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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

Canadians have a right to protest. Canadians also have a right to the enjoyment of their property. The former does not override the latter, and the latter was severely infringed upon by the occupiers.

These protests caused hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage. There is a $300M lawsuit against the occupiers in Ottawa, similar ones will happen against the occupiers of the Ambassador bridge.

The bank accounts have been frozen via two different mechanisms -- by the use of the Emergency Measures Act, and by a preliminary ruling in the civil court.

The freezing via the EMA would thaw after the EMA expires in a few days. The freezing by the civil court will not, and will likely result in the loss of those bank accounts.

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> The freezing via the EMA would thaw after the EMA expires in a few days.

The PM is on the record admitting he is considering extending the Emergency Measures Act, potentially for months.

His Minister of Finance has already declared she now plans to make some of the financial controls permanent.

Whether or not you believe these measures to be appropriate, it is incorrect to claim they will expire in the next few days.

Question: "Hello from the CBC, the truckers could come back in 2 months, 3 months, so does that mean we would have to keep it for another 2, 3 months?"

Trudeau: "Indeed. This is something we are thinking about, of course."

The EMA can only be applied for a maximum of 30 days. If he tries to reapply it, he's going to have a lot of trouble getting NDP support to do so.

Governors in the USA have consistently extended emergency orders continuously since the pandemic began.

It’s not unreasonable to expect power to not easily be relinquished.

"Governors in the USA" are not subjects of the Canadian government, and there's no particularly valuable conclusion to be drawn from the structure and legal backing of emergency orders in the US in this circumstance.

Sure there is — Canadians are even less likely than US-ians to push back against the ratchet-click that is tightening government control.

It's amazing to me the rhetoric used regarding people going honk honk, when just a year ago we were downplaying the burning and looting of cities, and brushing the deaths that happened in those protests under the rug.

I think you missed the part where people were being sleep deprived. It's not just a bit of honk honk lulz.

You missed the part where businesses were burnt to the ground and in some cases people were burnt alive inside those business

So spare me your pity on their sleeplessness.

Its hardly comparable.

And it's amazing what gets the sympathy based on nothing more than what political wing finds that pity advantageous as opposed to inconvenient

> Its hardly comparable.

And yet, you're the one making the comparison?

These protests can be incredibly intrusive and damaging to real people in real Canadian cities. That has nothing to do with the (largely) US BLM protests.

It's rather straightforward though for any further away observer; if you're referring to the BLM protests they were clearly embodying a concrete universal in the historical moment, whereas here it is much harder to argue that having been the case.

Moreover, American political movements against vaccination have to my mind without much doubt led to many, many avoidable deaths in the past few years, even if direct causality is harder to establish. So it is not so puzzling or amazing to observe where people's sympathies align at this point of the pandemic.

Weird, I missed the mechanism that involved violations of law, trials, and due process. Did you forget to put that in your list?

So emergency powers would trump that expectedly.

If you're worried about the groups using crypto to launder their money due to fines/lawsuits, then freezing accounts seems reasonable as well.

Laundering money is a great way in the US to get your account frozen without being arrested/tried/convicted. Because if you waited for the conviction, the money would be long gone.

Source on 300M in damages?

Is this real damage or "opportunity cost"?

Thousands of people were out of work for most of a month. For example, the Rideau Centre, which employs 1500, was shut down.

Thousands of people had to move out of their homes because they couldn't sleep with the continuous honking. One idiot even brought a train horn.

And that was just Ottawa. The ambassador bridge shutdown was much worse. For instance, Ford shut down an Ohio plant employing 1600 due to lack of parts made in Canada.

Were businesses pressured to close by the city and the police because people were allegedly flouting mask mandates, or to deny the protestors food, water, heat, and washrooms in -20 Celsius weather? The business closures advised by the city and police certainly furthered their war of attrition against the protestors, despite the lack of evidence of any real threat. On the contrary, a number of small businesses remained open during the protests and experienced relatively few disruptions.

The border protests were certainly more economically disruptive, and it's remarkable that it took days to clear out a handful of vehicles.

It's fundamentally non-serious to claim the protestors were following all applicable mask mandates. You're the first person I've seen to claim that. Take a look at any picture in the news, or that the protestors have posted.

I'm sure some people were ignoring the mask mandates. My point though was that it's fundamentally non-serious to claim that is sufficient reason to shut down blocks of businesses for weeks during a non-violent protest. I find the alternative explanation, that it was a tactical move to starve the protestors out, far more compelling.

I think a better approach was to fine individuals for breaking the law.

The first option is criminal, which is fine/imprisonment or both.

The second option is civil, which are lawsuits against the protesters to recoup losses by businesses.

And then if crypto is a possibility, one could say you have to seize the assets now before they can be laundered, in other words, you're pre-empting the potential of illegal behavior.

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