He's only Prime minister, not "Autocrat of All the Provinces."*
From the New York Times, January 23Court Finds Trudeau Overreached by Using Emergency Law to End Blockade
The government said it will appeal the decision that came two years after the start of a trucker protest that paralyzed the downtown of Canada’s capital.
A Canadian court found that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s use of the country’s Emergencies Act to end a truck convoy protest that had paralyzed the capital, Ottawa, two years ago was an unjustified infringement of civil rights, including the protection against unreasonable search and seizure, and, in some instances, the freedom of expression as well.
The Federal Court of Canada decision also found that the freezing of bank accounts of people linked to the protest was similarly unjustified, but it dismissed arguments that the government had violated a variety of other rights, including those linked to peaceful assembly.
The decision, which will be appealed, was the first instance of a court delivering a rebuke to Mr. Trudeau over his handling of the protest, which began on Jan. 28, 2022, and continued for much of February, inspiring copycat protests in other provinces, including Alberta and British Columbia, as well as in France.
The protests in Ottawa, which were initially incited by a Covid vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers, rendered most of the city’s downtown streets impassable, clogging them with parked trucks. Six days after Mr. Trudeau’s government introduced the emergency powers, an enormous force of police officers from across the country finished clearing the streets. About 230 people were arrested during the protest....
Although we had quite a few posts on the protests, this one from February 18, 2022 had the more important point:
Short of War, What Just Happened In Canada May Be The Biggest Story Of The Covid Era
Ummmm....Something's Up: Canadian Trucker's Convoy Being Greeted As Heroes
If this is the Zeitgeist, governments are going to fall....
....Saturday's "1000 Canadian Trucks On The Way To Ottawa To Protest The Cross-Border Vaccine Mandate"
is going to prove to be a low estimate of the numbers. The trucks are
coming from New Brunswick in the east to Vancouver in the west and
Yellowknife up in the Northwest Territories. And the people are cheering
them on.This might be one of the preference cascades we were posting on in early November.
Even though we had been following the story closer than many folks, at that point we really had no idea how big and how important the the unfolding events were.
Here's Izabella Kaminska at The Blind Spot, February 18 (also on blogroll at right) with more of just how critical it is for people to understand what is going on:
Why Canada is cultivating an M-pesa moment for bitcoin
....MUCH MOREAs mentioned the other day, I am on the go this week due to it being half term.
Nonetheless, I wanted to quickly draw readers’ attention to the following Globe and Mail piece by Tim Kiladze, mostly because it quotes me. For those who don’t know, the Globe and Mail is one of Canada’s most widely read daily/weekend newspapers. So it was very nice to be contacted for comment (even tho my husband immediately joked that it’s a red flag when journalists interview other journalists. Fair comment to a degree, I guess. But I think drawing on another journo’s specific expertise is fair.)
I was supposed to talk to Tim in person, but our schedules couldn’t quite make it work. So I sent him an email clarifying my view on some of the points he raised with me. Most of these were focused on his concerns about the rise of an uncontrollable parallel crypto economy rising up.
I think he did a relatively good job of representing my thoughts, so Tim if you’re reading this, this is not intended to be a dig at you at all. I just thought I would add my broader perspective, for the sake of contextualising my comments. As a journalist, I know the constraints that word count have on what’s published.
Below you will find the email that I finally dispatched to Tim (on the third go because of connection issues). Tim replied to the below with the very good counterpoint that Trudeau was only re-elected to power September, 2021, having run on a vaccine mandate ticket, which means as far as he is concerned he has a mandate from the people to do what he is doing.[*]
I agree with Tim to a degree. I think this fact definitely undermines accusations of Trudeau being a dictator. And for what it’s worth, I do think claims that “democracy” is at risk are a little far fetched. This is hardly a Caesar dictator for life situation. It’s more like a precursor – the moment when Pompey/Caesar tried to score domestic popularity by ridding the Romans of the pirate threat.
That said, the Covid situation today (i.e. February 2022) is very different to the situation voters were presented with in September. In the interim, there have been a number of developments that could have changed popular opinion significantly. The biggest of these is obviously the Omicron variant, which has led to rampant transmission and re-infection rates among the vaccinated. The other is the award-winning journalism from Paul Thacker, which came out in November, 2021, regarding data intergity issues with the Pfizer trials. Last of all, there’s the fact there are now a number of jurisdictions (England among them) that prove that mandate/health-passport policy does little to influence overall infection rates or mortality. Indeed, look to the UK in general as an example of a country that has seen support for Covid measures collapse in a very short space of time (aided in large part by revelations that core leadership had a compliance issue from day one).
In a democracy, when the facts change, it’s important to be open to the prospect of policy revision. This is especially the case if the policy in question is as unprecedented and far reaching as Covid mandates. Doubling down, slamming emergency powers on the situation and treating everyone questioning the policies as a potential insurrectionist who follows Qanon is incredibly bad optics for a democratic state. The latest speech from Chrystia Not-so-Freeland, meanwhile, seems nothing more than free advertising for cryptocurrencies. (It’s almost like they want to prove the bitcoiners right — which is bizarre in itself.)
Gamestopping Canada...
[*]Two quick notes. First off, Izabella knows as well as anyone that the Nazis were voted into power and I think she's is being nice to her interviewer by sidestepping that issue.However, for folks who weren't taught this stuff, here are the results of the elections leading up to President Hindenburg appointing Hitler Chancellor (last seen in a 2012 post):
December 1924
Nazi..............2.6%
Communist Party of Germany............... .9%
National Socialist Freedom Movement .....3%
Nazi..............18.25%
July 1932
Nazi..............37.27%
Nazi..............43.91%
On January 30, 1933 President Von Hindenburg named Hitler Chancellor of Germany. The Nazis held a parade.
Second quick note, Izzy's line:"I wanted to quickly draw readers’ attention to the following Globe and Mail piece by Tim Kiladze, mostly because it quotes me."is the funniest thing I've read this month and maybe this year. Completely unexpected.Still laughing, Nazis be damned.
A couple weeks later the Prime Minister's actions were just a signpost on the road to perdition:
Before the seizure of Russian - and Russian citizen's - assets, before the Canadian government began freezing citizen's bank accounts sans any type of judicial review ("It's an emergency" honk, honk) before GoFundMe stole the $10 million donated to the Canadian truckers - a decision since reversed after people started disputing the charge on their credit cards, something that was going to cost GFM $15 per disputed charge - before all that, the Bank of England took Venezuela's gold.
And now that the Biden administration is treating with Maduro the gold-grabbing might be important and as far as I can tell the BofE never gave back the gold they took....
