[Scoundreller]

> Suspicionless stopping of cars en masse followed by interrogation by police seems like an overreach.

I’m pretty sure Canadian DUI checkpoints are limited to interrogations about alcohol/drug intoxication (edit: and a few matters regarding the vehicle itself) 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. See R vs Mellenthin here: https://torontodui.com/knowledge-centre/everything-you-need-...

(Worth noting that Canada’s constitution is basically toilet paper for a lot of things because a judge (or politician!) can override a lot of it)

[idiotsecant]

> limited to interrogations about alcohol/drug intoxication (edit: and a few matters regarding the vehicle itself) unless something else is offered/observed.

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.

[epgui]

No, in effect this is not an unlimited power. Just ask any Canadian criminal law lawyer what they do all day.

I don’t know about K9 units, but I’ve never seen one anywhere in Canada, except maybe at an airport once.

[Teever]

They brought a bunch of police dogs into my Canadian high school for a 'random' search.

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.

[epgui]

That is for sure suboptimal, but it is not necessarily representative of most Canadians’ experiences.

[throwaway59596]

Why does that matter? The point is that it can happen and it's normal enough that the principal just did it and the police just followed up, no questions asked no eyebrows batted. That it's hidden enough is worse, not better for Canada, if it was outrageous there would be outrage and everyone would know - but nobody cares.

[epgui]

It matters because more than zero bad things happen to people in every single country, so we have no choice but to rely on statistics to get a sense for what countries are like and how to compare them. It's this sense of what countries are like in general, statistically, that allows us to say anything intelligent about things like this.

[867-5309]

to bat one's eyebrow

[asfarley]

This is representative of my experience.

[vkou]

> 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.

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...

[jonahrd]

One of the biggest problems is Canada is the assumption of country wide immunity from systemic issues because "it's worse in the States". This prevents lots of real change from happening and allows lots of really bad laws to exist.

[sekh60]

I am Canadian, living in Canada and I really hate this. We constantly compare ourselves to the States. Why can't we compare to a country more with aspiring to? Like one of the Nordics?

[red-iron-pine]

Canada is bigger, way more diverse, has way more population, and is structurally, historically, and culturally similar to the US.

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.

[seanmcdirmid]

> Denmark ain't exactly crazy about foreigners

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%.

[908B64B197]

> 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.

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...

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

[vkou]

Just three summers ago, the government spent a bit over a month, regularly gassing, brutalizing, and beating peaceful protestors in my town. And it didn't even need to unilaterally suspend the constitution to do so.

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.

[908B64B197]

And to that I say the perpetrators should be held accountable and prosecuted. The fact that it wasn't is a completely different issue.

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.

[vkou]

> The fact that it wasn't is a completely different issue.

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.

[int_19h]

The biggest problem in Canada is that whole "notwithstanding" backdoor in the Charter. And it's not even a hypothetical concern, given how it's been used in e.g. Quebec.

[JohnFen]

> You might have more rights on paper in the US, but in many respects, you have more of them in practice in Canada.

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.

[hutzlibu]

"Drug dogs"

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)

[ed25519FUUU]

Where do you get this from? The training of a drug dog would be one of the first things challenged in a criminal drug case and would terminal to establishing probable cause.

[hutzlibu]

My information is EU (germany) based and was a general remark, not specific to those traffic controls (and whatever specific rules they have).

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)

[idiotsecant]

>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,

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.

[hutzlibu]

Yes, that is wrong "than this is all that matters in court". There are some exceptions though, like with tax evasion, then illegal evidence was excepted, but in general you are right.

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)