JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau showed this week that it’s not only African countries that need to worry about collapsing into authoritarianism.
His decision to invoke emergency powers simply to deal with protests that have been almost entirely peaceful was completely without justification, and was based partly in the fervent desire of an urbane cultural elite to assert its political power against a working-class, rural lumpenproletariat.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has invoked Canada’s Emergencies Act to treat like terrorists the trucker protest in the capital city of Ottawa and at key Canada-U.S. border crossings. Citing a “public order emergency,” Trudeau can now deploy the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, forbid any public assembly, control private companies, cut off supplies, and seize bank accounts to stop the “emergency.”
“Without a court order, banks will be able freeze personal accounts of anyone linked to the protests,” noted Aaron Kheriaty.
h/t MMC for the pic!
Large numbers of police officers are moving in on protesters in downtown Ottawa and making arrests — including high profile organizers Tamara Lich, Chris Barber and Pat King — during an intense clash with the demonstrators who have so far refused to leave the area.
Convoy organizer Pat King livestreamed his arrest on Facebook. He is seen in a vehicle with at least two other people as an officer asks him to step out. A second officer is seen on the passenger side of the vehicle.
King responds by saying he would like to call his lawyer right away.
Police operation underway on Sussex. Police are negotiating with someone in a camper van. #freedomconvoy22 #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/1vQxsVQEth
— Jordan Gowling (@GowlingJordan) February 18, 2022
Take a walk around downtown Ottawa, and you’ll find nearly 400 trucks and RVs blocking the main roads of Canada’s capital city. You’ll see a hundred protesters or thousands of protesters, depending on the day.
There’s a sauna; there are games for children. You might come across the row of port-a-potties that was installed by one of the protesters. There’s a bouncy castle and a stage for live music.
You’ll likely see flags that say “F*** Trudeau,” referring to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and you may even see one of the swastika-stamped Canadian flags that were floating around in the early days of the protest.
Apparently the rule of law doesn’t matter if Justin Trudeau doesn’t like your peaceful protest.
Emergency powers, threats to freeze the finances of peaceful protesters, and smearing critics as terrorists—it has to be China, right? But no, it’s our neighbor to the north, under a leader with a bad case of China-envy. For all the world to see, a panicky Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is throwing a tantrum over protests against restrictive pandemic policy that warns us how quickly an established democracy can lose its mind. It’s an advertisement for the value of cryptocurrency and other means of escaping the reach of the financial police state.
Part of Canada’s problem is that the country has rarely seen large numbers of people take to the streets in opposition to government actions. As a consequence, officials and some members of the public are wigging out over what would cause people elsewhere to shrug.
Cops are moving in pic.twitter.com/ccRQzw25d4
— Mackenzie Gray (@Gray_Mackenzie) February 18, 2022
“The violent crackdown on #FreedomConvoy2022 has nothing to do with freedom of speech and human rights,” former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tweeted.
“How coercion could be related to liberty & freedom of choice?” the Iranian wrote, signing off with the #TruckersForFreedom hashtag.
Number of patients in Ont. hospitals with COVID-19 drops below 1,300 today; 33 net new deaths reported
The number of patients in hospital with COVID-19 continues to steadily decline in Ontario, dipping below 1,300 today.
Officials say there are currently 1,281 patients with COVID-19 receiving treatment in hospital, down from 1,829 last Friday. The number of patients in intensive care testing positive for COVID-19 has also dropped to 352, down from 435 seven days ago.
352 people are in ICU with #COVID19. 81% of patients admitted to the ICU were admitted for COVID-19 and 19% were admitted for other reasons but have tested positive for COVID-19.
There are 2,337 new cases of COVID-19.
— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) February 18, 2022
Mandatory vaccination policies for some sectors may no longer be needed, Ontario’s top health official says
The worst of Omicron-fuelled COVID-19 infections in Ontario is “behind us,” the province’s top doctor said on Thursday.
“We reached our peak several weeks ago, and that correlates to a rise in admissions to hospitals, which peaked in the third week of January, and they’ve been coming down ever since,” Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore said.
Christopher John Barber, 46, of Swift Current, Sask., who police arrested Thursday night, is charged with counselling to commit the offence of mischief, counselling to commit the offence of disobeying a court order and counselling to commit the offence of obstructing police.
Fellow organizer Tamara Lich, 49, of Medicine Hat, Alta., also is charged with counselling to commit the offence of mischief.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) announced Thursday that it plans to sue the federal government over its decision to invoke the Emergencies Act in response to ongoing protests and blockades.
“Emergency powers cannot and must not be normalized,” said CCLA executive director Noa Mendelsohn.
She said use of the act “seriously infringes on the Charter rights of Canadians.”
OTTAWA — The House of Commons will not sit Friday to debate emergency measures the government has brought in to deal with the protest just outside its doors that is entering its fourth week.
A note from Speaker Anthony Rota says the sitting is cancelled because of a police operation expected to take place by Parliament Hill and other locations around Ottawa’s downtown core.
The note goes on to say that anyone not in the parliamentary precinct should stay away from the core until further notice.
Police are about to undertake one of the largest law enforcement operations in Canadian history to seal off and clear downtown Ottawa of demonstrators and large trucks that have been clogging up the streets for three weeks.
The multi-day operation will start on Friday and involves hundreds of riot police, mounted officers and special obstacle-removal teams to deal with truckers who refuse to leave their rigs, according to a senior source with direct knowledge of the cordon-off-and-clear plan.
Go incognito
OTTAWA—An Ottawa judge has frozen the bank accounts and digital “wallets” of convoy leaders believed to hold more than $1 million in bitcoin and cryptocurrency after an extraordinary secret hearing.
Late Thursday, Ontario Superior Court Justice Calum MacLeod granted an injunction to a private citizens’ effort to stanch the flow of money that was a lifeline for the 21-day occupation of Ottawa.
… Lawyer Paul Champ, acting on behalf of a group of Ottawa residents who have launched a class-action lawsuit for damages caused by the protest, won the injunction during an unusual “ex-parte” hearing, held “in camera” — without public notice or access. The targeted defendants did not receive advance warning, nor did they have an opportunity to get a lawyer to court to contest the claims.
It was a calculated effort to halt the flow of funds after a private investigator and a bitcoin expert hired by Champ flagged that the “Freedom Convoy” organizers were moving cryptocurrency funds out of digital wallets and into new ones faster than the RCMP could keep up, and outpacing the federal government’s efforts to track them, Champ said.
Despite Quebec’s use of repeated curfews and vaccine passports, the province’s national institute of public health (INSPQ) has admitted that it does not have any documents related to studies showing the effectiveness of these two measures.
Tamara Lich, a top organizer for the so-called “Freedom Convoy” blockades in Ottawa’s downtown core, has been arrested in addition to several other arrests Thursday evening.
Convoy spokesperson Dagny Pawlak confirmed the arrest to Global News, calling it a “dark moment” in Canadian history and “a disgrace to any liberal democracy, although not a surprise.”
Lich had said earlier Thursday that she was resigned to the fact she was going to prison, adding her personal bank account had been frozen.
Tamara Lich has been arrested, but we will continue to #holdtheline pic.twitter.com/GaPZdsrhVe
— FreedomConvoy2022 (@rFreedomConvoy) February 18, 2022
