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Comment by bregma | Hacker News Reader

Just to clarify, under Canadian law the government has to put the use of the Emergencies Act before the House and Senate withing 7 days. It doesn't matter what colour the government is. The law itself was passed by a Progressive Conservative government to whom it would have applied exactly the same way.

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> Progressive Conservative government

Say what? Those two are literally polar opposites. I guess they can be progressive on the social scale and conservative on the economic one, but there's got to be a better name for that.

So Canada used to have a party called the Conservative Party (they do now too again). They wanted a guy named John Bracken who was Premier of Manitoba under the Progressive party of Manitoba to be leader. He wouldn't agree until they put Progressive in their name. So they did and Conservative Party became the Progressive Conservative Party until they merged with the Reform Party and went back to being called the Conservative Party. Some provinces still have a PC party.

Here and now is a different place and time than when that political party was named during the merger of the Progressives and the Conservatives in an effort to defeat the incumbent Liberals. Being a "liberal" was a term for a supporter of the right-wing moneyed establishment at the time because of their demand for laissez-faire economics and reciprocity in international trade. A lot can change over a century.

But the orders are in affect now.

Yes, of course it is. I replied to someone who said they have no idea how Canadian law worked. Commons/Senate approval is part of the Emergency Act and the current government has to follow it.

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