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'd like to see sources on this. The only thing I've seen is some truckers/protestors walking into a restaraunt unmasked and demanding to be served.

Someone in a sibling comment linked the article about attempted arson. Here's one about protestors attempting to handcuff the doors on a condominium building: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/mcleod-street-condo-residents...

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...

Weapons, ammunition seized as 12 people arrested at Coutts border blockade

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...

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 arson seems to be a hoax: https://twitter.com/jonkay/status/1490741074066825225

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.

I have seen you here for a while. I don't ever remember seeing you call out antifa or blm rioters when they set fire to buildings.

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 agree with you.

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.

I wish there was this much concern for the antifa / blm protests that terrorized cities including Portland for over 3 months in summer of 2020.

> “several attempts to burn down residential buildings full of people”

Sauce?

Why do you say it's peaceful?

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.

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.

You seem to have never heard of a strike.

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.

This is not out right terrorism. Take a breath

Fine, fine - it’s a hyperbole. But you have to agree that’s a step above simply protesting - on par with vandalism maybe?

At least in Canada, strikers cannot block access to the facility either.

https://www.go2hr.ca/legal/strikes-lockouts-picketing-and-re...

It's peaceful when it's my side doing the protesting!

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.

The emergency act is not the same as calling the military.

70 million Germans can't be wrong.

A few years ago, there was an online poll to name a new scientific research boat.

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.

Who said anything about an online poll?

“ 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.

Do you have an issue with the polling methodology they used in the survey? Source on it being an online poll?

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar hell. This internet track leads nowhere interesting.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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.

A small minority has decided to infringe on everyone's right to liberty by occupying their city with heavy machinery.

The pro-liberty move is to get rid of the occupiers.

Ah yes, the age-old liberal tradition of using the military to suppress peaceful protest.

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.

It's not peaceful. https://twitter.com/travisdhanraj/status/1493281411364700161

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.

The military is explicitly not being used in this measure.

The context of the thread:

> Two-thirds of Canadians support military force to end Ottawa protests