This is pretty damned wild. You have people engaged in their civil right of peaceable protest, as allowed by their Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but, since they are protesting against government, Fuhrer Trudeau doesn’t like that
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared a national emergency over ongoing trucker protests, allowing the nation’s government to temporarily override civil rights.
“The scope of these measures will be time-limited, geographically targeted, as well as reasonable and proportionate to the threats they are meant to address,” Trudeau said at a press conference on Monday.
The far-reaching Emergencies Act gives the Canadian government the ability to prohibit public assembly, restrict travel, and force businesses — such as towing companies — to act, with compensation.
Trudeau said Canada’s 1998 Emergencies Act will be used to “strengthen and support law enforcement agencies at all levels across the country.”
You good with this, Canada? Could it be your Rights suspended next? What do you call it when the government takes away rights because people are using those rights?
Last year when 56 churches were set on fire or vandalized, Trudeau said Antifa's reasons for doing so were "fully understandable." Canadian truckers peacefully convene to protest tyranny, and it's an "illegal occupation."
— Joseph Massey (@jmasseypoet) February 15, 2022
But, see, those protests were asking for more government (and other stuff), they weren’t against government tyranny.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association wrote
The federal government has not met the threshold necessary to invoke the Emergencies Act. This law creates a high and clear standard for good reason: the Act allows government to bypass ordinary democratic processes. This standard has not been met. 1/3
The Emergencies Act can only be invoked when a situation “seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada” & when the situation “cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada.”
Governments regularly deal with difficult situations, and do so using powers granted to them by democratically elected representatives. Emergency legislation should not be normalized. It threatens our democracy and our civil liberties.
Might this create more protest?
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