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Originally Posted by Slava
I think you’re being disingenuous here regarding the other states of emergency. Most of the states of emergency declared are things like extreme weather events or forest fires. Things that are quite obviously an emergency and of course no one debates that when the city floods, they declare that an emergency.
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Over half of those states of emergency were related to COVID and resulted in most of the the temporary reduction in civil liberties that these people were protesting against. So no, I don't think it's disingenuous to compare them.
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This was a protest that the government didn’t like about them. Of course when you declare a state of emergency to quash that protest you’re going to get blasted as being a totalitarian. And frankly, that is a concern we should all be wary of. This time it’s easy to say “well those guys are dumb and I don’t like that protest, so shut’em down.” If this was a different protest against a different government though, that might not be the case.
And, I’m pretty hypocritical here. If these protests were in front of my business or house, I’d be 1000% in favour of rolling in the tanks.
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No, it was an illegal occupation; what they were protesting didn't matter a whole lot (though it did make them look more ridiculous than they already did). What made it an emergency was the complete inaction of lower levels of government and the police and a failure to even begin handling the situation.
When climate protesters block a bridge or an intersection in Vancouver, they're arrested within hours. When protesters blockaded the entrance to the Port of Vancouver (twice) in February of 2020 they were arrested and removed within a couple of days both times.
The only illegal protests that were significantly disruptive for the general public and the economy that were allowed to continue anywhere near as long as the convoy were the rail blockades, and that was in large part due to the murkier legal issues surrounding Aboriginal land title. It's not a coincidence that the longest blockade near Belleville occurred adjacent to and on Tyendinaga territory. And despite that, the Belleville blockade lasted 18 days, nearly a week less than the Ottawa occupation was allowed to continue for.