1. Ottawa police have basically put zero effort into doing anything about the nighttime noise or generally criminal behaviour of the "protestors."
2. The federal government should not be stepping in immediately to solve policing issues like this precisely until the situation becomes untenable. THAT would have been draconian and authoritarian.
3. Beyond the city police, the provinces themselves needed to precipitate asking for this in some way, or to appear completely nonresponsive. This is why you saw states of emergency in the City, then in the Province, and only then was the act engaged.
4. The law that was invoked was an (IMO) very well designed piece of legislation that was designed to replace something called the War Measures Act, which was abused by Trudeau senior to end a terrorism threat in Quebec. That overstep of federal authority essentially ensured that law would never remain on the books and it was later replaced with this act. This is why today, tomorrow, and through Monday, there are debates going on on the house floor around the invocation of the Emergencies Act, and if the whole of parliament doesn't agree they can simply end it Monday at the conclusion of the debate when they vote on it. These rules are all clearly spelled out in the legislation. There's also effectively a review process where if this is engaged they must review and continue to agree to keep it in force over time, meaning it could not be an indefinite thing unless the majority of MPs agreed to keep it in force.
You can bet your last dollar that these abilities won't even be applied evenly. Look at the difference in the way the Canadian police have handled these truckers vs how they handle protests by indigenous people.
If the cops aren't willing to use existing powers and laws, what is the point in giving them more powers? Doesn't make sense
This is exactly the kind of thing that people were worrying about Trump doing in 2016: breaking societal norms and acting like a strongman, and getting away with it because the legal framework assumed leaders would all act like gentlemen. It's what you hear about people like Orban and Poland's leader doing, ignoring convention to push their own agenda. And now it is happening in Canada
> They're Canadian citizens after all, not terrorists.
These are not mutually exclusive. You can be both a citizen of a country and a terrorist operating within that country. Most countries (including Australia) have histories of this.
Whether their accounts should be frozen is a valid debate to be had. But they’re far from well behaved at this point.
And the rest of your post is made up.
I can anticipate the reply, but there's been an attempt of at least one, possibly with ideas about a second.[1][2]
> How many people have they injured?
This is an interesting phrasing of this. It implies an assault without injury is not an worthy of consideration. The actual answer is not entirely known by anyone outside law enforcement I would guess but there's been a few.[3][4][5]
> How can emergency powers be invoked against peaceful protests? Ideas are not violence.
Unless your definition of "peaceful" is "the majority of participants are not looting/destroying property or assaulting people", this is not a peaceful protest.
The ideas here are not coherent either, nor are the directed at where the changes can happen. As relates to the covid mandates, the Federal government actually only has powers over a handful of areas; the majority are held by the provinces. Indeed, the original precipitating mandate could be dropped tomorrow and it would change basically nothing at the borders because the US government also has the same mandates in place.
[1]: https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/ottawa-police-investigating-attemp...
[2]: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/mcleod-street-condo-residents...
[3]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/hate-crime-hotline-ott...
[4]: https://bc.ctvnews.ca/surrey-rcmp-investigating-alleged-assa...
[5]: https://edmontonjournal.com/news/crime/trucker-charged-follo...
Didn’t they fund Reddit? Trying to get their cash back I guess.
