I know that opponents of the current gov are enjoying this line recently, but our government is so far from totalitarianism that this seems silly to me.
The real problem is oligopoly, not fascism or anything like that.
The government puts most of its effort into protecting friendly companies and industries from competition and even funneling taxpayer money to them.
In the case of Bell & Rogers this is billions of $ a year.
Freezing the bank accounts of the trucker protest and deploying the emergency powers _was_ a bit wild. Even our top court ruled the emergency powers weren't necessary. Opening the windsor bridge, yeah, lets arrest everyone immediately, but clearing the people out of ottawa? That ones not so clear. But no matter how you slice it, the bank account freezing was a precedent that probably shouldn't have been made.
Ottawa was tricky because the jurisdiction belongs to the OPS, which fumbled the entire situation from beginning to end. It wasn't entirely clear if that was intentional either. The RCMP (federal) was brought in to break up the protests, but there was a lot of stone walling from the conservative provincial government.
There is also a world of difference between an organized protest with a specific purpose drawing awareness to a cause and thousands of people using commercial vehicles to hold a city hostage with no purpose or agenda other than a bunch of angry people unleashing their rage on the cities populous.
It was not tricky at all. CSIS (Canadian FBI equivalent) made it clear to concerned parties in government that there was no armed\violent threat[1], despite the official\reputable news media[2] claiming this repeatedly.
As regards your world of difference argument. Most of the important protests that have changed anything have involved not simple, passive attemtps to "draw awareness to a cause", but actually causing a good deal of deliberate loss of income, convenience, security and comfort. (see the suffragettes, the stonewall riots, the montgomery alabama lunch counter boycotts, chartists in 1848 etc).
The truckers, whether you agreed with them or not, were peaceful and intent on using that peaceful protest to force a change in their society. They were met with co-ordinated media defamation, the invocation of a power which should only be used in war time and the seizing of their supporters funds. Pretty much standard behavior for a Western democracy getting squeezed and needing to ditch the facade of democracy and revert to good old fashioned authoritarianism. It's never far from the surface.
The shots weren't mandated. You couldn't enjoy services like cross-country travel by air or rail, but the shots were absolutely not mandated to do most things -- at least, not by the government. To the vast majority of Canadians, those are not essential services for survival, and to those Canadians for whom they are (mostly those living in northern communities), they got about the usual amount of support they get from any federal government (which is to say, not enough, and that probably merits more discussion than the convoy protesters).
- If you worked from an office, you likely spent a good chunk of the first 12-24 months of Covid working from home. After that, it was up to your employer to put into place a policy about that.
- Addendum: if you were in the federal government, you *were* required to get an initial shot plus a booster for most parts of the federal government. Failure to do so was dealt with in a few ways depending on department, but would usually result in your being placed on unpaid leave (PSAC has made it very difficult to fire someone in general, including under these circumstances).
- If you worked a blue-collar job, what happened was massively up to your employer. Construction in particular slowed down in cities because of the extra precautions taken to avoid turning worksites into superspreader events.
- If you worked in the Forces, I gather you really didn't have much of a say in the matter, but militaries worldwide have strict and extensive vaccine schedules for all enlisted staff (and often officers, too).
The bodily autonomy argument holds some water, sure, to the same extent as you have the choice not to vaccinate your kid as they start going to school (but don't be surprised if they can't go, because we as a society have decided that things like polio don't deserve a repeat performance).
You were at no point prohibited from leaving the country, though you could de facto end up so because other countries likely wouldn't allow you in, at least, not without a Covid test.
If you were a Canadian citizen, you could not be legally denied entry into Canada, though because of the circumstances you may have been, at different points, required to either undergo a test or to go through a quarantine period.
These people were protesting being denied the ability to pick and choose what they do in society while unilaterally picking and choosing how much additional risk they want to introduce to the rest of society.
Frankly, this is probably best showcased by them deciding to just decide to take over the Ottawa baseball stadium (which is in a suburb and next to a highway) and use it and a few other places around downtown to store propane, gas, and other heating fluids since they decided to do this in the winter.
They were, at best, hypocrites, and massively reckless in the face of what was at the time still relatively speaking a medical unknown.
I'll also add, Re: the use of the Emergencies Act: regardless of what I think, a federal court has ruled it unconstitutional; the government has expressed interest in appealing the decision. I don't have a legal background, so I don't have a useful comment to add here.
I will say that it came after several weeks of multiple levels of police (but most notably, OPS) failing to do anything about the protests while tensions escalated, so it didn't come out of nowhere, and it wasn't the first thing the government tried.
> how much additional risk they want to introduce to the rest of society.
Even at the time, despite very strong claims from on high to the contrary, it was becoming more and more clear that the only people who might benefit from the shots were those taking them (and the people selling them of course).
It’s surprising to me to still see people making the "social good" argument in 2024.
Got a source on that? Virus transmission as a field of epidemiology is in general decently understood, and while vaccines aren't a panacea for everyone in every circumstance, herd immunity absolutely exists and is an effective way of reducing the spread of viruses at scale, sometimes significantly so.
Boosters were required as frequently as they were because Covid was developing new variants faster than things we're used to (like the flu, which tends to have about one variant a year with high infection rates among humans). Naturally, many people do get flu "booster" shots annually to try and reduce the spread of what's still a deadly disease to the immunocompromised; we just don't talk about it much because flu death rates have roughly stabilized for long enough that they're not considered excessive deaths (in the actuarial sense).
> and is an effective way of reducing the spread of viruses at scale, sometimes significantly so.
I don't follow. Doesn't herd immunity mean the herd is immune? As in, there is no transmission and the pathogen either dies or fades to the background?
Either way, eventually almost everyone caught covid (obviously with some exceptions), no matter how many shots you got or didn't get.
The strongest point in favor of the "social good" argument is that the shots reduced severity of infection, thereby reducing hospitalizations and freeing up hospital beds for random accidents. But the overflowing hospitals issue wasnt nearly as bad as it was made out to be as I understand it. And we'll probably never know for sure how many hospitalizations were caused by the shots themselves, because only lunatics think that something with vaccine in the name can harm you.
> I don't follow. Doesn't herd immunity mean the herd is immune? As in, there is no transmission and the pathogen either dies or fades to the background?
In a perfect world where everyone gets vaccinated and vaccines are 100% effective in all people against all individuals of a strain, yeah, probably. In reality, not everyone gets vaccinated, and not everyone reacts well to the vaccine, and sometimes individuals from a strain slip by, so no. Some individuals from a strain will survive, some people will catch it and get sick, and of those surviving the sickness, they'll become the breeding ground for a new mutation.
> Either way, eventually almost everyone caught covid (obviously with some exceptions), no matter how many shots you got or didn't get.
Source? The latest data shows that out of ~40 million Canadians, about 4.8 million or about 12% are reported to have tested positive for Covid at any point and been recorded as such. Globally, the figure is about 775 million out of 8 billion[0].
Among vaccinated Canadians, CCDR 2024 Vol. 50 published by the PHAC[1] shows that both despite waning immunity from the vaccines (which is partially attributable to the poor understanding of what would both be safe for humans and long-term effective against Covid) as well as the emergence of new variants both causing spikes in overall case count and associated stats (like hospital admissions and deaths), vaccinated people were measurably less likely to contract the disease and to fall severely ill if they did. This is roughly in line with your comment about vaccines reducing infection severity.
The study is a relatively quick read and I encourage you to give it a look if you have the stomach for medical statistics (which admittedly is pretty dry). The methodology is nothing special, but not problematic IMO, and the sample size and population distribution are good for a study of this scale (though there's an overrepresentation of the unvaccinated relative to the Canadian population; in this case, it likely doesn't represent an issue).
> By the third quarter of 2022, an estimated 96.4% of persons aged ≥16 years in a longitudinal blood donor cohort had SARS-CoV-2 antibodies from previous infection or vaccination, including 22.6% from infection alone and 26.1% from vaccination alone; 47.7% had hybrid immunity.
Doing the math, that estimates ~70% of US blood donors over 16 had contracted actual covid by almost 2 years ago.
Are blood donors representative? I don't know. Reported and recorded positives doesn't seem at all representative of an overall infection count though, since it misses probably most minor cases of covid, which makes up most cases period.
I can't really say whether or not blood donors are representative (most likely that has little impact on the results of the study), but the sample size is much smaller: an initial cohort of 142,758 from July 2021 was reduced down to a final sample size of N=72,748 because of the availability of robust records of immunization and disease history in the context of the study. This represents roughly 0.02%, which may be representative if the sampling was done well, (it likely was, the CDC tends to do good work in that regard), but isn't as robust as the study by the PHAC.
This final cohort was studied based on records generated and collected in four three-month periods between April 2021 and September 2022 which is a good timeline.
This study seems to focus on the efficacy of older (≥65 years) people sticking to a strict vaccination schedule, which is reflected in the numbers; in that age group, vaccination-linked immunity is highest. The counterpoint to that is that younger groups aren't sticking to as strict a vaccination schedule, though best as I can tell, the study stops short of spelling that out, so that's my own conclusion.
> it was becoming more and more clear that the only people who might benefit from the shots were those taking them
Do you have any evidence at all of that? AFAIK, none exist.
What exists is some weak evidence the vaccine severely reduced the transmission of the virus. I've never seen any study strong enough to be proof, but then this is extremely hard to measure (either way it goes).
Clearing the people out of Ottawa took far too long. The local police were cozy with the truckers and the entire downtown of a metro area with a million people was shut down for a month.
People complain about left-leaning protests taking over a public park - these guys took over multiple public spaces in multiple parts of the city. About a square mile in the middle of the city.
It wasn't that long ago that protests shut down Canada's entire rail system, for almost twice as long as the Trucker protest lasted. It paralyzed a lot of movement of products across our country and caused shortages in a lot of places. It was much more of an actual problem nation-wide than truckers disrupting the downtown of a single city
The rail protests had international implications too
So if that wasn't enough to invoke the emergency act then it's hard for me to imagine why the Truckers were
The emergencies act is extremely restrictive. The criteria:
>There must be an urgent, critical and temporary situation that “seriously endangers” the lives, health and safety of Canadians, and it must be so significant as to exceed the capacity or authority of the provinces to address it.
A foreign funded group with heavy vehicles invaded and took over downtown Ottawa and international border crossings. The province wasn't interested in dispersing them.
The Emergencies Act definition wouldn't allow you to halt a coup attempt if Ontario could handle it but chose not to. At a certain point you have to analyze things and say that if the law has a massive loophole then the law was poorly drafted.
The emergency act was used after the bridges were clear, to stop a peaceful protest in the nations capital that pissed off the minority government. You can go on YouTube and see endless live video streams of it. At no time were any lives in danger.
“You can’t protest, there’s a government here!” - Ottawa residents
But that's what makes a protest effective: it's inconvenient! Otherwise, the protest has no power to change anything. As long as its not violent or blowing things up I think "the establishment" should at least concede that.
Case in point: look what happened in Israel when the Abraham Accords were signed, Hamas decided to go for the "nuclear" option.
Harassing people, preventing people sleeping for weeks, this is not "inconvenience" it's violence and intimidation against fellow citizens. I have zero sympathy or tolerance for violent occupations that force people out of their home, nor their supporters who try to pretend these things didn't happen.
> But that's what makes a protest effective: it's inconvenient! Otherwise, the protest has no power to change anything.
Well that's kind of the point - protesters don't have the power to change anything based on physical inconvenience. The inconvenience is merely a PR effort because protesters don't have any more effective form of of PR - if people are famous/wealthy/powerful/etc. they have better forms of PR available.
The problem with some styles of protest is that they're asymmetrical in terms of damage. A relatively small number of people who get worked up enough can congregate in one location and indefinitely shut down the operations of a person/group/organization/government. At some point the legitimate governing body needs to enforce the functioning of society, or they'll lose the mandate to govern.
Yes people complain about “left leaning protests”. People complain about all sorts of protests. I can’t recall a single protest that wasn’t complained about.
Exactly when did the left leaning protestors have their bank accounts frozen? Exactly when did the left leaning protests get broken up.
All I remember is canadas stupid government supporting the left leaning protests.
In the states I remember fancy Nancy wearing an African shawl kneeling in the capital.
This sort of stuff is too obvious not to see. Good luck.
It was left leaning and Police were quite happy to handle it with all they got.
Many hundreds or thounsands of protester everyday (or nights) for over 100 days. 17 years-old students being hit with Baton, pepper spray,
, tears gas, rubber bullets, flashbang etc. It was so chaotic that vladimir fucking putin even call canada to sort its shit (!!!). Since then police really has dialed it back in the protest.
I don’t recall what the 2012 Canada protests were. Guessing OWS? OWS and the vaccine passport protestors have one thing in common - they challenge the ruling class.
I wonder why the ruling class hasn’t opposed social mousetrap identity politics protests.
Maybe it was mostly a Québec thing. In 2012, premier of quebec, jean charest (know him? He lost the conservative parti race to polievre) anounced he would increase university tuition fee many times over, to reach canada's average. Scolarship would be changed to loan. Students were not happy with this and went on strike.It was pretty eventful. After a few month it did start to look like OWS.
It ended in fall, costing charest his re election.
It really was eye opening in many ways. The media sucking up to the gouverment, the gourverment not giving shit about what end up being a large chuck of the population, forgetting they were in a democracy.
Trucker were err. Well see for yourself.
What does it have to do with the people of Ottawa? Since when do residents get to decide on the rights of the others? Was it because they were federal employees for the most part? I'm glad you think that protests need to be shut down when they bother people. You sound exactly like a daily wire talking point from 2020 lol
> Freezing the bank accounts of the trucker protest
Just putting this into context:
> Isabelle Jacques, assistant deputy minister of finance, told a committee of MPs that up to 210 bank accounts holding about $7.8 million were frozen under the financial measures contained in the Emergencies Act.
> She also said the fact that more than 200 bank accounts were frozen did not necessarily mean that more than 200 people lost access to their funds. Jacques said that individuals may have held more than one account affected by the measures.
The Windsor bridge obviously had to be opened at any cost. US businesses and their representatives made it clear to the Canadian raw-resource suppliers that they needed to stop their silly little democratic protest.
On the plus side, now the conservatives can use emergency powers to deal with protests too. The cat's out of the bag, and people with left-leaning politics who were okay with the powers being applied to the trucker protest, I'm sure we'll find they're all of the sudden not so okay when it's applied to a protest they favour.
I think the truckers were idiots and that their protest made no sense and probably made life for the average Ottawa resident very annoying at the time. I also think that freezing their bank accounts was huge government overreach and I'm sad that the consequence to the government for doing it have been basically non-existent.
In both Canada and the US each "side" loves ratcheting up government power against what they perceive as their political enemies. It's going to end in tears.
Somehow the people who often take umbrage at this are also the same sorts who are free market absolutists or oppose public health care, and then we are here on a VC discussion board which leans that way frequently.
Explain to me how willingness to take disease preventing treatment isn't just a feature of Whatwhaaaaat as an employee, that makes one more or less desirable on the free market? We are able free to work "at will" most places and any employer who will have you based on your marketability and desirability. Whatwhaaaaat could even start your own company where you mandated people not be vaccinated (and then die the first time someone sneezes).
More seriously, because this is a serious topic even if Whatwhaaaaat isn't a serious person:
We should all have a right to be healthy, where such things are within our power to understand and effect.
Whatwhaaaaat should have a right to opt out (even if I think it is childishly stupid).
The only way to make those both fit in reality is to have those who opt out of the incredibly but not quite perfectly safe and life saving vaccine in contradiction to all the evidence, is to have them opt out of activities where safety is desired by the majority. So you have a choice: opt-out of both the vaccine and some professional activities, or opt-in to both.
Note how this isn't a choice that Whatwhaaaaat, as a possible unknowing carrier of covid, is willing or even capable of offering immune compromised people in a work place. This is the only sensible way to structure a society that isn't literally forcing vaccines on people like Whatwhaaaaat.
You can keep playing tribalism all you want. I voted in the primaries for Bernie. I’ve been advocating for a public option my whole life. I’d be willing to bet I am more active in progressive causes than you are.
Everything in America is tied to one’s employment. It was take the shot or starve. Luckily I’m a decent enough engineer to be able to say go fuck yourself and they had no choice but to keep me. MANY of my co workers were not in that position.
There is no evidence based reason to not take it for nearly all people, it was well tested and very safe. If you are immune compromised to the point where the vaccine was risky a doctor visit would sort you out. For nearly everyone else the vaccine moved the chances of covid death from some single digit percentage to negligible and reduced severity of symptoms and very rare (far rarer than covid issues).
Per your own story it was not "take the shot or starve", you are simply lying.
For the same reason this happened exactly this easy in the past! This was nothing new! Conspiracy theorists just didn't have the nuance to know about it in the past.
Making a cheap good for many people opens companies up to risk. Even frivolous lawsuits are expensive and if they are getting pennies per customer even a frivolous lawsuit can destroy the profits of millions of successes deployments. Vaccines like the last round had serious issues on the order of 1 in a million cases. Even that low rate is enough to crush profits with medical costs the way they are.
I'm not familiar with a time in US history where all govt contractors, the majority of employees, and the recommendation to companies and that they complied with requiring employees get a relatively new, not completely approved vaccine to keep their jobs. Could you please cite some references to this kind of thing in the US?
You do not know what you are talking about with the vaccine but I’m guessing you’re not still getting boaters so that much is good at least.
Just because I’ve been (so far) able to avoid negative repercussions does not mean that I should ignore attempts to unrightfully force medical therapy upon me and react accordingly.
I’m frankly kinda shocked there are still people arguing for it honestly.
You are not operating with evidence. Cite sources, provide evidence, that it isn't safe and shouldn't be taken by nearly everyone.
Every conspiracy theory against isn't hasn't happened. All the mass deaths that were foretold didn't happen, all the claimed heart attacks were just noise that fools tried to elevate as signal, etc... But the real thing that is still with us is a new endemic disease that is killing people.
At best you are mistaken, more likely you are actively lying. You have, per your own story, been demonstrated as incorrect. No one should take you seriously.
He is a red herring not related to the topic in any direct way. In this context he is disingenuous talking point that conspiracy theorists who are detached feom reality bring up.
Yoy produced a context free Link and ignore a ton of realities.
The astrazeneca vaccine the one in the UK did have problems and was still safer than covid! Compare the payout rates to the amount of people vaccinated and try having some nuance. The existence of a solution to a problem doesn't mean the problem was the size conspiracy nutjobs say it was.
I don't think the "untested"* COVID-19 vaccine was given to anyone in the US, so if you "vote democrat" you wouldn't have been in any danger – except if you chose not to vaccinate yourself. Are you talking about something else?
*: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford%E2%80%93AstraZeneca_COV... actually was tested: they had suspicions it caused blood clots for a few people, then they found some slightly more suspicious data. Even then, taking it was better than taking nothing for the average person – just, there were other, safer vaccines available, so nobody informed would want to take it. Its administration was halted in most countries it was approved in, once there was some evidence of harm. But the correlation's still so weak that we're not really sure it's the vaccine causing it, or even if the effect is real.
Blood clot risk is still higher if you get COVID-19 than if you get this vaccine.
In general, the worst thing an uncontaminated vaccine can give you is mild symptoms of the disease it protects you against. We are very, very, very cautious about such things (I'd argue, too cautious, but when I take my utilitarian-debate-club hat off, I am similarly paranoid, so I don't begrudge them overmuch).
But of course there's different demographics; nobody is the average person. And even people that had already been infected with COVID-19 were required to get the vaccine.
But it's also interesting to think about it from the perspective of immune system compartments: the vaccine is effective in preventing severe illness and death because it's injected. But people with mild to asymptomatic cases only ever "fight it" in their mucosal immune compartment, which doesn't share antibody recipes, so people who have only received a vaccine can still spread COVID-19, because the mucosal immune compartment is not trained by the vaccine. (Hopefully, there'll be an intranasal vaccine soon.) In general, this may also be related to your general health; the stronger your immune system is overall, the less likely you're going to develop a severe infection (barring a thousand other variables) because the virus never makes it in real numbers to your bloodstream, but if you do get a severe infection the immune reaction by itself is likely to be dangerous.
At least, that's why I assume two COVID infections prior to vaccination were barely noticeable, while the vaccination itself knocked me on my ass for days and also gave me a really weird neurological episode. If I had not been required to, I would not have gotten a vaccine, since I already had a verified COVID-19 infection and recovery. So unfortunately, our policy made me pretty sick for basically zero gain, and I knew going into it there was no real upside for me (but I didn't expect the downside.)
ed: it's also worth noting that "in general" is not very useful; in this case we're talking about vaccines leveraging new technology to deliver their payload. It's not implausible to believe that the LNPs are not safe - it took several years to identify LNPs that were not obviously toxic, and it would not be wild to imagine that years down the line we find the LNPs used in the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are unsafe in the sense that you might be 20% more likely to develop RARE_CANCER_X 15 years from now. Great article on their development here:
Under the grits, the rcmp have already been extremely aggressive with protestors. Look at land defenders in BC--they are being removed at gunpoint, having property wantonly destroyed, and having masks pulled of their faces to apply pepper spray point blank. The clownvoy got treaded with kidskin gloves.
There's a case to be made that a naked display of force - at least in a democracy - is less authoritarian than quietly destroying someone's financial life. Spraying pepper spray and knocking heads creates some very unsavoury images that the government has to contend with during the next election and stokes outrage. Having a bunch of people's bank accounts frozen doesn't trigger the same visceral reaction.
> ...now the conservatives can use emergency powers to deal with protests too. The cat's out of the bag, and people with left-leaning politics who were okay with the powers being applied to the trucker protest, I'm sure we'll find they're all of the sudden not so okay when it's applied to a protest they favour.
That just means the conservatives can never be allowed to win elections...to protect Democracy!
Hmm it looks like all protest are being dealt very softly now. Natives? We don't want another 1990 oka.
Students? Don't want another 2012 printemps érable. Truckers? Well I'm not sure about that one. Was the majority of the police on the protester's side? A bunch sure. But most? Nah. Wasn't there like only 1% of all truckers there? They had the means but not the number. Also if freezing bank account ended it without any police lifting a finger, it's best no?
I am sure Canada has the progressivist ratchet like the US does: Left moves Overton Window never less than a click, Right moves it never more than a click (while looking like principled plausibly sub-malicious imbeciles in the moment).
> I am sure Canada has the progressivist ratchet like the US does: Left moves Overton Window never less than a click, Right moves it never more than a click
That's what happens when there is change in the world. Conservatives resist change, but change often has a momentum of it's own.
The world has changed a lot recently. TV brought everyone together. Transportation made the world smaller place. The internet and social networks gave everyone a voice. These are all game changers. For better and worse. We can't un-invent all that stuff.
The reason older people tend to be conservative is that they are used to the way things were when they grew up. They don't like the changes. They want the good old days back.
Young people don't have these notions about the good old days, they weren't around. They started off with a different view of things. The Overton Window moves with them. Progress ratchets, as you said.
p.s. None of this implies that I endorse how the protests were handled. I'm all for democracy and 100% against authoritarians - whether they are communists or fascists or whatever else.
There are a lot of problems with making this argument, though. Ultimately our government lacks the necessary powers. Remember, those people travelled to Ottawa with the stated mission of overthrowing the Government. They also used their horns in a densely populated area, which an ENT doctor confirmed exposed the citizens of Downtown Ottawa to volumes that can damage the inner ear. This is without taking into consideration those with disabilities, like Autism, which can make such sensations exceptionally difficult.
Then things get super messy when you start to look at how the province deals with indigenous populations, their protests, versus a group of white nationalists attempting to overthrow the Government.
The fact the emergency powers were used, to me, are a symptom of a broken system.
Either way, opposing political powers are jumping all over the opportunity to leverage the situation for their own gain.
I'm so sick of politics. They are all dishonest. No matter what, we lose.
The horns died down after a few short days, after a reasonable concession was made.
I have a feeling hardly any Canadians at all know what really happened in Ottawa even though there was and is extensive live video evidence streamed and stored on YouTube.
If I lived downtown Ottawa and likely worked for the federal government I would be extra sympathetic to any protest at all. I would have to appreciate a democracy in order to work for such agencies, which apparently your buddies don’t.
They also used their horns in a densely populated area, which an ENT doctor confirmed exposed the citizens of Downtown Ottawa to volumes that can damage the inner ear.
Are there any actual examples of people making claims about going deaf due to the protests?
Doctors == generally low information value unless they have training in science or mathematics.
I personally measured over 90dB in a friend’s apartment downtown. NIOSH recommends exposure to levels above 90dB for less than 30 minutes per (work) day. She said it was that loud 24/7, and I believe that.
If you have some evidence that it’s safe to listen to sound levels above 90dB for extended periods of time, I’d recommend you publish it.
Again, I'm not going to go searching the internet. Engaging in these comments is already more work than is worth it. I'm never going to convince convoy supporters they are wrong.
A woman took legal action against the protestors. In her action she called on an ENT. The ENT make the statements I outlined above under oath.
Search for it if you actually care. Again, I'm not wasting my time because nothing is ever good enough for the people who align ideologically with the convoy. The dismissiveness, what aboutisms, and misdirection that follow are never worth the effort.
Again, I'm not going to go searching the internet.
Yet you imply that others should do exactly that in order to take seriously your insinuation that actual bodily harm was incurred. If you have proof that someone was physically damaged by the blowing of the truck horns then it will a simple thing for you supply this information of which you have implied you are the possessor.
If you do not have it and have never had it then you could also help by just stating that, so that no one wastes their time.
Whether convoy supporters think I'm right or not doesn't particularly matter to me. You all have an internet connection, look it up. It's not hard to find.
I'll admit that article was quite long so I skimmed it and as such I might have missed something. The only thing I saw that even alluded to racism was saying one of the early people involved with the movement may have been racist.
If that is all you have then that is extremely weak. Plenty of movements don't have the best people in them...
I read through the entire article. Nowhere does it allege that the protestors sought to overthrow the government. If it did, Richard would have actually quoted.
> The article linked was in reference to their weak ass attempt to overthrow the government.
Can you quote directly from the article where it says anything close to that the protestors wanted to "overthrow the government"? I'm hesitant to call you a liar before giving you a chance to explain your point of view, but nothing I read in that link comes close to substantiating your claims.
Sorry, I forgot which thing you were complaining about since your article is terrible at trying to prove their was an attempt to overthrow the government. If anything about this is a "weak ass attempt" it is your article.
The closet thing I could find is:
> Others adopted more extreme positions. Some denounced what they defined as the authoritarian, treasonous, and corrupt governing practices of prime minister Justin Trudeau and requested the dissolution of the government
In parliamentary systems that does not mean abolishing the government or state or something like that. It means they want Trudeau to step down and they want new elections or at least a new coalition which results in a new prime minister.
Using the word dissolve and form and the like when it comes to parliamentary systems has nothing to do with overthrowing the government.
---
In terms of the flag, many people on HN supported occupy wall street. There were communist flags there. Does that mean everybody who supported the occupy movement wants to kill gay people like communists did? No, of course not.
Also, the other protestors weren't fans of the flag...
And when that happened, it was immediately taken down by the rest of the protesters. Just admit that you fell for the alarmist propaganda and move on with your life.
I fell for propaganda? Listen to yourself. You're standing by a group of people who associated with Nazis (there were more than one group with flags, and they were not immediately removed as you claim.). A group who made it clear they wanted the conservatives to take over.
Just because they sucked at communication, their demands changed minute by minute, doesn't mean that wasn't their intent. They absolutely tried to do this.
Stop being an apologist to a horrific group of people. They are so far from what represents this country and our democracy.
> (there were more than one group with flags, and they were not immediately removed as you claim.)
Prove it. What groups? Where were they? How many people were in these groups?
> Just because they sucked at communication, their demands changed minute by minute, doesn't mean that wasn't their intent. They absolutely tried to do this.
It sounds like you suck at communication since you cannot substantiate your claims that they wanted to overthrow the government, nor substantiate your claims that they were white nationalists, nor substantiate your claims that they wanted the conservatives to take power.
And even if "they wanted the conservatives to take power", that's ambiguous at best, and does not at all amount to "overthrowing the government". A democratic no-confidence vote could qualify as the conservatives taking over, but that doesn't qualify as overthrowing the democratically elected government. Broad protests that lead to a no-confidence vote is the definition of democracy in action.
So yes, you fell for alarmist propaganda from the media that had clear incentives to sensationalize what was happening. Which isn't to say the protest was legal or without problems, but the things you're saying about it simply aren't true.
Are you suggesting that if somebody flies a flag at a rally that means everybody in the rally supports the ideology of the flag? If I go to some politician that has your same ideology and fly a Nazi flag does that make you a Nazi or would it just be me who is the Nazi?
Can you elaborate on what you mean by, "their goal was to overthrow the democratically elected Government"? This could mean a whole lot of things, like voting out the incumbents in the next election - and sure I'll readily believe that the protestors were calling for that.
But "overthrow" reads to me like the protestors sought to forcefully remove and replace the existing government. In other words, a coup. That is a very different statement, and one I would really like you to substantiate with evidence if that's what you're trying to claim.
The protesters held Ottawa captive while demanding the current democratically elected government be replaced by the government of their liking, without an election.
It was very similar to the first few days of the Easter Uprising in Ireland in 1916, except with trucks. A large group of people held key infrastructure hostage, with unreasonable demands that would not be met.
Those claiming otherwise need everyone to believe their side is the victim.
> while demanding the current democratically elected government be replaced by the government of their liking, without an election
Do you have any evidence for this beyond simply postulating it as fact? I'd be really interested in seeing who in the convoy, and what proportion of people, were making these demands.
And no, it was not like the Easter Uprising. The Easter Uprising saw armed insurrectionists kill over a hundred government personnel and hundreds of civilians. This kind of comparison does not give me confidence in your analysis of the protest.
For the third time the central claim in your comments, that the Ottawa protestors sought to overthrow the government, remains completely unsubstantiated. Who said this, and on what basis is it a fair characterization of the >10,000 people who attended the protest?
One can take power through elections, it's a massive leap to go from "take power" to "overthrow". There are legitimate means of taking power.
And again, this is the fourth time that you've just postulated this as fact rather than linking to the protest leaders' actual statements. I have searched the internet for any such statements calling for a forceful overthrow of the Canadian government, and I have not found any. No, I don't know that was their goal, and nothing in my searches indicate that it was. If you're serious about convincing people that the protestors posed a legitimate threat to democracy, you need to do a lot better than making claims with no evidence and telling people do their own research.
I don't need to do anything. I remember it all vividly, and that's good enough for me. I know better than waste my time trying to change the minds of random strangers on the internet.
> The protesters held Ottawa captive while demanding the current democratically elected government be replaced by the government of their liking, without an election.
I asked for a citation. If this is literally what the protest organizers did, then it should be easy to provide one. Their official Facebook page where they published their official position is still up.
You know as much as I do that finding 2 yr old content is brutal. Especially given the volume of shitty media coverage the convoy received.
If you care enough about challenging your own beliefs, and if it's so easy, you'll do it yourself. I'm not going to waste my time and energy trying to convince random strangers on the internet. I know better.
I personally know two people who travelled from Toronto area to attend. I couldn’t because of a shitty situation but followed along with the live YouTube casts, which (for anyone who cares) will prove you wrong
I Know you are full of shit, therefore I know you know you are full of shit
My hobby is calling bullshit and it is fun. There’s so much of it!
Edit: for extra context, the two people who took major time out of their lives to do this, one was in the Canadian Forces when they were younger (not at the time obv) and the other came to Canada in the early 90s after their government wrecked their country and was watching in horror of it happening to them again
Why would you lie about this? It's literally not true. And no a quote from a random protestor doesn't make it more true. Again, this is basically Ben Shapiro style tactics where you can quote a single random person in a protest to call for violence and repression against an entire group. Super convenient when used against the other side but it doesn't make it less blatantly dishonest. Do you also advocate for full emergency act types of repression in may 1st anti capitalist protests? They explicitly call for destroying the current government system (which is completely their right, imo)
I used to live in Toronto near queen's park. There were very frequent protests down yonge and in queens park. Never once in all the time I lived there was I prevented sleeping by protestors honking outside my building all night.
I was also never once confronted, cornered, harassed, or yelled at by protestors. Not once. These actions are not ok and not typical of any protest. Yes I was frequently inconvenienced with the street blocked, but that's fine, the cost of living in a democracy.
Protesting does not involve attacking fellow citizens.
Disagree with everything you're trying to say. Terrorism has evolved into a doublespeak term used to describe your systems' quasi enemy...This was just civil disobedience and like any form of civil disobedience (that isn't directly sanctioned by government actors) they got slaughtered. The government in Canada pushed through extremely draconian Wuhan-styled lockdown rules and, just like what Camus wax-philosophized over, there's a breaking point with subjugated humans and a price those subjugating put on their own "hurt".
"The six thousand crosses which, after
such a just rebellion, staked out the road from Capua to Rome demonstrated to the servile crowd that
there is no equality in the world of power and that the masters calculate, at a usurious rate, the price of
their own blood."
> The government in Canada pushed through extremely draconian Wuhan-styled lockdown rules
Pretty much none of "lockdown" rules were federal - and at least in my province, I never felt more than mildly inconvenienced. Literally the worst thing I experienced was a shutdown of indoor team sports for a season.
Governments have figured out they can affect their populations like a rancher affects cattle. Elections are no longer solemn rituals but instead are processes for manufacturing consent to be governed. Only through the magick of the social contract can your neighbors collectively eat you while individually they are prevented.
"The government should solve every problem" is a totalizing idea the Liberals have implemented though.
We see this in the job growth numbers, for example, that show massive federal government hiring and anemic private sector growth. A market solution would have federal incentives create private sector growth to accomplish goals.
And, yes: Canada badly needs some kind of antitrust regime. Perhaps the reward for monopolization of a Canadian market should be nationalization.
Authoritarian. Totalitarianism requires a large mobilization of the population under a single ideology.
Putin aspires to be a totalitarian leader but even he has not managed to pull it off. He depends quite heavily on a depoliticized "silent majority" of Russians who are too scared/complacent to challenge his security apparatus. If Russia were a totalitarian state then you'd see that majority rushing to join the military and join the government.
I don't get how any of this was a shock. A lot of vaccines are mandated when you're in the public school system. Most people in the US have gotten these "mandated" shots without much complaint in the past. So much of this seems like rationalization of a purely reflexive reaction to the idea that there's any kind of social responsibility.
Consider the similar backlash to mask mandates. I didn't like wearing a mask, but it's not a huge imposition. Some people treated it like it was greatest injustice they'd ever experienced though. And then they went on to rationalize this emotional reaction by making up shit about masks cutting off their oxygen supply or causing brain damage, etc. All this despite the fact that wearing a mask (or even a respirator) is necessary for a big chunk of the day in many jobs ranging from construction workers to surgeons.
You can throw labels around as much as you like. My opinion is still my opinion. Call me stupid, anti-*, dumb, whatever you like. Sticks and stones you know. This way of labeling people with a different opinion is another thing I consider very very dangerous. But apparently, if it is done by left leaning people, it is always a good thing tm.
Are you aware of the testing they did before releasing the vaccine? It's not like they cooked it up in the lab on Monday and started injecting the entire population on Friday. Not to mention that it was not even available for individuals outside of high-risk groups for several months after release.
I'm sorry to hear about your experiences with the medical system. It's certainly not good at treating patients with respect - even today. But consider that if the vast majority of the population was willing to get the COVID vaccine voluntarily the mandates would not be necessary. People like yourself would likely be able to opt out freely thanks to herd immunity.
In a lot of ways my main feeling about COVID is disappointment. COVID was an opportunity for people to come together and make a small sacrifice to contribute to protecting the weakest among us. Instead it turned into an everyone-for-themselves shitshow. I remember visiting Hong Kong in 2008 and I was amazed to see how many people wore surgical masks in public. This was probably carry over from the SARS outbreak in 2003. To me it showed a high level of care and empathy for others that people were willing to set aside their own comfort to try to prevent spreading whatever cold of flu they were carrying. I wish we could adopt some of that attitude here in North America.
Rape victims aside, what is medical autonomy to some is the right to kill unborn life for rather weak personal reasons to others. Thats how democracy works. People will have different opinions about things...
Besides, I totally fail how you create that box. Not every anti-experimental-vaxer is anti abortion. Heck, most people I know who didn't approve of mandatory vaccination were always voting left. But sure, if you like to think that everyone with a different opinion then you can conveniently be put into the right-wing box, go ahead. You're being silly, though.
And, what's been most alarming through COVID is the same people that would claim medical autonomy in the case of abortion are the exact same people that'll tell you to shut up and take your shot when it came/comes to COVID. People are idiots, generally, and politicians doubly so.
Perhaps the general sentiment was to just get the damn shot, but it was not the case that people didn't have choice. People absolutely had the choice. Comparing those two are not really the same. Cons want to outlaw abortion. Vaccines were never outright required, people still had autonomy.
The convoy drastically overstated the mandates. In practice the vaccine mandate they wanted removed was the one requiring vaccines upon entering Canada so they could go to the US. However, the US had the same requirement so it was a moot point. Furthermore, any sovereign state can determine who can and can't cross their borders. Vaccines is absolutely one of the requirements that are used by some countries. Anyone who's seriously traveled would know that.
We can agree that politicians are idiots. They are sewing division in ways I haven't seen in our country. Many of the issues being brought the forefront won't improve anyone's lives. We need housing addressed, we need the wage productivity gap addressed, we need education and healthcare addressed. These things will have generational impact.
Canada is not totalitarian. Frankly, I can't imagine claiming so unless you have quite an extreme view of politics (for instance, the appropriateness of blockading downtown Ottawa). There is plenty of MAGA-like conspiratory thinking in Canada, but it's relatively new for Canada, and definitely not widely-accepted.
I mean, Canada is the only country in the west that has used emergency powers not once but twice in 50 years. Either our country is unstable (it's not) or the federal government clearly doesn't give a shit about precedent and due process.
It also doesn't help that the same government has admitted to a current genocide without basically doing anything about it. So yes, when you combine those two things criticism will happen.
People online are insanely cynical about Canada without having ever stepped one foot in the country. A ton of discourse regarding Canada happens in between non-Canadians, and I'm not sure if it's intentional at this point. Every scandal or disagreement gets blown up to an international stage, people eager to take party talking points as unquestionable truth.
There's no shortage of Americans who wholeheartedly believe that Canada is an authoritarian regime. Given that the average HN user seems to be an older, conservative-leaning American I'm not really surprised by the sentiment, though I did hope for more level-headed discussions.
What's this weird obsession with Americans? I'm Canadian, and it's only white liberal Canadians that have this super weird rose tinted look at their own country because they blame everything on the US. Maybe you're privileged enough to not relate with the issues highlighted, but that's just your own bubble.
At no point in the last several decades has any Canadian government come close to being totalitarian, authoritarian, or otherwise. The most recent example in living memory (which I don't intend to downplay) would've been residential schools, which were run by churches with supportive policies coming from the federal (and lower) governments. The last residential school closed in 1997.
Canada is absolutely, beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt, a representative democracy falling under the broad umbrella of "Western (Neo)liberal democracies". There are legitimate criticisms of neoliberalism just as there are of neoconservativism, but totalitarian aspirations are exceptionally rarely a valid accusation.
If anything, the biggest threat to Canadian democracy might be a decline in political literacy. We don't have an election where we vote for PMs, but many people still do. We don't have a two-party system; in practice, we have a multi-party system to the extent that minority governments are possible (we have one now!), but many people vote as though we're in a two-party system with a handful of "joke parties" that amount to wasting your vote. We have a bicameral parliament, but one of our chambers is made up purely of elected members who have so far mostly stayed level-headed through more or less sheer force of good will (which I don't consider a good enough protection in the long term, but that's another topic).
How laws are introduced into parliament and passed is something most Canadians probably couldn't answer off the top of their heads in more detail than saying that there there are a few readings, and most of us aren't following what our MP or MPP is doing for your riding, because in real terms, most of us vote based on a party leader and their at-large actions in office.
