than any legitimate media organisation. Getting to the root of it will be crucial in figuring out what went wrong.
Plus a future variant is likely to be even less affected by vaccination status.
Do you know of any evidence that would support this hypothesis? Especially when talking about evolution over short periods of time (years, not centuries or millennia)?
An article in the Guardian published several months ago argued the opposite[0]; and while the Guardian is certainly no authority on scientific matters, and could well have its own narratives to push, their article suggests that this is not a well-known behaviour of pathogens.
[0] – https://i.imgur.com/3bQGj04.png
Obviously it is no longer still this deadly.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/1918flupandemic.htm
With all the covid talk, it is hard to quickly find a good source for the theory and verification of the evolutionary dynamics of diseases I mentioned, but as can be seen with variants (and how Omicron clearly wiped out Delta by overcompeting it) evolution of viruses absolutely does not need thousands or millions of years.
Yes. I included thousands of years to accommodate the co-evolution of both the pathogen and the host, which, obviously, evolves at a much slower rate.
And since you mention how omicron wiped out delta, hadn't delta in its turn wiped out alpha, while being (I don't remember, was there a consensus on this?) a more dangerous variant?
SARS-COV-2 and its descendants seem to me somewhat uniquely qualified to pull this off as they're one of the few viruses that are asymptomatically spread, meaning you can be infected, pass the virus on, then die for all it cares.
The above however, is not reason for us as a species to endlessly pursue locking down and pushing for restrictive measures when we see the situation clearing up and the above not being the case. When the time comes restrictions will be removed (this was already being discussed in a bunch of places) and hopefully we can just get back to the normal worries of the day such as impending climate disaster and war.
https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/live-vote?voteId=234
> That, given that provinces are lifting COVID-19 restrictions and that Dr. Theresa Tam has said that all existing public health measures need to be "re-evaluated" so that we can "get back to some normalcy", the House call on the government to table a plan for the lifting of all federal mandates and restrictions, and to table that plan by February 28, 2022.
Just because you support the end of restrictions doesn't mean you should support people getting what they want through illegal methods. This is supposed to be a democracy.
Canada just had an election, and the people pro-vaccine and pro-mandates were elected.
Yes, durect democracy and being allowed to all vote on all issues is a nice dream, but for now the system is a representative democracy. And it's not okay to force things through keeping people hostage.
Would you be similarly supportive if 5000 people blocked essential infrastructure with big trucks everytime they want something?
In my opinion, if we were to see a really large gathering, of the kind that BLM saw, then if say, ok, it does seem there's a lot of people who really care about this so maybe have a direct referendum, but this one hasn't met the threshold in my opinion.
Direct democracy is 100% mob rule but no one really cares to read the Federalist Papers or the mountain of thought that was put into this at the start of the US.
Wtf, you want them to vote, and if trudeau wins the vote, you want him to resign? Really a heads i win tails you lose sort of plan.
Besides,its a minority government, trudeau doesn't have to put it up for a vote, if he was going to lose, the opposition would put it to a vote.
And that's ignoring that 95% of what they are protesting isn't even federal juridsiction and has nothing to do with trudeau. He wouldn't be able to interfere if he wanted to.
I suspect that if Trudeau enforces Ottawa laws (which the police haven't), then stands down, this won't hurt public perception.
The posters here decrying this as authoritarian don't understand anything about Canadian law, experience, or mindset and are going by what they're fed by their individual media source of choice. The War Measures Act invocation by Pierre Trudeau was one of the most singularly divisive moments (some would argue it was necessary, some would argue the opposite) in Canadian history, and made parliament realize they needed to rein in the Prime Minister's powers.
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2022/02/12/two-thirds-of-canadia...
The current approach seems to be a lot more mild than what the public would accept.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The boat ended up being named 'boaty mcboatface'
I don't know how much I take stock in online polls especially made by partisan sources.
Huffington post did an online poll about who would win the 2016 presidential election. Hillary Clinton received around 99% of the votes.
“ The poll was conducted Feb. 9 and 10, 2022 among a random selection of 1,506 Canadian adults who are Maru Voice Canada panelists and is accurate within +/- 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20.”
It’s right there in the linked article.
The pro-liberty move is to get rid of the occupiers.
On the scope of major protests in the last several decades in western democracies, this one definitely is about as close to the “peaceful” extreme as any have been.
As a society, we should also strive for fairness in our rhetoric. It betrays our credibility to describe a riot which leaves a city in ashes as “mostly peaceful protest” simply because we agree with the cause and then to characterize these protests as “violent” because we don’t agree with them.
> Two-thirds of Canadians support military force to end Ottawa protests
This is the last real protest in Canada. Next time, these "emergency" powers will either be immediate or these new powers are just new permanent government powers.
2/3rds the citizens will practically be demanding that this never happens again.
A lesson in why Ben Franklin said that democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
What about X or Y is not a valid response to this argument. You can have no public opinion on antifa or BLM in another country to have the opinion that activity in your own community is not okay. We can compare this to BLM or antifa, but we can also compare BLM or antifa to the Arab spring or French revolution to say that they’re relatively peaceful too.
The fact is this entire thing has been horribly covered by the media.
There are a lot of groups and factions involved in the protest. The main leadership group is organized (and fundraised) by Canada Unity, and their original demands were to overthrow the democratically elected government to install themselves as government and rule through the senate and governer general. You can look that up in their original MOU on the way back machine.
The means of the protest was to park heavy equipment and harass the citizens of downtown Ottawa (via keeping them awake 24/7 with train horns, arguably a form of warfare) until the federal government capitulated to demands. This is essentially the “I’m not touching you, but my hand is directly in front of your face” form of harassment. Later that evolved into blocking border crossings, which is explicitly illegal and explicitly under the criminal code listed as not an acceptable form of protest.
The complications of this issue are confounded by the fact that more than half the donated funds are foreign funds to a protest that was deemed an illegal action.
I personally support the spirit of the protest (i.e. the vaccines should be optional for most jobs and the vaccine mandate should be relaxed) but not the tools they are using, in particular blocking a vital bridge and the honking shenanigans.
I personally have no problem in expressing a nuanced point of view or accepting that I got something wrong. Truth is a very elusive concept. And I rather learn than argue.
The person I was replying to however is aggressively partisan in his opinions. And while it's true that my comment wasn't a proper rebuttal, it does address his lack of credibility for arguing a one sided view of the world.
Sauce?
Here's one about "unruly protesters" (quote from the article) shutting down two grocery stores: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/unruly-protesters-prompt-earl...
Here's one about a restaurant deciding to close, and stay closed, due to an assault of and racial epithets directed at employees: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/moo-shu-ice-cream-empl...
https://globalnews.ca/news/8618494/alberta-coutts-border-pro...
Convoy protesters break through Surrey RCMP barricade with military-style vehicle
https://bc.ctvnews.ca/convoy-protesters-break-through-surrey...
There's also another supposed hate hoax: https://twitter.com/jonkay/status/1490439304224686082
The fact that such a "violent" protest requires so many hoaxes to justify the characterization should help you triangulate the truth.
The only reason for the act is because of the illegal blockades which is affecting essential services, goods and livelihood of local business and citizens.
A peaceful protest cannot hold people hostage by blocking their access to essential services and goods, and trapping them in.
If the protest stopped doing that, then it's fine to continue as long as it wants.
You can't have a very small minority get its way by simply holding others hostage to their services and goods. The point of a protest is to be heard and get people to consider your cause, not to consider your demands through extraction.
https://www.go2hr.ca/legal/strikes-lockouts-picketing-and-re...
You're only including direct physical violence as part of your "not peaceful" definition. But blocking major road arteries and bridges that are essential to the economy and to bringing in/out services and goods to the people of Ontario is also an act that a peaceful protest wouldn't do.
I'm very pro-protest by the way. Including for people I disagree with. A few broken windows, some small contained fires in trash cans, and just the general side effects of having a thousand+ people in a small city space all protesting I'm absolutely okay with, even a few little breakout fights, I still would consider that a peaceful protest.
Blocking major roads using heavy machinery with no alternate route that can meet the needs of the local population, that goes beyond peaceful in my opinion.
P.S.: I've also watched live streams, I always do, I've seen BLM protests first hand for example, and all media always exaggerate a protest, so I'm the last person who'd believe the headlines at first. In this case though, I know even the truckers probably don't think it's that big a deal that they have their trucks blocking roads, but given the already stretched crisis of the Pandemic, the second order effects on supply is a big deal. Please keep protesting, but don't block those major roads. Move to smaller roads even if you want.
They know what's coming, when they decided to block those roads, they knew they didn't leave people a choice, they are cutting off a supply line, this is beyond protest, it's an attempt to say, if you want your supply back, do what we want. I'm sorry, that's beyond: We won't stop voicing our concerns and expressing our rights to protest.
Using government power intended for things like war to suppress a protest is ridiculous, if this is what being "liberal" is about, I'm out.
I hope the response is a protest escalation. Not my country, not my protest, but I know who I'm rooting for.
Contrast this to what was happening in Minneapolis a couple of summers ago... people burning down buildings, shops, and police stations and the fire and police literally afraid to go places in the city until we had armed forces marching through the streets. Those are the kind of popular uprisings that need to be dealt with, not streets being blocked by unhappy people.
Singular.
At no point were fire and police “afraid” to go places in the city either, though I can imagine you may have been watching certain “news” coverage that may have claimed that.
They completely abandoned a police precinct which was promptly burned down [0]. Pretty safe to say they were afraid to stay at their own building!
0: https://www.twincities.com/2020/05/28/minneapolis-police-aba...
>At no point were fire and police “afraid” to go places in the city either
The police abandoned the 3rd precinct station which was burned down later that night. How's that for being afraid to be in a place?
There were plenty of stories of fire trucks not going places for security reasons, and eventually firemen had national guard escorts. I don't know what that is besides "being afraid" to go places in the city.
>>“We were faced with these fail fail fail options,” Mr. Frey (Minneapolis mayor) said. “We were literally having to choose between preventing additional looting, protecting a precinct and providing escorts to firefighters to put out fires. There was no way we could do all three.”
>Damage in Minneapolis was mostly confined to a singular street.
A main street which crossed the cities, miles long. And damage wasn't at all confined there. There were several hot spots around the cities.
>I can imagine you may have been watching certain “news” coverage that may have claimed that.
Well, here's the New York Times backing up my claims.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/us/minneapolis-government...
Comparing privileged truckers to Canadian indigenous people is chalk and cheese.
As for pay, I’m seeing wages of $85K + bennies advertised around here. That’s not a bad wage.
Very privileged.
Regardless, I agree that the emergencies act is overkill. I think the Canadian government should sit down with the protestors and come up with a plan that alleviates the situation. I don't think a police vs protestor clash in the streets is going to end well for anyone.
“You need to get vaccinated, or you can’t work in cross border trucking or go to restaurants for a year or two” is an infinitely smaller ask than “give up control of your land to us, also your drinking water is poison”
What is the correct amount of economic harm in your view? What are the terms under which a protest should be allowed by a government?
"Public safety" is a good one, you're free to protest but there has to be adequate access for emergency services to get to people in need.
"No significant destruction" is a good one, not just making a mess in the streets but when your movement starts actively destroying property, looting, etc.
If you keep doing economic harm, your movement will tend to get pretty unpopular pretty quickly and the social pressure instead of government force will likely get to you in the end.
Lots of people walking of the job will do significant amounts of economic harm, I don't want people in certain jobs to become effective slaves because their job is important to the economy. And also a general strike is a very powerful action which should be done from time to time, explicitly very economically powerful and definitely should be protected.
This one is also ripe for abuse - outside forces have been using agents provocateurs for centuries, often undercover cops.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur#Canada
* "From January 17, 2022 to January 23, 2022, unvaccinated people were 5.9 times more likely to get COVID-19 than people who received their booster dose."
* "From January 17, 2022 to January 23, 2022, unvaccinated people were 11.4 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than people who received their booster dose."
* "From January 10, 2022 to January 16, 2022, unvaccinated people were 21.8 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than people who received their booster dose."
For the first point, I have some doubt as many covid infections go entirely undetected. If you don't have symptoms you don't get tested and don't end up a statistic. Even the CDC says it expects there have been 4x as many infections as reported.
For the next two, those aren't things which need government compelled vaccinations. You're taking a risk with your own health, I don't care if you take a risk and it kills you.
If hospitals aren't able to handle the wave of patients, put government weight behind staffing hospitals better and creating temporary hospitals for overflow.
The only metric that should require vaccination should be to prevent public spread, and then only if the risk to other people is beyond a threshold. It is pretty clear that omicron burned through populations regardless of vaccination status or previous infection. Forcing vaccinations could have lowered this rate a bit, but doubtfully enough to prevent everyone who was going to be exposed from being exposed anyway at a slightly later date.
If you're forcing vaccinations so somebody is more likely to get infected in March rather than January, it is not worth it or a justifiable action. That seems to be the situation with the current vaccine and current dominant variant. Infection is inevitable, short term delay is the only achievable goal, therefore mandates are no longer an acceptable use of government power. Omicron isn't in decline because people were smart or safe or did what they were told, it declined because it ran out of people to infect, vaccination rate didn't seem to significantly alter this pattern around the world except for when the peak happened and perhaps how wide and tall it was.
> If hospitals aren't able to handle the wave of patients, put government weight behind staffing hospitals better and creating temporary hospitals for overflow.
You just immediately contradicted yourself. "It's only a risk to you", but also the government needs to find more hospital staff to take care of you. The fact is, nurses and doctors are burnt out and they're leaving the field because of this bullshit. They don't have enough people to train new health care workers, and even if they did it takes years before they're qualified. You can't just throw money at a staffing issue like this.
Forcing someone to inject something into their body against their will in order to save you a few tax dollars is simply disgusting.
Frankly, I'd be more than happy forcing everyone to inject saline once if it saved everyone $10...but I do well, I'm not especially concerned about "a few tax dollars" and I'm happy to pay my taxes. But inflation from printing money hurts everyone, as do cuts from other government programs meant to help those in need, and both are likely. Maybe over-taxing the rich would too, but that'll never happen, so I'm not sweating that. Still, I think it's disgusting that you'd rather let people be homeless, starve to death, or die from lack of access to medical care than that we just demand that the members of society stop being anti-social. Alternatively, I think it's disgusting that you think you're entitled to everyone's money for treatment that a simple 15 minute trip to the pharmacy could have prevented, which you avoided just to spite all of those people who now have to pay the tab. If we could exclude the voluntarily unvaccinated from COVID-related medical treatment, that'd be a good and fair compromise, but for some reason anti-vaxxers throw a tantrum when that's suggested too.
Twice right? And then a saline booster every 6 months too right?
> I'm not especially concerned about "a few tax dollars" and I'm happy to pay my taxes.
Your lead argument for mandating vaccination was the potential cost of care.
> But inflation from printing money hurts everyone, as do cuts from other government programs meant to help those in need, and both are likely. Maybe over-taxing the rich would too, but that'll never happen, so I'm not sweating that.
I have no clue what you’re talking about here.
> Still, I think it's disgusting that you'd rather let people be homeless, starve to death, or die from lack of access to medical care than that we just demand that the members of society stop being anti-social.
I said no such thing.
There’s a world of difference between opposing a mandate that everybody take a vaccine and opposing vaccines.
Everybody who wants one should get one. They’re free, available on just about every corner, and I’m not aware of anyone right now who wants one who can’t get one.
I’m also not aware of anyone except the most paranoid triple vaxed that still wear a mask outdoors. Now thats anti-social. Not “following the science” either.
> Alternatively, I think it's disgusting that you think you're entitled to everyone's money for treatment that a simple 15 minute trip to the pharmacy could have prevented, which you avoided just to spite all of those people who now have to pay the tab. If we could exclude the voluntarily unvaccinated from COVID-related medical treatment, that'd be a good and fair compromise, but for some reason anti-vaxxers throw a tantrum when that's suggested too.
We do it for smoking. For obesity. For just about every other choice a person can make. There’s nothing special about covid that you should give up dominion over your own body. Hell, for the vast majority of non-obese under 50, it’s barely a flu.
For posterity, for the third time: obesity is not comparable to COVID, because obesity is not a problem which is instantly resolvable for almost no cost and no effort.
Smoking is also not comparable to COVID, because nicotine addiction is also not a problem that is instantly resolvable, for almost no cost. We also tax the hell out of nicotine, which helps offset the burden smokers place on society. If you're content with how we treat smokers, is there some way we could analogously tax the voluntarily unvaccinated to help offset the burden they're placing on the rest of us that you'd be happy with?
Anyway, that's what's special about COVID and vaccination: it is a problem that is almost instantly resolvable for almost no cost.
I understand you're arguing from a principle: you think that, no matter how costly it is for society for someone to be unvaccinated, no matter how ridiculous their reasons are for being unvaccinated, we still cannot punish anyone for it any way. There's literally no practical fact that could change your mind on that - it could be the case that unless everyone got vaccinated the Earth would explode and all our souls would be subject to infinite torment, and you'd still insist Trucker Joe has the right not to get vaccinated and cast all of humanity into eternal damnation. You can argue from that, if you want; but if you're going to try arguing from specifics, by analogy to specific things, you need to actually think those specifics out.
For posterity, I'll also try to clarify what I meant about taxes, and why what you're advocating for precisely leads to the consequences you claim not to support:
A COVID hospitalization costs the government something like 1000x more than a round of COVID vaccinations. There's no real economic benefit to spending that extra money, and that money needs to come from somewhere. It could come from debt or printing money, but that leads to inflation. Inflation makes everyone poorer; it makes it harder to afford basic necessities like housing and food, almost inevitably leading to some degree of starvation and homelessness. It could come from reallocating money that the government spends on programs elsewhere - but those programs generally exist for a reason, usually to help the people in the most dire of straits, and cutting funding to those programs is going to hurt those people - often leading to, you guessed it, consequences like starvation and homelessness. Or it could come from raising taxes - on the poor and middle class, which is awful, because generally speaking those people need that money (and guess what happens when people don't have money they need); or on the rich, which is probably the least awful option, Laffer curve be damned, but is also the least likely to happen, and is still wholly unnecessary. And of course: this ignores what was mentioned above, which is that there's no amount of money the government could throw at hospitals to let them instantaneously increase their capacity 50x over, because the staff literally doesn't exist. So it's an inevitability that the unvaccinated are clogging our hospitals, leading people to die due to treatable conditions.
That you consider giving up body autonomy "almost no cost" is what's simply insane.
It's not a sliding scale where $X of savings for Y% of personal choice. It's a black and white line that involves someone else, whether elected or appointed, deciding that you must inject this into your body for the good of society.
> I understand you're arguing from a principle: you think that, no matter how costly it is for society for someone to be unvaccinated, no matter how ridiculous their reasons are for being unvaccinated, we still cannot punish anyone for it any way.
Damn right.
> There's literally no practical fact that could change your mind on that - it could be the case that unless everyone got vaccinated the Earth would explode and all our souls would be subject to infinite torment, and you'd still insist Trucker Joe has the right not to get vaccinated and cast all of humanity into eternal damnation.
The only people that think the world is going to end if Trucker Joe does not get vaccinated are the same triple vaxed ones that are still wearing masks outdoors.
> A COVID hospitalization costs the government something like 1000x more than a round of COVID vaccinations...
That doesn't matter and claiming that you could use the same money for $PULL_HEARTSTRINGS does not make the argument any more valid.
People who give up individual freedoms to save a buck will end both enslaved and penniless.
None whatsoever.
I’m ok with hospitals having to do work, if they’re overwhelmed I’m ok with the government having to support them in various ways.
Almost unexceptionally yes?
Arab Spring in Egypt, civil rights lunch counter sit-ins, the protests in East Germany in 89...
I'm actually having a hard time thinking of historic protests which didn't inflict economic harm.
Hyperbolic example: If there was a 0.01% minority in your country/region which was violently opposed to some existing minor local law or regulation, would it be ok for them to shut down half the economy over it? Think of all the secondary damage that's doing every time someone gets upset over something relatively-small in the big picture. I think most would think that's unreasonable. It's this question that gets at the heart of when and/or if it's ok for a heavy-handed government to come in and put a stop to things. When is it reasonable for the powers that be to intervene and "stop a protest" because the toll is too high for the weight and/or popularity of the matter at hand?
Now with these protests, causing even more incredibly severe economic harms they've demurred from criticizing the protestors.
This isn't the war measures act. It is a response specifically targeted to situations like this.
"I hope the response is a protest escalation"
That's neat. I hope that every protester that misused a privilege of their CDL lose their truck license, lose insurance, have their bank accounts locked, and face enormous fines. I guess we have differing hopes.
Sign petitions. Make a new political party. Lobby. Do a campaign. But if you try to force your political will through force -- which parking large trucks throughout cities and on border crossings is -- you have crossed a line and need to be reigned in.
"Not my country"
Oh gosh, what a surprise...
And then, of course, a comparison with completely irrelevant other events that most of us also found reprehensible.
I hate when the protests appear on HN because it makes me realize how terrible "right wing" so many on here are (not conservative -- I'm conservative -- but rather a particularly...stupid and angry version that now parades as right wing in the US), and how absolutely reprehensible opinions are. A sort of "look someone previously in a different country and a completely different event tore stuff down so let them go wild in another country to own the libs". Just garbage takes that should be embarrassing to the speaker.
Like forcing people out of their job for refusing a vaccine?
Disclaimer: I'm vaccinated and I encourage everyone to do it. But no one should have to under threat to their livelihood, especially given the absurd logical inconsistencies of the mandate rules.
Before vaccination was politicized in the US (bizarrely, I must say, through mechanisms that I find absolutely baffling), many jobs had mandatory vaccinations. Most healthcare setting have mandatory yearly flu vaccinations, for instance. The military has a whole plethora of mandatory vaccinations, including some pretty crazy ones. And of course schools, daycare, etc have forced vaccinations.
Suddenly it's a big issue. Ask yourself why.
And for what it's worth, I've been against mandates since omicron made it evident that they were no longer useful. I have zero tolerance for these protests, though, and would like to see them absolutely stomped.
I remember seeing the roots of this in the early 2000s after the discredited Wakefield study. It was so bizarre.
5x more likely to die while unvaccinated than vaccinated.
Side effects of getting covid are significantly worse than any real reported side effects as well. Which at this point you will get covid if you haven't had it already.
All the sick people piling up in the hospital ruins care for others who are in ER for other reasons, this isn't about control, it's about doing whats best for everyone.
We've had vaccine mandates for decades at this point, if it wasn't for the Fox News & the Murdoch Cinematic Universe this would really be a non-issue.
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths-by-vaccination
I'm curious what your answer is. To me its obvious: people don't trust these vaccines (or these authorities) the way that they have trusted other vaccines with much longer histories of use.
The next why is a hairier question that a lot of people will have different answers for, but it all stems from that lack of trust.
Politicization and tribalism, obviously.
> people don't trust these vaccines
There are traditional anti-vaxxers of the "my body is my temple" ilk: Organic food, often vegan or vegetarian, against all vaccines and with an often bizarre notion of what is a "chemical" or not. Usually super fit. No one is surprised when these people are against COVID vaccines as it's consistent with everything else they stand for.
But there is a whole new army of anti-vaxxers who don't care what they eat, vape, smoke, or whether they or their children are standing in a plume of diesel exhaust 24/7. Often very unhealthy. They've never had the slightest concern or attention for any vaccine or medication, including novel, experimental medications (including those which they'll eagerly accept when they get COVID). New vaccines like the HPV vaccine, or yearly flu vaccine changes that have whatever random assortment of other ingredients, have never been of any concern or earned even a moment of their concern.
But suddenly they have very specific thoughts about this vaccine? Come on. And if it's the scary "changes your DNA" (but actually doesn't) bit, there are alternative, less effective more traditional vaccines which they also refuse.
It's tribalism. Early on their group ("conservatives") took some positions about responding to COVID -- anti-masking, anti-lockdowns, etc -- and that cemented into positions that somehow morphed into being anti-vaccine (basically anti anything seen as controlling or responding to COVID), despite there being literally nothing from a values or political perspective that would explain it (indeed, there are loads of classic conservative tenets that would directly oppose this anti-vax position). Then loads of people realized they could grift off of exploiting this divide, politicians -- most of whom are vaccinated -- saw an opening to pander, etc.
It is baffling and needs to be studied in depth. Tens to hundreds of millions of people could self-destructively be turned against something simply because they saw it as outside their tribe and messaging.
You're making some pretty specific assertions here that your whole rant seems to hinge on. Source?
As to your demand for a "source" -- as if there's a scientific paper I can cite -- there are zero rational people who can read what I wrote and seriously question it, beyond weak HN trolls who have nothing.
It's uncomfortable for sure, though: Knowing that one's entire position about complex topics (vaccines, AGW, etc) is dictated by tribalism is pretty embarrassing when one really thinks about it. Particularly if one has blanketed it in lots of ridiculous rationalizations and explanations -- a legacy of nonsense -- carefully curating their YouTube channels of disinformation.
[Gestures broadly at everything]
> You wrote a lot of text attacking a certain type of person
I "attacked" no one. If you feel an attack in it, you really need to reflect on why that makes you feel persecuted. Why a political demographic with zero historic interest in vaccines suddenly feels very opinionated about it is fascinating and disturbing.
I made a broad societal observation -- a plainly evident observation -- about tribalism overriding rational thought. And it's important to note that tribalism cuts all ways, and there are many cases of the "left" polarizing around something that is in no way a liberal or leftist value specifically because it's the tribal position.
> But there is a whole new army of anti-vaxxers who don't care what they eat, vape, smoke, or whether they or their children are standing in a plume of diesel exhaust 24/7.
So not to speak for the other poster, but I think another way to phrase their comment would be: what makes you believe this army exists? How many of them have you personally interacted with vs saw in some form of infotainment?
I ask because your description sounds like the kind of political cartoon you'd see in a news rag, and might be bolstered by that guy you remember from highschool or that crazy uncle that you can't stand. But I don't think its plainly evident that these people actually exist in great numbers.
I strongly believe what you're saying about tribalism. I just think your comment is another example of it.
Yeah. Ruining people's lives is a weird desire that somehow became very popular in recent years among the same people who usually criticized punitive justice.
> Sign petitions. Make a new political party. Lobby. Do a campaign. But if you try to force your political will through force -- which parking large trucks throughout cities and on border crossings is -- you have crossed a line and need to be reigned in.
Signing petitions and lobbying is a privilege of people with power. Neither the US nor France became a republic by signing petitions. Those are, of course, extremes, but those events are the basis of the liberal democracy, so it is quite ridiculous to dismiss everything beyond petitions and parties as crossing a line. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 wasn't enacted because someone signed a petition either. In fact, the protests were widely unpopular among people (https://imgur.com/4GYbaDt). Gene Sharp, a political scientists that studied nonviolent struggle, described in his book (http://www.aeinstein.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/TARA.pdf ) 198 methods of nonviolent actions, and they include far more possibilities than meek petitions.
>A sort of "look someone previously in a different country and a completely different event tore stuff down so let them go wild in another country to own the libs". Just garbage takes that should be embarrassing to the speaker.
And there is a vicious cycle where people are trying to one-up garbage takes by coming up with more and more ridiculous responses to each other.
Whether the response is authoritarian depends on how it is enforced. The police have basically failed to enforce any law on the occupiers on parliament hill (I live here). If the local enforcement had happened preemptively and as per the law, the situation wouldn't have escalated as far as it has done.
Governments chosen by a first-past-the-post system can barely be considered democratically legitimate, if at all.
> I don’t like governments elected on Tuesday. I’d prefer Wednesday.
FPTP vs. good election systems is not a trivial distinction like this, so your analogy is invalid.
If people could vote as they truly wanted without fear of throwing away their votes, the center would almost certainly move.
As to the back and forth between two major parties, that's hardly surprising. I'm not sure that indicates much in terms of what people actually want.
Systems with ranked choice or similar measures to encourage smaller parties end up with a similar situation, but with less stability. Since those parties appeal to narrower bands of society, they are unable to form a government. Eventually they are forced into coalition, which brings them to the same place as the major parties in FPTP: compromise. Yet, since coalitions are inherently more fragile than parties, you get less stability, and less institutional pressure on individuals in government and cabinet to represent wider interests.
Your comparison to North Korea casts doubt on your sense of proportion.
I don’t think this is true outside the English-speaking countries. Most “Western” countries are in Europe and have systems with some degree of proportionality where coalition governments are the norm.
> Your comparison to North Korea casts doubt on your sense of proportion.
It was an intentionally extreme comparison to show that “operates according to the rules” is not sufficient for a system to count as democratic. Of course Canada is much closer to counting as a liberal democracy than North Korea is, but for reasons other than “it operates according to its own internal rules”.
Perhaps a better analogy would have been Hong Kong a few years ago (before the situation there became worse and things became more directly controlled by the central Chinese state). Hong Kong has never been a democracy by any reasonable definition, but did have robust rule of law and liberal rights, despite elections being basically rigged due to the functional constituencies system.
That's unlikely to be true, because there would be way more viable parties. Maybe you would indeed have a supermajority of left-of-center parties but you can't conclude that they'd all have the same Covid restriction policies as the current ones.
Ranked choice (any form, not just IRV) voting systems without proportional allocation (whether multimember districts with STV, mixed member proportional, or party-list proportional, or something else) do not significantly increase the number of viable parties.
On the other hand, I'm amazed that 5% of the population voted for the People's Party of Canada -- a party which had no hope of winning. This absolutely split the vote on the right enough to make the CPC lose seats.
https://globalnews.ca/news/8212872/canada-election-conservat...
The the proposal of the convoy occupiers is that their organization picks a committee to run the country. That's a significantly less legitimate government with absolutely no claim at a mandate.
The best we can do is look at opinion polls, which suggest that most people want to get rid of most Covid restrictions, but also don’t support the trucker protest.
However, there was still an election.
Canada got vaccine way after the US because they simply wouldn’t help companies pay for R&D and secure orders earlier, like the US did. So while you could get a walk-in vaccine at Wallmart here in America people were waiting in line for weeks for a chance at an appointment in Canada.
Imagine how many lives it could have saved instead had they just put that money toward getting vaccines earlier.
> At the federal level, a vote of no confidence is a motion presented by a member of the House of Commons that explicitly states the House has no confidence in the incumbent government.[3] The government may also declare any bill or motion to be a question of confidence.
Major bills like budgets are automatically confidence votes as well. I think you need to get into the parliamentary minutiae to understand when other votes could cause an election.
OTOH in a Presidential system you get no such opportunity to get the public’s opinion. You have to wait until the end of terms (congressional or presidential or both).
If a majority of Members of Parliament vote yes on a no-confidence vote, that will trigger an election. Otherwise the prime minister chooses when an election will happen, within 5 years. If the government is a minority, it is likely it will call an election within a year or two if they're confident they could get a majority (this happened last year). Otherwise, with a majority government, they tend to wait longer before calling an election.
For what it's worth: no he didn't, he got 50.3% of the vote[1]. We don't directly elect prime ministers in Canada.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papineau_(electoral_district)#...
The issue is that Ottawa Police were afraid of media backlash if they did any crowd control for the initial "protest" weekend. This allowed the occupiers to move in heavy machinery as barricades. When the weekend ended and the trucks didn't move, they realized they were dealing with something closer to an insurrection than a protest, and they've been impotent to stop it since.
THe people of Ottawa overwhelmingly support ending the occupation. It has terrorized women, queer people and people of color on the streets. They've been violent and confrontational with front-line workers, which forced two grocery stores to close their doors, plus a large mall. There have been two documented attempts to burn down residential apartment buildings and trap the occupants inside.
This weekend hundreds of Ottawa residents marched in a counter-protest, and also blocked the road and held up a convoy of trucks for more than 8 hours. The occupiers are a small group of people who are acting badly - shitting in the streets, getting drunk, blaring their horns, and using their children as human shields. Everyone will celebrate when they're gone for good.
https://angusreid.org/trudeau-tracker/
"A new Angus Reid poll showed that 54% of Canadians support an immediate halt to all pandemic restrictions, a stark contrast to the 56% who said as recently as in December they would have supported another round of lockdowns over Omicron."
https://www.tasnimnews.com/en/news/2022/02/13/2662060/half-o...
> As the country rolls into another week of uncertainty, nearly three-quarters of Canadians (72%) say the time has come for protesters to “go home, they have made their point.”
https://angusreid.org/trudeau-convoy-trucker-protest-vaccine...
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/cur...
The specific question was "It’s time to end restrictions and let people self isolate if they’re at risk.", which describes basically the process that basically all provinces were going through prior to the protests.
Then why require the mandate? I haven't seen any answer to that question besides the implied: "because we demand full compliance."
This allows the federal government to send the army if necessary (although Trudeau said they wouldn't), allows the police to fine and detain protestor that do not want to leave the blockade. And allows the federal government to require private companies to provide services, in this case towing companies to tow the rigs.
It also allows for freezing bank accounts of e.g. companies that have trucks participating in the blockade without a court mandate.
I think, but I am not sure, that this only applies to "strategic sites", in this case the border and maybe highways. Protester blocking a random street in Ottawa may not be concerned.
So, why require the mandate: To prevent the slim minority of truckers participating in the blockade from impacting everyone else for months.
But sure, it's all because of Trudeau's ego.
"beginning in early January 2022, DHS will require that all inbound foreign national travelers crossing U.S. land or ferry POEs – whether for essential or non-essential reasons – be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 and provide related proof of vaccination. This approach will provide ample time for essential travelers such as truckers, students, and healthcare workers to get vaccinated."
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2021/10/12/secretary-mayorkas-allow...
So it causes no harmful change for Canadians in general, for as you say, nothing changes.
So... why not give in to this demand then?
As an aside, forcing truckers to get vaccinated makes no sense. They mostly work in isolation, and it isn't like blocking the virus at borders really helps these days.
I support forced vaccination for front line health care workers, those caring for the elderly, where it matters.
Giving in would set a terrible precedent and would undermine Canada's continued existence as a free society.
(This being said, very few governments did lockdowns properly, and therefore almost every half-measure taken was ineffective and wasteful.)
It’s obviously a rhetorical question. I’d suggest that in all cases whether such mandates are appropriate depends on their proportionality relative to the harms they prevent.
Car accidents are 30-40k/year in the US, so 10% of covid. And the number of measures taken to reduce car accidents is extraordinary - age limits, compulsory driver's licenses, city design rules (roads, pedestrian crossings, etc, etc), speed limits, car construction regulations, compulsory insurance, and more. Given that, what's the appropriate level of regulation you suggest for covid?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30342665
So as a napkin calculation how many normalised years of lost labour do we have from the deaths... 0.13 years from the 50-59 year olds, 40-49 0.08, 30-39 0.06, 20-29 0.08, 10-19 0.1, for a total of 0.45 years of lost labour from deaths if the whole country caught covid.
In a world were all economic activity can be turned on and off like a lightswitch it would make economic sense for Canada to flick that switch and leave it off for up to 5 months (of absolutely zero economic activity which is not the actual level of lockdown as essentials still run) to irradicate covid, from the impact of deaths on work produced alone.
So yes as a general rule I would argue that locking down entire countries can make great economic sense if you can lower your death rate (say by using the time where covid spread is reduced by rolling out a vacine that would reduce the lost time to 0.0045 years if everyone got it). Though of course you'd need to get into the nitty gritty of stunted business growth and if killing off 8% of people over 60 is a good way to reduce taxes needed to support them to have a definitive answer.
NB: I'll add that I'm replying to your question on the economic sense. Personally I find reducing the pandemic to this view deplorable but as some do argue it I thought I'd argue the countercase along those lines. I.E. Even if you're a heartless bastard only interested in money you should still be enforcing strict controls until your population is aproaching as vaccinated as it's going to get.
Add to that that the true cost of Covid-19 in survivors (including asymptomatic and mild cases) remains to be seen in terms of DALYs/QALYs, and is known to be significantly greater than zero. [1]
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00403-0
It’s mentioned in Pierre Poliveres speech in parliament, here’s a link: https://youtu.be/cGbnjF3OdNQ
Quality-Adjusted Life Years, and Disability Affected Life Years, respectively. Without an understanding of them, you can't actually have an objective conversation about measuring the impact of any kind of illness.
Why do you believe this? Do you assume there is no benefit to doing so? Or do you assume that the harms outweigh the benefits?
You'd be wrong on both counts. [1]
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01676-0
The health impacts of vaccinated, and unvaccinated, have been measured according to current models. And in current models, getting the disease does not offer as much protection as also getting the vaccine - and thus protecting the wider population is best done with a mandate. A minuscule number of individuals is posing a threat to the rest of the population. The freedoms of the individual end where society begins. One doesn't get to walk down the street threatening to punch everyone they meet, even if they never throw a punch.
That said you can't healthcare-capacity your way out of a pandemic, the USA has managed to overwhelm its capacity in numerous jurisdictions despite having much higher baseline capacity than any Canadian jurisdiction. It is not an honest argument worth engaging with.
Not sure what province you are in but using the Canadian average and a 40% increase in beds, that’s roughly $50 million per bed. That is quite frankly a colossal waste of money. Do you feel that this is money well spent?
Likewise if you think that the healthcare system capacity was the only limiting factor with respect to COVID-19 public health measures that reduced transmission your model of the epidemiology of SARS-Cov-2 is incorrect.
"I said $40k per person was enough to build an ICU bed for everyone in Canada."
You didn't say that in the comment I replied to, maybe you said it elsewhere?
$40k per person in Canada is 37 million X 40,000 - that's 1.5 trillion CAD, right? Is my math correct on that? That's 2 years of the entire federal budget where did you get that number from?
Why do you think our hospitals are understaffed? It’s not because of the great pay of the Canadian system
As a vaccinated person I flat out blame the people that didn't get vaccinated for making the last year much worse than it'd had to be. If we had better vaccine coverage we wouldn't need the restrictions that we had to put in place. They don't only put burden on the healthcare system (which they do), preventing people that need care from getting it (which they do), but they also mean the rest of us have to do more because they're not willing to do their share. I guess the bright side is that this is a tiny minority around these parts.
While we developed vaccines at an impressive speed, governments royally screwed up the rollouts and logistics. Had we all done real proper lockdowns and taken public health recommendations seriously for a few weeks, and had governments been properly supportive (ie.: enabling) of that, our current vaccination uptake might have been enough to eradicate covid-19.
There were no orders but recommendations only in regards to vaccines. I understand you realize the difference between the order and recommendation. Recommendation does not require compliance.
And the burden was caused by lockdowns and complete absence of vaccines in Canada for a big while
Meanwhile, anti-vaccine people are single-handedly working to revive diseases that were almost eradicated:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2019/03/28/anti-v...
It’s amazing that the definition of a word like vaccine could change suddenly, because it is was incompatible to one virus — a mysterious super virus whose origin is still unknown, according to the WHO.
Is the science settled on whether 90% vs 100% has an impact on the health of society given omicron?
> Meanwhile, anti-vaccine people are single-handedly working to revive diseases that were almost eradicated
Conflating traditional anti vaxers with the new COVID anti vaxers is dishonest, they actually usually come from different parts of the political spectrum.
It is militancy like yours that is elevating opposition.
I am vaccinated but support anyone that stands up to a mandate, vaccination passes or emergency powers. I don't really have to justify that any further.
Accordingly places where transmission is likely (eg. a small intimate restaurant) are serious and potentially deadly health risks to the elderly, unvaccinated part of the population.
So long as our hospitals are overwhelmed (as they currently are) it's a very bad idea to open up these high transmission areas to unvaccinated people, as they'll inevitably catch the disease and are so much more likely to end up in the hospital in ICU.
This is why restaurants/bars/etc should continue to have vaccine mandates even though so many people are vaccinated.
The point isn't to coerce the last 10% into getting vaccinated. It's to protect the hospitals from being overwhelmed by new cases from the unvaccinated.
In all provinces, the elderly were the very first to get vaccinated. First. First to get second vaccinations, and for a long time, the only group allowed to even get a third shot.
There are no unvaccinated elderly people running around, unless they insist on not being vaccinated. In such cases, that's their choice, and no one should take additional precautions for those opting out.
Your last paragraph makes sense, but the rest?!
> In such cases, that's their choice, and no one should take additional precautions for those opting out.
Yeah it's getting to the point where if stubborn old people want to meet their maker sooner than later, well sure that's their choice and we should let them, but at the moment the hospitals are overwhelmed and this has negative impacts on everyone, as it delays all the other surgeries and other work that the hospital needs to do.
I'm fine with lifting vaccine mandates once hospitals are unlikely to get overwhelmed, but it's not at all clear we're at this point yet.
Going to be very interesting to see what happens in Alberta and Sask over the next little while as they're lifting the vaccine passports.
notice the probable or confirmed case and know that hospitals (US) are eligible for additional reimbursement with covid “case” patient from a $100 Billion CARES act fund (at minimum)
>Individuals who received at least one dose was calculated as (# of individuals who received at least one dose) / (population estimate).
Deaths are also only attributed to Vaccinated category after 14 days from the second dose, else it’s a “unvaccinated” death.
This is the first vaccine ever where you can die 13 days after a vaccine, and be classified unvaccinated. It’s just magical how “science” to advance “public health” works.
https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm... — the source data for the site in the parent post
Sounds like a nonsense insane tin foil hat theory to me.
Now with Omicron (for the last few weeks at least) it's clearly not needed any more, but governments move slowly, so it'd take a few more weeks. There's other restrictions that were put in around that timeframe that no longer make sense, like requiring PCR tests, and all those are on their way out.
This protest makes no sense except as a way of sowing chaos and seeking to destabilize the country.
Seriously? This smells like an attempt to paint the truckers as extreme right. Any quality sources for that claim?
> PAT KING: Pat King is a far-right protester who has said in videos posted to social media that there may be future plans to target politicians' homes and that "the only way that this is going to be solved is with bullets." He has called for the arrest of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly.
> King has gained attention online for a video posted to Twitter in which he decries the "depopulation" of white people, as well as another video posted in 2019 in which he makes racist remarks about Jewish, Muslim, and Chinese people.
"Health care workers in Ottawa are being harassed protesters against COVID-19 mandates" - https://www.npr.org/2022/02/12/1080354245/health-care-worker...
"Unruly protesters prompt early closure of two downtown grocery stores" - https://ottawacitizen.com/news/unruly-protesters-prompt-earl...
"Ottawa police issue 825 more tickets, respond to reports of protesters ‘harassing children’" - https://ottawa.citynews.ca/police-beat/ottawa-police-issue-8...
> Police have said they are concerned about how the convoy has attracted far-right and extremist elements, and on Sunday confirmed they were dealing with more than 60 criminal investigations, with alleged offences including "mischief, thefts, hate crimes and property damage". - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60281088
"Canada: Ottawa protests full of 'hate propaganda'" - https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/canada-ottawa-prot...
I've been living in downtown Ottawa for weeks, I've been harassed.
“define harassment” is neither a good argument nor a discussion in good faith.
From a distance it's very hard to judge what's true and what isn't. My level of trust in the media these days is extremely low so reading stories about Nazi Flags I'm thinking "click bait". Meanwhile forums like reddit - and slowly HN as well - are clearly filled with "paid shill" accounts. So what to trust?
> I've been living in downtown Ottawa for weeks, I've been harassed.
I'm sorry to hear that. I did check your HN profile briefly and you "seem legit"
What did they do to terrorize those identities specifically and what did/do they benefit from it?
Pretty much every business in deep-liberal cities at this point simply ignores restrictions.
What mandate? Seems like there wasn’t one in the first place.
Over 1.6 million people tweeted about the Canadian trucker protests over the country’s vaccine mandates, reaching about 330 million users. Of the top 100 most retweeted tweets on the topic, 79% were in support of the protests.
https://twitter.com/NarrativesProj/status/149361219856801792...
He has a minority government. A weak one at that. If he really lost his mandate there would be a snap election already.
Say what now? Which part of the act allows that? I skimmed through it and didn't see anything relevant.
I do understand that the truckers were disturbing the peace of ordinary people - I think this should be discouraged. However there must be a way to peacefully assemble without the government's approval.
I don't see how we can have meaningful civil discourse if you need permission to protest at all.
By protesting only against things that Trudeau himself supports protests against, obviously /s.
Unfortunately, it is only a halfway sarcasm, because it legitimately sounds like this is how it might go down.
That hasn't happened. Grossly exaggerated statements are not what I and my friends who have been at the Ottawa protest for 3 weeks have seen.
We aren't living in 1950s. Everyone has a phone camera now a days and Ottawa, the capital, has security cameras everywhere and yet none of this ever gets captured on camera and nobody seems to capture the face of the people supposedly doing such things.
Violence does occur in cities, and it will continue to. I've seen no evidence protestors or attendees are violent or even aggressive, and livestreamers passing police and asking them impromptu specifically this confirms it.
There's bouncy castles for kids to play on, multi-ethnic groups dancing together and holding native ceremonies or prayer, people giving out free food, public handing dollars directly to truckers because of the frozen funds - every weekend it's packed with families, smiles and good vibes. And then the "news" comes on and says it's an "insurrection" (yeah, don't they just always have bouncy castles) and Trudeau says they're all racist transphobes.
It's laughable.
If more violence/crime is occurring, a more likely explanation may be the friendly and busy atmosphere his driven drunks/addicts/homeless out of the city centre, and these people are now committing crimes they would ordinarily commit in the city centre in surrounding areas instead.
That would suck for those affected, but all of this could be over in hours if Trudeau would simply remove the mandates and the passport. (Which are the Ottawa's protest organisers only demands, as they've reiterated multiple times.)
The mandates clearly don't work for their intended purpose of coercing people, and instead just motivate people to fight back yet stronger, in this case harming the economy and causing inconvenience to some. That's squarely on Trudeau's governance, nowhere else.
The passport is a completely silly idea given the facts regarding transmission, as many other countries have realised and since dropped.
It's a no brainer on Trudeau's part to simply drop both things. But instead he's chosen to humiliate himself spreading nonsense lies about the truckers and the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Canadians who support them.
If the disruption is causing you grief, maybe write to him or your local Liberal representative and suggest he/they drop those things? They're demonstrably no good anyway, so it'd be a pretty simple win-win for everybody.
All the people who are cheering this emergency powers move, have not made clear to me why this particular protest has surpassed that point outside of noise issues in private (and non-public) areas (which I do understand are difficult).
Nobody said they can't protest. Nobody invoked the Emergencies Act when they initially blocked the roads. When they remained blocked for a week, still nobody invoked the Emergencies Act.
Minimal protest? Sure, absolutely that should be allowed. Nobody's making it not allowed. But "minimal" isn't where these protest are, and they haven't been for a while.
> The protests started on 15 April and were forcibly suppressed on 4 June when the government declared martial law and sent the People's Liberation Army to occupy parts of central Beijing.
Why bring up Tiananmen Square when this is Canada? We have plenty of comparable protests.
If the protests were in-person, not causing major, disproportionate interference with the Canadian economy and all injunctions were being both obeyed and enforced, there would be no need for this act.
The rule of law is breaking down and this is required to ensure that the fabric of Canadian society does not deteriorate.
1. This was not a lone actor, you can see two men in the footage! 2. This is not clearly-unassociated, this happened as a result of an interaction between residents in the building and protesters! 3. Stop downplaying attempted mass murder you ass, the two men clearly attempted to burn the entire building and kill all of its inhabitants. You can see in the footage that they attempted to tie the exit shut so that residents couldn't escape. Shame on you for defending this.
It's a completely abhorrent and utterly stupid and harmful action whether or not it was motivated to intentionally physically kill anyone or not.
As for whether it's one or two people, I make no apology for paying less attention when watching something from legacy media sources who I've witnessed continually falsifying stories on this subject.
I honestly thought I saw one man twice but if it's two it's two, and I update my statement to "lone actors". I'm not going to watch that crap again so I'll just have to take your word for it.
And yes, I did see someone attempt to tie a door shut with what looked like an old t-shirt, it seemed to me much more like someone trying to create the appearance of an attempt at mass murder (and always in the direct line of sight of a camera).
Regardless, the motivations of this person or persons, whether your interpretation or mine, either way does not at all fit the profile of the truckers as I and many others have experienced it.
Anyone who spends any time watching their official announcements, or independent unedited livestreams of what's happening there, can instantly see that setting fire to apartment buildings is not remotely something they'd want to do, nor would it at all serve any of their stated goals and instead only work to utterly dismantle them.
They have bouncy castles for kids to play on. They hold multi-ethnic prayer sessions. They're voluntarily cleaning the streets of snow and ice, laying flowers on monuments, and having hockey games police. In Coutts yesterday the police hugged and shook hands with the protestors (and their kids) and they all sang the national anthem together. Look it up, some of us watched it happen live.
Hence my interpretation that whoever did this crap at the apartment building evidently aren't the same people.
Their most recent announcement was that they have moved some of their trucks closer to the city centre in order to cause less disturbance to residential areas. That's hardly characteristic of murderous terrorists.
They also stopped honking, initially between the hours of 8pm and 8am, and since mostly altogether, and if you bother to watch any of their official announcements they are clearly reasonable and intelligent people - the "story" presented by your "news" source simply doesn't fit. (And the pathetic attempt to portray that story by filming two random people disagreeing on a city street really didn't make the case.)
The truckers stated goals are that they want the (useless, and clearly not-working) vaccine mandates dropped so they can return to work, not to overthrow the government or even cause any further disruption. They've been explicit about this many times. Specifically they've said they want to go home, and when the mandates are dropped they immediately will. But backed into a corner as they feel they are, they're not moving until that happens.
Half of Europe and UK has already dropped the mandates, so it's not at all an unreasonable request given the present situation.
You come across as never having actually investigated or even heard anything they've put out as an official statement. Probably this is because they justifiably refuse to speak to the legacy media that continually mis-portrays them.
But if you search (easier to locate on bitchute or rumble), you'll find their press conferences and quickly realise the characterisation by the legacy media and trudeau, as many here have pointed out, is entirely incorrect.
This virus will continue to cycle through our world and continue to kill millions of people. Checked or no, this will continue until the virus dies or the vast majority are dead/immune. Nobody wants this; it's literally bad for everyone.
The gov has pumped billions to prop up the economy. Did you get your bail-out? I certainly didn't get 1 cent. I did my job without a belly ache; I've taken the inflation hit like everyone else. The least that I want to hear is selfish blow-hards complaining about governments putting a cap on their selfishness. We all hurt, and only working together will we heal.
In my opinion, Parliament is almost always a valid place to protest - outside a politician's or ordinary person's private home, much less so.
By invoking these emergency powers, I think it's hard to dispute that the Prime Minister's Office is stopping a peaceful protest!
This is the action of people who are not being heard. Trudeau could have de-escalated by meeting with the protesters, but he instead essentially said they should shut up and go back to driving.
These are not protests against the government. They harm actual people on the ground trying to get on with their lives.
I'm sorry the YouTube streams have not shown any of this. Who'd have thought that even youtubers can have editorial intent!
If it's a matter of being heckled or laughed at, surely one has to be able to deal with that and not scream bloody murder.
(We haven't had mask mandates here in Sweden, so your situation with masks seems peculiar and a bit weird from here)
Moreover, the mask mandates are provincial, not federal. If people are opposed to that, they should go heckle at Doug Ford, the Ontario Premier in Toronto, not at Trudeau in Ottawa. The fact is that the protestors don't have a common coherent narrative.
No one is gonna bat an eye if you block and intersection or a bridge for a day (ok maybe if it's the ambassador bridge).
But eventually, if you start occupying the space for days and weeks on end, there are limits to people's patience.
When a protest becomes an occupation, there are impacts on those whose neighbourhood is being occupied. Downtown Ottawa residents ain't happy.
Homeless shelters were raided by protestors, businesses have been forced to close due to threats, and people are afraid to leave their homes.
> Homeless shelters were raided by protestors, businesses have been forced to close due to threats, and people are afraid to leave their homes.
This is hilariously inaccurate. Everyone's bringing food TO the truckers and there's so much food there that truckers are refusing to take more.
Amazingly, we live in 2022 where everyone has a phone camera and Ottawa, the capital, has security cameras everywhere and yet none of this ever gets captured on camera and nobody seems to capture the face of the people supposedly doing such things.
Here's one actual violence which did get captured on video:
https://twitter.com/TheMarieOakes/status/1493053006237122562
And there's another video of someone with a mask on who drove his jeep over 3 protestors in Manitoba.
There are plenty of livestreams on YouTube (Viva Frei channel for example) which have been capturing everything.
Honking might be the only thing which could constitute as annoying but that hasn't happened for over a week.
Here's reporting by a government employee who lives right above the protest:
https://maybury.ca/the-reformed-physicist/2022/02/03/a-night...
I'm happy you're having fun.
> Costing millions
> Putting people out of work
> Shutting down civic functions
> intimidating school children
I don't know anything about Canadian government's response to the virus, but would it be fair to characterize the effects of the response as any or all of the above? Or if not affecting you directly, then those you may personally know or simply your fellow countrymen?
People do feel irritation when we have done so much collectively, only for a small minority to pee in the pool.
It's a war against the health system. It's on the verge of collapsing in many provinces because of Covid, and folks like Maxime Bernier want it privatized. Ideological and manipulative greed.
This is extremely disingenuous and ill-informed. I would recommend people do a google search for "Ontario hospital overcrowd" and set the date filter to be before 2020 (before COVID). You will find articles for every single year in past decade where hospitals were overcrowded because of flu.
Ontario ranks the 3rd last in the world in terms of hospital beds per 1000 (only mexico and chile are behind us) and absolute last within Canada. We used to have almost double the hospital beds per 1000 back in 1990s but since then our population has exploded and also gotten older but we haven't done much to increase the beds until last year when we added a few beds but still nowhere near to what it is supposed to be and what it used to be in 1990s.
A well functioning health care system is required to operate at 85% maximum but Ontario has been running at over 100% in most hospitals majority of the time BEFORE covid.
Ontario has the fewest hospital beds per capita in the country at 1.4 per 1,000 people. That compares to the national average of 2.0.
In 1990, Ontario had around 50000 hospital beds. Now, we only have around 34000 despite our population exploding and also getting older.
Many hospitals in Ontario operated at above 100% capacity in 2019. According to the Ontario Hospital Association, Ontario’s hospitals have faced low or nearly flat funding for years — with only an increase of 5.4% from 2012-19, compared to an average of 12.9% among other provinces while population increased and hospitals absorbed inflationary costs. Ontario’s Ministry of Health’s own numbers show the province has the lowest per capita health spending in Canada. The Registered Nurses Association of Ontario notes this also held true in 2018, and that the province had the lowest registered nurses per capita and the second-lowest hospital spending per capita rate in the country, after Quebec.
CBC News in January 2020 (before COVID) found 32 of Ontario’s hospitals were filled beyond 100% occupancy nearly every day in the first half of 2019 — including Ontario’s 10 biggest hospitals.
A study of 169 of Ontario’s acute care hospital sites during the same period found:
- 83 hospitals were beyond 100% capacity for more than 30 days.
- 39 hospitals hit 120% capacity or higher for at least one day.
- 40 hospitals averaged 100% capacity or higher.
https://pressprogress.ca/ontario-announces-surge-funding-to-...
Our health care systems in Canada have been collapsing every single year BEFORE covid:
> Before COVID, January 22, 2020: Brampton council declares health-care emergency amid hospital overcrowding, wait times
https://globalnews.ca/news/6447872/brampton-health-care-emer...
1 month prior to COVID:
> Some of Ontario's biggest hospitals are filled beyond capacity nearly every day, new data reveals
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-hospital-hall...
> Dozens of hospitals across Ontario filling beyond capacity most days, CBC investigation finds
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/doug-ford-ontario-hal...
> Hallway medicine 'new norm' at Guelph General Hospital, CEO says. Numbers show capacity problems in va...
The hospitals have been overloaded and badly managed for a long time, way before the pandemic.
Most hospitals here have been operating above 100% capacity for many years. Waiting time to see a doctor have been reported to take in average 15 hours and up to 20 hours (pre-covid data in 2019) [1]. God forbid if you need to be hospitalized, as it can reach 24-48 hours sometimes.
Firing nurses over COVID measures before Christmas certainly didn't help, which is worth pointing out.
The politicians are trying to shift the blame of the bad healthcare systems happening under their watch to COVID.
[1]: https://plus.lapresse.ca/screens/2fe607e4-1054-4f10-9f56-703...
Agree we designed systems that could barely handle the flu, and we are paying the price. I'm not defending the politicians, certainly not Legault.
Where do we go from here? Fund back to average OECD levels, raise taxes, or honk and yell freedom while healthcare workers burnout?
And yes, a tiny number of nurses were suspended, but it's noticing compared to those who left the field from exhaustion from mandatory overtime and rigid scheduling.
https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/ottawa-homeless-shelter-receives-7...
You mean surveillance footage like this, of a protestor trying to lock the doors to an apartmnent building and start a fire?
https://globalnews.ca/news/8600592/trucker-convoy-police-inv...
The cops have barely done anything and they've acknowledged there is violence and lawlessness:
https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/ottawa-police-report-a-night-of-di...
Lots more videos here:
https://www.instagram.com/ottawaconvoyreport/
I literally heard honking today. The only reason there is less honking is because there is a legal injuction and truckers who honk can now be sued civilly. But they still persist.
I don't feel like that's the point you're trying to make but with such minimal activities you can link too and even less with confirmed links it really feels like you're stretching.
You do know that they were NOT the protestors right? And even the Ottawa Deputy Police Chief has debunked it. The supposed "arsonist" was someone who was wearing face masks, had purple hair was was in his early 20s as max. You really think that's a trucker protester?
> Ottawa Deputy Police Chief on the alleged arson in Ottawa: “We don’t have any direct linkage between the occupation—the demonstrators—and that act.”
https://twitter.com/jonkay/status/1491152362253451265
Like I said, somehow the "homeless shelter" has zero videos of anything happening. We are living in 2022, not 1950s. Everyone has a video camera phone now a days and somehow not a single person captured such thing?
Your instagram link has not a single video of violence. You really are stretching your narrative.
Honking injunction was ONLY for continuous honking. Despite that, when I was there on Saturday after 9pm, there was no honking. Even if there were, you really think honking is violence?
If you're concerned about getting Canadians back to work, should you not also be concerned with the economic damage done by mandates and lockdowns with no end in sight?
Nobody gets locked down for the flu...
These trucks are extremely difficult to remove. And while you can still remove them if the air brakes are on it takes longer. Not only that, most rig towing companies won't do anything for fear of reprisal.
Can you point to some?
Cameras and cell phones are all over Ottawa and the cell network has been up and working all along. Surely something has been uploaded to YouTube?
If you truly were concerned about violence against innocent people, you'd be on the side of the protesters, not spreading unsourced lies in effort to have them silenced.
Unvaccinated people are not entitled to a job without consequence.
It was loud the first week due to honking but even that's stopped. And even if there were honking, that's not violence.
I am brown and my buddy is black and neither of us met with anything other than friendly hugs and fist bumps. Then we get home and see an entirely different reporting on media and by government.
Here's an article written by a government employee who lives right above the protests:
https://maybury.ca/the-reformed-physicist/2022/02/03/a-night...
EDIT: Reply to comment below, I was personally there because of the air-travel mandate by the Feds and restaurant/gym mandates by my province. Triple vaxxed Trudeau can fly even while he caught COVID. Triple vaxxed Mayor Jim Watson can go to restaurants and gyms despite being COVID+. But I am not allowed to fly or go to restaurants and gyms even if I can show a negative COVID test.
I also talked to nurses there who worked for 2 years taking care of COVID patients, caught COVID along with their entire family, got natural immunity which is superior, and then got fired for not taking the shots. Yet Ontario and Quebec is letting COVID+ nurses to work if they are vaxxed.
Also women are a lot more against the mandates than men based on my impression which seems to match the surveys.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
That sentiment was echoed in this podcast I listened to the other night: https://youtu.be/H-T_EGVdYwk
The guy being interviewed is just a dude, not a leader in the movement AFAIK. But he’s probably a good representation of what the average person attending the protests wants.
> surviving a previous infection now provided greater protection against the subsequent infection than vaccination
> Protection against Delta was highest, however, among people who were both vaccinated and had survived a previous COVID infection
So natural immunity is better than only being vaxed, but getting a vaccine increases your protection in both cases.
In order of protection:
1. cleared infection + vax 2. cleared infection 3. vax
Also natural infection antibodies have been shown to last for at least 20 months. We know vaccine one wanes in 3-6 months.
There's also some evidence on those with prior infection having higher chances of side-effects, though more research is needed.
https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/vaccine-after-effects-more-co...
Some trucks had train horns installed, significantly louder than regular horns. Trucks were honking continuously, all night. There is a line where too much noise can be considered violence. Certainly, if I was downtown and had a baby trying to sleep during that shit I'd be throwing rocks at trucks at 2am.
I see many people say "this person, who is vaccinated but got COVID anyways, is allowed to do X. Other person, who has a negative COVID test but am not vaccinated, cannot. That is hypocritical." Can someone explain the hypocrisy?
People do get that negative COVID tests have relatively little proof value after a day or so right?
The point of allowing a person to do X is based on the safety of them doing X. If we are preventing X due to fear of covid, then it makes sense to prevent people from doing X if they have covid, regardless of their vaccination status, and allowing them to do it if they do not have covid, regardless of their vaccination status.
Some of the rules appear to be punitive towards people who have chosen not to be vaccinated, and not designed to curb the spread of the disease; that is why hypocrisy is being called out.
If more of the population were vaccinated the spread of the disease would be curbed (there are still places under 60% vaccination in the US, for example). It would not be sufficient, but yes the point is to create spaces where you have less risk.
The rule is designed to get more people to be vaccinated. It is accomplishing that objective.
(more nuanced is that I don't believe "vaccinated means everything is OK" is the right position either, and that "vaccinate, but also try to do stuff at half capacity" etc etc would be better but...)
A room with 100% vaccinated people is going to be safer than a room with 100% of people showing up with day-old negative covid tests. (EDIT: actually not sure of this as much now that I'm thinking about it...)
Ultimately the rules forcing vaccination are a result of a huge part of the population refusing vaccination, which is the single most effective policy. It's roundabout because governments don't have the courage to just force the issue (or waited too long and now there's a coalesced movement against it).
Sorry if unvaccinated people feel bad because of it. If they cared about not getting people sick they would vaccinate. Taking covid tests every day doesn't improve your immunity.
But the argument isn't "does vaccination magically solve everything", it's "does it make things better relative to the costs", and that seems absolutely unobjectionable. We can walk and chew bubblegum here, but antivax positions seem to be to do neither out of some vague principle of freedom.
The sad point off this is that you're contagious when you're still asymatic, so even those wanting to do the right thing cant prevent accidental spreading. All we can do is reduce our transmission rates as low as possible. Vaccines did a great job of that pre-omicron and though Omicron seems to spread just as freely in vaccinated populations, those with vaccines had far better health outcomes. Who knows what date will throw at us if/when another significant variant mutates into our lives.
Natural immunity of an unvaccinated person is superior to a vaccinated person without natural immunity, all else equal, and the difference isn't even close. It concerns me that people still don't accept this.
See https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v... for conclusive proof of this. I don't have my notes on that study in front of me right now but off the top of my head natural immunity was at least 7x superior when compared to people who were double-vaccinated but with no exposure to the actual virus.
Meanwhile we have the CDC showing that:
- previous COVID exposure + no vaccination is 3x smaller incidence than vaccination without covid exposure
BUT
- previous COVID exposure + vaccination is 2x smaller incidence than without vaccination
arguing that "I got exposed to Covid so the vaccine is not useful for me" is factually incorrect. I had not been clear enough in my objection. So protesting vax mandates have even one less leg to stand on.
(at least here: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm?s_cid=mm...).
I'm glad you have felt at home at the protests, I'm sure if you tried to ask critical questions about vaccine efficiency and the active participation of far right extremists like Pat King in the protests, you'd have received a much colder welcome.
Thousands of people in Ottawa have been affected by the occupation. At least 1000 workers of the Rideau Center are out of a job because the protestors kept trying to force their way into the shops without masks. Covid is a respiratory disease and the use of well fitting masks are shown to significantly reduce transmission. Why are the protestors ignoring the science behind the policies?
If the protestors are rational, why haven't the protestors called out the loud lunatics amongst them who are on bullhorns shouting how Trudeau is a devil worshipper and pedophile?
Why have white supremacists like Pat King been allowed key roles in the protests, and allowed to - literally - dance on the sound stage set up on parliament hill?
Why did the organisers refuse to answer - earlier today - the simple question from a reporter if there were any firearms present amongst the protestors?
What was the rationale behind the "MoU" that called for the democratically elected government to be deposed and replaced with a junta composed of the protest organizers? That wasn't even a fringe demand, it was front and center.
Nobody from the protests has had any rational answers for these questions. I'm sorry, but for the residents to be able to accept the inconvenience of being occupied, they have to sympathise with the elements of the protests.
Those workers are "out of a job" because of the very COVID policies that the truckers et al are rallying against. COVID did not take away those jobs. COVID policies did.
(I am not even thinking of whether it's justified, good or bad, just reasoning about motivations)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[0] https://youtu.be/0DvVtDHEizk?t=51
I have issues with asking permission to protest, even if it's an issue I don't support.
The blockades of the border and overwhelming presence of truck/train horns at all hours of the day were the tipping point.
You get to make your point heard to anyone who cares - both to the government and other people - but they don't have to care. If it turns out that general public does not want to hear and support your protest, then you simply wait until elections, and either get what you request or watch your candidate lose and peacefully accept that your requests are simply not going to be met. You don't get to stop the rest of the society until your demands are met, they don't owe you that. If the other voters disagree with your opinion and don't want to listen to it, you don't get to make them listen.
I dare say, if you've got things escalating to the point where people from all over your country plop themselves on the Federal government's front door .. do you not realize how much that actually takes?
If one is so eager to dismiss the minority, then pray tell, how does anyone propose getting any change done? Further, why are you blaming the protesters for making your life more inconvenient when the only person who has been harmed already is...wait for it...them?
Because until that road got blocked, nobody gave a care 1.
That is successful protest. That is the consequence of Statecraft failure.
I mean, for every contentious issue there's going to be a part of the population which does not get their way. The whole point of democracy is that in such situations we discuss the issue, vote on the issue, and then the losers accept the decision and go home without escalating to action. The fact that some people are extremely dissatisfied with some decision does not necessarily imply that the decision should be changed nor does it imply a statecraft failure - how about all the people who supported the decision? Like, if the vote was somehow fake and misrepresents reality, then a protest can show that no, the majority does think differently; but if the protests simply confirm that yes, x% people are opposed, then the protest does not provide any information that deserves attention, the decision was made (and had the right to be made!) already knowing that those people oppose it.
The final escalation point of an ignored protest should be a call for general election if the public believes that circumstances have changed and the current government does not represent the will of the people anymore. However, if elections do not get what the protesters want, they should simply not get what they wanted because "we the people" have spoken that they don't want that. And, crucially, they can continue to peacefully request change and wait for public viewpoints to change, but certainly they have no right to disrupt others unless the demands are met, at some point the society has the right to say "we heard your arguments but made the choice to move on", and require you (with force, if necessary) to stop disrupting normal activities of the society.
I think you've got your view backwards in the sense that every protest you've experienced up until now has been small enough to not be majorly disruptive because that crowd of "I will not accept this" hardliners was small enough where it would literally be folly to belabor the point further. That does not place an effective ceiling on legitimate vs. illegitimate protest, rather it puts a floor on the quality of your Statespeople at doing their jobs in a way that gets enough people not feeling marginalized.
That is clearly not the case here. Each of these protestors is someone feeling they are not being represented. They have the right to hold everything the bugger on up until some level of reasonability comes around. That is the fundamental dimension and action of politics. Just because it's been a good many years since the consent of the governed was pulled back doesn't mean it can't still be.
The number of people pounding the drum of "well these miscreants better watch out, the will of Canada is going to steamroll them!" or "It is the will of Canada that these people be pushed out of the limelight and ignored, so cut off their logistics, make it easier to enact financial violence (fines), and imprison them!" instead of "Well, shit, maybe we did go overboard a bit, didn't we?" disturbs me.
At the end of the day, those people are Canadians too. The mark of a country is how they treat their conscientious objectors.
And yes... I say that with a straight face accepting where the U.S. is on that scale recently. I just hope Canada doesn't follow our lead down the road to hell.
As far as I understand your position, expecting the protesters to back down without satisfying their requests is also not okay - so what would be okay?
I'll be frank. The government committed the first overreach here. These people were hard working, contributing members of society when they were free to do so. That was taken away, and no equitable exchange offered, or convincing justification given besides "father knows best", so I'm not surprised this has blown up as spectacularly as it has. They've been painted with broad strokes by the media as nuisances for making themselves collectively heard. That's what you do in a democracy. The ball is in the government's court to come back to the table, because those prople will still be Canadians at the end of this. So ignoring or squashing the problem won't make it go away.
If the government really has as much support as they think they do, they don't need formal policy, everyone will just do as they do; they just need best practices in place, and people to continue following them. If they actually don't, and the polling has methodology problems, then you're taking a step back toward normalcy and getting people back to work. The fact supposedly, what, two thirds, approve of the measures wasn't necessarily framed in a way where people are taking into account the overall cost in liberties in the long run. I'd have to review methodology.
I'm increasingly finding that as much of a hardline idealist as I tend to be, when dealing with the masses of dissatisfied people, pragmatism is often the better way to go. Get enough of them to leave to decrease the size of the protest. But if you double down on the authoritarian streak, get ready to hemorrhage support. This isn't the kind of thing you get the chance to do twice.
This isn't about protesting "at all" it's about protesting in a way that stings the government. You can protest in a legal way but then you're dismissed. The Truckers are protesting in a way that can't be dismissed. They've chosen to risk serious consequences because to them the status quo is worse. Protests like this are a sign of a failure of leadership and representation.
Sometimes that means you don't get your way. Right now in my country the government in power acts in ways I really don't agree with but unfortunately they won fair and square and clearly have the support of the majority. For me that is disappointing and somewhat embarassing but I wouldn't dream of claiming that elections were fraudulent (USA) or simply ignoring mandate and consensus and trying to blackmail the government (CA).
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/10/0...
https://theconversation.com/before-9-11-australia-had-no-cou...
"Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said politicians should not be telling the police how to deal with protesters and that resolution should come through dialogue"
Millions of dollars in damage by these protestors (railway above). Protests for me, but not for thee.
Vaguely remember stuff like:
"Your right to freedom of speech stops where it harms others" (hate speech)
"Your right to bodily autonomy stops where you can harm others" (vax mandates)
"Your right to protest stops where ... ?"
These are all nuanced, sadly the Canadian government can override its Bill of Rights whenever they please under temporary 3 year Emergency Measures.
"Don't like first amendment speech? Just suspend the constitution!"
We should start processing asylum claims from the north...
…and then face elections with this track record, hence why this is the first time this bill has been invoked in 50 years.
Regardless of the outcome of this situation, the current few weeks _will_ be taught in Canadian schools for the next decades.
It’s time for Canada to rewrite the Constitution and to enshrine some inalienable rights and freedoms.
You might also find that Canadians as a whole want a balance between public order and individual freedom that tilts more toward the public order end of the spectrum than you'd like.
This blockade has been ongoing for weeks. Maybe you only just heard about today, but they certainly didn't go "straight to the nuclear option."
Also, what do you mean by "nuclear option" anyway? To me, that would be the most extreme possible response. Nobody is saying the current situation is great, but there is clearly a lot of room left for escalation. (May it never come to that)
Calling the current state of affairs "the nuclear option" is disingenuous at best.
Could be, but to extend the metaphor giving yourself the political option to call in the military is certainly taking the safety off the big red button.
Everything is "unprecedented" and the "biggest threat to society" and other sensational labels.
I think it may come from the media who tend to sensationalize often?
Vaccines work, they work extremely well. You are literally making it up.
Restrictions have come and gone across the world as case numbers and hospital capacity go up and down. Most European countries have plans to drop mandates or are in the process as case numbers go down. This logic is repeating pretty much everywhere.
Your post is a textbook example of a slippery slope fallacy. I just went to a night club yesterday for the first time in two years - completely allowed by my government, in line with lowering case numbers, in a country with far less democratic tradition than Canada.
Stop the paranoia and understand the nobody's out to get you.
If it so then why there have been so many breakthrough infections ? (30-40% of the new infections for delta at the 60-70% vaccination rate and 80% for omicron at 80% vaccination rate, and that is as reported which is given lighter symptoms means severe undercounting) While the vaccines failure to control the infectious spread has been obvious from the publicly available numbers at least since the Spring of 2021, that is bona-fide scientific result which naturally took several months ( it is about delta, and with omicron situation is significantly worse)
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y
" A person who was fully vaccinated and then had a ‘breakthrough’ Delta infection was almost twice as likely to pass on the virus as someone who was infected with Alpha."
"Unfortunately, the vaccine’s beneficial effect on Delta transmission waned to almost negligible levels over time. In people infected 2 weeks after receiving the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, both in the UK, the chance that an unvaccinated close contact would test positive was 57%, but 3 months later, that chance rose to 67%. The latter figure is on par with the likelihood that an unvaccinated person will spread the virus."
It's clear you're not here to make good-faith arguments.
Yes, for very specific groups of people. For the majority though it did practically nothing which makes forced vaccination of that majority immoral and illegal.
>They reduce transmission by a substantial amount.
No. As the numbers and the link I provided show.
>literally avoided tens of millions of deaths?
Forced vaccination of the very low risk majority has nothing to do with it. Even more - if those wasted vaccine doses were instead used to vaccinate high-risk people in poor countries then even more lives would have been saved.
You're discounting the effects of long-covid. You discount the health burden of millions of people catching this disease at the same time. You discount the long-term effects and the fact that a substantial amount of the healthy population has symptoms 3 and 6 months after catching the disease. You discount that perfectly healthy young people have died. You discount the effects on the workforce and the rates of permanently disabled. You discount the hospital burden and the fact that saturated hospitales mean triaging and people dying of easily treatable causes.
> Forced vaccination of the very low risk majority has nothing to do with it.
You don't have a right to not be vaccinated to participate in society. Your profound ignorance on this as if the standard vaccination schedule for children doesn't have dozens of vaccines necessary to reach the modern standards of quality of life means you have nothing to add to this.
Your arguments are just one ridiculous, ignorance-ridden point after another.
It's a good thing that the people making most of these decisions, unlike you, have century-years of experience on these topics and have assessed the health burden on the population.
And most of us consider that a disease that's the 3rd to 4th highest cause of death, even at this point in the pandemic, is worth treating with extreme measures, lest we lose half a decade of life expectancy, not even getting into the effects for the survivors.
vaccinating low risk people has no effect on all of this. The close to 0 risk of hospitalization becoming 20 times closer to 0 doesn't affect the total hospitalization numbers, at best it is a noise.
> if the standard vaccination schedule for children doesn't have dozens of vaccines
i have said nothing about the well proven working vaccines. You're advancing anti-vax movement position by mixing together the working vaccines with the zero effect for the most people covid vaccines.
>century-years of experience on these topics
the covid is 2 years old. The mRNA covid vaccines is even less than that.
> is worth treating with extreme measures
wasting resources on the measures that don't work makes things naturally worse.
This feels downright dystopian, especially if the move away from cash and towards centrally-controlled electronic payment systems is anywhere near as widespread in Canada as elsewhere.
Access to most of Ottawa was been cut off, including one of the biggest border crossings in Canada, not a "pizza place". Deploying hyperbole like this isn't helping your case. Surely if the Ambassador Bridge doesn't qualify as critical infrastructure, nothing does.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/marc-miller-path-forward-pr...
These railway blockades forced layoffs, and the CBC also notes that rail carries three times more than what trucks do in Canada.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/rail-shutdown-pro...
Instead, in this case, the Trudeau government met with the protestors and had a process of dialogue that resolved them peacefully after almost a year.
It wasn't the "entire CN rail network" (instead it was the Eastern Canada segment, comprising maybe 15% of CN's network). They don't claim that rail carries three times more than trucks do, but instead simply note that one rail car carries as much as three trucks.
And the blockade lasted approximately 2-3 weeks. Not sure what you mean by "after almost a year".
But let's be clear -- most of Canada was enraged about that. It was hugely expensive to Trudeau politically, and was a tenterhooks [edit - thank you fennec] situation because of the aboriginal file. Yet most of Canada absolutely wanted a stronger response and it hurt Trudeau in the election.
I honestly don't get these "but the rail blockade" or "but some BLM protest in some US city" responses.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/on-tenterhooks...
It's usually called integrity and honestty
I am ok with BLM blocking infrastructure and disripting things to spread an important message. But we have to give everybody the same ability then.
So as long as it's politically expedient for the sitting PM you would advocate using the emergencies act? Yikes.
Can you point to the part of my post that said that? Anywhere?
Yikes.
Stronger response simply means demanding that police enforce existing laws and injunctions (where injunctions are often simply court orders saying "follow the law") instead of the conciliatory let-it-play-out messaging that Trudeau used at the time. Even in the case of the current protests the emergency act seems unnecessary, and is basically a failure condition for the Ottawa Police basically doing nothing and claiming that they're all out of ideas.
I am saying that during the pandemic for the purposes of restrictions and exceptions, people who worked at grocery stores were "critical workers". It's a big old caution for using words like "critical" which are very vague in order to implement policy assuming it will be used for things you deem to be important, because you do things like that and now there's precedent. Grocery stores are critical infrastructure now so some picket line for a labor dispute at a grocery store is now legally arguably a banned protest.
When opposed to things, people are usually very happy to give away freedoms they don't realize might have adverse consequences in the future.
https://covid19.ca.gov/essential-workforce/
> In accordance with this order, the State Public Health Officer has designated the following list of Essential Critical Infrastructure Workers to help state, local, tribal, and industry partners as they work to protect communities, while ensuring continuity of functions critical to public health and safety, as well as economic and national security.
> Blocking critical infrastructure is illegal
and pointing out that there are an enormous number of things which were labeled critical infrastructure during the pandemic, like any store that sells food.
You’re splitting hairs in an unhelpful way which distracts from the point entirely.
However, enough grocery stores have to be kept running, or else people could run out of food, or the food supply chain could be disrupted.
So, "essential workers" means that they have to be protected and encouraged to work as a group, but that if some individual ones quit or have to take time off work, it will be OK. Whereas in this crisis, if even one grocery store closed, that could, depending on the area, cause a problem.
Edit: changed AT ALL to without a trial because on second thought resized it's possible that there are some legit uses for freezing bank accounts.
The forcing of wearing masks is a tyrannical action, whether it's for a 'good cause' or not.
Some people view the ends do not justify tyrannical means.
A mandate with a good justification is authoritarian but not tyrannical.
Also, yes, some protests are moral and some aren't. If there's a Nazi march shutting down main street I have no objections to shutting it down. It's not logically inconsistent to say that people shitting in the streets, having drunken discos and harassing people day and night aren't really "protesting" at this point.
I was making fun of the parent poster's normative theories, not describing how police in ottawa actually behave.
>These people have been paralyzing a massive part of downtown and violating the law for 3 weeks and they're finally now seeing some consequences.
I'm sure you could say the same for hong kong protesters. I'm going to go on a limb that flooding the entire island with millions of protesters is pretty "paralyzing", if not more.
>Also, yes, some protests are moral and some aren't. If there's a Nazi march shutting down main street I have no objections to shutting it down.
Sounds like you're agreeing with my previous comment?
>It's not logically inconsistent to say that people shitting in the streets, having drunken discos and harassing people day and night aren't really "protesting" at this point.
that sounds awfully like the CHAZ.
And the next time farmers protest because their land is being taken away and given to multinational corporations, they crackdown and say "see? we're just like Canada, these people are criminals and we need to restore order".
Being admired by thuggish dictatorships doesn't exactly reflect well on Canada.
Are all speech created equal? Is it bad to apply informed judgement on society issues? I mean, why do we want Bad Speech to proliferate? The government should ensure only Good Speech is allowed!
>If you go by that, then the US revolution should have been a bad and illegal thing.
"all causes are equal" =/= "all causes are a bad and illegal thing".
2. What counts as "marginalized" here? I could plausibly make the argument that anti-vaxxers are marginalized because the government is cutting off their access to common services and threatening their livelihoods.
2. Pretty much 1:1 correspondence with the social determinants of health. [2]
[1] https://fs.blog/veil-ignorance/
[2] https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/health-promo...
this is exactly my point. back in the day "racism" really did mean "treating people differently based on race". https://web.archive.org/web/20071014174747/https://www.merri.... under that definition, "giving everybody a fair chance" or "protections for marginalized groups" could count as racism in certain cases. eg. "this scholarship is for black students only", or "you can't apply for this scholarship if you're asian or jewish".
>2. Pretty much 1:1 correspondence with the social determinants of health.[1]
So going off that list:
1. if you're a rich person protesting then that's bad because you're not marginalized
2. if you're employed and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.
3. if you're well educated and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.
4. if you haven't suffered childhood trauma and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.
5. if you didn't grow up on the wrong side of the tracks and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.
6. if you have social support and coping skills and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.
7. if you have a healthy diet and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.
8. if you have "access to health services" (live near a hospital and can easily take time off work?) and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.
9. if you have better than average genes and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.
10, 11, 12. if you're [redacted] and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized
If we're talking about truckers, we can definitely check off #3, and probably check off 1, 5, 7, and 8 as well. Does that check enough boxes to earn them "marginalized" status?
So protests are only just if they are against the 14 things listed by the government? I thought "free speech zones" were ridiculous, but this idea of approved protest topics takes the cake.
>and about how they do it
What does "marginalized groups" have to do with "how they do it"? Are you saying that if you're protesting against the 14 approved protest topics, you get additional leeway regarding illegal things to do?
Yes, BLM sometimes blocked roads. In every case they were promptly removed if they did not disperse when ordered to.
BLM march on highway in California: https://abc7news.com/los-gatos-black-lives-matter-protest-hi...
2 women were killed in Seattle when BLM and police shutdown a highway for a protest: https://www.fox5dc.com/news/police-2-women-hit-by-car-on-clo... >Protesters had shut down the interstate for 19 days in a row, Mead said at a press conference. The State Patrol responded by closing sections of the interstate to keep drivers and protesters safe.
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2020/09/100-days-of-prot...
If the police were responding in Portland they weren't trying very hard. With no firebombing in Ottawa, the response seems proportionate.
Is this something that has precedent in Canada?
We don't have the concept of co-equal branches of government, but the judiciary can declare acts of parliament to violate the charter of rights and freedoms. The Emergencies Act explicitly says it does not supercede any constitutional rights.
Several MPs and MLAs have received suspicious packages: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/mike-kelloway-sus...
"Protesters" tried to break into a federal MP's constituency office: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/covid-19-protests...
And that's just Nova Scotia. This isn't as bad as the October Crisis, but it's still quite serious. It's not small potatoes.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLQ_Manifesto
“The government is issuing an order with immediate effect under the Emergencies Act, authorizing Canadian financial institutions to temporarily cease providing financial services where the institution suspects that an account is being used to further the illegal blockades and occupations,” she said. “This order covers both personal and corporate accounts.”
—-
Under Canadian law, the Liberal government has to put this before both the House of Commons and Senate within 7 days.
Say what? Those two are literally polar opposites. I guess they can be progressive on the social scale and conservative on the economic one, but there's got to be a better name for that.
There’s plenty of areas of this that are misused (see things like civil asset forfeiture), but the overarching strategy of freezing bank accounts isn’t novel or dystopian.
Edit: it’s a bit sneaky to change “AT ALL” to “WITHOUT A TRIAL” without calling out the change.
You can't just have the executive decide they can do that using pure administrative action to seize property. Also, you generally also have to prove in a court of law there was a crime before you can do anything at all.
The US civilian asset forfeiture (and now in Canada too, it seems) are actually quite unique in that regard outside of maybe China (not sure even you can do that there anymore), and at most couple other dystopian very authoritarian nations.
Guess we were all a little asymmetrical with our "reply" button pushes.
That’s it. It’s a time out, not a forfeiture. The Emergency Act is powerful, but this invocation isn’t that powerful.
Is Canada throwing the market efficiency and equity principles baby with the trucker's protest bathwater ?
Oh yeah, letting a bureaucrat freeze assets on an arbitrary basis people's savings and then, eventually, another bureaucrat will unfreeze it.
Rights delayed are rights denied.
Moral is, don’t ignore court orders in democratic countries.
It doesn't exist in the normal course of judicial business, how does it get created here ?
My understanding is that the legal link was created by the Emergencies Act. The government believes that it will be able to calm the situation faster if they can track and cut off the flow of money. This invocation gives the government increased powers to track (they ordered crowdfunding platforms/payment processors to register with FINTRAC). And increased powers to cut off funds (through freezing bank accounts).
Edit:
Here's a relevant quote from Canada's Deputy PM:
“The government is issuing an order with immediate effect under the Emergencies Act, authorizing Canadian financial institutions to temporarily cease providing financial services where the institution suspects that an account is being used to further the illegal blockades and occupations,” she said. “This order covers both personal and corporate accounts.”
They created a power of themselves, out of expedience, but there still doesn't seem to be any justification or grounds for it according to the basic principles of the Canadian legal order, except it formally comes from the PM, and he has cops.
They created a false legal reality (grave danger of violence to Canada and its people), which isn't objectively observable, to justify a power to solve that false reality, where in fact they are using it for something else (forcing people to move parked trucks).
They could have just arrested all the truckers for a variety of traffic laws or public-order laws (honking, noise), and then moved the trucks one by one. Instead, Emergency powers...
As my administrative and fiscal law professor taught us, after listing for two weeks all the principles which can be used to craft a law (not Canadian law school, European) :
Due process should be quicker, I wish more people would vote based on making the courts more responsive, but unfortunately no one does.
The trick is to categorize the protest as something else.
The US First amendment has some good language on this: the people have a right to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Imposing a blockade does not qualify. If they just sit in front of Parliament and hold up signs and shout, but don't impede anyone going about their business, then they have a right to make their voices heard.
But what about (some other protest)? Civil rights protesters are usually ordered to disperse after a short time and get arrested if they don't. Sometimes they engage in civil disobedience, but they can be arrested if they do that.
If I go through your post history am I going to see a consistent belief expressed in mid 2020?
https://twitter.com/FrischReport/status/1493344853421436946
They are using terrorism financing laws to execute this.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
1. The use of violence or the threat of violence, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political goals.
2. Resort to terrorizing methods as a means of coercion, or the state of fear and submission produced by the prevalence of such methods.
3. The act of terrorizing, or state of being terrorized; a mode of government by terror or intimidation.
I'm sympathetic to (some) of the aims of the protesters but I think they've made their point and should go home. Still, this move by Trudeau seems like an overreaction considering there's been little/no violence.
I think that anyone following closely would have to concede that police conduct and the lack of enforcement is a product of the threat of violence, but I certainly concede that it might be the case that immediate enforcement /might/ result in nonviolent resolution - it just seems very unlikely.
If that's your bar for "violent protest", then it's trivial for anyone to disrupt any protest by injecting interlopers to try to trigger an explosion. There's evidence that undercover police tried to instigate violence and looting in the BLM protests. Couldn't that be happening here too?
I think it is lost on most people not following closely that the day-to-day protest headcount is quite low, easily under 1,000 people, probably well under 500. Any normal crowd control policing unit could disperse such a small group, the police do not do so despite many instances of having done so and clear legal authority to do so.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/photos-climate-strike-...
I would also note that some in this thread are claiming shutting down streets are violence. That protest shut down multiple streets.
Obviously shutting down streets for hours or a day is not "violence" but preventing people from enjoying public roadways for 17+ days in their own neighbourhood is a violation of their liberities. Just the same a single day horn-honking protest would not be the same as weeks unending.
But language-lawyering about the word "violence" isn't really the point anyway, this is more about the right to protest being in tension with the rights of nearby residents and workers to live peacefully.
At what point does shutting down a street go too far? 1 day, 2 days, a week? It seems somewhat arbitrary to me, and that is what I was trying to convey. I think any obstruction of a road is an inconvenience. Does that mean it is too much of a tension and is causing me to not be able to live peacefully? I don't think so.
I would also say that the point of the protest is to inconvenience people. If the truckers blocked roads in the middle of the Yukon nobody would care. The reason they are doing it in Ottawa is because it is capital and because it is populated.
I guess I wouldn't have as much of an issue if there was a clear standard, but as far as I can tell there isn't.
I think OWS is a good example, they got a lot of publicity and staged long term protests and demonstrations that indeed inconvenienced people, in a two month occupation there certainly was some disruption but I would invite you to compare the two events closely and I think you will see that this Ottawa situation is quite different both in the level of disruption and the quantity of arrests.
Of course in Canada we have lots of great examples of roads being blocked in isolated areas because of logging and pipeline protests, they draw a lot of the comparisons because despite their impact being very limited in terms of the people effected they are cleared out much more violently than has occurred in any instance here. Fairy Creek is something you can look into, the RCMP happily arrested journalists covering the protest crackdown in a gross violation of civil liberties and the rule of law.
I think if your impression of the protests in Ottawa is that they have simply "shut down a street" you should look into it in more detail. (For example the mayor tried to negotiate a deal to get the trucks to stop overnighting and honking in residential areas but failed to get it to stick, that's not related to blocking off one street downtown.) I know a few people that have been hassled on the street in a manner that resulting in them regarding the area unsafe and not a public space for them anymore.
The trucker protest, on the other hand, I can understand what it is supposed to do. Make people uncomfortable, block critical infrastructure, force the government to do what you want. But, if truckers just leave, then we're back to "What's the point of this?"
If the point of a protect is go 'get your way', it's essentially a crappy "Might makes right" play. Might as well not vote, ignore all the rules etc. Society doesn't work if you pick-and-choose at scale.
Now, you can say "The trucker protest isn't as important as civil rights" but that's just a "You shouldn't be protesting" argument. Racists thought civil rights protesters shouldn't be protesting too. If the protesters believe their cause is actually important then it makes sense to protest. But, it only makes sense to protest in ways that are likely to result in changes. Symbols are fine, but empty symbolism isn't enough for something you think is really important.
Something has gone wrong though with this trucker protest because people should have already been arrested. LBJ wasn't granting himself power to deal with civil rights protests.
IMO now it is going to turn into some kind of Canadian Reichstag fire.
Some headline like 2/3rds of Canadians want the government to make sure there is never another Reichstag fire is just a matter of time.
For most of us COVID is like a cold or at worse a flu if not vaccinated, and likely absolutely nothing if you are vaccinated. So the need to force people to get vaccinated is pointless because they’re only harming themselves, but it’s their own damn choice.
Clown world.
Imagine someone honking their horn at your bedroom window all night because they wanted a McFlurry but "the machine was broken".
If all a protest does is mess with society, it'll just end up with counter-protests and civil war light edition.
There's no guarantee of due process in Canada's constitution?
The whole protest has been illegal from the start (violating the highway traffic act)
> Last week they arrested an old man for merely honking his horn to show support.
Source? Either way, yes, there was an injunction granted specifically against honking horns.
> So, anyone attending a protest is joining an illegal activity...and can have their accounts frozen.
No, anyone attending this specific protest at this specific time when there is a provincial state of an emergency (and now the invoking of the federal emergencies act, which requires provincial assent) is joining an illegal activity, and anyone providing monetary support to said illegal activity may have their accounts frozen.
> There's no guarantee of due process in Canada's constitution?
There is indeed. The Emergencies Act is subject to the charter of rights and freedoms, section 7 of which covers legal rights[1] and section 1 of which lays out how these rights are subject to "such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society". It'll be up to the courts to decide after the fact whether these restrictions were demonstrably justified (hint: with the province declaring the protest illegal, declaring a state of emergency last week, and the protesters totally refusing to move: they will be found justified. Our court system is not nearly as politicized as our southern neighbours')
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and...
Man arrested for honking
He appears to have been arrested for refusing to identify himself when stopped (it looks like he was intending to, then emboldened by the cameraman opted not to). That's bog standard highway traffic act stuff - if you're stopped driving, you have to show your license, registration and proof of insurance if asked.
To say "arrested for honking" feels misleading - it seems reasonable to suggest that if he followed standard Highway Traffic Act stuff he would have been on his way with a warning/ticket/whatever is done presently to stop the honking, doesn't it? I'm open to have misunderstood, I'm not even qualified to be an armchair lawyer.
But you might be better served to first examine the reasons why so many Canadians are in favour of various restrictions that have been introduced (and eventually once again withdrawn), by every party and every level of government in the last two years. It's mostly because we have much more faith than our American counterparts that our institutions will do what's right for all Canadians.
What about an online petition or a bake sale?
Less sarcastically: there are frequently situations in which a majority may democratically decide to make a minority behave in a certain way. I think it is relatively clear from opinion polls that a majority of Canadians do not agree with the behavior of the truckers. So writing to an MP or running for parliament will probably be a fruitless strategy. Hence the protests.
It would be trivial to find unpleasant, widely-condemned situations in which you and I would probably be united in our opposition.
The difficulty comes when the minority being forced to behave in a certain way are non-appealing in some way. Democracies need to find a way of dealing with them. It will be horse-trading, negotiation, cajoling, appealing and arguing.
None of those strategies were applied by the Trudeau government before they became hysterical and tried to claim they were having a Canadian version of Jan 6th.
I am certain that many Canadians both do not agree with the apparent demands of the truckers and simultaneously do not agree with the application of the Emergencies Act.
I found this podcast interesting: three interviews with people who were doxxed as donors. I disagreed with the first two, but the third one seemed like a very sane person: https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/756-how-i-ended-up-suppor...
Getting these people off the street isn't authoritarianism, it's preventing the inmates from running the asylum.
Can't you make a distinction with the bridge blockade and the rest?
To me the Canadian government doesn't look authoritarian, it looks weak. For weeks you have people threatening public order as well as public health. To accommodate this implies that a minority can intimidate the majority of the population and legitimate authority through use of force.
> violating the highway traffic act
Show me the man, and I'll find you a crime. Seriously man, what the fuck is the "Highway Traffic Act."
> an injunction granted specifically against honking horns
Let's simply declare a benign activity that people do thousands of times per day in every city, illegal!
> this specific protest at this specific time
But also, you better not show up at similar protests at other times either
> provincial state of an emergency
Yep, the blanket "emergency declaration" that makes virtually everything we don't like, illegal
> joining an illegal activity
because we just declared whatever you are doing to be illegal
> anyone providing monetary support to said illegal activity may have their accounts frozen
so you don't have to be a protester to be engulfed by this, just offering $5 so someone can get a coffee means you could have your accounts frozen. Cast a wide net, indeed!
> It'll be up to the courts to decide after the fact
Yes, by judges who are appointed by Canada's federal government!
Isn't there a court order forbidding that? Ignoring court orders is a crime and there is plenty of due process around that.
Managed to hurt him too.
Imagine being in law enforcement. Coming home to your family and brag about how you physically hurt an old man and bullied him out of his constitutional rights.
And this is entire event has been orchestrated by "people with power" with a political agenda which is hostile to most of the population.
It has almost exactly zero organic content. No amount of rhetoric and gaslighting is going to change that.
> The top donation, $215,000, has a comment that says “processed but not recorded.” The next top donation, at $90,000, is listed as from Thomas M. Siebel. CTV News has reached out to the American billionaire by the same name but has not confirmed it is his donation.
Those standards being "billionaires donated, therefore illegitimate" as far as I can tell.
This is the first I'm hearing of this. Which neighborhoods were burned to the ground?
In Portland Oregon, BLM spray painted buildings, burnt many things in the middle of the road and sidewalks, destroyed property, physically assaulted, broke windows, and ripped down bus stops and statues. They formulated an incursion into a state building putting the lives of Oregon's law officers in jeopardy (Molotov cocktails throw at them).
Depending on your persuasion, you might argue some justification occurred in Minneapolis Minnesota. But there are clearly limits when destruction of property and looting fall far outside of any tenuous reflection of social unrest. (Target?)
Seattle Washington was worse. Much much worse. The city directed their police force to yield a central block of the city to armed rebellion. People, one as I recall completely innocent, were shot and killed.
There was not the immediacy nor the widespread arrests to match the level of violence and destruction in these three locations. In terms of accuracy and spirit I believe you have missed the mark in your description of action and response.
There have been some good points in this thread otherwise and I'm still thinking about them. But you would be better served by re-evaluating your position on this topic.
Mid-level police commanders unilaterally decided to abandon the precinct, which allowed CHAZ to form. Not “the city,” and not in the face of “armed rebellion.”
(Yes, there were guns and unfortunate violence later: after the police left. Their job is maintaining public order; they failed.)
https://theoryreader.org/2021/03/30/french-philosopher-miche...
Here is a more conservative one (yet still, the essay is very good), which also brings up how he knowingly spread HIV to young men in San Francisco:
https://newcriterion.com/issues/1993/3/the-perversions-of-m-...
BLM arose from several extrajudicial murders by police after a history of racism and mistreatment by the state. The trucker protest is essentially about commerce policy in an already very heavily regulated industry. It's hard to imagine other similar jobs where mandating your hours of sleep is discussed by a federal legislature (possibly international treaty too?).
The perspective is important because these are obviously not the same thing.
> The inquiry launched by Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s government into the scale of foreign funds aimed at damaging the province’s oil and gas industry has issued its long-awaited report, finding that foreign donors provided nearly $1.3 billion in funds for Canadian environmental campaigns between 2003 and 2019.
There were BLM protests in Canada.
Europe is opening up. I guess Science different in Canada.
But its not Gov following science, at best it's Gov following sentiment. People are right fed up of the overreach and want no more rules around masks, passports and lockdowns. There's no more tolerating restrictions for something that's a minor cold, can be vaccinated against if you are worried or early treated with antiviral using both new and repurposed drugs.
The restrictions have already been poised to be lifted on the strength of said advice. This was already on the horizon and one can only imagine that protestors purposefully decided to move on this on the tail end of these policies.
With that being said, how do you get noticed? I remember there was a Wall Street protest of some kind right after the crash. They sat quietly in parks and protested because people got annoyed when they were "inconvenienced" when they protested outside buildings. Their protests fizzled out and was forgotten. Even though large swathes of people were pissed off with Wall Street.
Back in college, we had a protest. Few people from the media were there and we were protesting on campus, doing it "right". The media people were like "go do something...we cannot cover a bunch of college kids sitting around!"
Unfortunately protests(the ones you agree with and the ones your disagree with) run by smaller groups are going to get noticed only when they do "illegal" things.
The reason they fizzled is they had absolutely zero marketing experience. When they finally got down to listing their demands, it was a 43 point manifesto from save the penquins to truther investigations.
BLM really didn’t get anywhere (they initially had a ~14 point demands) until someone came up with “Defund!”. Marketers would get you down to 2 or 3 items, but two syllables was brilliant.
Someone in this thread mentioned "civil disobedience" movements. Studying the history of such movements (anti-apartheid politics, workers movements, womens rights, anti-colonial struggles), we quickly realize although having a mass of non-violent protesters (popular support) is important, the actual balance of power lies with more militant groups putting actual pressure (sabotage, blockages, attacks) on our overlords to change things for the better.
That sounds pretty healthy. I mean, having a central authority deciding for everyone else is precisely what's wrong with our society.
It also doesn't help to keep a unified front when you have many people injured/traumatized/incarcerated due to police actions (political repression). So while i agree the Occupy movement was a colossal failure, i don't agree with your interpretation of why.
I don't think that is true. I've personally witnessed several major movements in France which involved literally millions of people on the streets, some of which were successful and some not. Let's look over the past 20 years:
- the anti-CPE movement (CPE was a reform for quasi-slave labor for people fresh out of studies) won after months of intense and violent struggle (think molotov cocktails) and university occupations
- the national suburbs riots of 2005 (caused by cops murdering two kids, and Sarkozy raging racist discourse) failed after weeks of intense and violent struggle ; nothing changed except some people were jailed
- in 2010-2011, the protests against retirement reform gathered over a million people every week and the government was on the verge of collapse (we no longer has gas in the petrol stations) yet the movement was never very violent, the government never ceded and so the movement lost
- in 2016, millions of people demonstrated and blockaded for months against working law reform, yet Macron (at the time "socialist" minister of economy) passed it without a vote (article 49-3 of the constitution allows the government to bypass the parliament, and it had not been used in decades) ; this was the first mass movement after the State of emergency (2015) and we can see the fascist cops were on free wheels as we started getting serious life-threatening injuries at every demo even in smaller cities
- in 2018, with the gilets jaunes, despite approval by a vast majority of the population and the protests spreading to even the tiniest countryside cities for over a year and half, the movement failed as it was teargased/grenaded/batoned to hospital (or to death, as with Zineb Redouane) and MANY people were either jailed for extensive periods of time or crippled for life
All of these protests i've noted had very clear objectives and were very massive. Some succeeded, some not. What's the difference between those cases? The only difference is the decisions by the government and the amount of blood they were willing to spill. If you want to know what kind of blood spilling i'm talking about, there's a gilets jaunes collection here: TRIGGER WARNING http://lemurjaune.fr/
On the other hand, studying the history of political repression gives us much clearer ideas on how/why social movements can succeed or fail. The fact that INTERPOL started with a "international police conference on the peril of anarchism" for example, or early collaboration between french/russian/american services to hunt down radical troublemakers. Or the Church committee investigation about FBI's COINTELPRO. Or in France, the many post-WWII scandals involving pro-nazi police prefects (like Maurice Papon who ordered to kill and deports hundreds-to-thousands of algerians in a single week of october 1961). Or the fascist militias organized by De Gaulle (Services d'Action Civique) to attack May 68 demos. Or... and the list goes on.
Modern States have spend considerable resources on counter-insurgency strategies because that's how they hold power. Whether opposition movements have a common purpose is irrelevant as long as the State has the powers and is willing to cripple or kill a significant portion of the demonstrators should their organizing start to be effective.
They flopped because they had no plan. Even today, you can’t come up with any concrete thing/legislation they wanted.
The masters of Wall Street didn’t have to lift a finger.
> The masters of Wall Street didn’t have to lift a finger.
No, because they had their obedient militia (the police) teargas, beat up and arrest everyone for them. And the media to spew lies along the lines of "we don't know what these people want" because their desires can't be confined in a single bill/reform.
These people wanted what Barack Obama promised and denied them: hope and change. Food & housing & healthcare for free for all. Putting an end to racial policing. Etc. They were met with rubber bullets and detention. And now clueless people like you who were not on the ground (i personally was involved with other Occupy movements in Europe at the same time) now judge them based on State/corporate propaganda.
That's pretty representative of any form of collective organizing defying the status quo. The civil rights activists of the 60s in the USA were equally derided by the media and repressed by the police in their day, just like the gilets jaunes of today's France.
Thanks for so eloquently making my point that they had no plan.
> clueless… who were not on the ground
Best of luck with projection and raging about conspiracies on the internets.
You've mentioned "conspiracy theory" twice now. What's a conspiracy theory about what i said? Are you implying police/political repression does not exist and we all live in a free and democratic society? Or something else entirely?
Doing illegal stuff to get attention only makes me less supportive of any cause, personally, whether it's lefty or righty bullshit - I don't like this, I didn't like the Jan 6 riots, and I don't like a lot of what I saw from BLM, Occupy Wall Street, and many others over the years. Even if I agreed with a few of the underlying demands or issues (I'm against vax mandates, I do think Derek Chauvin should be in prison, there was a ton of bank fraud in the 00s and high level people should have been jailed, etc).
Emergency powers weren't invoked in 2020 when Canada's railways were blocked for months. In fact, at the time Trudeau was quoted saying things like "Politicians should not be telling the police how to deal with protesters"
The double standards in this country are staggering at times.
...Now the fact a bunch of donors are American and not Canadian is... Fascinating...
I'm not sure what to do about that little chestnut... Sorry Canada. Welcome to politics by free trade I guess???
>I'm not sure what to do about that little chestnut... Sorry Canada. Welcome to politics by free trade I guess???
That'd make sense if they were only freezing the funds that were received from outside the country, but according to the article they're freezing the accounts of "anyone linked with the protests".
Taking a second look through the media coverage, I've gotta laugh though... To think that your Federal capital should be immune from a glorified sit in, and to go and make a big fluff about demanding to "take it back"
...Yet no moment of reflection in this is a symbolic gesture to the people of Ottawa on what the Federal mandates have taken from the protestors. It's like people are shouting completely past one another. It's one of the most sublime examples of dysfunction writ large I've lived through to date.
Sad that...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
As I wrote elsewhere in this thread [1], I recommend taking a look at this channel or other extended livestreams to get a view from the ground if your impression of this event has been mostly shaped by articles. That recommendation goes for all major protests, especially if you think you disagree with the people protesting.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30340938
Don't get me wrong I like his videos but I also like hearing from the other side for good measure. Perhaps it is pedantic to point out that everyone has a political leaning but I think it is good to be upfront so that people can consider the biases of the input in order to make a more informed opinion. Or perhaps others should gauge the political bias themselves? That's a question of philosophy and ethics. I wish that everyone had enough skepticism and critical thinking to question everything and be conscious of their measures of validity and invalidity.
Edit: As I note in the linked comment, this channel is openly supportive of the protests. As I also write there, a quick YouTube search will yield a large variety of other sources. The important thing is finding sources with long and unedited footage. As Jacques Ellul observed, "propaganda ceases where simple dialogue begins." (This seems to be the primary driver of interest in long-form podcasts.)
I chose to share a channel with a positive bias because 1.) in my view Frei does a respectable job engaging counter-protestors with opposing views and 2.) in my view, mainstream coverage of this skews more negative than is warranted based on having watched many hours of livestream footage.
*edit: Ironically I've been rate limited and can't continue this conversation, lmao
So how… how would a moderation log and strict policies make HN a better place?
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30340588
Given:
1) HN was started by / is moderated by "computer nerds" (IMO you're hardcore if you write it in lisp)
2) 'dang' is the only acknowledged public moderator (some small? number of additional secret moderators also exist)
It follows that:
It's difficult and doesn’t scale to "manually" apply rate limiting. Most / all such action is highly automated.
At least that's my wild, possibly way-off-base guess.
This doesn't happen to me often, but does happen when I comment in rapid succession.
The edit button is still not showing up for me, though. Do you have any idea why that might be or if there's something I can do to fix it?
Imgur screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/ZEWIJeW
Edit: Was there a thread-level edit ban or something? Because I can now edit this post.
https://imgur.com/a/b7H00ny
Users flagged that comment.
I blame the big media for sowing so much division because they flatout refuse to write a positive story about the other side.
https://youtube.com/user/DCNews2Share
What ever the YouTube channel attribute flag to throttle visibility is, is probably set to max as they never get more than a few hundred views.
Ottawa Walks: https://www.youtube.com/c/Ottawalks/videos
Pre-convoy this user was just doing walking live streams around the city.
I am all for demonstrating, but I think it is a little ridiculous what they are doing.
The BLM protest in Ottawa showed up, stayed peaceful, protested, and left. As did all of the many protests I saw while living in downtown Ottawa.
I have friends living in the area still and they were subjected to a sleepless week of harassment by damagingly loud train horns and people giving them shit for choosing to wear a mask.
That's not a peaceful protest. It's not just discomfort. It's a crime. And the fact they're behaving better now doesn't erase their past behaviour. I think that having a discussion on ending mandates is fine. It's a good time for that.
But I also want to see them face legal consequences for their behaviour toward the innocent citizens of Centretown. And I don't like how they tried to blackmail the government into making changes by hurting their fellow citizens. I think that is undemocratic.
These were train horns that were well over 100db outside and still over 80db inside people's apartments. Loud enough to cause permanent hearing damage. So yes, if you're doing something that can cause lasting damage, it's violence.
There's a wide gulf between honking loudly enough to annoy and honking loudly enough to injure. It's really not that hard to not cross it, but they did, for days on end.
As I said - they seem to be behaving better now. Maybe it's petty and vindictive, but I don't think it's okay to just let that kind of thing pass without consequences for the perpetrators.
I bet some of the people they were tormenting are anti-vaxxers themselves. Everyone gets annoyed if you keep them awake all night, every night.
My personal opinion: your threshold to kill free speech is way, WAY too low.
Anyone here with on the ground experience about the nighttime situation?
Perhaps reading the comment in context of the comment chain is necessary. I am making no claims as to the truckers, I am stating that the onus is on those who are causing damage by their "Free Speech" to adjust to avoid causing that damage, rather than on the people suffering the damage.
Took 5s to find.
Look at how casually you make these connections: speech -> noise -> sleeplessness -> damage ... therefore implying, purposefully or not, that speech = violence.
No. Speech is NOT violence. I suggest you get a pair of earplugs.
Sadly, I doubt you even recognise your contribution to the polarisation of society and removal of nuance from social discourse.
> No. Speech is NOT violence. I suggest you get a pair of earplugs.
Threats. That's one form of violence. Yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, that's another.
Threat is instigating fear of injury. Violence is causing injury. You can have your own personal definition, but from a legal perspective, threat is not a violent crime.
Yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre isn't even illegal. Let alone a violence. Inciting panic is illegal. If you incite panic through yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre, you'll answer for inciting panic and will bear responsibility for the actual consequences, if any, not for the yelling.
https://dictionary.thelaw.com/violence/
this violence is not confined to an actual assault of the person, [..] whatever goes to intimidate or overawe, by the apprehension of personal violence, or by fear of life [..] equally falls within its limits
Instead, read a little further: The term “violence” is synonymous with “physical force,” and the two are used interchangeably, in relation to assaults
Speech is not physical force, and is not an assault, and is not violence.
It doesn't have to be either one or the other. A more conciliatory approach by the Canadian government would pay off better. My personal opinion, only. I might be wrong, who knows?...
I cannot have a festival out on my lawn for similar reasons...
This whole thread is people arguing about something they evidently know nothing about.
Free speech has nothing to do with it.
If that is the only type of demonstration that gets your point across, ok, but I seriously doubt that is the case.
Unless Trudeau does that, and god forbid show some humility, this will not end good for Canada.
In what way will this "not end good for Canada"?
Most likely the blockades will be shut down and everyone else will be able to get on with life.
"Most likely the blockades will be shut down and everyone else will be able to get on with life."
Except for all people who can't because they got unlucky in the vaccine lottery, like Maddie de Garay:
https://thecovidblog.com/2021/07/08/maddie-de-garay-ohio-13-...
Note: de Garay is a child. Zero benefit from Covid vaccines to her or anyone else. It's bad enough when parents submit their children for medical experimentation like that, but when governments force them to do so it's even worse.
Well I can see you're not interested in things like facts, evidence, science or reality. Never mind then.
An absolute handful of children have been (possibly; causality unclear) sickened by the COVID-19 vaccine.
About 1,000 children have died of COVID-19 in the US (https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-Focus-...).
The exact details of why the virus hits children less hard are unclear; one theory is that the primary cause of lung-failure death in adults is a cytokine storm (i.e. the immune system reacting to the virus by attacking too many healthy cells at a rate the body can't repair), and a younger, more naive immune system is less likely to have picked up whatever environmentally-primed triggers COVID-19 aggravates to kick off a cytokine storm.
... but sadly, "less likely" isn't "didn't happen," and if that causality is correct, some thousand unlucky kids have gotten snake-eyes on the immune dice and died of a disease that we can now vaccinate for. That's an order of magnitude more children than the number we even suspect of being sickened by the vaccine.
We should vaccinate those who haven't been vaccinated because the risk balance is pretty clear at this point from the gross numbers we have on under-18 vaccination already.
from your source:
> COVID-19 deaths are those with confirmed or presumed COVID-19
i.e. 1000 children have died with COVID, not of COVID. Big difference.
1 - https://youtu.be/pcGsqLRyKo0?t=67
2 - https://givesendgo.com/FreedomConvoy2022
If you can't even describe the situation accurately, why should anyone care about your take on it?
Of the ~90k GiveSendGo donors, ~35k were from Canada. Population: 36-38m.
Here's one of the top donors confirming their entry was accurate: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/nb-sussex-corne...
This doesn't look like public discontent, it looks like a small group of motivated contrarians and their international backers.
You know what looks like public discontent? The public coming together to stop trucks disrupting their lives and their city - https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/battle-of-billings...
And none of this answers the question about how this will "not end good for canada".
I don't have the right to go lay on my horn outside your house, and for good reason.
If not, then maybe not the most unbiased source of information.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/coutts-protest-blocka...
After all, extremists either left or right, terrorists and criminals have been doing that for years on Signal.
The rest of the truckers will have to obtain a proof of vaccination BEFORE they are aloowed to drive their trucks again.
Ottawa residents aren’t forced to live in that city.
Why not do the obvious thing: send the police in to arrest people who won't leave. Tow their trucks. That worked at the border the other day -- why wouldn't it work in Ottawa too? It's not like the Canadian police haven't dealt with large protests in the capital before.
If that approach doesn't work, then it might make sense use emergency powers. But why go straight to emergency powers without trying to clear people out the normal way?
For me the main takeaway from the protests so far is that the Canadian police are either afraid to, or unwilling to, enforce the law, and the government at all levels is afraid to make the police do their jobs.
They claimed they didn't have enough manpower and needed help from the provincial and federal governments.
Why they were so poorly prepared when the convoy was broadcasting its intentions in advance is a great question, but it also doesn't help now.
The Ottawa Police Service abandoned the people of the city for weeks and now can't resolve the problem on its own.
So I guess the answer to "why go straight to emergency powers without trying to clear people out the normal way?" is because the people whose job it was to handle this the normal way raised the white flag about 24 hours in and haven't done much about it since.
This is not correct. The Ottawa police have repeatedly said that they're ready to arrest anyone breaking the law but currently it is not illegal to park in public roads with trucks and the truck drivers are mostly abiding by all laws. Less than half a dozen people have been arrested because there's no laws being broken.
The reason they are not doing any enforcement is because they have no legal authority to kick out the bulk of the protestors.
Fireworks in the downtown core nightly. Air horns for days on end. Harassment, assaults and intimidation targeted towards minorities or those wearing a mask. Public urination, defication.
Even “it’s not illegal to park on public roads” is false because they’re parked across all lanes, blocking north/south access to several blocks.
Enforcement is non existent. The police are so afraid of escalating what are clearly a volatile group that they’ve opted to arrest only when it’s unavoidable. Whether or not that I keeping a lid on the situation is up for debate, but what isn’t up for debate is that laws are being broken and it’s making life hell for residents.
Oh, also, three days ago protestors jammed the emergency lines with phony calls. It would ring until the line disconnected. It’s a miracle no deaths were directly attributed to this.
As noted in the release, blocking a public road the way they've been doing seems to be a violation of section 423(g) of the Criminal Code: https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-423.ht...
Note that the Criminal Code defines "highway" as "a road to which the public has the right of access, and includes bridges over which or tunnels through which a road passes."
There's also mischief - section 430(1)(c): https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-430.ht...
They've certainly interfered with Centretown residents' lawful enjoyment of their property.
Not to mention Highway Traffic Act violations. Plus other Criminal Code violations for the train horns (and while we're at it, even by-law violations). The reality is that the Ottawa Police have had plenty of tools at their disposal but have chosen not to. I don't mean to blame the individual officers - I've seen quite a few of them on the live streams trying their best. I see it more as a failure of leadership.
And I get that during a protest, it's better for police to err on the side of not nailing people for every infraction they can. But it seems like they have the tools to do a lot of than they've done - and have had these tools available since the beginning.
Also, in fairness - it could be they have intel about weapons like the ones the RCMP seized at the Alberta blockade today. That would explain their reluctance, and would mean they are really stuck between a rock and a hard place because if they step up enforcement and kick off an armed conflict, they'll get blamed for that, too. So it might be a bit of a no-win situation.
But if that's the case, it's not very visible from the outside - making the whole situation understandably frustrating for citizens who feel like they are paying $350mil a year and not getting enough protection in return.
The police have begged repeatedly for people to report lawbreaking to them so they can arrest more people.
Train horns in residential areas, let alone at night, are against the law. Harassment is against the law. Parking vehicles in intersections is against the law. Do I need to go on? Stop pretending this isn't what residents are taking issue with, no one gives a fuck about protesting in and of itself.
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-423.ht...
Highway, in this context, means any public road.
Early on, you could maybe argue you came to protest and there was really nowhere else to park. But after a few days, given the convoy's stated intent was to shut down Ottawa, it's difficult to argue that you're not trying to make residents abstain from their lawful right to drive down Kent St. or Wellington St if you're still blocking the roads when there are plenty of other places you could park and then walk or bus to the hill to protest.
Here they are around 11pm last night: https://youtu.be/bZ6d2rnUvi8?t=1988
Plenty of truck horns, a train horn, and someone continually engaging his Jake brake. There are apartments 50 meters away on Sparks St. And if memory serves, there are plenty more on Queen St. close enough to be kept awake by that much noise at that time of night. It's difficult to see how that's not depriving residents of lawful enjoyment of their property.
That's an indictable offense, which makes it an arrestable offense as per the code:
495 (1) A peace officer may arrest without warrant
(a) a person who has committed an indictable offence or who, on reasonable grounds, he believes has committed or is about to commit an indictable offence;
I realize this isn't what you want, but the law means what it says, not what you think it should mean. If you want to change it, you're free to run for political office.
But on that note, a big issue we face is that while anyone can decide to run for election in theory, in practice it's way, way easier to become an MP if you're already wealthy and can afford to take the time away from work to run a successful campaign.
So in reality, running to become a member of Parliament is least accessible to those whose voices need to be heard to most. I don't know what the right answer is, but I don't think that harassing your fellow citizens to try and blackmail the government into doing what you want is the way to go.
If I left my car parked in the middle of the road in Ottawa it would be towed within a couple of hours. It's complete bullshit that there are no laws for the police to enforce.
Some of the reasons listed as to the reluctance of towing companies to participate: - the heavy truck towing companies get much of their business from the truck industry. If these towing companies were to tow away these heavy trucks, they may lose much of that business. - many of the towing companies support the freedom convoy and their participants - fear of violence against tow truck operators if they try to tow away these trucks
see https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-protest-truck-t...
the police and government had ample time to prepare for the protest.
They should have restricted vehicle access near Parliament Hill once they heard the protesters were heading to Ottawa.
There must be day to day things disrupted enough that someone's job has been disrupted with this all going on that can be reallocated to this.
also from the CBC article, excerpts:
====
While the city likely has some vehicles with heavy-duty towing capacity for large OC Transpo vehicles, they also did not provide a response when asked how many they had.
Hooking up a commercial truck to a heavy-duty tower — sometimes called a "wrecker" — takes at least 30 minutes, Whan said.
It also takes time to tow the trucks to wherever they're being relocated to, and if the City of Ottawa did attempt it, they'd need to find a sizable space to put them.
Police don't think towing the trucks is an effective solution, said Matt Skof, president of the Ottawa Police Association.
"You can tow all you want — they're just going to return to the location, so it hasn't resolved the issue," Skof said. "And where are you putting all these vehicles?"
====
“This leads us, as a leader and as a country, to make a choice: Do we tolerate these people? Over 80% of the population of Quebec have done their duty by getting the shot. They are obviously not the issue in this situation.”- this is according to this article: https://thepulse.one/2022/01/03/prime-minister-justin-trudea...
The bureaucratic state can freeze your bank account, revoke your license, and shut down your life, all remotely.
And now they've set precedent for future protests. I don't know how anyone who considers themselves a liberal or Leftist can support this.
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/anonymous-donations-to-convoy-as-...
Assuming both police force (as many minorities have experienced) and administrative force can be abused, is one worse for society or more susceptible to abuse?
So, what's left to litigate is whether the threat/coercion of "you will lose your job unless you let us do this to you" makes the definition no longer apply.
I would say that (hypothetical) refugees fleeing a government-orchestrated pogrom are still victims of "political violence" even though they had the "choice" of leaving the country (and their job); but perhaps some would argue they are merely choosing to avoid a mandate passed by their democratic government.
"At about 8 p.m., police said a large farm tractor and a semi-truck attempted to ram a police vehicle. The officer in the vehicle was able to reposition and avoid the collision." https://globalnews.ca/news/8618494/alberta-coutts-border-pro...
Lol, ok then. You can redefine words to mean different things than is commonly accepted all you want, but good luck trying that with a judge.
This novel use of trucks for protest has been enormously effective and I expect we'll see this replicated all over from now on.
Whereas in the past it took a mass movement of thousand upon thousands to block a bridge, now a few dozen people in trucks can do the same thing.
Trucks enable a protest to be incredibly paralyzing with a fraction of the amount of protestors.
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2022/02/12/two-thirds-of-canadia...
The current approach seems to be a lot more mild than what the public would accept.
You have to remember that polls show a numerical outcome, not necessarily how it will filter through the various rules.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationwide_opinion_polling_for...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidentia...
2. Even those that were off were off by just a few percentage points. This is a 2 to 1 ratio.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/sam-wang-p...
The odds set in 2016 by various groups were often wildly bearish on Trump winning, the polls were not so much. Political polls and surveys are usually not off the mark by all that much, especially if you have good demography data.
Surveys can be manipulated but they are also much better than flying blind with no data at all.
At most it would be extra sets of hands to arrest people and deal with the truck blockades.
And there is no plan to use the military.
In the early 20th century, eugenic policies were considered progressive among many Canadians, including some socialists, feminists, farmers and psychiatrists. Their assumption was that Canadian society could be improved by encouraging reproduction among certain groups — particularly Anglo-Saxon Protestants — and discouraging or limiting reproduction among other groups, including Eastern European immigrants and, increasingly, Indigenous people. (Similarly, immigration policies like the Chinese head tax were aimed at limiting the population of Asian Canadians.)
Many prominent Canadians of that era were advocates of eugenics philosophy and eugenic sterilization, including Dr. E.W. McBride, Professor Carrie Derick and Dr. Helen MacMurchy. Support for eugenic sterilization was also expressed in the 1920s by many prominent Alberta women, including Emily Murphy and Nellie McClung. Maternal feminists like McClung, for example, argued that women were the mothers and guardians of their “race.” They therefore championed legislation, including sterilization, which aimed to curtail prostitution, alcoholism and “mental defectiveness.”"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization_in_Ca...
Jun 3, 2021 "Indigenous women still forced, coerced into sterilization" https://globalnews.ca/news/7920118/indigenous-women-steriliz...
How about... Life-Safe Code. DNA is effectively code, code is editable for the betterment of people, riiiight? And it's Life-Safe - like if you wanted to oppose Life-Safe Code you're saying "I want code that isn't safe for life to promulgate", which should help diminish the effectiveness of any rhetoric towards enshrining inherent rights that protect people's read/write/execution permissions over their own genetic code. And if you want Free Lifeware, or whatever, well, do you have problems with seatbelts? Because clearly there is a major inconsistency to your worldview if you accept seatbelts but won't promote the deployment of Life-Safe Code to all humans by any means deemed necessary.
Do you understand how much $ worth of mobilization has to happen to safely attempt to deal with people who say they’re going to start shooting at you in a city?
It’s a lot of time, money, & other resources. You can choose to cognitive dissonance this fact, but it doesn’t change it.
IMO, Canada didn’t use as much force as they should’ve to remove people who literally told them they were going to fight to the death instead of moving. Pretty big threat.
This lets the feds use their own police to enforce existing law, for example.
On one hand, if the protests really were peaceful, I do not believe the government should shut them down.
On the other hand, I’ve heard the protests have caused millions in trade to be shut down which I would not consider a peaceful act. If some non-citizen entity shut down millions in trade, I don’t think it would be viewed as peaceful.
Should the right to peaceful protest include the right to halt trade at this scale? Are the reports of halted trade overblown?
Since when did economic disruption become violence? I just don't understand. It makes zero sense to redefine violence to mean "something that inconveniences me, that I disagree with", Where does that end?
When next the liberals want to protest something - an oil pipeline for instance (economic disruption) - would that also be called violence?
Just so it's clear, there were environmental protests that _were_ cleared out for the same economic disruption reasons. There were concerns that it was not the right thing to do and too aggressive at the time, but I believe in retrospect that many consider it to have been the right course of action.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/what-you-need-to-know-about-th...
...This is also why JIT logistics is incredibly fragile. Our economic sects have been shirking the inherent risk of long tail disruptive events for the better part of my life.
There is a certain schadenfreude to seeing the come-uppances.
Let that happen for long and you'll quickly have thousands of workers who need to feed their families converging in the blockade to take matters into their own hands.
It's not just the immediate impact, either. Canadian manufacturers who sell to the U.S. (which is pretty much all of them) are constantly fighting against 'buy American' legislation that makes it more likely companies will shift production out of Ontario - and trade disruptions make it even harder to compete if Canada looks like a flaky trading partner that can't even keep its own border open. And manufacturing workers know what's at stake, and things would get ugly quickly.
So it's not just inconveniencing corporations - it's threatening the short and long term viability of tend of thousands of jobs and the people working those jobs aren't likely to take it laying down.
So blocking trade isn't off the table, but anyone who does it had better expect the government to treat it as a public order emergency because if they don't, it will very quickly become a public order emergency on its own.
Our charter right is peaceful assembly. If the protests were not peaceful, the police would be right to shut them down. The reason the Ottawa police cannot do anything for weeks is because they are peaceful.
>On the other hand, I’ve heard the protests have caused millions in trade to be shut down which I would not consider a peaceful act.
That would be an incorrect characterization. The bridge blockade did not touch the tunnel. https://www.post-gazette.com/news/nation/2022/02/12/Detroit-...
Furthermore, a blockade that isn't violent... isn't violence.
>If some non-citizen entity shut down millions in trade, I don’t think it would be viewed as peaceful.
Yes Trudeau has alleged that these blockades/occupations/sieges are in fact the US government. Even using the name occupation is a international definition. Military occupations would certainly justify the measures being taken by the Canadian governments.
I even agree, if the USA has a military occupation over Canada. Trudeau is right to do what he has done.
That's not what is happening. Trudeau is looking to squash peaceful political protests and the propaganda of calling the protesters racists and white supremacists is insane.
>Should the right to peaceful protest include the right to halt trade at this scale? Are the reports of halted trade overblown?
If the protests 'are at this scale' absolutely. Though yes, clearly the detroit tunnel was open. They even had 1 lane open for the bridge. It's completely overblown.
The correct action for the governments to do when protesters are blockading isn't to send in the guns and tear them down. It's to open conversation with the peaceful protesters. Liberal MP Joel Lightbound is a smart man. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-mp-politicization-p...
the protesters just need a roadmap to no restrictions and human rights being returned.
Trudeau has taken this action because there is no roadmap. He wishes to keep the totalitarian state.
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Trudeau will not be calling in the military, he said.(...)
The move will “supplement provincial and territorial capacity to address the blockades,” Trudeau said, and will afford more powers to local police forces.(...) The police will be given more tools to restore order in places where public assemblies can constitute illegal and dangerous activities, such as blockades and occupations as seen in Ottawa, the Ambassador Bridge and elsewhere. These tools include strengthening their ability to impose fines or imprisonment,” he said. (...) The measures will be “time-limited, geographically targeted as well as reasonable and proportionate to the threats they are meant to address,” he said. “The Emergencies Act will be used to strengthen and support law enforcement agencies at all levels across the country. This is about keeping Canadians safe, protecting people’s jobs and restoring confidence in our institutions.”
Trudeau said the move could be used to render “essential services” such as contracting trucks to tow vehicles blocking streets.(..)
Financial institutions will be “authorized or directed to take measures, including regulating and prohibiting the use of property to fund or support illegal blockades,” Trudeau said. (...) The act will also enable the RCMP to enforce municipal bylaws and provincial offences, Trudeau said. (..) Trudeau said he wanted to be “equally clear” about what the act does not entail, and said he would not be calling in the Canadian Forces.(..)
“We’re not suspending the fundamental rights or overriding the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we are not limiting people’s freedom of speech, we are not limiting freedom of peaceful assembly (or) preventing people from exercising their right to protest legally,” Trudeau said.
Pretending to express concern about charter rights with respect to towing some trucks away is quite the theatre.
Meanwhile, Canada spent the last two years stomping on charter rights: mobility (provincial borders closed, unjustified quarantine requirements even for vaccinated Canadians), free expression (court orders to silence anti-vaxxers), and free assembly (unvaccinated in Quebec are unable to attend weddings, funerals, religious services or pretty much anything with over 25 people) to name a few. Ironically, a lot of these are the things that actually caused the protests.
It’s been disappointing to see judges go along with it all (Canada has a big opt-out for charter rights, in that “reasonable limits” are allowed if they can be “demonstrably justified”), but quite ridiculous to see that statement in this context.
Indeed, and there is ample case law from the Supreme Court of Canada that provides guidance to judges as to how to apply that section of the Charter.
R v. Oakes was one of the seminal cases in that regard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Oakes
I feel like in the US, states, the federal government and the judiciary tend to be more adversarial and this can be quite useful.
Apart from the quarantine requirements and possibly your point about free expression (though I'm not sure which incident that refers to and you provided no references), none of the rest of that list is under the purview of the federal government and is instead decided upon by the provinces.
In case you aren't familiar, Canadian provinces have near total control over most areas, with the federal government typically stepping in only in areas that were explicitly granted to it. The provinces, for instance, are responsible for all healthcare related decisions within their borders. The federal government licenses drugs and treatments as a centralized body for all provinces, though I believe here too the provinces can take some steps on their own. Provinces can equally ignore the charter rights of citizens for a set period of time by invoking a specific clause when passing legislation (it's been done several times recently). Provinces wholly own their mineral rights, including into the waters on their borders.
The point I am making with this explanation is that the issues the convoy began protesting (that truckers had to be vaccinated to cross the US/Canada border) made sense to protest federally. Once it was apparent the US had implemented the same rule (coming into effect before Canada, if I remember rightly), the protest became about other mandates. These other mandates are purely provincial jurisdiction and the federal government could only hope to convince the Premiers to do what they ask. The protest is misplaced in its entirety at this point, which is why there is no cohesive direction.
In terms of the targeting of the protests — I agree, it makes little sense. But it’s a bunch of angry, not-so-rational people. In any case, I suspect the federal government does have a lot of sway, and would still be able influence quite a lot. Trudeau has a pen and a phone, as Obama would say. I’m sure that the lifting of the border exemptions was not unilateral on either side, and there are symbolic things that federal government could do (such as setting an expiration vaccine requirements for domestic air travel).
In the end, I think Trudeau has backed himself into a corner. He probably could have preempted this by “listening to the science” and recommending a relaxation plan with a reasonable timeframe (even if it relied on provincial cooperation) before the convoy reached Ottawa — for example, the UK announced exactly this in mid-January (well before the convoy). Instead he politicized the issue with his “unacceptable views” speech, and pissed a lot of people off. Now, he has little that he can do directly (and the things above are probably off the table, since they require back-tracking) and is arguably making an even bigger mess of it (refusal to meet, going into hiding, now declaring emergency measures).
I suspect that the current rush to open in many US states is a recognition of the same underlying sentiment, and a desire to avoid political issues.
[1] https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/covid-19-pandemic-restr...