OTTAWA — The House of Commons will not sit Friday to debate emergency measures the government has brought in to deal with the protest just outside its doors that is entering its fourth week.
A note from Speaker Anthony Rota says the sitting is cancelled because of a police operation expected to take place by Parliament Hill and other locations around Ottawa’s downtown core.
The note goes on to say that anyone not in the parliamentary precinct should stay away from the core until further notice.
Justice Minister David Lametti made the remark in an interview with CTV News Channel on Wednesday night, where host Evan Solomon pressed him on whether average citizens who donated to the protests should be worried about account seizures.
‘If you are a member of a pro-Trump movement who is donating hundreds of thousands of dollars, and millions of dollars to this kind of thing, then you ought to be worried,’ said Lametti.
Can’t wait to see what they try with Elon Musk.
Looks like TD Bank in Canada might be experiencing a bank run after freezing accounts which received money from the GiveSendGo campaign.
On Thursday Chief Bell told reporters the Ottawa police are “ready to use methods people are not used to seeing in the capital.”
Chief Bell then went on to ad that he will not tolerate Canadians participating in the unlawful activities of engaging in demonstrations.
The “Freedom Convoy” isn’t a Canadian “problem.” The prime minister and Canada’s Laurentian elite are.
The protests have inconvenienced many, but they have exposed what ails the country. It’s governed by a party that won only 32.6 per cent of the popular vote, with a public badly divided among five other parties. The Liberals have dominated politics for decades, backed by the well-heeled establishment in Montreal, Ottawa and Bay Street whose careers, incomes and businesses are linked to the party and who disdain rural and Western Canada. Such attitudes led to Justin Trudeau’s rebuff to the truckers when he pledged that “we won’t give in.”
Relying on emergency powers reveals his weakness
When Justin Trudeau invoked emergency powers to quell protests against mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations this week, it was another sign that for Western liberal democracy, business as usual is over. This is the first time Canada’s Emergencies Act has ever been called upon by a Prime Minister. Its predecessor, the War Measures Act, was used three times: once for World War One, once for World War Two, and once to deal with a violent campaign of bombing, kidnapping, and murder by Quebecois separatists in 1970.
“Yeah, well there’s a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don’t like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is, go on and bleed, but it’s more important to keep law and order in this society than to be worried about weak-kneed people who don’t like the looks of a soldier’s helmet.” – Pierre Elliot Trudeau
Trudeau to protesters: If you don’t let our government make your health decisions, we’re willing to shoot you.
The Premier of Ontario has declared what he calls a “state of emergency” to justify the Canadian government’s removal of the truckers and their trucks from Ottawa.
Others, however, could view his statement to more closely resemble a Declaration of War.
You decide. I urge you to watch the video of the Premier’s statement for yourself.
According to the Premier, each trucker they arrest will face up to one year in prison, have to pay fines up to $100,000 and may likely forfeit their trucks to the Crown!
Tamara Lich has been arrested, but we will continue to #holdtheline pic.twitter.com/GaPZdsrhVe
— FreedomConvoy2022 (@rFreedomConvoy) February 18, 2022
Every time working-class people rebel today they are instantly smeared as fascists.
We need new political labels. That much has become clear amid Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau’s crackdown on the truckers’ revolt – the now weeks-long protests by truckers and their supporters, in Ottawa and elsewhere, against Covid vaccine mandates.
It’s truly unreal. https://t.co/rGAtvoMTa6
— Gad Saad (@GadSaad) February 17, 2022
Bank accounts are officially being frozen under Justin Trudeau’s Emergency Economic Measures Order under the Emergencies Act.
Shaun Zimmer recently travelled from Winnipeg to Ottawa to show his support for the trucker’s convoy, and now he no longer has access to his funds.
For whatever reason, the Canadian federal government deemed that he was engaged, either directly or indirectly with the protesters here in Ottawa.
… Basically, the car and the boy’s apartment — worth millions of dollars — is simply an example of money laundering taking place in the open in Vancouver. It’s such a prevalent tactic, particularly for the ruling governing elite in China, it’s got a name — the “Vancouver Model.”
Justin Trudeau’s government uses national emergency powers to try to end the trucker protests
The ongoing saga of Canada’s “Freedom Convoy” took an extraordinary turn this week. In response to protests in Ottawa and blockade actions at some Canada–U.S. border crossings, the Canadian government invoked the Emergencies Act, giving itself exceptional powers to try to end the nearly three-week-long protests. It’s difficult to overstate the legal and political magnitude of this decision, which is undoubtedly among the most controversial in Justin Trudeau’s tenure as prime minister and will be the subject of debate for years.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said Thursday financial institutions have moved quickly to freeze the accounts of people linked to the demonstrations in Ottawa, leaving an unknown number of protesters in financial limbo.
Freeland vowed to take more accounts offline in the coming days in an attempt to starve the organizers of the funds they need to continue their occupation of the nation’s capital.
Freeland, who is also the finance minister, said the RCMP and other law enforcement agencies have been gathering intelligence on convoy protesters and their supporters and sharing that information with financial institutions to restrict access to cash and cryptocurrency.
He’s also exposed a massive flaw in Canada’s constitutional order.
… At no point in the last 34 years has anything that happened in Canada met either of these standards. By declaring that a medium-sized irritation — a group of truckers protesting in Ottawa — is severe enough to buck the trend (mostly, it seems, because the truckers happen to be his political enemies), Justin Trudeau has disgraced himself and his office.
This is the most monumentally stupid, monumentally arrogant, and monumentally misguided decision by a prime minister since 1867.
When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in his sophomoric musings on the nature of Canada some years back, famously declared that Canada has “no core identity,” most of us thought he was stating his opinion, however ridiculous, of the country as he saw it at the time.
We were wrong, ever so wrong. He was stating an ambition. He was declaring a goal.
