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Originally Posted by GGG
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I think the two questions the government needed to answer are still inserted.
1) did they meet the requirements of the act. - Unclear and no one has stated they definitively that they did or believed they did
2) were existing laws exhausted in dealing with the protest. - The answer appears to be no based on Trudeau’s testimony.
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I think for 1), you won't get a clear answer because one does not exist. But I also think that a rational society can understand that laws written 40 years ago may not cover all situations it could potentially be used for today. It's like the constitutional originalist argument(which I strongly disagree with) used in the States. The world changes, so should our laws. The next reasonable step would be to look into this.
For 2) I don't think it comes down so much to existing laws as it did the situation and people involved in enforcing them were not doing it, either because they are imperfect humans, or were up against situations that made those laws ineffective. I believe that things only started to move once the weight and threat of the act were in the open.
In then end, I think a lot of this is quibbling over details that don't really matter. The facts were that several protests had sprung up, with the threat of more, and that many different illegal things were happening at these protests. There were legitimate safety concerns, and the impacts were being felt economically across the country, and personally by many in Ottawa. While these protestors were attempting to assert their own rights, they were trampling all over many other peoples rights, and the government also has a duty to protect those. A government can't allow protesters to impinge rights of others indefinatly. By the time the EA was called, I feel we were well past that balance. The occupation always had the right to protest peacefully and legally, but they chose not to. Once the EA was called, actions were swift, and there was no over-reach(I don't consider the financial measures over-reaching). It was rescinded as soon as made sense. I think it did it's job protecting the rights of Canadians.