[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.

[908B64B197]

> 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 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.

[vkou]

Do you also think they kidnapped and murdered Pierre Laporte, which is what precipitated the use of the WMA? How far down does this conspiracy theory go, exactly? Are we just going to, without any evidence, blame everything on the RCMP boogieman?

> 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 the lead-up to 2007 and again in 2008 was a change to who can declare it.

That's the other problem with 'reading the US constitution'. It's not exactly clear on the subject of when it can be set aside. The 68 invocations of martial law make it crystal-clear that it can be set aside, and does get set aside whenever someone feels like it [1]. But you're not going to find a single word in the constitution that explains why, who, and in what circumstances it can be set aside.

At least the CORAF is clear as on the subject of what it takes to set it aside - an Act of Parliament, and which parts of it can be set aside (Sections 2, 7-15 - pretty much all the important bits, aside from elections, and language rights).

[908B64B197]

> Do you also think they kidnapped and murdered Pierre Laporte, which is what precipitated the use of the WMA?

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.