Giving the finger is a ‘God-given right’, Canadian judge rules

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>Not like you could do anything about it, seeing as the monarch took the guns!

This is silly. Canada is free to legislate however it wants on gun ownership. King Charles has nothing to do with it.

Michael, Ari and Frank Naccache are not typical Québécois names. I would guess they are either Mizrahi jewish or Lebanese.

> Emergency laws don’t eliminate rights. They suspend them and courts absolutely have the ability (at least in the US) to get involved and penalize the government if it finds the suspension of rights are unwarranted.

One of the key differences between the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the US Constitution is that the charter was an escape hatch right in section 1:

> The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

When there’s an allegation that someone’s charter rights have been violated by the government, there’s a 3 part test known as the Oakes test that the courts use to determine whether or not the violation is appropriate per section 1. When an action by the government makes it to court and fails the Oakes test, the courts come up with a remedy.

> I don’t believe any Canadian court has found that to be the case in the truckers blockade, which probably reflects that fundamental rights were not suppressed.

I believe you are correct, but with a bit of nuance. From what I can tell, the convoy lawyers are somewhat incompetent. I don’t personally have much of a horse in this race, but as a citizen it would have been a really nice outcome for me to have seen some clarity and consistency come out of the Canadian courts on what exactly is or is not acceptable and when one side is doing a terrible job of arguing their case you end up with weak precedent.

Beyond the trucker convoy, in the past couple of years we have also had several rail lines and an oil refinery blockaded for many weeks. National, provincial, and municipal police forces have handled these situations very differently, the courts have handled them differently, and the current legislative and precedent situation is very very hazy.

I apologize for not presenting my experience more clearly then. Ottawa is a city that is used to protest. Being the nations capital, they happen quite frequently. I am quite used to having certain aspects of my day distrupted by protest. So allow me to share some experiences that demonstrates what made this event unique:

- being unable to sleep for weeks due to train horns being blared at all hours of the night.

- having every single one of my friends and family who is some sort of visual minority having racial slurs hurled at them daily.

- seeing someone waving a nazi flag near the War Memorial.

- Having fireworks explode in between apartment buildings right next to where people lived.

- Daily harassment of any medical staff, sometimes coming directly into hospitals to shout conspiracy theories about doctors killing people with vaccines. Nurses self-organized into protection groups and were instructed not to come to work wearing scrubs to avoid harrassment.

- a group of grown men yelling at a kid who could not have been more than 17, who was unfortunate enough to be working at Tim Hortons, calling him a mask wearing faggot.

All these are personal stories either directly from myself or from those who were close to me. I share these because I am well aware of the those attempting to frame these types of stories as small, performed by a few bad actors,not representative of the movement, and that the media was highlighting a few isolated incidents to spin the image as negative. So let me assure you, these types of behaviours were constant, everywhere, and actively encouraged by many who were there. The supposed "media narrative" was quite real, as was apparent by anyone who lived in the area.

I believe in the right to protest, but there is a line where a "protest" becomes harassment to those around you. Let's recall that parliament was remote at the time, so the government who this anger was directed at was not even present at the location. Nor do government employees typically live in the city. So the justification of getting back at those who wronged you was not even present. They weren't even inconveniencing the people they came to protest. Instead they blared horns in residential areas, shot fireworks next to high-rises that were people's homes, threatened health care workers, and yelled at Tim Hortons employees. They had / have a legitimate right to protest. They instead chose to occupy a city who's inhabitants were not even those who they were angry at.