They didn’t “call for ignoring law”, they were just too lazy, unimaginative, and incompetent to take any action.
It’s common knowledge. Just as it’s common knowledge that the founders are grifters exploiting a tragedy for personal wealth.
I’d vote for a shake up, but I don’t think Jim Watson would ever go near such a thing. He’s a Tory who has a track record of standing with the Ottawa Police Service and Chief Peter Sloly (voted in 2020) would plead for restructure without changing anything about the general behaviour we’ve seen from troopers supporting these yahoos.
Again I’d support bringing in the RCMP and rebuilding the police force, but honestly that’s a dream and hoping for such a big dick-swinging move from a moderate mayor is dreaming even further.
She might be Marxist. That does not indicate that the BLM movement is made primarily of Marxists, or that their stated goals are Marxist. Painting with a brush the size of the USS Missouri…
Ronald Reagan was a union member. When he became the head of the Republican party, they were all union members! Connect the dot.
And if so, being a marxist in America is kind of like being a ballerina in Jacksonville.
We need to cut back on accusations of “fascism” and the like too, though conservatives are more commonly guilty of this sort of rhetorical overkill; to hear them these days, there are Communists everywhere, more Communists that at a Supreme Soviet. But we seem to live in a time when everyone is really angry 24/7 and reaches for the hyperbole more than they used to. It’s not just words but accusations of behaviour. The government isn’t just overdoing it on restrictions, they’re trying to MIND CONTROL THE POPULATION!!!1!. Or it’s the NEXT HOLOCAUST or some shit.
It will be a disgrace if OPS manages to ride this out. Sloly would have resigned by now if he had a modicum of self-respect or shame. I would agree a total overhaul is in order. I’d be 100% behind the government of Ontario forcing something but Ford’s a coward too.
One of their stated goals is along the lines of “it takes a village”, a view which was embraced by Marx. They’re victims of at least one fallacy by association.
Except the mayor has already announced his intention to retire (he did that months ago), and we’ve got an election this fall. A lot of people are talking about voting for a candidate who would be willing to take such steps. I’m pretty sure this shit show will be the biggest issue in the election.
Plus, a lot of people would be okay with some higher level of government stepping in to slap the city government around a bit. Municipal governments are the creation of the Province, and as we saw when Doug Ford screwed around with the Toronto city council, they have the legal authority to mix things up.
But yeah, there’s also this:
I’m thinking it’s going to have to be the citizens of Ottawa stepping up again to do the job. We really have to shake up the city council in the election this fall, and vote out the people who are just sitting on their hands while all this plays out, and vote in those who will actually use their authority to do things.
I think this might be the most interesting city election of my life, and I won’t be at all surprised if voter turn out is significantly higher than in typical years. People are pissed off at the whole city structure right now: the mayor, the city council, the police services board, and the police. I think only the fire department is getting a pass 
Hey, I’ll do my part. This asinine protest (I mean I could forgive a protest if the/some public figures themselves were buffoons but their raison d’etre of anti-health measures is rotten to the core) has fucked up the city at a time when people are under a lot of stress and have difficulty as-is travelling in the winter.
I’d be crushingly disappointed if it wasn’t, and whomever runs to be a new mayor really needs to just bring up one thing.
Something I’ve heard a number of times in the media over the last few weeks are variants of “the mayor (or politicians or whoever) doesn’t tell the police what to do”. As a vet I find this astonishing - then who does tell the police what to do? To me this is like saying that the gov’t of Canada doesn’t tell the CAF what to do. Isn’t a police force subordinate to a civilian agency (eg the municipal gov’t in the case of the OPS)?
It is subordinate, but it’s an arms-length relationship. The notion is that the police should operate in a politically neutral manner, and having the top politician issuing orders to the police risks messing that up.
What we do is have a Police Services Board with representatives from both city and provincial governments, who hire and supervise the chief of police. The chief runs the department as they see fit, but if they do things the PSB don’t like, they can remove the chief from that position, and hire someone new. But so long as the chief has that job, they largely keep their own counsel on how to operate. They may listen to advice, but aren’t required to follow it.
This worked great until the cops apparently decided to side with the truckers over everyone else.
So, the PSB could fire Chief Sloly, the current chief of police in Ottawa, but the members of that board are largely the same city officials who have been saying “wait and see, the police might do something any day now…” for several weeks.
So, the citizens are just stuck. Our elected officials refuse to fire Sloly, Sloly refuses to do his job, and no one in the provincial government is willing to override any of them.
I fully intend to do my best to get these people out of office come the fall election, but that does nothing to help us right now. For some reason, all our pleas are just falling on deaf ears.
Thanks for that - greatly appreciated. It seems that that relationship has been used in this instance for some sort of buck-passing. Though I don’t live in Ottawa right now, I grew up there and had a few military postings there and was involved in a community organization back in the day (pre-amalgamation when there was the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton and post-amalgamation when city hall moved into Regional HQ) but I was not particularly knowledgeable about that particular aspect of civics, though my volunteer work entailed a fair bit of interaction with the police, who I respected at the time.
What did not get done during the last few weeks is shocking to me and the extent of the inaction is appalling in that, despite a couple of weeks of watching the situation develop across western Canada, nobody did a bloody thing to mitigate it. I used to live about a 15 minute walk from Coventry and was able to walk downtown in about 40 minutes. At the gut level I feel that the entire bloody OPS should be sacked though I know that’s neither fair nor realistic. I have a fondness for Ottawa and my wife and I plan on retiring there in a couple of years. Should be interesting.
I used to live near Rideau and King Edward, and would walk home from work in Hull along Sparks Street, Wellington, or through the Byward Market, so right where all this crap is happening. I loved that area, and it kills me to see what’s become of it. I’m not to far from retirement myself now, and have been thinking about relocating closer to downtown when that happens, so again, I hate to see what’s going on there.
You gut feeling is shared by a lot of people. I’m sure there are some in the OPS who could be saved, but it would be pretty hard to sort them out from the ones who should be tossed. I fear anything less than a scorched earth policy for the OPS will be viewed with skepticism by a lot of people.
As I mentioned upthread I found it really frustrating that the group on Wellington and the group at Coventry weren’t simply “kettled” with nothing being allowed in or out.
With the way the protesters now have their trucks re-parked on Wellington I really don’t see how the trucks removed either without protester cooperation or without very specialized equipment (eg military vehicle support equipment).
Only if you put it in the most broad terms like this, and ignore the details, as has already been well stated previously in this thread. Just because a person supports one protest, does not mean they must support all others or be a hypocrite. It’s a ludicrous assertion designed solely to score meaningless political points.
The PM invoked something called “The Emergencies Act”.
And it doesn’t even do that.
Emergencies Act now being invoked.
I think the arrest of 11 armed criminals at the Alberta border blockade, along with the attempt to ram a police vehicle were the tipping point here.
The Mounties said in a statement Monday morning that they recently “became aware of a small organized group within the larger Coutts protest” who had access to firearms and “was said to have a willingness to use force against police” if any attempts were made to end the blockade.
Cue the cries of “fake news” from the usual suspects in Alberta.
As I said before - most folks here are dupes. But they are being led, infiltrated and funded by fucking terrorists.
Look around you protestors: If you are buddies with folks that want to murder police, you might just be on the wrong side here.