From the Canadian Civil Liberties Association:

Let's be clear: there is no legal justification for using the emergencies act.

The broad powers the government has granted to police curtail Charter rights across the country.

This risk of abuse is high.

The emergency declaration should be immediately revoked.

https://twitter.com/cancivlib/status/1495932825752809472

Let's be clear that the CCLA is not an organization that many Canadians have even heard of (unlike the ACLU), and that their stance really doesn't carry any weight more than any other organization weighing in on this.

The act was passed specifically to curtail charter abuses from the previous bill and in the end, still answers to the charter.

I'm Canadian and I'm both familiar with CCLA and glad they exist, especially at the moment. Not to be hyperbolic, but many people around the world don't know Amnesty International exists until they find themselves locked up without due process and find that they have a weighty advocate.

>Our democracy is not in danger, nor are the majority of Canadians concerned about this.

"Fully 61 percent of Americans said they approve of renewing the Patriot Act's provisions to allow for continued collection of phone data, according to a CNN/ORC poll released Monday, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points."

https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/06/01/41123...

>The greatest concerns seem to be from Americans and this is particularly bad on Reddit, where the Canadian subreddit has been captured by right-leaning Americans mainly.

Source for this?

Once you know you are on the side of good everyone who disagrees with you must be assigned to an out-group. That way you don't have to listen to them.

On the contrary, I feel like the pandemic has revealed the fragility and asymmetric distribution of costs in our society, and the governments unwillingness to even address it. I do not consider democracy in danger, but there are some pretty serious precedents being set.

I suspect Canadians aren't concerned because for the most part Canadians have lived a very comfortable existence for a very long time due to the nature of our geopolitical privileges. I think the hyperbole tossed around regarding the convoy and blockade illustrate this.

It’s not America but it was founded with western liberal ideas to be a functioning self-governing democracy and have English common law ideals similar to America. Chief among those is due process which this emergencies act completely sidesteps.

It's a system set up with "here's where the American system gets screwy" hindsight available, though. The two systems are cousins, not identical twins.

Canada has "peace, order and good government" where the US has "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"

The governments actions meet at least 2/3 and most Canadians would say 3/3 of the main Canadian values.

I think your numbers are completely baseless. And "good government" is elsewhere.

Absolutely agree. The American viewpoint seems to be "restrictions on freedom of speech! Not allowing protests! Canada is becoming a dictatorship!" which I think is an absurdly extreme reaction, particularly in a minority parliament.

I think Canadians have more faith in our institutions, particularly the courts, to remain apolitical.

> I think Canadians have more faith in our institutions, particularly the courts, to remain apolitical.

Speak for yourself. Also consider that an estimated 9% of all Canadians live abroad (mostly in the US and Europe), including up to 25% of professionals in certain industries (doctors, for example, and I'm sure tech is up there too).

Lots of Canadians don't have faith in our institutions. Unfortunately, moving away is easier than changing the docile Canadian mentality and is a better individual choice.

Edit - and for comparison purposes around 1.7% of Americans live abroad.

> Speak for yourself. Also consider that an estimated 9% of all Canadians live abroad

I was speaking for myself, as I see it, as are you. Note that I was one of the 9% living abroad for ~3 years.

> the docile Canadian mentality

I rather disagree with this supposed generalization

> moving away is [..] a better individual choice

Yes, for those who are more professionally desirable (doctors, tech, other professionals as you mention), moving to the US in particular is the "better individual choice", in that you can earn a better living. I certainly could, but I prefer to live here with my fellow docile Canadians.

Are you suggesting that 9% of Canadians live abroad because they don't have faith in national institutions?

I'm one of that 9% and I can tell you that you couldn't be further from the truth.

Institutions means more than courts...

Most Canadians I imagine live abroad for economic reasons. But that in itself is a failure of our institutions; an economy is a reflection of the set of rules created by the government.

Anyhow, some examples:

- Police, it's obvious they can't do their jobs. Between inability to clear protests, all our cities being taken over by crackheads, it's failed.

- Courts: basically catch and release. Murder regularly gets plead down to manslaughter with pathetic sentences

- Municipalities: make starting a physical business damn near impossible. Tons of red tape and random fees, then you get taxed to hell because homeowners can't possibly pay for their share...

- Healthcare: it's a joke. Worst of any country in our income bracket yet Canadians inexplicably think it's not shit.

- Bank of Canada: literally went out and said they're propping up house prices

- Feds: literally said they are bringing in immigrants to reduce wage inflation ie. Prevent wage growth. Trudeau senior capped wage increases for awhile while in power...

Tons more examples of failed institutions in this country...

So tell me, why don't you live in Canada?

I want to live near extended family for a while and have another life experience. Living abroad doesn't mean it's better than Canada but that I want to experience something different for a while.

I'll be back ... None of the issues you listed stand out at all to someone born in Canada but who has lived in 5 countries (mix of very rich, middle income and poor). Ok, I admit the housing price situation bothers me.

To judge by IP addresses, at least, there are a lot of Canadians posting to HN on both sides of this argument. There are also a lot of users from other countries posting on both sides of the argument. The dividing line seems more ideological than national.

Thanks for the insight, Dan. I think that HN does over-represent (relative to population at large) the libertarian viewpoint, but my comments really stemmed from what I've seen of mainstream media coverage of the issue from the two sides of the border.

>I think Canadians have more faith in our institutions, particularly the courts, to remain apolitical.

But in this case they're freezing bank accounts without even going through the courts.

> But in this case they're freezing bank accounts without even going through the courts.

And the emergencies act is being challenged in court, which will determine if this is lawful.

Banks are private entities. They freeze accounts engaged in illegal activities regularly. The US does too - here's one random citation. [1]

[1] https://www.kqed.org/news/11899955/when-banks-turned-their-b...

>And the emergencies act is being challenged in court, which will determine if this is lawful.

The difference is that in liberal democracies, the executive branches has to convince a court before they can act. eg. getting a warrant before doing a search, or getting a conviction before imprisoning someone. The approach of "shoot first, you can sue us in court later" makes a mockery of this.

>Banks are private entities. They freeze accounts engaged in illegal activities regularly. The US does too - here's one random citation. [1]

They're both bad. This is just slightly worse because the government is directing businesses into targeting their political enemies.

In this case the executive didn't do any convincing, the legislature did. It's a parliamentary system - the executive is an extension of the legislature.

> The difference is that in liberal democracies, the executive branches has to convince a court before they can act. eg. getting a warrant before doing a search, or getting a conviction before imprisoning someone. The approach of "shoot first, you can sue us in court later" makes a mockery of this.

Uh no, not really. I'm going to presume you're comparing with the US. Do you forget that the US kidnapped, imprisoned and murdered random people, including American citizens without any judicial oversight? Not to mention sweeping surveillance with laughable pretense of judicial oversight ( FISA courts)?

Executive branches have lots of power, and that power is controlled via checks and balances, the judicial and legislative branches ( in many countries the executive branch' power comes from the legislative and is directly beholden to it ( where PMs are sitting MPs)).

>Uh no, not really. I'm going to presume you're comparing with the US. Do you forget that the US kidnapped, imprisoned and murdered random people, including American citizens without any judicial oversight? Not to mention sweeping surveillance with laughable pretense of judicial oversight ( FISA courts)?

And? That's just as bad. I'm saying canada's actions are bad because they go against how liberal democracies should work, not against how the US works in practice

>Executive branches have lots of power

That's exactly why I'm concerned.

>and that power is controlled via checks and balances, the judicial and legislative branches ( in many countries the executive branch' power comes from the legislative and is directly beholden to it ( where PMs are sitting MPs)).

And 9/11 in the US shows how easily the populace can be convinced to abandon those liberal democracy ideals given a threat.

The key here is that these people are not engaged in illegal activities or even accused of engaging in illegal activities before their accounts are frozen and before they have been given any chance to defend themselves. Rapists and murderers don’t even get treated this badly. They are treating them like terrorists.

> The key here is that these people are not engaged in illegal activities or even accused of engaging in illegal activities before their accounts are frozen

What stood out the most about these protests, vs most other large protests in recent Canadian history, is how many warnings the participants received. They were told time and time and time again by every party involved that their conduct was illegal - from the police as well as from municipal, provincial, and federal level. They were even given a court injunction against certain specific actions (horn honking), which was largely ignored after the first 24 hrs. They were engaged in illegal activities for weeks before this action was taken.

That has nothing to do with freezing accounts of donors, or blocking donations.

> That has nothing to do with freezing accounts of donors, or blocking donations.

Yes, it does. The donations were specifically to fund an activity that had been deemed illegal. Similar to the other things tracked by FINTRAC.

I have seen only one claim of a donor being targeted, and quite frankly, I didn't trust the source, but it is possible. The RCMP issued a statement [1] yesterday clarifying that the only information they had provided to banks was regarding organizers and trucks blocking the street (both groups were made explicitly aware that their behaviour was illegal and would have consequences).

[1] https://blockade.rcmp.ca/news-nouvelles/ncr-rcn211130-s-d-en...

But they are engaged in illegal activities, which you can find with a cursory Google search. And blocking borders and pipelines can arguably be classified as economic terrorism.

They are fully welcome to protest peacefully, on foot, in front of parliament like everyone else.

>But they are engaged in illegal activities, which you can find with a cursory Google search.

So were rapists and murderers, but even they have a right to a fair trial.

That has nothing to do with freezing accounts of donors, or blocking donations.

Donating money is illegal?

Yes, donating money can be illegal depending on what it is being donated to. Here[1]'s a list of financial transactions that would be tracked in Canada.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Transactions_and_Rep...

Banks freeze accounts under the effective duress and cover of the government, because freezing money is stealing money from someone, even if you (might) give it back one day. If they didn't have the cover of the government then they would be under a ton of liability.

Much like how taking someone's car, even if you plan to give it back one day, maybe, if you think they deserve it, is still theft.

Because banks do it under duress, it's really the government that is doing this, not the bank itself.

Where is towing tresspassing cars illegal?

A better analogy would be: you park your car illegally, and the city then goes into your home and takes all your possessions without due process.

One of those institutions is freezing bank accounts.

The courts now get to play a role. https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/kenney-to-launch-l...

Yeah, Kenney's lawsuit is mostly political grandstanding, but I welcome the use of the Act being challenged in court. All this makes our democracy stronger.

How does it "make our democracy stronger"?

A law was on the books for decades but hadn't been used. It has now been used (in a rather restrained way, considering what it could be used for). This use is now being challenged in court, which will likely clarify what restrictions the use of that law actually has. Eg, did it respect the charter appropriately? Was it appropriately justified?

Why does that make democracy stronger? It's just an elaboration of a particular interpretation of the rules by jurists that are probably already not uncomfortable with the state.

The outcome of those deliberations will be to some extent obscure and subject to yet further interpretation and arguments.

That doesn't in, and of itself, make democracy stronger.

I would argue that the use of this Act has already weakened democracy in Canada because it shows that the only response the political systems has to a very minor disruption is to use acts that everyone understood to be for much more extreme situations.

This has already deepened many people's cynicism about the idea of this form of government.

> I would argue that the use of this Act has already weakened democracy in Canada because it shows that the only response the political systems has to a very minor disruption is to use acts that everyone understood to be for much more extreme situations.

Certainly the act was used in response to weaknesses in the system - eg the Ottawa Police Service were unwilling to fine/ticket/otherwise deal with the illegal activity for weeks; crowdfunding sites weren't subject to FINTRAC; etc. Ideally this will lead to proper legislation regarding these weaknesses, removing the necessity of using the Emergencies Act to deal with a similar situation again.

Checks and balances, and legal certainty in either direction.

Legal certainty? It was supposed to be the answer to the problems for the War Measures Act; the Constitution of Transitional Measures Act; the Emergency Powers Act; the Public Order (Temporary Measures) Act and some others I have forgotten.

I would argue that laws only mean what they are interpreted to mean by a particular governmental body at a particular time.

And you can in addition have a coherent, clear and easily interpretable body of laws and measures which result in a society which lacks many of the features of what people like to imagine is a "democracy".

There's still a level of certainty that comes from "this law survived legal review by the courts" that I find some value in.

Fair enough. It's better than nothing, but probably not good enough. We'll be seeing more of this sort of problem as living standards decline under climate destruction and the buffers separating us from more direct conflict of interest thin out.

This made me lose confidence in our government and in our banking institutions.

I would like to protect our constitutional rights, but I feel that Canada is too far gone.

Our prime minister called the protesters racists, declare emergency act, froze bank accounts of people who donated.

I am thinking about moving out.

In fairness, the leaders of this protest are on video literally discussing topics that would be considered racist (ie: depopulation of the white race).

If I had access to my laptop I'd locate the video (self-filmed) where Pat King discusses this exact topic. Someone may be able to find this for us.

Edit: found with great difficulty on my phone - https://mobile.twitter.com/VestsCanada/status/11779958944085...

Why would that matter? Should I take away your rights if I disagree with your views?

Ultimately the true test for the existence of guaranteed rights is if those who you and the majority of people absolutely hate and despise have their rights guaranteed and protected in the same way and with the same vehemence as those of the average Joe.

A right lives and dies by our willingness to protect it for those who we hate.

Being sad/concerned that your culture is going away is not the same as racism against people.

If they were planning an attack on a group of people based on their race it would qualify, but that’s far from this.

You can be against immigration (to protect your culture, the gains of your country) without being against individual of any race.

I'm canadian. That's not true for me, nor many people I know. Canadians have "liberal elites" just like the US, and they tend to over represent on HN, but there is not some Canadian phenomenon about trust in institutions. We have apathy and only get politically involved when we absolutely have to, if I have to stereotype. But it's certainly not because we trust "institutions" especially. I've heard this only recently as a general talking point abou Democrats/liberals, but it seems like something that just got made up to justify current support of orthodoxy. It certainly wouldn't have been true on the George W Bush days for example.

The 'freedoms' (more accurately called rights) that Canada sacrifices to make the country work better and simpler, such as specific local & state rights, are not the lost freedoms that most Canadians think make the country better. By removing some forms of vetocracy, the state can coordinate better and avoids some forms of small scale corruption, although not enough as most of the housing crisis shows.

Much of the dysfunction of the USA partly comes from it's size and it's economic, climatic & historical diversity compared to Canada. Canada is significantly smaller economically, historically and population wise. It is also a country that has had consistently cold winters, which creates cultural values that forces you to save for the winter, which makes everyone work better together, which is something you see similar with Scandinavian countries [0].

The USA has many climates that make fairly different cultures in subtle ways. Canada works better because it's smaller and accidents of history, not because they don't have free speech. Canada is more american than they feel comfortable with, and this creates a unease that makes them feel like they need to differentiate themselves on minor difference, much like two twins.

[0] If your wondering why russia doesn't work like scandinavia, one reason why is hundreds of years of brutal mongolian rule, while scandinanvia avoided that trauma.

Interesting theories. First, i find that the communal work togetherness is also present in Mediterranean European countries which don't have that bad winters. Second, i don't get the premise behind the Mongols explanation. Doesn't a common external enemy make people work together even more? Furthermore many countries were rules by Mongols ( including China and most of Central Asia), yet they exhibit varying levels of "togetherness"/communal spirit.

I completely disagree with everything you said. And please do not pretend to speak on behalf of "most Canadians".

"Most Canadians" likely could not care less about things that does not affect them directly. And the opinions of the ones who do are most likely split in very different proportions contrary to your claim.

To be fair to him the opinion polling does suggest that 54% of those polled were not in favor of the truckers: https://globalnews.ca/news/8610727/ipsos-poll-trucker-convoy...

But yes, tiresome to see people trying to claim that they know the mind of the people.

We`ll see next elections: I bet Conservatives will do well and the Liberals will decline and the NDP will be wiped out. Jagmeet Singh has managed to extract the worst possible position from this.

It's very difficult to know which way things will turn. The most likely leader of the CPC supported the protests directly, and I think we will see that hurt them somewhat. The interim leader is a definite liability.

Trudeau is not making friends, but given a lack of strong leadership from any other party, you may not see them able to pull any more support out. The only poll that matters is the election and it's probably fair to say we don't know what will happen.

The protests may be a distant memory by then. And if one of the parties gets a handle on housing prices, that could swing things.

Jean Charest is being floated as a contender, I don't know what organization he has, but it might be popular in QC https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/jean-charest-conservative-l...

Jean Charest is not exactly loved in quebec. The end of his provincial premiership was pretty rough and his name is a bit synonymous with "corrupt slimey politician". But I'd bet Québec would still vote for him just because he's from "our team" and he's a very familiar figure

I see a lot of dislike from his past, but I would love to see an older-school politician back in the fray. The CPC needs a strong figure to rebuild.

Charest is a former Huawei employee and a lobbyist for them

Calling the Canadian system robust is just detached from reality. Between the fact that quebec has not even signed the constitution yet, the opportunist and sometimes never ending elections, the total mess that is our constitution and charter... and your comment is in a thread where the government invoked an act that strips away almost all our charter rights and does away with due process. Do you not see the irony? That has never happened even in the USA.

I guess it's just natural for canadians to have this weird smug inferiority complex towards the US but you have to remember that our government admitted to committing a genocide (still ongoing) barely 2 years ago. Also on average even a majority government rarely gets more than 34% of the total votes. But I'm legimately curious as to what parts of our system you see as being so healthy?

Btw saying that the majority of canadians are not concerned at all about setting the precedent of suspending charter rights over a protest is just a complete self own if it was true and I don't think it is. Well at least I hope it isn't

> I guess it's just natural for canadians to have this weird smug inferiority complex towards the US

There was an article in the Montreal Gazette this January that was very earnest, but if you read it with a critical outside perspective, it's absolutely ludicrous:

https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/josh-freed-flori...

So this guy fled Quebec's corona restrictions for a vacation in Florida, and describes this experience while constantly complaining how Floridians are ignoring corona, and putting in a bunch of digs at the US healthcare system.

But at the same time, why did he go to Florida if everything is so terrible there? And if Canada's healthcare is so great, why was his pre-departure corona test that he needed to take before being let back in to Canada, free and easy to get in Florida? And why was the post-arrival test he needed to do in Quebec, expensive and hard to get?

The amount of Stockholm syndrome and "Canadian apologetics" is completely off-the-charts. I simply cannot understand how you can write an article like this in the first place, it's absolutely deranged.

(The height of irony, of course, is that at the time of the article's publishing, the daily death rate in Quebec was twice as high as the one in Florida.)

Oh yeah that's another maddening episode. Every single media outlet here in quebec was obsessed by sweden and florida,and was doing some soviet tier governement praising while we had worse numbers than both and some of the worst daily stats per capita.

Also I totally agree on the canadian apologetics. It's really up there with some of the worst. A part from maybe the cognitive dissonance I've seen with Europeans grandstanding on racism in the USA (but don't talk to them about the Roma or moroccans or Muslims or albanians or... etc though, its different & they have totally valid reasons to hate them!).

This is the country that freelyadmitted to a genocide (and a currently occuring one at that) which caused just a bit of controversy, which I guess is good right if we are the worlds first to self declare a genocide? Except that we just... didn't do anything about it. Like we recognized it and flew the flags down for a bit, and that's all you need for a currently occuring genocide. The real debate is obviously talking about how bad american society is at dealing with race relations. 4 years later and the genocide is apparenly still ongoing and no on in government has been prosecuted or penalized, or even lost a siege in parliement over it.

> guess it's just natural for canadians to have this weird smug inferiority complex towards the US

It's one of the less charming facets of Canadian culture.

How is “our democracy is not in danger” apply to people who had their funds frozen for supporting convoys? Does “our” means “mine” in this case?

>Canada is not America.

I think this bears repeating. Especially when one of the protest organizers tried to cite their "first amendment rights" in court: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/tamara-lich-bail-heari...

The USA is not America either.

And it is unfortunate that many Canadians do not understand that they are living in a state in which the parliament can be suspended by the unelected representative of the Queen (prorogation -- the same issue that led to Australia deciding they wanted to change their constitution) and that the not withstanding clause makes a mockery of the Charter.

Hopefully this wakes a few people up and gives some new impetus to the reform movements.

Wow. That's just unacceptable for a "liberal democracy."

Yes. This has happened before when the conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, asked the governor general to prorogue parliament and block a coalition government from forming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932009_Canadian_par...

Well they _do_ have the right to recognize Manitoba as a province, and many of them seem very vocal about it.