Put the measures being protested directly up for a vote by the Canadian legislature (so they're not just executive actions), if they're not struck down the government should resign / do a no confidence vote, let people elect a new government. Let the people have their voice. If protests continue take actions that let them protest but reduce their ability to be disruptive.
With the current dynamics of the disease though, authoritarian medical requirements are making much less sense over time. Vaccination doesn't really help curb transmission much and omicron is considerably less dangerous than previous variants. SARS2 was originally pretty near the threshold where government might not need to do anything forced and the new variant and ineffectiveness of the vaccine against is is pushing it further lower.
He did win, but the majority voted against him. He won the plurality of seats, giving him a minority government, but with 33% of the popular vote. Another party got fewer seats with 34%. Canada’s electoral system sometimes works like that. Changing the system was one of Trudeau’s campaign promises in 2015!
If you want to argue about the popular vote, the NDP + Liberals combined got 48% of the vote. Electoral reform is only going to reflect Canada's desire to move further left - it would actually make it harder for the conservatives to win.
If the greatest flexibility a government can offer its people is the ability to vote every few years then that government does not work for the people.
I wasn't attempting to negate what you said, merely commenting on the inadequacies of a government that rigid.
I think protesting is not only valid, but necessary to keep centralized powers from growing too complacent. The growth of freedom globally and the birth of democracy was not on the back of elections or playing by the rules defined by the class of people in centralized power.
and obviously Canada's democracy has begun to erode if their leader is calling for a state of emergency completely bypassing the democratic process using old laws meant only to be enacted in extreme circumstances...certainly not to punish protests that have at worst blocked major roads for days - all the critical roads of which have already been cleared.
I think invoking the act is well within the democratic framework. The act mandates that there be an inquiry after to assess the validity etc. That will all come in time and I am sure lawsuits will follow too.
That said, there is definitely something going wrong with a portion of Canadian society because they trust Rebel News and Infowars more than any legitimate media organisation. Getting to the root of it will be crucial in figuring out what went wrong.
The conservative party forced a vote today to drop the mandates by the end of the month. It failed 151 to 185, with MPs voting along party lines (Conservatives and Bloc Québécois in favour; Liberals, NDP, and Green opposed) with a couple of abstentions.
Unless I misunderstand what the motion text means, it did not force a vote on mandates but on whether to come up with a plan to do so!
> That, given that provinces are lifting COVID-19 restrictions and that Dr. Theresa Tam has said that all existing public health measures need to be "re-evaluated" so that we can "get back to some normalcy", the House call on the government to table a plan for the lifting of all federal mandates and restrictions, and to table that plan by February 28, 2022.
You can't do that because 5000 people have blocked essential roads with big trucks. That's tyranny man.
Just because you support the end of restrictions doesn't mean you should support people getting what they want through illegal methods. This is supposed to be a democracy.
Canada just had an election, and the people pro-vaccine and pro-mandates were elected.
Yes, durect democracy and being allowed to all vote on all issues is a nice dream, but for now the system is a representative democracy. And it's not okay to force things through keeping people hostage.
Would you be similarly supportive if 5000 people blocked essential infrastructure with big trucks everytime they want something?
In my opinion, if we were to see a really large gathering, of the kind that BLM saw, then if say, ok, it does seem there's a lot of people who really care about this so maybe have a direct referendum, but this one hasn't met the threshold in my opinion.
The irony is this is exactly why the US is a republic and not a democracy.
Direct democracy is 100% mob rule but no one really cares to read the Federalist Papers or the mountain of thought that was put into this at the start of the US.
> Put the measures being protested directly up for a vote by the Canadian legislature (so they're not just executive actions), if they're not struck down the government should resign / do a no confidence vote
Wtf, you want them to vote, and if trudeau wins the vote, you want him to resign? Really a heads i win tails you lose sort of plan.
Besides,its a minority government, trudeau doesn't have to put it up for a vote, if he was going to lose, the opposition would put it to a vote.
And that's ignoring that 95% of what they are protesting isn't even federal juridsiction and has nothing to do with trudeau. He wouldn't be able to interfere if he wanted to.
There's not a "guarantee" but this is the well known behavior of the evolution of diseases. There is strong evolutionary pressure to become less deadly and more infectious.
Plus a future variant is likely to be even less affected by vaccination status.
> There's not a "guarantee" but this is the well known behavior of the evolution of diseases. There is strong evolutionary pressure to become less deadly and more infectious.
Do you know of any evidence that would support this hypothesis? Especially when talking about evolution over short periods of time (years, not centuries or millennia)?
An article in the Guardian published several months ago argued the opposite[0]; and while the Guardian is certainly no authority on scientific matters, and could well have its own narratives to push, their article suggests that this is not a well-known behaviour of pathogens.
The 1918 (Spanish) flu has descendants still circulating. During its peak it killed up to 5% of population (statistics vary, usually numbers land between 1 and 5%, in some places much more).
With all the covid talk, it is hard to quickly find a good source for the theory and verification of the evolutionary dynamics of diseases I mentioned, but as can be seen with variants (and how Omicron clearly wiped out Delta by overcompeting it) evolution of viruses absolutely does not need thousands or millions of years.
> but as can be seen with variants (and how Omicron clearly wiped out Delta by overcompeting it) evolution of viruses absolutely does not need thousands or millions of years.
Yes. I included thousands of years to accommodate the co-evolution of both the pathogen and the host, which, obviously, evolves at a much slower rate.
And since you mention how omicron wiped out delta, hadn't delta in its turn wiped out alpha, while being (I don't remember, was there a consensus on this?) a more dangerous variant?
If we break this down to basics, the selection pressure for a virus' survival is the host surviving long enough to spread the virus to another host, and ensuring enough hosts are available to continue this.
A new variant could kill every single last human and remain successful by infecting animal populations (SARS-COV-2 is doing the latter).
SARS-COV-2 and its descendants seem to me somewhat uniquely qualified to pull this off as they're one of the few viruses that are asymptomatically spread, meaning you can be infected, pass the virus on, then die for all it cares.
The above however, is not reason for us as a species to endlessly pursue locking down and pushing for restrictive measures when we see the situation clearing up and the above not being the case. When the time comes restrictions will be removed (this was already being discussed in a bunch of places) and hopefully we can just get back to the normal worries of the day such as impending climate disaster and war.
Firstly, he has a timeline for removing most restrictions, so there should be progress there, and secondly, why should he have to promise that? In case conditions change, say a much more deadly form of COVID, those restrictions may be needed. That demand seems unreasonable.
And the truckers and everyone else on their side feels that leaving the emergency powers in the hands of the government is unreasonable. Thus why the two respective sides are at an impasse.
