Which in effect means that they are unlimited. They make wide use of drug detecting dogs. If a drug dog indicates you might have contraband, that allows further intervention. It is widely known that drug dogs can , worst case, be trained to hit when a hit is not present. Best case they have a bond with their handlers that tells them that the handler wants there to be a hit, whether the handler consciously conveys that or not. This increases the odds that there will be a hit.
Drug dogs are basically a override-the-law get you into jail free card, and any system that allows them as evidence of probable cause basically does not require probable cause.
I don’t know about K9 units, but I’ve never seen one anywhere in Canada, except maybe at an airport once.
I saw the principal come into the class I was in and point out a specific kid that she wanted searched.
The distrust of authority that I learned from that experience is without a doubt the greatest lesson I ever got in high school.
Police dogs manufacturing search warrants is more of an American problem than a Canadian problem.
You might have more rights on paper in the US, but in many respects, you have more of them in practice in Canada. The letter of the law matters way less than how the law is implemented in practice. Public culture, legal culture, political culture, and policing culture all play into this.
The right to bear arms is enshrined in the constitution, yet there's no shortage of people who have been executed for 'reaching for an (often imaginary) gun' during a 'routine traffic stop' that, oddly enough, predominantly targets minorities...
And speaking as someone who has lived or worked in a couple of those countries: it ain't all rainbows and cupcakes.
Denmark ain't exactly crazy about foreigners, plus there was just an article here about how ruthless they are with data surveillance. There isn't a huge market, jobs are tight, and "tall poppy syndrome" is a thing -- which is a problem for the HN wannabe-tech-mogul crowd. They're not the most open people -- kind, nice, polite -- but also closed off; its not easy to make friends. They're not crazy about immigrants, and there is very much a "for us, by us" mentality; high immigration in Sweden is, like in much of Europe, not popular with large segments of the population.
Outside of some cultural artifacts like Rugbrod or the Copenhagen obsession with fermenting every kind of food, there isn't much you can't get in Canada. Slightly less fat, slightly better dressed, and the English was often better.
7.5% of people in Denmark are foreign born, which isn’t as high as Canada’s 23%, but isn’t that far from the USA’s 13%.
In Canada the government unilaterally suspended the constitution (because that's a thing over there?) in the 70's for mailbox bombings. It was later revealed that the feds were behind these [0]. They did it again to shut down peaceful demonstrations against covid restrictions, where the protesters setup a bouncy castle close to the parliament. So I'm not sure about having more rights "in practice".
> The right to bear arms is enshrined in the constitution, yet there's no shortage of people who have been executed for 'reaching for an (often imaginary) gun' during a 'routine traffic stop' that, oddly enough, predominantly targets minorities...
Well, in Canada minorities found out the hard way what happens when only the cops (and criminals) have guns [1]. Not sure either of those are better.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_controversies_involvin...
It didn't seem like anyone needed to suspend the constitution to firebomb a neighbourhood in Philadelphia in 1985, either. 250 completely uninvolved people were left homeless by that. Go back a bit further in time, and discover that both countries were perfectly fine with running internment camps.
It frankly doesn't matter what the law says. What matters is how it is applied in practice.
PS. The constitution was suspended not for the mailbox bombings, but during the October crisis, when a cabinet minister was kidnapped and murdered by a secessionist terrorist group. You did a sleight of hand on unaware readers by portmanteauing the two events together.
Also, the CORAF (the 'constitution') was only adopted in '82, a decade after the crisis.
They should certainly not be able to avoid prosecutions because "woops we decided that, on that particular day we'll just ignore the constitution". You can't build a truly free country without the rule of law.
The War Measures Act was invoked in October 1970, replaced with the Public Order act in November 1970, which expired in April 1971.
The fed-created bombing attempt was in 1974. Unless the RCMP has a time machine, I don't think the invocation of the WMA or the POA can be blamed on Robert Samson.
> They should certainly not be able to avoid prosecutions because "woops we decided that, on that particular day we'll just ignore the constitution".
The US has invoked martial law 68 times in its history, 29 of them for a labour[1] dispute (The WMA has only been invoked three times, and the Emergencies act, which references the trucker case has only been involved once).
The mechanism for just deciding to ignore the constitution is very similar in both countries[2], but one of them has invoked it a lot more frequently. And, as mentioned a few posts above, government repression doesn't even need any invocation of such acts.
[1] With that frequency, it should be pretty clear as to who the government sees as its real enemy.
[2] In the US, the 2007 National Defense Authorization act even gave this power directly, and unilaterally, to the President, but it did get overturned in 2008. Now, it's largely in the unilateral hands of state governors.
They were caught in 1974. That doesn't mean (and Samson's testimony corroborated that) they didn't plant bombs or fake threats before. Ted Bundy wasn't caught the first time he murdered someone.
> but it did get overturned in 2008.
Thankfully, some still read the constitution.
> Thankfully, some still read the constitution.
Did you miss the second part of this equation, where martial law is still a thing, it can still be declared by state governors, and will happily suspend your rights?
The only thing that happened in 2007 and 2008 was a change to who can declare it.
They apparently got a confession from the alleged murderer (of course, one might question a confession obtained while the suspect's constitutional rights were suspended) but couldn't even place him at the scene of the murder.
And let's be honest, once you admit to planting evidence, there's not a lot of credibility left...
> How far down does this conspiracy theory go, exactly?
People said the same thing about the lab leak hypothesis back in 2020.
> The only thing that happened in 2007 and 2008 was a change to who can declare it.
As with any law, let's see if it stands the test of courts.
> And let's be honest, once you admit to planting evidence, there's not a lot of credibility left...
The most likely and obvious conclusion of this is that they got the wrong guy for the murder, not that they killed him.
> People said the same thing about the lab leak hypothesis back in 2020.
'People' also say smoking doesn't cause cancer, marijuana causes reefer madness, and that Bigfoot is real. 'People' believe and say all sorts of stupid things. You're going to need a better argument.
> As with any law, let's see if it stands the test of courts.
The application of martial law in the US has already stood the test of 68 invocations. How many more invocations are you going to need before you are convinced of the basic fact that the US constitution can and has been suspended during states of emergency?
And you're pointing fingers at Canada for invoking the WMA three times, and the Emergencies act once? [1]
This is a completely ridiculous double standard. Please open your eyes.
[1] When the Canadian CORAF has explicit, clear provisions for when those kinds of acts can be invoked, and by whom?
"No, your honor, we planted evidence on a different black man. No this one we really did find evidence. Just trust us".
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and all you have is... Well, not even any circumstantial evidence, it's just conjecture.
Generally speaking in the US, the rights you have in practice (as opposed to on paper) are determined by how wealthy you are. Much like how we have the best health care in the world if you're wealthy, but the worst (among wealthy nations) if you aren't.
Fun fact: Most police "drug dogs" you see in public are actually normal dogs, because "drug dogs" are quite expensive and can only be put to service for a limited time (and they stress out with lots of noise and people). But if the people think the dog is a drug dog, then their reaction is often telling enough.
(but I don't know, if they do this in canada to get the "allows further intervention", but this is usually a grey area anyway)
Here what matters in court is, have drugs been found. If the cops think someone looks suspicious enough, they can search him. And if drugs were found, than this is all that matters in court, because obviously the cops were right with their suspicion if something was found. I don't see how that evidence could be challenged in court?
(No one said, that the dog is a drug dog. People just assume it and the police uses that assumption)
That is entirely incorrect. German law follows a similar structure to the United States regarding the admissibility of evidence that was collected improperly. Evidence obtained in violation of the law, particularly by infringement of the privacy of the home or person, may be excluded from the trial if the violation is deemed to have a significant impact on the reliability of the evidence. The standard of probable cause in German law is known as "concrete indications of a specific criminal offense" (konkrete Anhaltspunkte für eine bestimmte Straftat). It requires officials to have concrete indications that a specific criminal offense has been committed or is about to be committed before they can conduct a search or seizure.
Still, in case of the dog: it would be interesting, if there was a case about it, as I am very sure of the practice in reality.
Police will do, what works and with what they can get away. Most people will just comply when the police tells them to open their pockets (note that they don't have to articulate it as an order, the same if police comes to your door without a warrant and they ask if they can come in) assuming the police has the right. (and drug addicts usually do not have a lawer).
I don't know if it would hold up in court as a justification for searching, that a person looked nervous because of a police dog as the person just could have fear of dogs in general, so they likely would avoid it.
(Also, if you happen to live within 30 km of a nation border like me, then police (Zoll) can search pockets and cars all the time without concrete indications. So they could use this tactic without problems, but I have never seen the Zoll doing it, but the normal police in the cities)
I’m pretty sure Canadian DUI checkpoints are limited to interrogations about alcohol/drug intoxication unless something else is offered/observed.
Supreme Court basically agreed that they are warrantless and detainments without reasonable suspicion, but considered them acceptable for the purposes of preventing drunk driving so that’s all the carve out it for.