I'm back on here because of Gaza - but since I'm here, might as well talk about whatever else that's bugging me. Almost as if this was my blog. Probably not going to use this title gimmick for it after this post though, just thought it was fun to note how fixated I am on one specific topic.
So what's the thing that's so important I can ignore the ongoing crisis in Gaza to talk about? Well it's not that important. Literally, it's no emergency. Here's some background:
A couple years ago, a bunch of anti-vaxx nutjobs rolled into the capital of Canada with a bunch of big rig trucks and took over the streets around our parliament buildings. They set-up bouncy castles and hot tubs and railed on about a host of different issues - causing massive disruption to the city. In response, Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, which granted him a number of powers to override civil rights. One of the drawbacks of using the Emergencies Act is that the government is bound to hold public hearings into why they invoked it. These hearings were pretty embarassing for the government.
We now have a court ruling that invoking the Emergencies Act was unconstitutional. Basically, that there was no emergency - at least none which required giving the government the power to override civil rights (in this case, freezing bank accounts). Now the declaration of emergency was lifted not that long after the emergency was called - so the case is moot in terms of things the court can do about it. This is really an argument about whether the government made the right choice or not - and the courts said that they didn't. The government of course, plans to appeal.
So why does this interest me? On which side of this am I even on? I mean, I'm pro civil rights but also strongly opposed to anti-vaxxers. The Ottawa occupation was basically non-violent with no one getting seriously injured and the one violent incident (attempted arson at an apartment building on Lisgar Avenue) has been determined to be unrelated to the convoy protest. OTOH, these assholes were blaring air horns into the middle of the night next to residential neighbourhoods for weeks.
It interests me because the Liberal government got totally played. There was an emergency - a real and very serious one, but not something the government could recognize. The emergency was that law enforcement was so sympathetic to these assholes that policing the protests was not actually possible. In the public hearings, protest organizers were talking about how they had sources constantly feeding them the Ottawa Police Service's plans. The daily briefings went not just to Ottawa cops, but also to the demonstrators they were supposed to be keeping under control. Also, Ottawa Police claims they were massively overwhelmed by the turnout and the task of dealing with the convoy. BUT everyone involved knew how big the protest was well in advance. They had started their convoy in Alberta! It was dead easy to gauge what they would be dealing with as they approached Ottawa. The reason that they were overwhelmed is because our Premier, Doug Ford (brother of our late Crack Mayor) abandoned his post. He didn't want to be seen as doing anything to oppose a conservative fuelled protest movement.
So there was an emergency - the utter and complete failure of law enforcement to do their jobs. But this is an unspeakable truth for those in power. And so, Trudeau had to invent some other reason to invoke the Emergencies Act - which has now been found to be pure bullshit. It's kind of funny - the court in its decision noted that there were existing laws that gave the government the tools it needed to deal with the situation, which is absolutely true. But that decision also ignores the actual emergency - that despite having the laws in place, you can' do shit if the cops side with the protestors. As far as I know - no cop has been disciplined for any of this. The Ottawa Police Chief did resign and he was criticized a lot during the inquiry - but holy shit this is sad. That chief was likely thrown under the bus so hard because he was a reformer who was pushing for progressive changes. Mind you - wholly inadequate changes - but still better than the usual. And the failure of police to do their jobs instead of being bigoted shitweasels lead to the firing of the most anti-shitweasel police Chief Ottawa has ever had.
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