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As I may have mentioned, most of the issues with the Truckers are actually in the provincial rather than the federal level and have been handled by the municipal and provincial police.
Until a couple of days ago, the police were making every effort to handle things with very gentle hands in order to avoid a major confrontation, something that was going to prove difficult since a lot of the Truckers brought their wives and kids along. Nobody really wants to pepper spray a 5 year old girl. Basically they weaponized their kids
Things started to change the other day when truckers blocaded the bridge between Detroit and Windsor Ontario. This bridge handles about $300 million worth of goods daily, mostly parts for the auto plants on both sides of the border. When the plants started to close, the munical authorities got a court order and told them to move or be jailed and fined. That worked but Ottawa, where I live is still tied up.
The big event today was that the federal government activated Part II of the Emergencies Act. This Act has never been activated before and was set up about 40 years ago when the current Prime Minister's father was Prime Minister and had to deal with a terrorist situation caused by people who wanted to split the Province of Quebec off from the rest of Canada. That kind of situation had never before been contemplated and the then Prime Minister found that the only legislation that he could use was the "War Measures Act", a very powerful act that virtually turned some areas into a police state. The much more controlled Emergency Act was passed to replace the War Measures Act. Part II deals with what is called a "Public Order Emergency' and the regulations give the local police more power to handle the situation.
All very well but they also are doing some interesting things under Part II. There is a high degree of certainty that the Truckers have been infiltrated and funded by a number of very right wing and racist organizations from the USA. The Canadian government managed to get GoFundMe to return about $10M in donations and stopped another organization from using or disbursing about $8M. To deal with this, the new regulations put strict controls on all financial organizations regarding funds from any group involved in the ongoing mess and even more interesting have instructed the insurance companies to cancel the insurance on any truck involved in any sort of illegal occupation.
These regs and the implementation of the Act only last 30 days.
There are some other issues that have not yet been dealt with and I am waiting to see what if anything the government will do. In particular, the written material from the leaders of the goup and some statements made to the media talked about how they wanted to take over the government by having the Governor General dismiss the current government and allow the formation of a coalition containing the unelected trucker leaders, the opposition parties and the Senate. This is probably sedition which is a pertty serious crime. It also shows that they have absolutely no clue about how a Parliamentary Democracy works.
A final thought is that in my opinion and I suspect most other Ottawans, our police chief totally mishandled the whole incident and should be asked for his resignation
Until a couple of days ago, the police were making every effort to handle things with very gentle hands in order to avoid a major confrontation, something that was going to prove difficult since a lot of the Truckers brought their wives and kids along. Nobody really wants to pepper spray a 5 year old girl. Basically they weaponized their kids
Things started to change the other day when truckers blocaded the bridge between Detroit and Windsor Ontario. This bridge handles about $300 million worth of goods daily, mostly parts for the auto plants on both sides of the border. When the plants started to close, the munical authorities got a court order and told them to move or be jailed and fined. That worked but Ottawa, where I live is still tied up.
The big event today was that the federal government activated Part II of the Emergencies Act. This Act has never been activated before and was set up about 40 years ago when the current Prime Minister's father was Prime Minister and had to deal with a terrorist situation caused by people who wanted to split the Province of Quebec off from the rest of Canada. That kind of situation had never before been contemplated and the then Prime Minister found that the only legislation that he could use was the "War Measures Act", a very powerful act that virtually turned some areas into a police state. The much more controlled Emergency Act was passed to replace the War Measures Act. Part II deals with what is called a "Public Order Emergency' and the regulations give the local police more power to handle the situation.
All very well but they also are doing some interesting things under Part II. There is a high degree of certainty that the Truckers have been infiltrated and funded by a number of very right wing and racist organizations from the USA. The Canadian government managed to get GoFundMe to return about $10M in donations and stopped another organization from using or disbursing about $8M. To deal with this, the new regulations put strict controls on all financial organizations regarding funds from any group involved in the ongoing mess and even more interesting have instructed the insurance companies to cancel the insurance on any truck involved in any sort of illegal occupation.
These regs and the implementation of the Act only last 30 days.
There are some other issues that have not yet been dealt with and I am waiting to see what if anything the government will do. In particular, the written material from the leaders of the goup and some statements made to the media talked about how they wanted to take over the government by having the Governor General dismiss the current government and allow the formation of a coalition containing the unelected trucker leaders, the opposition parties and the Senate. This is probably sedition which is a pertty serious crime. It also shows that they have absolutely no clue about how a Parliamentary Democracy works.
A final thought is that in my opinion and I suspect most other Ottawans, our police chief totally mishandled the whole incident and should be asked for his resignation
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