[NhanH]

You made a lot of hidden assumptions in both of your replies so it’s a bit hard to response. But let me try one: if I claim that they can’t use physical force because they (the government) didn’t have the popular support and risk facing overwhelming violence escalation, what is your response to that? (I’m not saying that it is the case, more to question some of your assumptions in this situation)

> if you still continue with civil disobedience, well it is normal for the government to then follow up with threats of consequences, like tear gas, handcuffs, jail time, fines, account freezes, etc.

More to the point, the government are free to follow up the threat in a court case in front of a judge, and the fact that they didn’t is the problem

[ladallada]

> if I claim that they can’t use physical force because they (the government) didn’t have the popular support and risk facing overwhelming violence escalation, what is your response to that?

I'm not sure I'm following 100% your question, but I think you mean what if the government is so unpopular that the country is close to a revolution from its citizens?

This doesn't really makes sense to me in a liberal democracy like Canada. Every few years, the citizen get to replace the government with another if they're unhappy with the current one. The opposition are able to have a vote to cast out the current prime minister if they want. The governor general, at any point, if it senses the people are no longer favorable to the government can kick off a new election as well. On top of that, the government is using force within the established limits of the laws and Charter of Rights of the country that are already pre-agreed upon, and the force it is using is itself in order to enforce the laws of the country from being broken, which is kind of its job as a government.

> More to the point, the government are free to follow up the threat in a court case in front of a judge, and the fact that they didn’t is the problem

I'm not really following your point? The government is also allowed to enforce laws, and they can later be trialed. Police does this all the time, they will intervene and perform an arrest, and the trial in front of the court happens after. They are also free to enact the Emergency Act in the case of an Emergency as they did.

The funds from bank accounts are frozen, not taken. What will happen next is they will either be released, or a court case can start and decide what to do with the funds.

[NhanH]

> I'm not sure I'm following 100% your question, but I think you mean what if the government is so unpopular that the country is close to a revolution from its citizens?

I meant that they didn’t have the popular support to shut down the protest (I was not talking about the general popular support to the government as a whole, but just this specific issue). In the previous post, you were assuming that the protest does not have popular support and I wonder if that assumption is correct.

The specific methods used to shutdown the protest matter a lot. The police are free to arrest them or impound their vehicles. Freezing the bank account is not a standard course of actions, which you seems to think are similar to arresting. Even in the case of arresting, the police can’t even hold you for more than a few days unless they can find a prosecutor to file some charges against you.

They were free to use a plethora of methods to stop the protests, the complaint a lot of people have is they didn’t use other methods, and choose something that a lot of people consider immense overreach.

[telephone2]

You are missing a key element of context in all of this. This protest took place "online" as much as in person. This was a giant photo op designed to generate propaganda to drum up support for a burgeoning handful of trumpist/brexit style political movements that largely propagate through social media platforms.

Exercising traditional forms of enforcement (as seen in almost every other protest in Canada in the past 20 years) would have resulted in the generation of sensationalist content that would have stoked a wildfire in the social media support for these movements. (Look at how much the network nodes of the movement pushed the single instance of violence - a horse that got spooked and trampled a protestor.) This is the reason why force was not used, and non violent/commercial methods were used instead.

[winkeltripel]

> you were assuming that the protest does not have popular support and I wonder if that assumption is correct.

Seems to be a valid assumption.

https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/two-thirds-of-canadia...

[sangnoir]

> you were assuming that the protest does not have popular support and I wonder if that assumption is correct

The was a poll and it showed that the majority did not support the protest, by a landslide. IIRC, 72% of responses selected "Protestors have made their point, it's time they went home" (paraphrasing), a minority supported continuation.