The government used emergency powers designed to be used in case of war for dealing with peaceful protesters. The previous act was only used during WW1, WW2, and during the October Crisis by Trudeau's alleged father, which is also the reason the powers were watered down.

Canada's democracy slip up was criticized in the EU: https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/rest-of-the-world-n...

> the burden of proof is on you

Which is impossible because the government explicitly said they won't be transparent and that all the charges are secret:

> Freeland said she would not give "specifics of whose accounts are being frozen."

-- https://www.newsweek.com/banks-have-begun-freezing-accounts-...

> Freeland said she would not give "specifics of whose accounts are being frozen."

Freeland did say that they would be freezing the donators as well in the original videos.

The more egregious comment was by David Lamenti. He's a lawyer and law professor. He knows the law. His comments are not a gaffe and not out of context or anything. This is not him pulling the wrong insult out of his bag. He spoke clearly and he meant every little bit of the comment.

https://torontosun.com/news/national/trudeau-minister-threat...

The CTV guy is even like wtf.

Days later the RCMP disavowed being involved and urgently worked to unfreeze those bank accounts.

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

That is a pretty high bar for abuse you have there. Emergency acts are typically meant for governments to react quickly to unprecedented situations where not all eventualities can be forseen and covered by laws. This means that they are grant very broad powers that considered unacceptable under normal conditions and thus any use of those powers is potential abuse. What is abuse and what dis not allowed are two entirely different things.

>If you're claiming that a government is abusing its power because it froze some funds, and it turns out it was done according to law, then the accusation is unsubstantiated. Maybe it was abusing its power, but we haven't been shown any evidence. And the burden of proof is on you to show that it was an abuse of power.

This is kind of the argument that Gerald Butts made. That technically parliament approved this misuse of power. In a way you are right. Here's the problem.

The Canadian media represented the protest as a bunch of nazis and maga military occupying ottawa and loooking to over throw the government.

The NYTimes thought it was the best story ever. They put boots on the ground and said... wait we don't really agree with the goal of the protest but it's a legitimate protest. That using force to end the protest would be wrong. That in a democracy protests are going to be annoying but these must be left to exist.

They are right. There can never be an exception to the charter right of peaceful protest. Right now, what the conservatives in Canada have been told is that they do not have the right to protest. They will simply declare another national emergency, seize bank accounts, and arrest them on 'mischief' charges.

So now what happens? The conservatives cant peacefully protest... media is smearing them to propaganda levels.

You can still do roaming protests where you keep moving making stopping the protest difficult to do. I suspect these kinds of protests will get tiresome.

Eventually you just say, ok, peaceful isn't allowed. Other than peaceful is our new option.