[mass_and_energy]

YSK that the people who had their accounts frozen weren't simply protesting in Ottawa; they were blocking international borders to our largest trading partner, effectively holding our economy hostage. This absolutely constitutes behavior that's a danger to our nation so it makes sense to freeze the accounts of the people doing it. To be clear, there were many attempts to settle this without freezing people's bank accounts, but when nothing else works sometimes you have to get out the big guns.

[ungreased0675]

That logic seems like it would outlaw labor strikes too, especially in important industries. Sometimes, holding the economy hostage is the point.

I take exception to the framing of “attempts to settle this.” The government used violence and threat of violence to make the problem go away. There wasn’t an attempt at compromise. Do what I say or else isn’t an attempt to settle.

[roncesvalles]

Except it wasn't a labour strike.

[gruez]

That's how analogies are supposed to work. How do you expect civil society to function if people only supported civil disobedience when it's their preferred cause?

[segasaturn]

The recent postal strikes in Canada are an example of the situation you're describing. Eventually the federal government had to step in and break the strike to get the mail system moving again - if the workers refused to comply, against the orders of the government, I actually think strong measures like the freezing of bank accounts would be warranted and supported by most Canadians.

[gruez]

>I actually think strong measures like the freezing of bank accounts would be warranted and supported by most Canadians.

Typically such measures are mandated by court order, not executive fiat.

[ungreased0675]

The government should be able to force people to work under worse conditions and less pay they want to? That’s ok if most Canadians support it? Really? I hope you can appreciate just how dangerous this sounds, even if you think my slippery slope has a lot of traction on it.

[freedomben]

Out of curiosity, how do you feel about labor strikes? If customs, border control, longshoremen, or some other union decided to strike and picket would you support having the feds declare them terrorists and doing the banking thing?

[kennyloginz]

If they blocked travel arteries like highways and bridges for more than a hour or two.

[eastbound]

> effectively holding our economy hostage

This is what a protest is. (French here). If protesters go as far, and in Canada it was because you did them dirty, then you must sit at a table and negotiate. You must sit at a table and negotiate with everyone in a country. You cannot do someone dirty then complain that they protest.

It’s effects removing the right to protest, and therefore, removing democracy itself. Go live in Singapore?

[throw0101d]

> This is what a protest is.

They became occupiers when they started living in their trucks. There is no right to occupy in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

If they had slow-rolled their trucks to create traffic jams that is a protest and would have been quite another thing (but also generally illegal, e.g., Ontario Highway Traffic Act §132).

If you don't like what the government is doing elect a new government: that's what elections are for. You don't get to throw a hissy fit and mess up other people's lives and livelihood every time there's a decision you don't like.

Every society is about balancing the rights of the individual and the rights of the collective, and their responsibilities as well. About balancing of different rights when they are in opposition to each other.

[adamc]

Not a Canadian, but no, a protest protests and gives voice to the disagreement. Blocking other people's rights is not just a protest and is likely to trigger action to protect others. That's how it goes everywhere that has rights. Normally, some effort is made to do it peacefully, but there are no countries where you can halt the economy whenever you want to force people to negotiate with you.

[throaway89]

A protest which isn't allowed to do anything other than raise voices is a powerless and toothless protest.

[adamc]

I don't agree. There were a bunch of university protests over Gaza (slapped down for stupid reasons by university administrators under pressure from government), and, really, they just made noise, but they got a lot of people to notice, including myself. And to ask ourselves, what do I think about this?

If you are expecting protests to force someone's hand, that isn't protest or protected political speech, that's coercion. Some forms of that are legal (e.g., strikes), but there are pretty sharply defined limits.

[throaway89]

That's a good point, but the Gaza protesters would of course counter that they were slapped down (for stupid reasons) and the war in Gaza (which is illegal and genocidal, though initially provoked by Hamas) continues to be supported. So their protest, while not useless, wasn't effective in bringing change.

[eastbound]

Preferably online, but not on a website that everyone sees. Something silent. On the side. Also please have the dignity to die in peace, not commit suicide in a place where everyone can see it.

[Khaine]

so you were okay with BLM blocking freeways, and city roads?

[parineum]

What are you going to say if the answer is yes?

[potato3732842]

I respect principled people a lot more than people who flip flop out of self interest even if I might agree with the latter some of the time.

[Khaine]

If you are okay with the Truckers doing the same, then nothing.

[kennyloginz]

Did this ever happen for more than a day?

[tlss]

I mean, this is the French way. SNCF striking (a yearly occurrence) is arguably halting the economy each time it happens.

As a sympathizer to the HK protests, I've heard all these talking points before -- that the protesters are ruining the economy and making things miserable for everyone. Usually the protests can really only get so big when there is a shared grievance that keeps getting ignored by the administration.

In the case of HK, the grievance was the possibility for criminals to be extradited to Chinese mainland.

In the case of convoy protests, the grievance was the vaccine mandate in order to work a trucking job that's mostly solitary with minimal human contact.

[bawolff]

I think a better comparison would be the jan 6 protests in usa in 2021.

[cmrdporcupine]

Speaking as someone who has been in dozens of protests in my life: yes, that is what protest is, and as a protester engaging in civil disobedience you expect the response from authorities. That is exactly the point. When I have been on the receiving end of tear gas, there was no surprise. Big duh.

Crying because your illegal civil disobedience led to civil reaction by the law is the height of "oh no the leopard ate my face" idiocy.

[lordloki]

They weren't punished by the law though, they were debanked in an era where you need to use the banks to eat, pay rent and to merely survive. That is above and beyond any legal punishment. It is economic banishment and it is se excessive that it alone should be shunned by any person who wants civilization to survive.

[alext5]

Please, disagreeing on a topic and providing arguments is one thing, but suggesting somebody go live in another country because you don’t agree with them on something that happened in their country is disrespectful.

[lamontcg]

I mean, the South in the US waged a really big protest because they wanted slaves, and we murdered each other enough that they sort of changed their mind. Not every political grievance is on the right side of history.

[B1FF_PSUVM]

> the right side of history.

A particularly odious moral framework, mostly used to justify mass murder.

[tlss]

Everyone thinks they're on the right side of history :)

[lamontcg]

I guess it's time for slavery again, then.

[Khaine]

Stop Oil glue themselves to the road in cities as a protest, disrupting the economic output of major cities. They haven't been treated like a terrorist organisation.

By your logic they should be.

[cmrdporcupine]

Actually the Harper gov't passed laws when in power that enabled them to treat such protests against fossil fuels as terrorist or threat-to-national-security events.

And pipeline blocking protests in BC saw fairly heavy handed police intervention under the Trudeau govt. Those blockades were cleared by the RCMP, quite aggressively, something which the police basically refused to do for the convoy protest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Canadian_pipeline_and_rai...

I don't think it's really that cut and dry of a comparison in favour of your argument. Oil and gas protests in Canada have been treated more aggressively than the convoy was.

[Cumpiler69]

>but when nothing else works sometimes you have to get out the big guns.

Isn't that why you have the police, army, etc? You use force to remove those people breaking the laws, not go after their families. That's some USSR shit.

[bawolff]

> Isn't that why you have the police, army, etc? You use force to remove those people breaking the laws, not go after their families. That's some USSR shit.

Nobody went after anyone's family.

If you solicit donations to fund a criminal act, you lose access to the money you raise. This is a thing that happens in normal crime too. Its not just an emergency act thing.

People forget that many of the protestors who lost banking access wasn't due to the emergency act, but because one pissed off ottawa resident sued them in civil court and obtained a court order to that affect.

[MattGaiser]

Or the ones in Coutts with guns and a pipe bomb.

[catgary]

Yeah are we forgetting Alberta truckers who were planning to murder RCMP officers, and were straight-up terrorists?

[gadders]

The thing they were found not guilty of? https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/anthony-olienick-chri...

[CamelCaseName]

> But Anthony Olienick and Chris Carbert were both convicted on other charges of mischief and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose. Olienick was also convicted of possessing a pipe bomb.

> "It was an overcharge to begin with," Beyak said.

> He said if police tried to storm the barricade, he would "slit their throats."

[gadders]

So a few of them had guns then?

[potato3732842]

They won't tell you this because the patchwork of regulations makes it literally impossible to do so legally but a very large minority, perhaps brushing up to scant majority depending on where you measure, of truckers in North America pack heat. They're in and out of all sorts of sketchy places all the time, never have local knowledge and would be insanely easy pickings for various types of career criminals if they (as a class of people) were not a risky target.

[bragr]

I don't know about the details of this prosecution, but having served on juries, it is important to remember than "not guilty" is a finding that the government didn't meet the burden of proof, not necessarily a finding of actual innocence. That article would certainly suggest that they were prepared for violence, even if acquitted on the most serious charge.

[null0pointer]

It certainly is a finding of innocence when the presumption is innocent until proven guilty.