Thank you.
The city of Windsor has requested assistance.
Ford perhaps deserves credit (which may also be due to the police, or Tory, I cannot say) for reducing the size of the contingent in Toronto by blocking access.
A lot of Canadians are fed up with restrictions. Everyone gets that. But Canada has death rates under a third of that in the US. Masks have indeed made a difference. But a different calculus may be required for what is needed next, when things can normalize and a future no one knows.
Pictured: more people than in all of Canada with not as much opportunity for social distancing.
Covid, Canada: 3.15 million cases (pop 36,991,981 = 8.5%). 34,969 deaths
Covid, Japan: 3.48 million cases (pop 125.4 million = 2.8%). 19,613 deaths
This thread is helping with some of my bewilderment at why the authorities didn’t stop this one day one.
However, it still seems like Canada is losing what it takes to have an orderly society – something you were, in the past, famous for. Consider:
That is not a whole lot of kids, and the amount of time anyone needs to be arrested (just until the truck is in the impound lot) is short.
When I was 12 or so, in the 1960’s, I was in an anti-Soviet sit down protest blocking a D.C. street. Numbers were on the order of magnitude as here. Being a law abiding type, and not being with my parents, when they started arresting people, I followed police direction and walked away. I’m sure if I was a little younger a social worker, or cop, would have helped me for the few hours until everyone was released.
Something happened, probably in both the U.S. and Canada, and people now think children are unable to live through the least trauma, whether wearing a mask, or being away from Daddy for a couple hours (assuming Mommy or Daddy isn’t setting a good example of politeness, in front of their kids, during the arrest, so they can go into the police bus together).
I’ve been an Ottawa tourist at least twice, and want to take my grandkids. Not a good look.
Japan has a history of mask wearing. Canada has done better than most first-world nations except for half a dozen or so - despite doing a lot of things in a suboptimal way. On the whole, what they did worked pretty well. Whether it justified the cost or inconvenience is a different and more difficult question. Instead, one hopes they learned the right lessons since this is the fifth epidemic or pandemic within the last two decades, and it will not be the last.
(New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, Taiwan, Denmark, Japan, Iceland and Norway have generally done better than Canada.)
How many of these are right next door to the world’s largest plague nation? It’s a wonder that Canada did as well as it has.
And it’s worth noting that several large trucker associations in Canada have pointed out that these chucklefucks aren’t addressing the actual problems that most truckers have been having during the pandemic. There are real issues out that that should be addressed, and I’m sympathetic to the real truckers who are still doing their jobs despite those problems.
But these assholes have so taken over the narrative for their stupidity, that those real problems have been pushed to the side and ignored again.
Interesting list. 8 nations, total of 5 land borders, three of which belong to just one of the coutnries. Of the five, one is militarized with virtually no traffic, and another two are in the high arctic with little traffic. Not the only factor, of course, but still seems worth noting.
It’s also worth remembering that the legislation that replaced the War Measures Act Trudeau the Elder used is much more restrictive on when and how the military may be used. So Trudeau the Younger has much less flexibility on this front.
Shit would really have to have hit the fan before he could legally call in the army the way his Dad did.
Someone on Facebook posted a picture of one of the tank recovery vehicles that they apparently have in Petawawa. If they can haul a tank out of a ditch, they can drag away any of these trucks. I suspect that just driving that big bastard down one of the main drags here in Ottawa would inspire quite a few of the convoyers to decamp to a safer location.
The last time Nazis got all uppity we sent the military overseas to shoot them. So why should it be surprising that when fascists (and they are but since you don’t recognize Republicans as the fascists they are then this fact may escape you) try to take over, then maybe a military response is appropriate? Frankly, I partially blame you Americans for allowing fascism to rise in your country. Why don’t you go clean up your fascist infested Republican party so that the problem doesn’t get worse? Or do you agree with Republicans on the fascism issues?
Also, five of the listed seem to be islands, plus another peninsula. Not a guarantee, not the only factor. But obviously this can help. You could talk about travel, masks, homogeneity, government and its perception or trust.
The list is not complete - small countries like Finland could be there. Not all countries test or report accurately, however, and this list does take into account an increase in mortality from historically expected values. More complete data is available on: COVID Live - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer
No.
We are responsible for D.C., and Canada is responsible for Ottawa.
If there is no provision for a few tank removal crews to be temporarily placed under the Ottawa police, that is not my problem.
Now, if your handful of tank engineering equipment is all under renovation, you should be able to put in a request to have someplace nearby — maybe our Fort Drum — lend you a couple units (equipment, not troops — comparable to what the U.S. did for Israel in the 1973 war). If Biden refuses a bit of equipment sharing with an ally, I’ll agree with blaming the U.S.
I think “inviting a foreign power to invade Canada” is just about the worst suggestion for solving this problem that I can imagine.
Because it’s a lock that this is exactly how the CPC and the Nazis supporting this convoy would frame it.
You of course know way more about how this would go down in Canada than I do. But sometimes, a foreign perspective isn’t all wrong.
About 20 years ago, my wife and I were on the Vancouver SkyTrain and saw some kids on a bridge approach. So while the natives just sat there, we foreigners pressed the emergency button. There was a bit of an extended stop at the next station while the police talked to us – and thanked us. I don’t know if they got to those kids, and gave them a serious talking to in front of their parents, but one can hope.
This Ottawa situation seems to me another one where someone needs to press the button.
I strongly suspect your government could have, at the start, grabbed control of equipment, within hailing distance of Ottawa, that can tow a semi without the owner’s consent. And once they started with a method of towing that can damage the truck, drivers may become more cooperative. As for borrowing from Fort Drum – borrowing equipment, not troops. as made clear before – I just mentioned that as the kind of thing that might sensibly be thought of and then probably dismissed as unneeded. But if people can’t tell the difference between lending equipment and being invaded, that’s almost a bigger problem. It almost sounds like what could be call Latin Americanization in terms of undue fear of the U.S. (just as Trumpism is a Latin Americanization of the U.S.A.)
I suppose that every day this continues, it gets harder, bacuse you no longer can treat it as an emergency justifying rule-skirting. When police see someone walking in a railway-only area, or blocking traffic, I can’t believe they normally get an arrest warrant. But if you allow it to go on for weeks, you are making a statement that this is borderline lawbreaking, and then an arrest warrent sounds correct.
Part of the problem is jurisdictional here. Governments in Canada don’t make a habit of ordering the police to take actions, the relationship between the government and the police is sort of a hands-off thing. Ultimately, we can fire a police chief if they aren’t doing the job we want done, but as long as they’re on the job, it’s largely their call in how it gets done.
So our local Ottawa police basically are telling our city council that there’s “nothing they can do about it”.
Now, we do have provincial police who could step in and take control, but the provincial government has declined to take control of the situation. The Federal government can only really intervene unilaterally in extreme circumstances. As it stands, they’d have to be invited in by the province, who, as noted, have declined to take the situation in Ottawa at all seriously.
So we’re at the point where the people who clearly have the authority to act to fix this problem have declined to do so, and no other authority appears willing to put their foot down and act without the permission of those first authorities. It’s a perfect storm of bureaucratic, political and police ineptitude and finger-pointing. Absolutely no one has shown any kind of leadership at all.
I have no idea how your reply matches to what you quoted from my post. Sorry.
Oh lord…. The truck drivers are Nazis now? C’mon, are the words racist, sexist, etc. stuck in traffic?
And ‘infested’? Tsk tsk!
Tonight’s news said the ‘go fund me’, when the money was traced, 53% came from US far right groups. The remainder divided by various other groups. US donors far outstripping any other group.
Every Canadian should be afraid. Not taking immediate action, has made this much, much worse. As it spreads around the world, each day it passes it gets worse, in my opinion.
Justin looks more impotent with each passing hour. He should be calling out Ford, every day before the media.
I hope the First Nations and Nurses are taking notes! If this passes as political action, things could get interesting.
Only the woke mob call the people waving swastika flags Nazis!