Quote:
Originally Posted by Monahammer
These aren't mutually exclusive terms. Protests very often take the form of sedition from a pendantic definition stand point. I walked by a guy yesterday outside the leg with a sign shouting for Kenney to resign. Totally crazy- potentially seditious if he was around 5 months ago.
Here's what canada's criminal code says about sedition:
Seditious words
59 (1) Seditious words are words that express a seditious intention.
Marginal note:Seditious libel
(2) A seditious libel is a libel that expresses a seditious intention.
Marginal note:Seditious conspiracy
(3) A seditious conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to carry out a seditious intention.
Marginal note:Seditious intention
(4) Without limiting the generality of the meaning of the expression seditious intention, every one shall be presumed to have a seditious intention who
(a) teaches or advocates, or
(b) publishes or circulates any writing that advocates,
the use, without the authority of law, of force as a means of accomplishing a governmental change within Canada.
So really, they would have had to have created a structure or conspiracy for them to actually acquire power in order to be criminally seditious. As CHL pointed out, they failed abjectly to do that in Ottawa IMO- sitting on your ass honking your horn all day is not going to get you political power. Now, the Coutts protestors who did have a plan to attack the RCMP and acquire power by force at the border- that sounds like a good case of sedition. But protestors can be seditious.
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Maybe it's borderline, but I would consider the creation and circulation of the MOU to meet those standards, at least according to those nebulous definitions. They had a plan, as silly as it was. After a brief "news conference" and someone whispering in their ear that it was, indeed, silly they did abandon it.
I believe there were people in Ottawa with intentions truer to a protest, but I also believe there were people there interested in forgoing democracy to install their own preferred, un-elected leadership. There are shades of grey throughout this whole thing that justifies my inability to universally apply the term 'protest' to the convoy.