I work in the financial sector, albeit on a different continent, but the pattern is there too. The one thing that really rubs the wrong way, is that this is really a government responsibility that...
I work in the financial sector, albeit on a different continent, but the pattern is there too. The one thing that really rubs the wrong way, is that this is really a government responsibility that is being outsourced to banks. Through regulation, government imposes these anti-money laundering and other checks, with often disproportionate consequences for the bank if they do not comply. Off course will the bank start to off-board massively: they have a huge risk for one bad apple, and little to gain from most mass retail consumer. The additional checks on those consumers make an unprofitable customer even more so.
On the other hand, we have had some centuries ago several revolutions to finally get an independent judiciary system that offers the best assurances when it comes to criminal behaviour. Yes, it costs money, but it is the price we pay for the freedom we have. As de-risking demonstrates, it cannot be outsourced.
Add to this that financial services is becoming more and more a basic human right to be able to live decently in a modern society.
I don't know what kind of upheaval will be necessary to change the system. Currently I mostly see patchwork, such as basic banking services. We'll see what the future brings. Anyway, to me, financial inclusion is the next big thing to make sure we have an ethical banking system.
The system is pretty terrible, but an upside is that banks do have different rules and somewhat different attitudes towards risk, and this decentralization can work in your favor. A lesson for...
The system is pretty terrible, but an upside is that banks do have different rules and somewhat different attitudes towards risk, and this decentralization can work in your favor. A lesson for most of us is that having a bank account at more than one bank (or credit union) is a really good idea, and not only for the reasons described in this article.
An example: a family member had a recent problem with depositing a large check issued by a local government, due to a technicality regarding who the check was made out to. It was quite fortunate that they had an alternate bank to try, because getting the government to reissue the check would have been difficult.
Contrast with the difficulties people have had when they were wrongly added to the US “no fly list” which is more centralized.
Yes, the judicial system can often be helpful, but it’s not a quick or easy process; even simple things can take months or years to fix. Already having an alternative set up is better.
Had a similar personal experience of alternate routes to get money around when people you're close with need it. Friend needed to borrow some cash, but his bank's zelle integration was just...
Had a similar personal experience of alternate routes to get money around when people you're close with need it.
Friend needed to borrow some cash, but his bank's zelle integration was just non-responsive.
"Do you happen to have coinbase linked with your debit card?"
"Yup."
Sent USDC over to his coinbase account, he withdrew the USD to his debit, was able to make the payment in time.
In my opinion that issue was preventable, had the parties involved not used the second least secure method of transferring money (after cash)… I do not understand how checks are still this widespread.
An example: a family member had a recent problem with depositing a large check
In my opinion that issue was preventable, had the parties involved not used the second least secure method of transferring money (after cash)… I do not understand how checks are still this widespread.
These situations are what banks refer to as “exiting” or “de-risking.” This isn’t your standard boot for people who have bounced too many checks. Instead, a vast security apparatus has kicked into gear, starting with regulators in Washington and trickling down to bank security managers and branch staff eyeballing customers. The goal is to crack down on fraud, terrorism, money laundering, human trafficking and other crimes.
In the process, banks are evicting what appear to be an increasing number of individuals, families and small-business owners. Often, they don’t have the faintest idea why their banks turned against them.
But there are almost always red flags — transactions that appear out of character, for example — that lead to the eviction. The algorithmically generated alerts are reviewed every day by human employees.
...
As if the lack of explanation and recourse were not enough, once customers have moved on, they don’t know whether there is a black mark somewhere on their permanent records that will cause a repeat episode at another bank. If the bank has filed a [Suspicious Activity Report], it isn’t legally allowed to tell you, and the federal government prosecutes only a small fraction of the people whom the banks document in their SARs.
As a result, you don’t know what you’re under suspicion for. “You feel like you’re walking around wearing this scarlet letter,” said Caroline Potter, whose Citibank accounts were shut down abruptly last year.
...
Federal data on the types of SARs that banks file show what they worry about most. Last year, banks filing SARs tagged categories like suspicious checks, concern over the source of the funds and “transaction with no apparent economic, business or lawful purpose” most often, according to Thomson Reuters.
To former bank employees, the bloodless data belie the havoc that banks wreak. “There is no humanization to any of this, and it’s all just numbers on a screen,” said Aaron Ansari, who used to program the algorithms that flag suspicious activity. “It’s not ‘No, that is a single mom running a babysitting business.’ “It’s ‘Hey, you’ve checked these boxes for a red flag — you’re out.’”
...
Federal law requires depositors to fill out a form if they’re depositing or withdrawing more than $10,000 in cash. Sometimes, in an attempt to avoid the gaze of the authorities, account holders will engage in “structuring,” making a series of transactions just under $10,000. It’s one of the top reasons that banks file suspicious activity reports.
The article has several stories about people who got caught out by this.
Reminds me of an amusing story of dog names, Finnish grammar rules, and EU banking sanctions. Woman in Finland half owns a dog named Ira, who needed an emergency vet visit . Finnish conjugation...
Reminds me of an amusing story of dog names, Finnish grammar rules, and EU banking sanctions.
Woman in Finland half owns a dog named Ira, who needed an emergency vet visit . Finnish conjugation adds an 'n' to the dog's name, so when the other owner sent her funds to cover the insurance, the bank message spelled the dogs name as "Iran". Banking system auto suspects this is an EU sanctions violation, and freezes her account. https://yle-fi.translate.goog/a/74-20033182?_x_tr_sl=fi&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
The original $10,000 cash reporting threshold was set back in 1945 by Henry Morgenthau, a level that was ratified in 1972 after the passage of the Bank Secrecy Act. This level has never been adjusted. (Morgenthau also set a second and lower $1,000 threshohold, but this only applied when banknotes in denominations of $50 or higher were involved).
Alas, inflation has been steadily eating into each thresholds' real value. When the Bank Secrecy Act was passed, $10,000 was worth $75,000 in today's dollars. In Morgenthau's time it was equal to $173,000. Either way, when the data collection apparatus was first established and the Pragmatic Compromise reached, most people's day-to-day cash withdrawals and deposits would have been sheltered from reported requirements. With the passage of time and inflation, a much wider swathe of civilian cash transactions have lost the protection offered by Morgenthau's $10,000 threshold. That means more snooping. It also means more debanking. Rather than absorbing the growing compliance costs of having "risky" cash-reliant customers, banks are closing accounts.
As for suspicious activity reports, when they were first legislated in 1994 the government subjected them to a $5,000 threshold, which is equal to around $10,000 today. With inflation having effectively destroyed half of the value of the threshold, more and more regular transactions are falling under suspicion. As the Times points out, suspicious customers don't make for good customers: "Multiple SARs often — though not always — lead to a customer’s eviction."
The Pragmatic Compromise that society came to decades ago is being poorly administered. To restore it, what is needed is a reasonably-sized one-time "catching up" of the various thresholds to account for at least part of the inflation that has occurred over the years, and then periodic adjustments to these levels each year to account for subsequent inflation. Maybe that'll solve some of the problems brought to light by the Times.
In Canada, all you had to do to have your account locked up, was to make a donation to the "wrong" cause. In this case, it was a grass roots protest of the vaccine mandates during Freedom Convoy...
In Canada, all you had to do to have your account locked up, was to make a donation to the "wrong" cause. In this case, it was a grass roots protest of the vaccine mandates during Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa. Just donating to that cause was enough to make the government freeze some people's bank accounts in an effort to dissuade more donations and try to force people to go home.
Even our national public broadcaster hinted that it must be "Russia" or "dark money" that donated over 10 million dollars to the protesters. Nope, the vast majority was from ordinary Canadians who were fed up with the gov overreach on the mandates and wanted to signal their massive displeasure.
There were conversations between the banks and the gov, with some of the bankers suggesting that the donors be labelled as "terrorists" so that the funds could be seized, but instead the gov invoked the Emergencies Act, an act designed to bring in the equivalent of martial law to freeze bank accounts and assets. It was an incredible overstep that's still playing out as much of that 10 million is still seized and being disputed.
The wild part is that although only few hundred accounts were actually frozen, our dear deputy Prime Minister gave the impression that an account could be frozen for a donation of any amount, which would have included thousands and thousands of Canadians. It caused a run at the banks and the e-transfer and online banking system at all of Canada's banks went down the day following the announcement. But that barely made the news - though it most definitely got the bank's and the gov's attention.
You think your money is yours until the gov in FREE country decides it doesn't like the way you protest them. And then its not.
The response was justified. That was not a protest. That was a national security situation, complete with shady financiers and shadow support that is still being litigated in courts as we speak....
Also it's worth noting that it's damn near impossible to get a list of everyone who donated to a cause in Canada. It's not like the government can just demand a list of every donor from any organization, especially at the speed with which this played out. We don't even mandate proper recordkeeping or reporting for NPOs or charities in this country. , so the notion that Canada went after anyone who donated to like causes but not Convoy-funded ones is as far-fetched as it gets. And this particular "protest" had a lot of far-fetched ideas and sentiments.
The federal government didn't even have a vaccine mandate at the time. They had already dropped it by then. It was all on the largely Conservative provincial governments at the time, who the Convoy notably did not protest nor have anything much to say about (and vice versa). Canada had already dropped the mandatory vaccine requirement to cross at the border but the United States had not. If this "protest" was actually about federal vaccine mandates, then it would not have happened at all. Or at least it would have happened at the proper jurisdictional levels.
So if there was no federal vaccine mandate to actually protest against, and they did not attempt to protest the jurisdictions that still had a vaccine mandate, then the protest wasn't actually about vaccine mandates. What it really turned out to be was a coup attempt on the Liberal federal government because they were Liberals. The Conservative governments who still had vaccine mandates were not "protested" against. The Conservatives in power were allowed to walk among their ranks even though many supported vaccine mandates and were vaccinated themselves (and had it mandated for their staff) while any Liberal and NDP member felt completely unsafe around them.
Such responses had to be put in place after weeks. Not days. Weeks of the capital being under siege by people who lied about their intent and purpose and were aiming to shut down the country by blocking infrastructure, and terrorizing the citizens of Ottawa, until they got what they really wanted. Many attempts were made in order to get them to stop or relent, as every other protest does once they feel heard or that they will progress to the next step. Of course part that involves giving the protestors what they're asking for, but they had it before they even left their homes. Their original MOU had it plain as day: what they really wanted was to be handed the power to shape and affect the federal government without an election. They just assumed, completely incorrectly, that power could just be taken away from a democratically elected government and handed to someone else.
It was, in other words, a coup attempt.
And it's not like there haven't been anti-mask and anti-vaccine protests all around the country. They exist. They can and have happened without any consequences. But pretending like the "Freedom" Convoy was just a protest that got unfairly maligned and targetted is just a bald-faced lie. Go ask the citizens of Ottawa, or Toronto, or any capital city. They all see over a hundred protests a year. Nothing about the Convoy was a real protest after a while, it was just a siege. Ask if any "protest" they've experienced has ever engaged in a form of torture used at Abu Ghraib.
This isn't even getting into how this was originally the "Trucker Convoy" as a method to pretend like this was some critically affected "pandemic hero" group until it became clear almost nobody were truckers. The actual truckers were trapped on the other side of the Canada-US border thanks to these antics, and were releasing videos begging this Convoy to stop so they could return home. Did you ever see those videos? Large groups of East Indian and white men, standing together, begging these "protestors" to stop enough just so they can get home. Have you ever known a protest to cause this kind of response? That sounds more like what you see at the edge of warzones.
Trucking companies fired the very few actual truckers who did participate and denied all involvement or responsibility. Or how many of these "protestors" did not have even the most basic understanding of what the actual vaccine policies at the time were, or what the laws of Canada were (many of them infamously referred to the US Constitution's Amendments as their own rights, such as referencing "First Amendment" rights even though Canada's first amendment was to create the Province of Manitoba).
Of course at the end of this is "I'm not a terrorist or committing a coup! I just hate vaccine mandates and think they trample on my freedom!" Sure. Almost everyone involved were ultimately useful idiots, it's not like Canada actually has that many rabid far right types. The vast majority of them had zero clue what they were doing, they just felt angry and someone offered them easy answers and a grand adventure, while stoking their egos about how they were going to be remembered as heroes in the annals of history. Just like the Jan 6 mob.
I'm not even going to start with the Trump and Nazi flags present at this "protest".
This was a group of people intentionally being disingenuous at every turn about what they wanted and why, with a complete ignorance of how Canadian government works, had no intention of protesting any Conservative even though they were more directly responsible, falsely impersonated a whole industry that was not involved and did not want to be, and even now maintains a lot of lies and disingenuous statements about the whole situation. And all over an event where they held the capital of Canada hostage for weeks. That's not a protest. Nothing about the Convoy is a protest.
So it makes sense why bank accounts surrounding the Convoy got locked up, just like bank accounts around any terrorist or hostile militant group get. Freedom does not mean the ability to take control over the federal government or hold the country under siege until you get it. Most Canadians do not begrudge that decision. Most Canadians hated that event and would do it again if they had to, but even faster if it meant saving weeks of time wasted trying to negotiate with people that tried to be as undiplomatic as possible. Of course, maybe having a police force locally that wasn't also a bunch of useful idiots would have also helped.
During the George Floyd protests I saw mentioned over and over again online (link below is an example) that "Protests are supposed to be disruptive" as people blockaded roads and destroyed...
And all over an event where they held the capital of Canada hostage for weeks. That's not a protest. Nothing about the Convoy is a protest.
During the George Floyd protests I saw mentioned over and over again online (link below is an example) that "Protests are supposed to be disruptive" as people blockaded roads and destroyed property (the most costly in US history). I'm curious if you make difference between the Convoy protest and the George Floyd ones?
I feel like many of the details I outlined with the Convoy above already explains why it was not just a disruptive protest but something much worse. I can't apply any of them to a disruptive...
I feel like many of the details I outlined with the Convoy above already explains why it was not just a disruptive protest but something much worse. I can't apply any of them to a disruptive protest, but I'm happy to dive into any of the points specifically.
I don't think I made a case to suggest that protests can't be disruptive above, only that they are clearer in goal and scope and actually have planned endings. Protests are disruptive, that's their point.
Also blockading a road as a temporary demonstrarion is one thing, but blocking an international trade route indefinitely until you get given control of a government is such a textbook act of war that it's been a mechanic to declare war in Civ and Total War games for decades now.
Well, since you were kindly willing to type all that out with a pretty rational response, allow me to share more from the side of a protest supporter, donor and friend of people who not only...
Well, since you were kindly willing to type all that out with a pretty rational response, allow me to share more from the side of a protest supporter, donor and friend of people who not only attended but helped organize the protest.
That was a national security situation
What it really turned out to be was a coup attempt on the Liberal federal government because they were Liberals.
You'd have to come up with far more than a statement to prove that. If the protesters wished to actually 'overthrow' the government they could easily have used those huge semis to enter Parliament hill proper and run roughshod through the House. That was the image that the mainstream media was trying to portray as they often referenced the US "January 6" and tried to draw parallels. Instead the semis and cars parked along Wellington and other nearby streets and set up camp and there was a definite air of festivity along with all the honking.
You put emphasis on that MOU written by James Bauder as a sign that the convoy was out to overthrow the government. First, if you actually read it, you can see that its definitely written in 'legalese' by someone who has little understanding of law. Secondly, if you watched James Bauder give his testimony at the Public Order Emergencies Commission, you could easily see that while the man is very sincere and earnest, there's no way he was going to be leading an insurrection. He's not a bright man. But more importantly, both he and the MOU were NOT a significant part of the protest as Bauder and the MOU were barely mentioned at the POEC and none of the police reports before or during the protest mentioned fears of an insurrection. Third, if you were paying attention you would have seen that the main convoy organizers, Lich and Barber, were not at all comfortable with the MOU or Bauder and asked him to rescind it. He took down his document and apologized for it before the convoy even made it to Ottawa as he acknowledged that it was 'not in the spirit of the convoy'. Fourth, if this was an insurrection, then Lich/Barber could easily have been charged with insurrection. They were not. The most the gov could come up with is a charge of "mischief" and judging by the way the case against them is going, this charge too will be dropped for lack of evidence. This was not a 'coup' or insurrection by any means.
Not that there wasn't anger, yes, toward Trudeau and the Liberal gov. Absolutely there was (and still is). Which is why there were so many groups that converged in Ottawa. The Freedom Convoy was not a single group organized by a couple of people. It was multiple 'convoys' with the common motivation that they were all deeply angry with Trudeau and our government. Yes, provincial gov's were imposing mandates but it's disingenuous to argue that the gov's derisive attitude toward people who were protesting against further mandates was not coming directly from him. Trudeau was, after all the man who said "why do we tolerate these people" and that the protesters were a "a small, fringe element in this country that is angry, that doesn’t believe in science, that is lashing out with racist, misogynistic attacks" Those were insults that he directed at ordinary Canadians and they responded. Turns out they weren't so fringe after all as the huge crowds, and the millions they donated would clearly indicate. Trudeau would go on, by the way, to say that he never said those things about the mandate protesters when he most definitely did.
But even more infuriating was that Trudeau showed no sign of letting up on controlling Canadians when over 80% of Canadians were already vaccinated. He was pushing the ArriveCan app at that point which (disastrously) did nothing but frustrate travellers and cost great expense. And he was proposing that the use of the app be expanded for future use in tracking Canadians. Between that, QR codes, federal travel restrictions, and mandates that no longer made sense after two years MANY Canadians were fed up with the overreach and control for a PM who didnt know when to let up.
This was a long protest and it was disruptive. It was intended to be as most effective protests are. But it was not a "siege", another word that gets mistakenly applied. Yes there were trucks and cars parked on several Centretown streets - but a siege is a military operation in which enemy forces surround a town or building, cutting off essential supplies, with the aim of compelling the surrender those inside. Some of the people of Centretown were definitely inconvenienced but they were not cut off from supplies and even Parliamentarians continued to work, some walking directly through the protesters to and from the House without security. There were emergency lanes open so emergency crews could get through and anyone who needed food literally only had to walk out to any of the many free food stands/bbqs that ran all day in the streets. That is not a siege, it's a protest.
The Freedom Convoy was labelled as a trucker protest because the spark was truckers, who had been crossing the US/CDN border without issue for nearly two years during covid, were suddenly being coerced into getting vaccinated or lose their routes. Which was pretty outlandish when covid was already two years old, 80% of Canadians were vaxxed and truckers spend almost all their time alone, in a cab, isolated from everyone, doing an essential service. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. It was a mandate for the sake of a mandate that was disconnected from a logical "scientific" response.
It started with angry truckers but obviously grew far beyond JUST truckers. And then it grew organically to many other countries. I lost count at about 15 other countries that had 'freedom convoy' protests to copy Canada's protest and it was the first time I saw Canadian flags being flown in other countries as a sign of protest. Obviously the gov overreach was being felt everywhere, not just Canada.
Freedom does not mean the ability to take control over the federal government or hold the country under siege until you get it.
You havent proven your point. There was no control taken over the federal government. The person who wrote the MOU took it down and apologized for it. Barber and Lich, the two main figureheads did not support it. Parliamentarians came and went through the protest as they pleased. Parliament did not stop operating. There was no violent uprising, no rioting, no damage to property. There weren't even any guns found among the protesters. That is NOT a siege and that was NOT a takeover. It was a protest, which is the lawful right of every Canadian citizen.
It's along the lines of Justin Trudeau's thinking to call people who showed up in Ottawa as a 'useful idiot.' I think it's far more accurate to say they were and are Canadians who are deeply concerned when their 'free' country starts imposing restrictive mandates that supercede what's actually necessary to protect its citizenry. Trudeau definitely got the message that he'd gone far enough and so did all the other provincial and municipal authorities. Shortly after the protest the mandates were systematically dropped at all jurisdictional levels and life began to return to some level of normalcy. Not that we aren't still feeling the immense cost of all those mandates and restrictions and will for years to come, to say nothing of the fact that the gov used the modern day equivalent of the War Measures Act to stop a grassroots honking protest. Shameful.
To the original point of this thread - locking down people's bank accounts for supporting a grassroots non violent protest was massive gov overreach. Trudeau was desperate. He was worried about looking like a fool on the world stage and its not lost on the observant that his decision to use the Emergencies Act came only two days after he got a call from President Biden, who made it clear that the auto manufacturers who depend on Canadian car parts were getting pretty upset about losing money and maybe it was time he did something. Trudeau ignored the fact that two of the main port blockades actually came down BEFORE he enacted the EA and decided to do it anyway, using a sledge hammer to smash a fly, seizing vehicles and freezing bank accounts.
When it came to justifying the use of the EA the primary question that the gov had to answer at the Commission was "On what legal authority did the gov make the decision to use the Emergencies Act?" And on that question the Attorney General and Justice Minister Lametti said he refused to answer because it was confidential (not surprisingly Trudeau removed him as Justice Minister). In the ongoing trial of Lich and Barber the gov is supposed to provide police transcripts to the defense and has produced an 8 page police document that was fully redacted as well as claiming that two key police liaison officers had all the messages on their phones wiped when the phones were 'upgraded'. There's nothing at all suspicious about claiming 'confidentiality', redactions and 'accidental' missing messages when trying to prove a case /s
It won't be forgotten anytime soon. You'll note for the record that almost all the charges against people who were at the protest have been dropped or failed. The pastors who were charged have had charges dropped as well as the restaurants who refused to close. The case in front of the courts on whether the use of the EA was lawful was heard in April and the decision will be out in few months but my guess is that the court will find out what the Canadian public has already decided: Trudeau is not a fit leader and his decision making has and is damaging this country. The polls say he won't be leader after the next election IF he even stays in power that long.
Sorry for the long reply.
ps. Just to make it personal, I'm not "anti science" - all my family were vaccinated. Two of my adult children are M.D.'s and we are all university grads, but I can appreciate that it was easier to downplay the protest if the people involved were considered to be ignorant.
I'm curious, you seem connected to the Convoy at an arm's length given those connections. Is there also a relationship to the Maverick Party as well, since the Convoy organizers were linked with...
I'm curious, you seem connected to the Convoy at an arm's length given those connections. Is there also a relationship to the Maverick Party as well, since the Convoy organizers were linked with them? Seems like similar circles.
As for all the effects on everyday Canadians, this BBC article has a number of examples, from blocking garbage and mail trucks from operating, to preventing a border town from getting access to groceries and gas. By the end of it, even Jason Kenney, who supported axing the vaccine mandate for border crossings, called the Convoy "totally unacceptable".
When people call this a siege, they do not mean it like the military in a banana republic overwhelming the capital. They mean it like when a bunch of hooligans invade a nursing home and refuse to leave.
So I really have to wonder where this rosy perspective on the Convoy is coming from. Most Canadians wanted it to stopeven if they agreed with its principles. It wasn't some glorious party with a bad rep. It was appalling on a number of levels. I really have to wonder if the people who caused so much suffering and harm actually enjoyed and partied about the fact that they were doing this.
The MOU received emphasis because it is the only claim the Convoy actually had that support its extremity. You say the guy who wrote it is an idiot. Of course, it's plain as day to everyone who read it. But yet that seemed to be what many of the most ardent Convoyers wanted by the end, especially when they escalated to blocking a major international border crossing indefinitely.
That was the straw that broke the camel's back. It was a mandate for the sake of a mandate that was disconnected from a logical "scientific" response.
And this is worth shutting down the capital and a key trading route over? But also why the federal government then? In Canada, healthcare is a provincial responsibility. The vaccine mandates that affected people day-to-day were not federal. If this was only about vaccine mandates in general, then this would have been a provincial protest.
The whole thing about truckers shows the rationale behind this. 90% of Canadian truckers were already vaccinated. I'd bet that 10% of every industry and job had unvaccinated people—only about 80% of the country was vaccinated at the time after all. So what was it about this specific group of people and not, say, retail workers or mail workers or railyard workers? It was branded as the Trucker Convoy because it claimed to speak for truckers and be made of truckers, even though they officially called themselves something else. But almost all truckers were already vaccinated, and trucking associations had already disavowed the Convoy before it ever started.
It makes sense in one way: if a fifth of every industry has unvaccinated people that are affected by these policies, and trucking is a rare one that specifically is affected by federal policy, then there's a reason to amass a Convoy to go and protest at Trudeau about it.
That's really the core of the matter, and why it's a coup in the end. The Convoy really just hates that guy, and only because he's the Liberal leader and therefore a Liberal PM. Even your comment is tinged with a lot of acid personally for him, assigning him quite a lot of responsibility for birthing the Convoy here. There is a lot of personal hatred that is sending people into mania and yet they are treating it like it's normal and cool to go rabid about someone—it's not normal. The obsession with this guy is insane. It clouds all judgement and makes it impossible to actually discuss any real policy or information because it feels like all reality has to bend to somehow be this guy's fault.
I'd bet the entire Convoy don't want him to be PM, one way or the other, and hoped it was an opportunity to lead to him coming down. If it was really about vaccine mandates, there were more relevant policies and Premiers to protest. There would not have needed to be any "indefinite" blockading going on, it would have showed "the will of the people" and gotten a ton of support.
Or maybe everyone involved is just so ignorant that none of this crossed their minds and they just went to a guy they really, really hate, who just happens to be the Prime Minister, just to see what happens when they descend en masse and cause as much disruption as possible for him until they get "what they want".
As for Trudeau and how he viewed the Convoy and his many detractors flying F*CK TRUDEAU flags: it's a perfectly normal response to see people going out of their way to be complete assholes to you personally and decide "Nah, I'm not going near them." It's not like he's well-liked these days, he's got opponents and detractors everywhere. But the people who fly those flags and logos, and who organize into the Convoy about it, are beyond simple political disagreement, and seem to be aware and proud of it.
All I really want to contribute to the discussion on personal taste on Trudeau is: I believe if he was a Conservative, they would all fucking love him. Like what's the worst Harper or Ford or Polievre ever got? Some boos? A snide remark? A rude gesture? They don't get treated anywhere nearly as badly. (Maybe that moment where Masai snubs Ford and then goes in with Trudeau is up there.) But just imagine if any of them somehow got people left of "ban all abortions" to act like Trudeau haters do, and then Conservative-Trudeau responded the exact same way as regular Trudeau does. He'd be the most famous world leader on the planet, as conservative media around the world would champion him as a strong-willed hero.
As for the legal matters, I cannot comment on them as they are still ongoing. Mischief seems quaint compared to what the Convoy was, and yet that's the charge they could reasonably go with under our laws, which are quite stringent when it comes to charging people. The fact that Canadians are calling for prosecution on protest organizers at all is a clear sign it was not just a fun party protest. But the ERA was already tried and was found legitimate. The reasons for it are obvious to any outside observer. They only seem to by a mystery to those who insist the Convoy was something different than what we all saw, heard, and smelled.
It seems like you’re spending a lot of time describing how people observing these events felt about them, which if anything makes it more difficult to understand what physically happened. For...
It seems like you’re spending a lot of time describing how people observing these events felt about them, which if anything makes it more difficult to understand what physically happened. For example:
When people call this a siege, they do not mean it like the military in a banana republic overwhelming the capital. They mean it like when a bunch of hooligans invade a nursing home and refuse to leave.
Hooligans occupying a nursing home would not be a siege, either, though. A siege means surrounding and cutting off supplies, not invading or occupying.
People often use language imprecisely. Maybe it felt like a siege and a lot of people started calling it a siege, but that doesn’t make it one.
I am not interested in providing a recap of the event. I responded to someone suggesting that the Convoy was not a national security incident and is an example of government overreach and tyranny...
I am not interested in providing a recap of the event. I responded to someone suggesting that the Convoy was not a national security incident and is an example of government overreach and tyranny when the actual situation was much different than they described. I have provided details of the event, with links and citations, multiple times already because that is qualified coverage of the events, with all the facts and testimonials of people validated and not just from some random guy on the internet. If that's not enough to start giving someone a picture of what happened or to find more sources of information and coverage, then I can only imagine that they ignored all that.
But also, if you looked at the links I provided, you'll see the Convoy was described in all kinds of ways: a siege, an occupation, a takeover, a hostile act, and more. There's all kinds of descriptions about what it was. There were also incidents described of cutting off transport routes and supplies too, but I still reject the notion that it cannot be called a siege without those specific factors while it maintained all the other qualities—there is no need to be so specific about whether it was siege or an occupation when the actual point is that it was not just a protest and cannot reasonably be described as one. The citizens of Ottawa—a city which sees over a hundred protests a year and is pretty familiar with what protests are—were inarguably terrorized and traumatized by the event, and there's a lot of ink out there about how and why. To be so pedantic about which description to use strikes me as being pedantic when dealing with an abuse victim and telling them to use the correct terminology when describing their abuse, or like when a school shooting happens and people get more focused on arguing what the AR in AR-15 actually means instead of talking about the actual school shooting. There's no good reason for such pedantry here. There's a lot of good reasons people called the Convoy all those things, and it would behoove a truly interested observer to explore why that is the case, not to find ways to dismiss their choice of language.
I don’t mean to be dismissive. I picked one simple thing because you wrote quite a long response and responding to it all would be a lot of work. (I haven’t studied what happened in any detail.)...
I don’t mean to be dismissive. I picked one simple thing because you wrote quite a long response and responding to it all would be a lot of work. (I haven’t studied what happened in any detail.)
No, it’s not the most important thing, but I think any argument is going to be based on facts, and it matters how you describe them.
The citizens of Ottawa—a city which sees over a hundred protests a year and is pretty familiar with what protests are—were inarguably terrorized and traumatized by the event
I don’t really have the background to argue, but this form of argument is unconvincing and a little suspicious to me, where it’s all about how people felt and not what happened to make them feel that way. Feelings and perceptions and reactions are important but shouldn’t come first. Understanding what happened comes first.
There’s a lot more I could respond to, but I’m just trying to get across how, while you’re going through a lot of effort writing your posts, it’s not necessarily as convincing as you think to a casual reader.
Again: the technical difference between "siege" and "occupation" (or any of the other words people used) is irrelevant when the actual point is that it was not a protest and cannot reasonably be...
Again: the technical difference between "siege" and "occupation" (or any of the other words people used) is irrelevant when the actual point is that it was not a protest and cannot reasonably be described as one, and any attempts to do so are disingenuous and involve dismissing the trauma and experiences thousands of people across Ottawa and its surrounding towns were subjected to.
Even if you don't like that I used certain words in my comment, you can see those words and more being used by the people directly affected. Like it or not, these are the pervasive sentiments on the Convoy and the only thing to explore is why this is the overwhelming sentiment from those that experienced it, not why they are using one specific word and not another.
If this entire situation will be unknowable to you because of slightly imprecise terms, you may as well stop now. I haven't even tried to go into the details of all the far more incorrectly used terminology on the Convoy's side. If calling this a siege stops you from understanding why this Convoy was not at all a protest and more like a hostile action, then the misuse of scientific terms, political terms, and the complete misunderstanding of the Canadian government system on the Convoy's side will send your head spinning.
Besides, this is a bad requirement to have before an argument can be considered these days. Current discourse, especially from the right wing, basically requires misusing and abusing terminology to make situations sound worse than they are. Looking at all the terms and concepts they've co-opted and warped: virtue signalling, cancelling, cuck, woke, tyranny, free speech. If you're going to demand precise terms at all turns, then you're obligated to ensure that all sides are using proper terms first. I've already been more precise and made my case for why the Convoy is more of one term than the other, and gatekeeping based on technicalities is not only avoiding the actual point, it is giving power to those who intentionally misuse terms on the other side of things.
Again, it strikes me the same as all those gun nuts who are more focused on dismissing arguments for gun reforms because the people calling for reform don't know what model of gun was used to kill people in a mass shooting. That's just not the point, and it's distracting to focus on such pedantry instead of the matter at hand.
I don’t really have the background to argue, but this form of argument is unconvincing and a little suspicious to me, where it’s all about how people felt and not what happened to make them feel that way. Feelings and perceptions and reactions are important but shouldn’t come first. Understanding what happened comes first.
You have to pretend like I didn't link to a single source or cover the events in order to make this statement. I've done both multiple times, and I still do not see my efforts acknowledged in this response.
Incessant and interminable noise. The US torturers would blast music and noise at prisoners 24/7 with a wide range of music, from Metallica to Rage Against the Machine to children's music like the...
Incessant and interminable noise. The US torturers would blast music and noise at prisoners 24/7 with a wide range of music, from Metallica to Rage Against the Machine to children's music like the Barney theme song.
“There is no humanization to any of this, and it’s all just numbers on a screen,” said Aaron Ansari, who used to program the algorithms that flag suspicious activity. “It’s not ‘No, that is a single mom running a babysitting business.’ “It’s ‘Hey, you’ve checked these boxes for a red flag — you’re out.’”
I work in the financial sector, albeit on a different continent, but the pattern is there too. The one thing that really rubs the wrong way, is that this is really a government responsibility that is being outsourced to banks. Through regulation, government imposes these anti-money laundering and other checks, with often disproportionate consequences for the bank if they do not comply. Off course will the bank start to off-board massively: they have a huge risk for one bad apple, and little to gain from most mass retail consumer. The additional checks on those consumers make an unprofitable customer even more so.
On the other hand, we have had some centuries ago several revolutions to finally get an independent judiciary system that offers the best assurances when it comes to criminal behaviour. Yes, it costs money, but it is the price we pay for the freedom we have. As de-risking demonstrates, it cannot be outsourced.
Add to this that financial services is becoming more and more a basic human right to be able to live decently in a modern society.
I don't know what kind of upheaval will be necessary to change the system. Currently I mostly see patchwork, such as basic banking services. We'll see what the future brings. Anyway, to me, financial inclusion is the next big thing to make sure we have an ethical banking system.
The system is pretty terrible, but an upside is that banks do have different rules and somewhat different attitudes towards risk, and this decentralization can work in your favor. A lesson for most of us is that having a bank account at more than one bank (or credit union) is a really good idea, and not only for the reasons described in this article.
An example: a family member had a recent problem with depositing a large check issued by a local government, due to a technicality regarding who the check was made out to. It was quite fortunate that they had an alternate bank to try, because getting the government to reissue the check would have been difficult.
Contrast with the difficulties people have had when they were wrongly added to the US “no fly list” which is more centralized.
Yes, the judicial system can often be helpful, but it’s not a quick or easy process; even simple things can take months or years to fix. Already having an alternative set up is better.
Had a similar personal experience of alternate routes to get money around when people you're close with need it.
Friend needed to borrow some cash, but his bank's zelle integration was just non-responsive.
"Do you happen to have coinbase linked with your debit card?"
"Yup."
Sent USDC over to his coinbase account, he withdrew the USD to his debit, was able to make the payment in time.
In my opinion that issue was preventable, had the parties involved not used the second least secure method of transferring money (after cash)… I do not understand how checks are still this widespread.
It's not like the local government gives you a choice. They just send you a check in the mail.
Yes, this wasn’t a critique on “the individual”, but rather “the system.”
Poorly worded, apologies.
Here is another take on the issue, more from an OPS perspective:
https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/seeing-like-a-bank/
From the article (archive):
...
...
...
The article has several stories about people who got caught out by this.
Reminds me of an amusing story of dog names, Finnish grammar rules, and EU banking sanctions.
Woman in Finland half owns a dog named Ira, who needed an emergency vet visit . Finnish conjugation adds an 'n' to the dog's name, so when the other owner sent her funds to cover the insurance, the bank message spelled the dogs name as "Iran". Banking system auto suspects this is an EU sanctions violation, and freezes her account.
https://yle-fi.translate.goog/a/74-20033182?_x_tr_sl=fi&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Here's an argument that this is happening because the reporting thresholds are too low:
In praise of anti-money laundering thresholds (Moneyness)
In Canada, all you had to do to have your account locked up, was to make a donation to the "wrong" cause. In this case, it was a grass roots protest of the vaccine mandates during Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa. Just donating to that cause was enough to make the government freeze some people's bank accounts in an effort to dissuade more donations and try to force people to go home.
Even our national public broadcaster hinted that it must be "Russia" or "dark money" that donated over 10 million dollars to the protesters. Nope, the vast majority was from ordinary Canadians who were fed up with the gov overreach on the mandates and wanted to signal their massive displeasure.
There were conversations between the banks and the gov, with some of the bankers suggesting that the donors be labelled as "terrorists" so that the funds could be seized, but instead the gov invoked the Emergencies Act, an act designed to bring in the equivalent of martial law to freeze bank accounts and assets. It was an incredible overstep that's still playing out as much of that 10 million is still seized and being disputed.
The wild part is that although only few hundred accounts were actually frozen, our dear deputy Prime Minister gave the impression that an account could be frozen for a donation of any amount, which would have included thousands and thousands of Canadians. It caused a run at the banks and the e-transfer and online banking system at all of Canada's banks went down the day following the announcement. But that barely made the news - though it most definitely got the bank's and the gov's attention.
You think your money is yours until the gov in FREE country decides it doesn't like the way you protest them. And then its not.
The response was justified. That was not a protest. That was a national security situation, complete with shady financiers and shadow support that is still being litigated in courts as we speak. That's why the bank accounts got frozen. Exactly which organization did you donate to and are you sure they didn't participate or fund that attack on Canada? Only 257 accounts (personal and business) were frozen and they were mostly tied to the organizers or people that refused to leave the area in the tail end of the "protest", or had other criminal records that came up, and many of these accounts were released a short while later. (Source 2).
Also it's worth noting that it's damn near impossible to get a list of everyone who donated to a cause in Canada. It's not like the government can just demand a list of every donor from any organization, especially at the speed with which this played out. We don't even mandate proper recordkeeping or reporting for NPOs or charities in this country. , so the notion that Canada went after anyone who donated to like causes but not Convoy-funded ones is as far-fetched as it gets. And this particular "protest" had a lot of far-fetched ideas and sentiments.
The federal government didn't even have a vaccine mandate at the time. They had already dropped it by then. It was all on the largely Conservative provincial governments at the time, who the Convoy notably did not protest nor have anything much to say about (and vice versa). Canada had already dropped the mandatory vaccine requirement to cross at the border but the United States had not. If this "protest" was actually about federal vaccine mandates, then it would not have happened at all. Or at least it would have happened at the proper jurisdictional levels.
So if there was no federal vaccine mandate to actually protest against, and they did not attempt to protest the jurisdictions that still had a vaccine mandate, then the protest wasn't actually about vaccine mandates. What it really turned out to be was a coup attempt on the Liberal federal government because they were Liberals. The Conservative governments who still had vaccine mandates were not "protested" against. The Conservatives in power were allowed to walk among their ranks even though many supported vaccine mandates and were vaccinated themselves (and had it mandated for their staff) while any Liberal and NDP member felt completely unsafe around them.
Such responses had to be put in place after weeks. Not days. Weeks of the capital being under siege by people who lied about their intent and purpose and were aiming to shut down the country by blocking infrastructure, and terrorizing the citizens of Ottawa, until they got what they really wanted. Many attempts were made in order to get them to stop or relent, as every other protest does once they feel heard or that they will progress to the next step. Of course part that involves giving the protestors what they're asking for, but they had it before they even left their homes. Their original MOU had it plain as day: what they really wanted was to be handed the power to shape and affect the federal government without an election. They just assumed, completely incorrectly, that power could just be taken away from a democratically elected government and handed to someone else.
It was, in other words, a coup attempt.
And it's not like there haven't been anti-mask and anti-vaccine protests all around the country. They exist. They can and have happened without any consequences. But pretending like the "Freedom" Convoy was just a protest that got unfairly maligned and targetted is just a bald-faced lie. Go ask the citizens of Ottawa, or Toronto, or any capital city. They all see over a hundred protests a year. Nothing about the Convoy was a real protest after a while, it was just a siege. Ask if any "protest" they've experienced has ever engaged in a form of torture used at Abu Ghraib.
This isn't even getting into how this was originally the "Trucker Convoy" as a method to pretend like this was some critically affected "pandemic hero" group until it became clear almost nobody were truckers. The actual truckers were trapped on the other side of the Canada-US border thanks to these antics, and were releasing videos begging this Convoy to stop so they could return home. Did you ever see those videos? Large groups of East Indian and white men, standing together, begging these "protestors" to stop enough just so they can get home. Have you ever known a protest to cause this kind of response? That sounds more like what you see at the edge of warzones.
Trucking companies fired the very few actual truckers who did participate and denied all involvement or responsibility. Or how many of these "protestors" did not have even the most basic understanding of what the actual vaccine policies at the time were, or what the laws of Canada were (many of them infamously referred to the US Constitution's Amendments as their own rights, such as referencing "First Amendment" rights even though Canada's first amendment was to create the Province of Manitoba).
Of course at the end of this is "I'm not a terrorist or committing a coup! I just hate vaccine mandates and think they trample on my freedom!" Sure. Almost everyone involved were ultimately useful idiots, it's not like Canada actually has that many rabid far right types. The vast majority of them had zero clue what they were doing, they just felt angry and someone offered them easy answers and a grand adventure, while stoking their egos about how they were going to be remembered as heroes in the annals of history. Just like the Jan 6 mob.
I'm not even going to start with the Trump and Nazi flags present at this "protest".
This was a group of people intentionally being disingenuous at every turn about what they wanted and why, with a complete ignorance of how Canadian government works, had no intention of protesting any Conservative even though they were more directly responsible, falsely impersonated a whole industry that was not involved and did not want to be, and even now maintains a lot of lies and disingenuous statements about the whole situation. And all over an event where they held the capital of Canada hostage for weeks. That's not a protest. Nothing about the Convoy is a protest.
So it makes sense why bank accounts surrounding the Convoy got locked up, just like bank accounts around any terrorist or hostile militant group get. Freedom does not mean the ability to take control over the federal government or hold the country under siege until you get it. Most Canadians do not begrudge that decision. Most Canadians hated that event and would do it again if they had to, but even faster if it meant saving weeks of time wasted trying to negotiate with people that tried to be as undiplomatic as possible. Of course, maybe having a police force locally that wasn't also a bunch of useful idiots would have also helped.
During the George Floyd protests I saw mentioned over and over again online (link below is an example) that "Protests are supposed to be disruptive" as people blockaded roads and destroyed property (the most costly in US history). I'm curious if you make difference between the Convoy protest and the George Floyd ones?
https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2020/07/08/history-protests-social-change
I feel like many of the details I outlined with the Convoy above already explains why it was not just a disruptive protest but something much worse. I can't apply any of them to a disruptive protest, but I'm happy to dive into any of the points specifically.
I don't think I made a case to suggest that protests can't be disruptive above, only that they are clearer in goal and scope and actually have planned endings. Protests are disruptive, that's their point.
Also blockading a road as a temporary demonstrarion is one thing, but blocking an international trade route indefinitely until you get given control of a government is such a textbook act of war that it's been a mechanic to declare war in Civ and Total War games for decades now.
Well, since you were kindly willing to type all that out with a pretty rational response, allow me to share more from the side of a protest supporter, donor and friend of people who not only attended but helped organize the protest.
You'd have to come up with far more than a statement to prove that. If the protesters wished to actually 'overthrow' the government they could easily have used those huge semis to enter Parliament hill proper and run roughshod through the House. That was the image that the mainstream media was trying to portray as they often referenced the US "January 6" and tried to draw parallels. Instead the semis and cars parked along Wellington and other nearby streets and set up camp and there was a definite air of festivity along with all the honking.
You put emphasis on that MOU written by James Bauder as a sign that the convoy was out to overthrow the government. First, if you actually read it, you can see that its definitely written in 'legalese' by someone who has little understanding of law. Secondly, if you watched James Bauder give his testimony at the Public Order Emergencies Commission, you could easily see that while the man is very sincere and earnest, there's no way he was going to be leading an insurrection. He's not a bright man. But more importantly, both he and the MOU were NOT a significant part of the protest as Bauder and the MOU were barely mentioned at the POEC and none of the police reports before or during the protest mentioned fears of an insurrection. Third, if you were paying attention you would have seen that the main convoy organizers, Lich and Barber, were not at all comfortable with the MOU or Bauder and asked him to rescind it. He took down his document and apologized for it before the convoy even made it to Ottawa as he acknowledged that it was 'not in the spirit of the convoy'. Fourth, if this was an insurrection, then Lich/Barber could easily have been charged with insurrection. They were not. The most the gov could come up with is a charge of "mischief" and judging by the way the case against them is going, this charge too will be dropped for lack of evidence. This was not a 'coup' or insurrection by any means.
Not that there wasn't anger, yes, toward Trudeau and the Liberal gov. Absolutely there was (and still is). Which is why there were so many groups that converged in Ottawa. The Freedom Convoy was not a single group organized by a couple of people. It was multiple 'convoys' with the common motivation that they were all deeply angry with Trudeau and our government. Yes, provincial gov's were imposing mandates but it's disingenuous to argue that the gov's derisive attitude toward people who were protesting against further mandates was not coming directly from him. Trudeau was, after all the man who said "why do we tolerate these people" and that the protesters were a "a small, fringe element in this country that is angry, that doesn’t believe in science, that is lashing out with racist, misogynistic attacks" Those were insults that he directed at ordinary Canadians and they responded. Turns out they weren't so fringe after all as the huge crowds, and the millions they donated would clearly indicate. Trudeau would go on, by the way, to say that he never said those things about the mandate protesters when he most definitely did.
But even more infuriating was that Trudeau showed no sign of letting up on controlling Canadians when over 80% of Canadians were already vaccinated. He was pushing the ArriveCan app at that point which (disastrously) did nothing but frustrate travellers and cost great expense. And he was proposing that the use of the app be expanded for future use in tracking Canadians. Between that, QR codes, federal travel restrictions, and mandates that no longer made sense after two years MANY Canadians were fed up with the overreach and control for a PM who didnt know when to let up.
This was a long protest and it was disruptive. It was intended to be as most effective protests are. But it was not a "siege", another word that gets mistakenly applied. Yes there were trucks and cars parked on several Centretown streets - but a siege is a military operation in which enemy forces surround a town or building, cutting off essential supplies, with the aim of compelling the surrender those inside. Some of the people of Centretown were definitely inconvenienced but they were not cut off from supplies and even Parliamentarians continued to work, some walking directly through the protesters to and from the House without security. There were emergency lanes open so emergency crews could get through and anyone who needed food literally only had to walk out to any of the many free food stands/bbqs that ran all day in the streets. That is not a siege, it's a protest.
The Freedom Convoy was labelled as a trucker protest because the spark was truckers, who had been crossing the US/CDN border without issue for nearly two years during covid, were suddenly being coerced into getting vaccinated or lose their routes. Which was pretty outlandish when covid was already two years old, 80% of Canadians were vaxxed and truckers spend almost all their time alone, in a cab, isolated from everyone, doing an essential service. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. It was a mandate for the sake of a mandate that was disconnected from a logical "scientific" response.
It started with angry truckers but obviously grew far beyond JUST truckers. And then it grew organically to many other countries. I lost count at about 15 other countries that had 'freedom convoy' protests to copy Canada's protest and it was the first time I saw Canadian flags being flown in other countries as a sign of protest. Obviously the gov overreach was being felt everywhere, not just Canada.
You havent proven your point. There was no control taken over the federal government. The person who wrote the MOU took it down and apologized for it. Barber and Lich, the two main figureheads did not support it. Parliamentarians came and went through the protest as they pleased. Parliament did not stop operating. There was no violent uprising, no rioting, no damage to property. There weren't even any guns found among the protesters. That is NOT a siege and that was NOT a takeover. It was a protest, which is the lawful right of every Canadian citizen.
It's along the lines of Justin Trudeau's thinking to call people who showed up in Ottawa as a 'useful idiot.' I think it's far more accurate to say they were and are Canadians who are deeply concerned when their 'free' country starts imposing restrictive mandates that supercede what's actually necessary to protect its citizenry. Trudeau definitely got the message that he'd gone far enough and so did all the other provincial and municipal authorities. Shortly after the protest the mandates were systematically dropped at all jurisdictional levels and life began to return to some level of normalcy. Not that we aren't still feeling the immense cost of all those mandates and restrictions and will for years to come, to say nothing of the fact that the gov used the modern day equivalent of the War Measures Act to stop a grassroots honking protest. Shameful.
To the original point of this thread - locking down people's bank accounts for supporting a grassroots non violent protest was massive gov overreach. Trudeau was desperate. He was worried about looking like a fool on the world stage and its not lost on the observant that his decision to use the Emergencies Act came only two days after he got a call from President Biden, who made it clear that the auto manufacturers who depend on Canadian car parts were getting pretty upset about losing money and maybe it was time he did something. Trudeau ignored the fact that two of the main port blockades actually came down BEFORE he enacted the EA and decided to do it anyway, using a sledge hammer to smash a fly, seizing vehicles and freezing bank accounts.
When it came to justifying the use of the EA the primary question that the gov had to answer at the Commission was "On what legal authority did the gov make the decision to use the Emergencies Act?" And on that question the Attorney General and Justice Minister Lametti said he refused to answer because it was confidential (not surprisingly Trudeau removed him as Justice Minister). In the ongoing trial of Lich and Barber the gov is supposed to provide police transcripts to the defense and has produced an 8 page police document that was fully redacted as well as claiming that two key police liaison officers had all the messages on their phones wiped when the phones were 'upgraded'. There's nothing at all suspicious about claiming 'confidentiality', redactions and 'accidental' missing messages when trying to prove a case /s
It won't be forgotten anytime soon. You'll note for the record that almost all the charges against people who were at the protest have been dropped or failed. The pastors who were charged have had charges dropped as well as the restaurants who refused to close. The case in front of the courts on whether the use of the EA was lawful was heard in April and the decision will be out in few months but my guess is that the court will find out what the Canadian public has already decided: Trudeau is not a fit leader and his decision making has and is damaging this country. The polls say he won't be leader after the next election IF he even stays in power that long.
Sorry for the long reply.
ps. Just to make it personal, I'm not "anti science" - all my family were vaccinated. Two of my adult children are M.D.'s and we are all university grads, but I can appreciate that it was easier to downplay the protest if the people involved were considered to be ignorant.
I'm curious, you seem connected to the Convoy at an arm's length given those connections. Is there also a relationship to the Maverick Party as well, since the Convoy organizers were linked with them? Seems like similar circles.
I already explained how and why it was a siege and a coup more than it was a protest. The people of Ottawa felt terrorized by the Convoy, and were the first to call the event a siege; the incessant noise that was used as torture against the people of Ottawa, not any politicians; Nazi and Confederate flags along with (and then the eventual baseless claim that the Nazi flags were staged); desecrating a war memorial and dancing on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier; food banks attacked (not enough food stalls and barbecues, I suppose).
As for all the effects on everyday Canadians, this BBC article has a number of examples, from blocking garbage and mail trucks from operating, to preventing a border town from getting access to groceries and gas. By the end of it, even Jason Kenney, who supported axing the vaccine mandate for border crossings, called the Convoy "totally unacceptable".
When people call this a siege, they do not mean it like the military in a banana republic overwhelming the capital. They mean it like when a bunch of hooligans invade a nursing home and refuse to leave.
So I really have to wonder where this rosy perspective on the Convoy is coming from. Most Canadians wanted it to stop even if they agreed with its principles. It wasn't some glorious party with a bad rep. It was appalling on a number of levels. I really have to wonder if the people who caused so much suffering and harm actually enjoyed and partied about the fact that they were doing this.
The MOU received emphasis because it is the only claim the Convoy actually had that support its extremity. You say the guy who wrote it is an idiot. Of course, it's plain as day to everyone who read it. But yet that seemed to be what many of the most ardent Convoyers wanted by the end, especially when they escalated to blocking a major international border crossing indefinitely.
And this is worth shutting down the capital and a key trading route over? But also why the federal government then? In Canada, healthcare is a provincial responsibility. The vaccine mandates that affected people day-to-day were not federal. If this was only about vaccine mandates in general, then this would have been a provincial protest.
The whole thing about truckers shows the rationale behind this. 90% of Canadian truckers were already vaccinated. I'd bet that 10% of every industry and job had unvaccinated people—only about 80% of the country was vaccinated at the time after all. So what was it about this specific group of people and not, say, retail workers or mail workers or railyard workers? It was branded as the Trucker Convoy because it claimed to speak for truckers and be made of truckers, even though they officially called themselves something else. But almost all truckers were already vaccinated, and trucking associations had already disavowed the Convoy before it ever started.
It makes sense in one way: if a fifth of every industry has unvaccinated people that are affected by these policies, and trucking is a rare one that specifically is affected by federal policy, then there's a reason to amass a Convoy to go and protest at Trudeau about it.
That's really the core of the matter, and why it's a coup in the end. The Convoy really just hates that guy, and only because he's the Liberal leader and therefore a Liberal PM. Even your comment is tinged with a lot of acid personally for him, assigning him quite a lot of responsibility for birthing the Convoy here. There is a lot of personal hatred that is sending people into mania and yet they are treating it like it's normal and cool to go rabid about someone—it's not normal. The obsession with this guy is insane. It clouds all judgement and makes it impossible to actually discuss any real policy or information because it feels like all reality has to bend to somehow be this guy's fault.
I'd bet the entire Convoy don't want him to be PM, one way or the other, and hoped it was an opportunity to lead to him coming down. If it was really about vaccine mandates, there were more relevant policies and Premiers to protest. There would not have needed to be any "indefinite" blockading going on, it would have showed "the will of the people" and gotten a ton of support.
Or maybe everyone involved is just so ignorant that none of this crossed their minds and they just went to a guy they really, really hate, who just happens to be the Prime Minister, just to see what happens when they descend en masse and cause as much disruption as possible for him until they get "what they want".
As for Trudeau and how he viewed the Convoy and his many detractors flying F*CK TRUDEAU flags: it's a perfectly normal response to see people going out of their way to be complete assholes to you personally and decide "Nah, I'm not going near them." It's not like he's well-liked these days, he's got opponents and detractors everywhere. But the people who fly those flags and logos, and who organize into the Convoy about it, are beyond simple political disagreement, and seem to be aware and proud of it.
All I really want to contribute to the discussion on personal taste on Trudeau is: I believe if he was a Conservative, they would all fucking love him. Like what's the worst Harper or Ford or Polievre ever got? Some boos? A snide remark? A rude gesture? They don't get treated anywhere nearly as badly. (Maybe that moment where Masai snubs Ford and then goes in with Trudeau is up there.) But just imagine if any of them somehow got people left of "ban all abortions" to act like Trudeau haters do, and then Conservative-Trudeau responded the exact same way as regular Trudeau does. He'd be the most famous world leader on the planet, as conservative media around the world would champion him as a strong-willed hero.
As for the legal matters, I cannot comment on them as they are still ongoing. Mischief seems quaint compared to what the Convoy was, and yet that's the charge they could reasonably go with under our laws, which are quite stringent when it comes to charging people. The fact that Canadians are calling for prosecution on protest organizers at all is a clear sign it was not just a fun party protest. But the ERA was already tried and was found legitimate. The reasons for it are obvious to any outside observer. They only seem to by a mystery to those who insist the Convoy was something different than what we all saw, heard, and smelled.
It seems like you’re spending a lot of time describing how people observing these events felt about them, which if anything makes it more difficult to understand what physically happened. For example:
Hooligans occupying a nursing home would not be a siege, either, though. A siege means surrounding and cutting off supplies, not invading or occupying.
People often use language imprecisely. Maybe it felt like a siege and a lot of people started calling it a siege, but that doesn’t make it one.
I am not interested in providing a recap of the event. I responded to someone suggesting that the Convoy was not a national security incident and is an example of government overreach and tyranny when the actual situation was much different than they described. I have provided details of the event, with links and citations, multiple times already because that is qualified coverage of the events, with all the facts and testimonials of people validated and not just from some random guy on the internet. If that's not enough to start giving someone a picture of what happened or to find more sources of information and coverage, then I can only imagine that they ignored all that.
But also, if you looked at the links I provided, you'll see the Convoy was described in all kinds of ways: a siege, an occupation, a takeover, a hostile act, and more. There's all kinds of descriptions about what it was. There were also incidents described of cutting off transport routes and supplies too, but I still reject the notion that it cannot be called a siege without those specific factors while it maintained all the other qualities—there is no need to be so specific about whether it was siege or an occupation when the actual point is that it was not just a protest and cannot reasonably be described as one. The citizens of Ottawa—a city which sees over a hundred protests a year and is pretty familiar with what protests are—were inarguably terrorized and traumatized by the event, and there's a lot of ink out there about how and why. To be so pedantic about which description to use strikes me as being pedantic when dealing with an abuse victim and telling them to use the correct terminology when describing their abuse, or like when a school shooting happens and people get more focused on arguing what the AR in AR-15 actually means instead of talking about the actual school shooting. There's no good reason for such pedantry here. There's a lot of good reasons people called the Convoy all those things, and it would behoove a truly interested observer to explore why that is the case, not to find ways to dismiss their choice of language.
I don’t mean to be dismissive. I picked one simple thing because you wrote quite a long response and responding to it all would be a lot of work. (I haven’t studied what happened in any detail.)
No, it’s not the most important thing, but I think any argument is going to be based on facts, and it matters how you describe them.
I don’t really have the background to argue, but this form of argument is unconvincing and a little suspicious to me, where it’s all about how people felt and not what happened to make them feel that way. Feelings and perceptions and reactions are important but shouldn’t come first. Understanding what happened comes first.
There’s a lot more I could respond to, but I’m just trying to get across how, while you’re going through a lot of effort writing your posts, it’s not necessarily as convincing as you think to a casual reader.
Again: the technical difference between "siege" and "occupation" (or any of the other words people used) is irrelevant when the actual point is that it was not a protest and cannot reasonably be described as one, and any attempts to do so are disingenuous and involve dismissing the trauma and experiences thousands of people across Ottawa and its surrounding towns were subjected to.
Even if you don't like that I used certain words in my comment, you can see those words and more being used by the people directly affected. Like it or not, these are the pervasive sentiments on the Convoy and the only thing to explore is why this is the overwhelming sentiment from those that experienced it, not why they are using one specific word and not another.
If this entire situation will be unknowable to you because of slightly imprecise terms, you may as well stop now. I haven't even tried to go into the details of all the far more incorrectly used terminology on the Convoy's side. If calling this a siege stops you from understanding why this Convoy was not at all a protest and more like a hostile action, then the misuse of scientific terms, political terms, and the complete misunderstanding of the Canadian government system on the Convoy's side will send your head spinning.
Besides, this is a bad requirement to have before an argument can be considered these days. Current discourse, especially from the right wing, basically requires misusing and abusing terminology to make situations sound worse than they are. Looking at all the terms and concepts they've co-opted and warped: virtue signalling, cancelling, cuck, woke, tyranny, free speech. If you're going to demand precise terms at all turns, then you're obligated to ensure that all sides are using proper terms first. I've already been more precise and made my case for why the Convoy is more of one term than the other, and gatekeeping based on technicalities is not only avoiding the actual point, it is giving power to those who intentionally misuse terms on the other side of things.
Again, it strikes me the same as all those gun nuts who are more focused on dismissing arguments for gun reforms because the people calling for reform don't know what model of gun was used to kill people in a mass shooting. That's just not the point, and it's distracting to focus on such pedantry instead of the matter at hand.
You have to pretend like I didn't link to a single source or cover the events in order to make this statement. I've done both multiple times, and I still do not see my efforts acknowledged in this response.
Okay, I'll ask: what do you mean by that? What happened?
Incessant and interminable noise. The US torturers would blast music and noise at prisoners 24/7 with a wide range of music, from Metallica to Rage Against the Machine to children's music like the Barney theme song.
Brutal system.