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Trudeau Invokes Emergencies Act

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Re: Trudeau Invokes Emergencies Act

#741

Post by Tiktaalik »

joshlemer wrote: post #26
ameminator wrote: post #12

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 permi…

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.

Pretty much this is the core difference here. Is this a protest or an occupation?

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.

Re: Trudeau Invokes Emergencies Act

#742

Post by fishidns »

selcuka wrote: post #364
fishidns wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just want to make sure everyone has the correct piece of data to think about this. The mandate says that non-Canadian truckers need to be vaccinated to enter the country. The mandate says that Canadian truckers, if they are not vaccinated, are not going to be exempt from the normal border entry measures, which is that they'd need to quarantine on entry unless they are vaccinated. The US has a similar mandate for Cana…

> How do you feel about paying for healthcare of people who are not vaccinated and need care to treat COVID? I'm not anti-vaxxer nor oppose vax mandates; but your question misses the point. I am happy to pay for healthcare of people who are not vaccinated the same way I'm happy to pay for healthcare of smokers with lung cancer. I would still do my best to educate them, though. Negligence or ignorance of others should…

Ideologically, I'm with you. But you can't dismiss the practicality of it all.

When it comes to smokers for example, people have realized that adding a tax to cigarettes and other tabaco products could make it practical that people get subsidized treatment of smoking induced medical issues.

So the increase in medical cost and strain to the system is offset by a tax. On top of that, there are also restrictions of where you can smoke/drink, how you can advertise for it, etc., making the prospect of doing so less enticing. And the tax act as a disincentive as well.

This also applies to alcohol.

In other cases, substances have been outright banned, and I don't mean just narcotics, but also things like chemicals in foods, products, construction materials, etc.

Some people argue the same in order to tax sugar and fast food (and I can't remember if there are any such tax in Canada yet or not, but some cities in the US have it).

Similarly here, the institutions are faced with a real practical challenge. The cost and strain to the Canadian healthcare system of COVID as a whole is huge, and of that cost and strain, the majority is now from unvaccinated.

You can ideologically agree they all should be covered, but it's now hurting other medical care, and the cost is just getting larger and larger.

That's where, similar to tobacco and alcohol taxes, options for COVID are being explored.

That's why people have been talking about a tax for the unvaccinated. And maybe that's a better way then mandates, but in any case, I don't think it is useful to just dismiss the practical cost/strain of the unvaccinated right now, because that's what is motivating the legislature and other civil servant to pursue mandates.

So the topic needs to be addressed, if you want to convince people mandates aren't the way to go, you need to address their concern with why they want mandates in the first place, and that's the strain/cost to the healthcare system primarily.

Re: Trudeau Invokes Emergencies Act

#743

Post by rpeden »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #91
tyleo wrote: post #39

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…

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 z…

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.

Re: Trudeau Invokes Emergencies Act

#744

Post by sul_tasto »

bearjaws wrote: post #605
sul_tasto wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me both pro-choice advocates and Canadian truckers are saying, “Get your laws off my body.” The idea that a person belongs to herself or himself is fundamental to both arguments.

Someones choice to get an abortion doesn't give someone a potentially fatal disease. Someones choice to not get vaccinated HAS led to significant deaths at this point. Via overloaded health systems, spreading the disease and of course, the much higher likelihood of death for those who are unvaccinated. Drawing a parallel to abortion is absurd.

I think pro-life supporters would argue that abortion leads to the death of the unborn child, who they believe has a right to be born. Is a woman required to carry an unwanted child to term because the fetus has rights? Is a Canadian trucker required to receive an unwanted vaccine to protect the old and vulnerable? Personally, I see a lot of similarities in the ambiguity of where the boundary exists between the rights and responsibilities between two parties relative to each other.

Re: Trudeau Invokes Emergencies Act

#745

Post by thesz »

klyrs wrote: post #658
gwicks56 wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure Trump could have come up with reason BLM protesters were doing something illegal, and needed to shut down their bank accounts.

BLM protests happened in a completely different legal jurisdiction. Trump couldn't invoke the Emergencies Act, because that's a Canadian law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests_in_Canad...

There were BLM protests in Canada.

Re: Trudeau Invokes Emergencies Act

#746

Post by JediPig »

makomk wrote: post #24

Headline on the front page of BBC News right now: "Trudeau vows to freeze anti-mandate protesters' bank accounts" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60383385 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.

No post body was provided.

Re: Trudeau Invokes Emergencies Act

#747

Post by 908B64B197 »

MattGaiser wrote: post #168
animal_spirits wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They were trying to take advantage of a pandemic lull to increase their power. It did not work. However, there was still an election.

How much did this election cost?

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.

Re: Trudeau Invokes Emergencies Act

#748

Post by hindsightbias »

klyrs wrote: post #658
gwicks56 wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure Trump could have come up with reason BLM protesters were doing something illegal, and needed to shut down their bank accounts.

BLM protests happened in a completely different legal jurisdiction. Trump couldn't invoke the Emergencies Act, because that's a Canadian law.

There was talk about the Insurrection Act. Ties to the Civil War probably made them a little weak in the knees.

Re: Trudeau Invokes Emergencies Act

#749

Post by _skel »

makomk wrote: post #24

Headline on the front page of BBC News right now: "Trudeau vows to freeze anti-mandate protesters' bank accounts" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60383385 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.

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.

Re: Trudeau Invokes Emergencies Act

#750

Post by nathanaldensr »

parineum wrote: post #727
Jackim wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Will those accounts be frozen before or after trial?

A better question: will there even be a trial?
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