noims said:

I literally came back here to see if you'd commented/voted on it yet. Hope Santa Claus finds a nice way to get into your place.

oritteropo said:

Happy Christmas @ant!

@newtboy,

A company cancelling a multi-billion dollar project means multi-billion dollars not spent on the work of the project, that many jobs out of the economy. Exactly the same as a car manufacturer shutting down for a week, by your logic nothing was lost, the company just stopped spending money for a couple days...

I only support the groups right to protest, and not to illegally block roads or borders. I stand by my wish is for their prompt arrest when illegal blocking roads, borders or places of business.

That said, I believe it also wrong of me to fail to point out that our federal government has continually refused to act as I would wish in promptly shutting down illegal blockades. This is the very first instance were they've shown any interest in a prompt police enforced end, and they've in fact jump much further to invoking a declaration of national emergency so they can also target protesters bank accounts directly and without court orders.

An analogy would be someone that supports arresting people for possession of marijuana. The government then proceeds to only selectively enforce that law, say only acting to make arrests when people are a particular creed or color. It's perfectly consistent to believe the government arrests are wrong and unfair, and to NOT support them, while at the same time still believing the idea of the rule applied fairly being a good idea.

One side is about what I think the line for protest should be:
-I believe the right to protest should be independent of creed or belief, and should only be restricted when actions taken are illegal.(Ideally illegal being defined as impeding on freedoms of others)

By that, the convoy blockade of border or streets should have led to immediate arrests.

In the eye of fairness though, the last two years have already seen at a minimum 3 major protests, that included illegal blockades of work sites and railways and those were ALL allowed to run for weeks and in 2 cases months. The government of the day even tripped over themselves to message their support for the overall causes of the protestors.

In that light, it's wrong to simply ignore the fact that the first protest that is likely to vote conservative is the ONLY one where the government immediately condemns everything about them and feels compelled to intervene urgently.

Churches were literally burning last summer, and our PM's public statements spent most of their time sympathizing with the anger before pleading that burning churches isn't helpful. Where'd all that compassion for folks that you disagree with go when it meant a small number of downtown Ottawa business shutdown and horns honking go. Now our PM invokes terrorizing of the populace.

Trudeau's actions have been distressingly similar to Trump's as the division in our country grows, he's using his words to reach out to the extreme end of his side of the aisle, while tossing gasoline and vitriol onto his opposition. It's making things worse in the worst possible way when we need leaders uniting instead of stoking further division.