I agree. I have no idea how Canada's legal system works but I would not trust the american executive branch with this power without the authorization of a judge. Even then it feels too easily abused, but you can already do a lot worse with a judge's sign off and there are certainly cases where the power makes sense.

Is this something that has precedent in Canada?

Here is a quote from Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland:

“The government is issuing an order with immediate effect under the Emergencies Act, authorizing Canadian financial institutions to temporarily cease providing financial services where the institution suspects that an account is being used to further the illegal blockades and occupations,” she said. “This order covers both personal and corporate accounts.”

—-

Under Canadian law, the Liberal government has to put this before both the House of Commons and Senate within 7 days.

Just to clarify, under Canadian law the government has to put the use of the Emergencies Act before the House and Senate withing 7 days. It doesn't matter what colour the government is. The law itself was passed by a Progressive Conservative government to whom it would have applied exactly the same way.

> Progressive Conservative government

Say what? Those two are literally polar opposites. I guess they can be progressive on the social scale and conservative on the economic one, but there's got to be a better name for that.

So Canada used to have a party called the Conservative Party (they do now too again). They wanted a guy named John Bracken who was Premier of Manitoba under the Progressive party of Manitoba to be leader. He wouldn't agree until they put Progressive in their name. So they did and Conservative Party became the Progressive Conservative Party until they merged with the Reform Party and went back to being called the Conservative Party. Some provinces still have a PC party.

Here and now is a different place and time than when that political party was named during the merger of the Progressives and the Conservatives in an effort to defeat the incumbent Liberals. Being a "liberal" was a term for a supporter of the right-wing moneyed establishment at the time because of their demand for laissez-faire economics and reciprocity in international trade. A lot can change over a century.

But the orders are in affect now.

Yes, of course it is. I replied to someone who said they have no idea how Canadian law worked. Commons/Senate approval is part of the Emergency Act and the current government has to follow it.

Yes. Trudeau's father did the same thing (look up "Just watch me"). Anyway, there's no such thing as separation of powers in Canada. It's called Parliamentary Sovereignty.

I mean, Trudeau's father called in the military because a terrorist group kidnapped a government minister and set off multiple bombs. This is pretty small potatoes compared to the FLQ.

We don't have the concept of co-equal branches of government, but the judiciary can declare acts of parliament to violate the charter of rights and freedoms. The Emergencies Act explicitly says it does not supercede any constitutional rights.

The legislature in my home province is closed to the public due to threats: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/security-risk-clo...

Several MPs and MLAs have received suspicious packages: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/mike-kelloway-sus...

"Protesters" tried to break into a federal MP's constituency office: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/covid-19-protests...

And that's just Nova Scotia. This isn't as bad as the October Crisis, but it's still quite serious. It's not small potatoes.

There was concern of over-reach when Pierre invoke the War Measures Act also. The War Measures Act included all of Canada, not just the geography the FLQ was operating in. I was fairly young at the time but I still have a recollection of the bombing, kidnapping and murder. I can't reconcile the current protest demands with say the FLQ manifesto[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLQ_Manifesto

Trudeau is the spitting image of his biological father both in appearance and approach to government. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Canada isn't britian. The constitution is supreme, and courts will enforce it.

We already have civil forfeiture in the US. The police can just claim the money is linked to criminal activity and seize it.

That's unfortunately true, however those cases are frequently reversed and returned by judges (though the burden is entirely on the asset owners to bring the case). We definitely need legislation to invert the process though, law enforcement should be going to a judge before they can seize the assets.

Seizing funds from criminals to restrict their ability to perpetrate and profit from crime is a tool used by law enforcement in essentially every country, and has been happening for a long time.

There’s plenty of areas of this that are misused (see things like civil asset forfeiture), but the overarching strategy of freezing bank accounts isn’t novel or dystopian.

Edit: it’s a bit sneaky to change “AT ALL” to “WITHOUT A TRIAL” without calling out the change.

Yeah, but in most countries there is due process in front of a judge to do that.

You can't just have the executive decide they can do that using pure administrative action to seize property. Also, you generally also have to prove in a court of law there was a crime before you can do anything at all.

The US civilian asset forfeiture (and now in Canada too, it seems) are actually quite unique in that regard outside of maybe China (not sure even you can do that there anymore), and at most couple other dystopian very authoritarian nations.

Note that this is not asset forfeiture. The order only authorizes financially institutions to temporarily freeze accounts if they suspect they’re being used to fund illegal blockades. They can temporarily freeze accounts without a court order without any fear of legal liability.

That’s it. It’s a time out, not a forfeiture. The Emergency Act is powerful, but this invocation isn’t that powerful.

> The order only authorizes financially institutions to temporarily freeze accounts if they suspect they’re being used to fund illegal blockades.

Oh yeah, letting a bureaucrat freeze assets on an arbitrary basis people's savings and then, eventually, another bureaucrat will unfreeze it.

Rights delayed are rights denied.

My point was only that this is a temporary denial of service, not an asset forfeiture. Finally, do you have experience with Canadian banks? Temporary account suspensions are relatively common for unpaid debt. There are defined processes, federally regulated banks have a position called ombudsperson and there is always the OBSI.

Moral is, don’t ignore court orders in democratic countries.

What is according to you the legal link (or logical construction), in between an order to disperse, or not support somebody not dispersing, and a freezing of said person's assets ?

It doesn't exist in the normal course of judicial business, how does it get created here ?

I'm not an expert in this field, I just tried to correct one word. This is a freeze not a forfeiture.

My understanding is that the legal link was created by the Emergencies Act. The government believes that it will be able to calm the situation faster if they can track and cut off the flow of money. This invocation gives the government increased powers to track (they ordered crowdfunding platforms/payment processors to register with FINTRAC). And increased powers to cut off funds (through freezing bank accounts).

Edit:

Here's a relevant quote from Canada's Deputy PM:

“The government is issuing an order with immediate effect under the Emergencies Act, authorizing Canadian financial institutions to temporarily cease providing financial services where the institution suspects that an account is being used to further the illegal blockades and occupations,” she said. “This order covers both personal and corporate accounts.”

> My understanding is that the legal link was created by the Emergencies Act. The government believes that it will be able to calm the situation faster if they can track and cut off the flow of money.

They created a power of themselves, out of expedience, but there still doesn't seem to be any justification or grounds for it according to the basic principles of the Canadian legal order, except it formally comes from the PM, and he has cops.

They created a false legal reality (grave danger of violence to Canada and its people), which isn't objectively observable, to justify a power to solve that false reality, where in fact they are using it for something else (forcing people to move parked trucks).

They could have just arrested all the truckers for a variety of traffic laws or public-order laws (honking, noise), and then moved the trucks one by one. Instead, Emergency powers...

As my administrative and fiscal law professor taught us, after listing for two weeks all the principles which can be used to craft a law (not Canadian law school, European) :

    There's one very old legal principle left, according to which laws are sometimes made, wrongly, but well, that's the real world for you : "I'mma the state, I do it because I can, or I'mma gonna crush you".

Ah, perfect, the corporations are free to do the govt bidding without explicit pressure from the govt. They'll work hand in hand though. This feels like they are just making what GoFundMe did, legal after the fact.

Well, the big corporations and the government have always worked hand in hand. What they do under the covers when they're in bed with each other is their business.

Shouldn't it be everybody's ?

Is Canada throwing the market efficiency and equity principles baby with the trucker's protest bathwater ?

Sorry pal, but this doesn’t make much/any sense.

As has now been called out by the person I replied to, when I typed my reply, they said seizing funds “at all” was dystopian. They’ve now amended the comment to specify without the involvement of the judiciary.

Ok, gotcha.

Guess we were all a little asymmetrical with our "reply" button pushes.

How many protesters have had their bank accounts frozen in the past for disobedience?

Edited!

Locking bank accounts without a trial happens every single day in every democracy in the world. Any legal process where money is suspected of being dirty but is allowed to flow freely through the banking system until the conclusion of a trial would be completely useless - I believe this is fairly obvious if you think about it.

Due process should be quicker, I wish more people would vote based on making the courts more responsive, but unfortunately no one does.

Blocking bridges with trucks to protest public health members seems dystopian.

Clearly not everyone agrees that , what some consider medical tyranny, is a good thing.

Thank goodness I'm not trying to speak for everyone then, just for myself, because it doesn't seem like tyranny.

Do you believe forcing women to wear burkhas is tyrannical?

The forcing of wearing masks is a tyrannical action, whether it's for a 'good cause' or not.

Some people view the ends do not justify tyrannical means.

Tyrannical means " Unjust or oppressive governmental power.", so the justification for the mandate is important, not just the fact that a mandate exists.

A mandate with a good justification is authoritarian but not tyrannical.

I recall the police responding to the protests in Portland and working hard to shut them down as a result. The Ottawa police have declined to take action.

Portland had rioting for over 90 consecutive nights with firebombing of federal buildings.

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2020/09/100-days-of-prot...

If the police were responding in Portland they weren't trying very hard. With no firebombing in Ottawa, the response seems proportionate.

Translation: "If it's for a Just Cause, then anything goes. If it's for a Unjust Cause, then we should arrest you at the slightest infraction of the law and punish you to the fullest extent of the law".

This is hilariously backwards. Black protestors in Ottawa are arrested all the time. These people have been paralyzing a massive part of downtown and violating the law for 3 weeks and they're finally now seeing some consequences.

Also, yes, some protests are moral and some aren't. If there's a Nazi march shutting down main street I have no objections to shutting it down. It's not logically inconsistent to say that people shitting in the streets, having drunken discos and harassing people day and night aren't really "protesting" at this point.

>This is hilariously backwards. Black protestors in Ottawa are arrested all the time.

I was making fun of the parent poster's normative theories, not describing how police in ottawa actually behave.

>These people have been paralyzing a massive part of downtown and violating the law for 3 weeks and they're finally now seeing some consequences.

I'm sure you could say the same for hong kong protesters. I'm going to go on a limb that flooding the entire island with millions of protesters is pretty "paralyzing", if not more.

>Also, yes, some protests are moral and some aren't. If there's a Nazi march shutting down main street I have no objections to shutting it down.

Sounds like you're agreeing with my previous comment?

>It's not logically inconsistent to say that people shitting in the streets, having drunken discos and harassing people day and night aren't really "protesting" at this point.

that sounds awfully like the CHAZ.

I have family who live in an authoritarian dictatorship and there is a lot of news coverage of Trudeau's decision - why? Because they parade it around as "evidence that allowing protest is dangerous to a countries stability" and "see what hypocrites the so-called democracies are?"

And the next time farmers protest because their land is being taken away and given to multinational corporations, they crackdown and say "see? we're just like Canada, these people are criminals and we need to restore order".

Being admired by thuggish dictatorships doesn't exactly reflect well on Canada.

Justice means appropriate measures for relevant actions. Not wanting to take responsibility for your own decisions like these truckers is a far cry from being repressed and abused because you look like someone the men who control the money don't like. The tolerable level of their civil disobedience should be commensurate with the severity and legitimacy of their complaint.

So all causes are equal? Is it bad to apply informed judgement on society issues? If you go by that, then the US revolution should have been a bad and illegal thing.

>So all causes are equal? Is it bad to apply informed judgement on society issues?

Are all speech created equal? Is it bad to apply informed judgement on society issues? I mean, why do we want Bad Speech to proliferate? The government should ensure only Good Speech is allowed!

>If you go by that, then the US revolution should have been a bad and illegal thing.

"all causes are equal" =/= "all causes are a bad and illegal thing".

In Canada, there _is_ permitted prior restraint on hate speech. The American view on "unrestricted" free speech is an anomaly.

Another way of saying this is you only support the right to protest if it’s a cause you support.

Or perhaps it’s because on the one hand we have a cause which seeks to protect marginalized groups, and on the other hand we have a cause which opposes the protection of marginalized groups.

1. this sounds awfully like to the "modern" definition of racism, which basically justifies any sort of action as long it's for the "marginalized" group.

2. What counts as "marginalized" here? I could plausibly make the argument that anti-vaxxers are marginalized because the government is cutting off their access to common services and threatening their livelihoods.

1. On the contrary, this is about giving everyone a fair chance. In no universe are protections for marginalized groups "racism". I would strongly encourage you to read about John Rawl's "veil of ignorance" concept. [1]

2. Pretty much 1:1 correspondence with the social determinants of health. [2]

[1] https://fs.blog/veil-ignorance/

[2] https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/health-promo...

>1. On the contrary, this is about giving everyone a fair chance. In no universe are protections for marginalized groups "racism".

this is exactly my point. back in the day "racism" really did mean "treating people differently based on race". https://web.archive.org/web/20071014174747/https://www.merri.... under that definition, "giving everybody a fair chance" or "protections for marginalized groups" could count as racism in certain cases. eg. "this scholarship is for black students only", or "you can't apply for this scholarship if you're asian or jewish".

>2. Pretty much 1:1 correspondence with the social determinants of health.[1]

So going off that list:

1. if you're a rich person protesting then that's bad because you're not marginalized

2. if you're employed and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.

3. if you're well educated and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.

4. if you haven't suffered childhood trauma and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.

5. if you didn't grow up on the wrong side of the tracks and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.

6. if you have social support and coping skills and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.

7. if you have a healthy diet and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.

8. if you have "access to health services" (live near a hospital and can easily take time off work?) and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.

9. if you have better than average genes and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized.

10, 11, 12. if you're [redacted] and you're protesting, that's bad because you're not marginalized

If we're talking about truckers, we can definitely check off #3, and probably check off 1, 5, 7, and 8 as well. Does that check enough boxes to earn them "marginalized" status?

It’s not about who is protesting, it’s about what they are protesting (and about how they do it).

>it’s about what they are protesting

So protests are only just if they are against the 14 things listed by the government? I thought "free speech zones" were ridiculous, but this idea of approved protest topics takes the cake.

>and about how they do it

What does "marginalized groups" have to do with "how they do it"? Are you saying that if you're protesting against the 14 approved protest topics, you get additional leeway regarding illegal things to do?

Wow, I give up. No matter what I say, you'll find a way to not hear what I'm actually saying and distort my words in a nonsensical way.

If people blockade an important international crossing or trying to deny access to government buildings I expect that the authorities will promptly clear it, even if they are doing it in the name of a cause I support.

Yes, BLM sometimes blocked roads. In every case they were promptly removed if they did not disperse when ordered to.

BLM blocks intersection, police protest them: https://www.the-sun.com/news/2850067/blm-protesters-clash-fu...

BLM march on highway in California: https://abc7news.com/los-gatos-black-lives-matter-protest-hi...

2 women were killed in Seattle when BLM and police shutdown a highway for a protest: https://www.fox5dc.com/news/police-2-women-hit-by-car-on-clo... >Protesters had shut down the interstate for 19 days in a row, Mead said at a press conference. The State Patrol responded by closing sections of the interstate to keep drivers and protesters safe.

It's ok when we do it!!!

Wait till you hear about civil forfeiture in the United States.

So a consistent view is to be anti-civil forfeiture and anti-freezing bank accounts. I think that’s largely the sentiment expressed here.