Canadian Politics

[M1ke]

Canada is such a beautiful country. I hate to see this happen. Personally, while I'm left-oriented, I don't think Trudeau is handling this well. Calling people names doesn't help.

He should have clamped down on them sooner. He let it go on for far too long.

Some people say he didn't want to give those screaming "tyranny" any ammunition, but it doesn't matter if you give it to them or not. If you don't give it to them, they just make it up.

Just as an example, that "Mooselini" bullshit has been around pretty much since he won his first election. The crazies on the right have been circulating that shit for years. It's just getting attention now, because we're giving the Flu Klux Klan attention in the news. It's not new, they've been saying this shit long before the pandemic started.

[botley]

He should have clamped down on them sooner. He let it go on for far too long.

Some people say he didn't want to give those screaming "tyranny" any ammunition, but it doesn't matter if you give it to them or not. If you don't give it to them, they just make it up.

Just as an example, that "Mooselini" bullshit has been around pretty much since he won his first election. The crazies on the right have been circulating that shit for years. It's just getting attention now, because we're giving the Flu Klux Klan attention in the news. It's not new, they've been saying this shit long before the pandemic started.

Okay, but also, Trudeau is literally suspending civil liberties (with the assistance of the NDP) under flimsy pretense.

[M1ke]

Okay, but also, Trudeau is literally suspending civil liberties (with the assistance of the NDP) under flimsy pretense.

I'd say that what's happening easily meets points a, b and d from that article pretty clearly.

I hear the argument that they're making about the use of these power setting a precedent that would allow it to be used against any protest, but they already use the same amount of force whenever an indigenous group sets up a protest/blockade. They just don't wait weeks for the prime minister to step in before they do it.

[MrLobster]

Okay, but also, Trudeau is literally suspending civil liberties (with the assistance of the NDP) under flimsy pretense.

Things that would not have been necessary if the province(s) would have done something to stop them weeks earlier... but instead we get Ford saying things like "I’ve worked on a plan for weeks and was hours away from ending this protest but the federal government jumped ahead of my team” which, uhm... even if true was long overdue.

[elevenism]

Okay, but also, Trudeau is literally suspending civil liberties (with the assistance of the NDP) under flimsy pretense.

I know this isn't my country, but watching from down here, I have to agree: some of these actions aren't a good look for a free democratic society.

It reminds me of, say, the Patriot Act the US, passed amid terrorist panic after 9/11. It sounded good at the time, but long term, it created massive issues with regard to racial profiling, immigration, personal freedom, and perhaps most famously, privacy. The US government is using provisions of this "Patriot Act" to mine data from unsuspecting American citizens to this day.

You can cheer your government on when they use questionable means to foil people with whom you disagree, but one day, those same tactics may be used against YOU.

[M1ke]

You can cheer your government on when they use questionable means to foil people with whom you disagree, but one day, those same tactics may be used against YOU.

If we democratically elect a fascist at some point in the future, they're going to do fascist things regardless of whether or not the liberal party does something against them today.

The white supremacists started this, and organized this. But it's basically just become a boiling pot for anger and hatred now.

You've still got the white supremacists sticking around. You've got the anti-vaxx crowd. You've got the anti-mainstream-media crowd. You've got the anti-lgbtq+ crowd, and the anti-women crowd. The Nazi's, the Trump supporters, it's all there. The anti-mandate crowds exist, those who've lost their jobs for refusing to get vaccinated are there.

But when you talk to someone, they say "Oh, it's not about group-x that I disagree with, it's about my specific grievance". You can't negotiate with that. If you give one part of the group what they want, the others are still going to scream that it's not over and to keep fighting.

And they had infrastructure set up to turn it into a party zone, with hot tubs, and food trucks, and a supply network set up to sustain it indefinitely. And the funding for that supply network was being funneled through the white nationalists who organized the whole thing. So if you want to stop the supply lines (which you have to do, to get the city of Ottawa back), you have to strike a deal with the white supremacists. And if someone's angry about anything, they're going to send funding to the white supremacists while thinking that they're just donating to their own particular cause.

The police should have stopped this with existing laws before they got set up, but cutting the funding off was absolutely essential for ending this. Our existing policing laws should have stopped the convoy from getting a foothold, but I don't know if the existing laws would have allowed us to stop the funding of the white supremacist groups in the way that we've done here. And I think that really needed to happen.