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Tell that to the inmates at the Shanghai Disneyland. Society is a balance between freedom and survival. In China and Russia, that balance is way out of whack. In Canada, we have a pretty good balance. The EMA was a response to the violation of the constitutional rights of thousands of residents in Ottawa. The sanctions against the convoy participants did not violate their rights. The right to protest was affirmed. The right to break the law was not. Freezing of money in the commission of a crime is not a violation of constitutional rights. Using reasonable force to effect an arrest is not a violation of constitutional rights. Towing vehicles that are illegally parked is not a violation of constitutional rights. (At least I hope not. I have seized and towed enough vehicles in my career.) When a Peace Officer tells you to move, you move. What is irrational is, when offered a vaccine that can save your life, or the lives of others, why would anyone not choose self preservation?

Not true at all that there was a reaching out of government to protesters and their organizers. There was no violence among protesters, the honking and blockade had mostly ended, and agreements were being settled to shrink and move the protest footprint before the EA was invoked.

No that’s not the issue. China had far fewer deaths but most Canadians don’t want to emigrate to China. The issue is that because our healthcare system is weak and our governments decided that individual medical discretion and constitutional rights are less important than protecting a failed system and pretending it isn’t failed, government essentially lapsed into totalitarianism. Individual rights such as freedom of movement and medical discretion were overridden. I’d say that for much of the pandemic the public understood that sacrifices were necessary, but by the time vaccines became available to anyone who wanted them and the dominant Covid strains weakened, the mandates came to look unnecessarily harsh and arbitrary. People had vaccines, masks, and treatments to protect themselves irrespective of what other people did. For government not even to talk to the opposition and instead to vilify them, was pretty awful. The EA, bank account freezes, etc. added insult to injury. You don’t get to impose drastic rules on people without damn good reasons or to treat them harshly without damn good reasons. There simply weren’t good reasons for any of this. It looked like a fearful and cowardly government killed a fly with a sledgehammer.

I agree... Trudeau stacked the deck. Worked to his advantage to grab more and more power. The next fake crisis is the environment. WEF is already going after the auto industry and you'll see further attacks on mining. All the good paying jobs.. more reliance on government. Easier to control

Not if you people put your conclusions up for peer review and it's determined you demonstrably know better than the experts what if anything needs to be done. What is it about this simple fact that you don't get?

You clearly didn’t see the thousands of regular citizens lining highways and showing up in Ottawa to oppose mandates. You’re using the same degrading language to paint everyone with the extremist brush. “Tiny minority” sounds just like “fringe minority” (Trudeau).

Couldn't be said any better. Since when arbitrary counts on an arbitrarily selected issues became more important than constitutional rights, checks and accountability? Who said and decided that number = X allows me to cancel your rights and begin martial law? Can't you see that this kind and style of governance is way into another territory - and right on the way to totalitarianism. Seriously movies were made exactly about this theme way before this pandemic.

That's what you want to have happen, as you've said in your own words. The idea that Europe will freeze and starve through the winter is comical. The EU economy is an order of magnitude larger than Russia's and therefore far better equipped to transition through the an east/west decoupling. You really don't seem to understand the numbers or the economics of scale at work here. Russia is a pretender. ? Who are we sacrificing, exactly? If you're worried about sacrificing, ask how the Russian army feels about being grinded down to pulp to achieve near-nothing. A referendum under armed occupation is not a referendum. It's pageantry. That you think it's anything but is comical. I actually believed you were smarter than that. Thanks for clarifying! ?

The Star has become radical left in the last decade. It used to be a great paper. The Globe is now firmly Liberal. It used to be Conservative. The National Post is pretty centrist. There are no mainstream conservative papers. The CBC and CTV are Liberal. I get my news online now, mostly through Substack.

but there's the shoddy logic that underlines the whole conspiracy theory. The MSM is fake news...until it says something you agree with and then it's...not fake?

Wrong. The Conservatives don’t constantly express how shameful Canada is. The Liberals of the Chrétien era were fiscally prudent. That party is gone. The current Liberals stole the 2015 election platform of the NDP and continue to overspend, over-tax, and wonder why inflation climbs and living standards drop.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/20/world/hunter-biden-china-cobalt.html How is this even a thing?

What a joke. It would be a lot more fitting to say that you ignore the scientific consensus and then elevate the small handful of dissenters (1% maybe? I don't know) as the highest authorities on the topic. You don't care about 99% of the science. You only care about the doctors making the noises you want to hear.

Bottom line: The 'enquiry' will come to the conclusion that Trudeau did the 'right' thing but, there were a few little glitches along the way. Precedent is set for future EMA to be unleashed for . . . . . contempt for Bill C-11, contempt for Liberal funding of media, contempt for Federal Liberals and their lunge into Marxism, contempt for Trudeau and his band of brain-dead penguins . . . . . the list is long.

A vaccinated diabetic can go to the same Tim Hortons, sit at the table, stuff their face with multiple donuts until they have to be rushed to the hospital in a diabetic shock.. A healthy unvaxxed individual who's already had covid and successfully fought it off at home without any medical treatment cannot go and sit at that same tim Hortons because they don't have the the pseudovax.. One person can sit restrictions free at the table, make poor choices, and end up taking up a hospital bed. The other cannot... science and whatnot you know You know... "science" and "protecting the Healthcare system"

robosmith was very specific in that he stated "The EC representatives are required by law to be assigned according to the popular vote in ALL states. Required by law. I don't know if it is required by law or not. And there were those celebrities urging the EC representatives to ignore the popular vote in those states Trump won. They are mostly the same bunch that shout about the importance of winning the popular vote.

Well if I dared to sit down at a table to enjoy a Tim's donut they'd call the police and have me escorted out as one of the undesirable class.. But nah that doesn't resemble any other time in history lol

Yes you do. There is no such crime. Show me the official statute that makes a medical choice a crime.

So do you think these celebrities asking that the Electoral College not certify the election for Trump some years ago were encouraging them to do something illegal? Trump did win those states after all. Ok I'll concede that these are not A list celebrities.? Has-been Martin Sheen is the only one that I recognize. I highly recommend Mark Dice!

He may just be feeling a bit sarcastic about this. For the sake of comparison, the Pelosi attacker is being held without bail as he should be. It's a no brainer. Contrast that with the attack against Lee Zeldin. Some guy attacks him on stage, trying to stab him. It's on video and not in dispute. July 22, 2022 An attempted assault on Representative Lee Zeldin, the Republican candidate for governor of New York, inflamed a fierce debate over the state’s public safety laws on Friday, hours after a man accused of charging the candidate with a pointed weapon was released without bail. The man who allegedly tried to stab Republican candidate for New York governor Lee Zeldin with a bladed weapon during a campaign stop on Thursday was released from jail within hours of his arrest on a felony charge — just as Zeldin had predicted. David Jakubonis, 43, from Fairport, New York, was arraigned overnight in Perinton Town Court on a count of second-degree attempted assault stemming from the attack on Rep. Zeldin but was quickly released on his own recognizance. Quite a difference isn't it. And Republican Lee Zeldin has strongly condemned this violent attack against Pelosi, as should everyone. And what font size are you using now? Is that like a 56 or 72?

No problem. You've still got all that btw. And when government ever threatens to tie you down to a gurney against your wishes and force a needle into your arm I'll be there doing my best to stop them.

It is obvious to me that you have no idea what COVID is and that what it is today is not what it was in 2020 and certainly not what it was when it started as SARS-CoV-2 way back when. When it became a world pandemic that SARS-CoV was already at COVID 19 and it has constantly mutated since then. "Viruses constantly change through mutation and sometimes these mutations result in a new variant of the virus. Some variations allow the virus to spread more easily or make it resistant to treatments or vaccines. As the virus spreads, it may change and may become harder to stop. Regardless of the variant, a surge in cases can impact healthcare resources Even if a variant causes less severe disease in general, an increase in the total number of cases could cause an increase in hospitalizations, put more strain on healthcare resources, and potentially lead to more deaths." https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/index.html So, keeping on saying that vaxxed people get it is correct but, by not saying that it is a mutated version of COVID and the last vaccination is ineffective is what you are missing. Every variant is a new problem and a new vaccine is needed.

I know, I know... That's an easy one A Doctor.

You have the avantage of me. I don't know what you mean.

Lets examine the qualifications of the people on each side. One the one side we have Ms. Lich, a fitness instructor and musician. Pat King has no known training or experience in medicine. Chris Barber, truck driver (likely an excellent driver) also has no known medical credentials. Chris Sky works for a construction company and has no known medical expertise. On the other side, we have Dr. Theresa Tam, Chief Public Health Officer of Canada with 25 years of experience in the fields of infectious disease prevention and control. We have Dr. Saqib Shah, Chief Medical Officer for the Province of Saskatchewan, one of Canada's longest serving Provincial Chief Medical Officers. Dr. Bonnie Henry, retired RCN Medical Officer, Associate Professor at UBC in preventative medicine, and Provincial Health Officer for the Province of British Columbia. I could go on but you get the picture. Wait. I can add one more. Donald Trump, forme President of the United States of America who appeared with Bill O'Reilly to advocate, not just to get fully vaccianted, but to follow his example and take the booster shots as well. So, lets choose which side is best qualified to advise us whether or not to follow public health measures. People with expertise in music and fitness, operating heavy transports, and an activist employed but not actually working for his dad's construction company... or medical health professionals with years of experience in preventative medicine and infectious disease control.

Obama implemented SANCTIONS against Russia for invading Crimea. You want to send TROOPS? How about Canadian troops?

Meanwhile Trump has been in bed with the top Kremlin banks for decades and I've yet to see YOU complain about that. ? Total hypocrisy on your part.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/twitter-jack-dorsey-retains-stake-after-elon-musk-buy-1235252557/ Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is betting that Elon Musk can turn the social platform’s fortunes around. According to securities filingsMonday evening, Dorsey opted to roll his ownership stake in the company over to Musk’s new private venture. While Musk had said in the months leading up to the closing of the deal that he had been in talks with Dorsey to roll over his stake, neither man had confirmed the deal until the filings were disclosed on Oct. 31. Dorsey owned more than 18 million shares in Twitter, valued at about $1 billion. He could have cashed those shares out at $54.20 a piece when Musk took the company private, instead, he will end up saving Musk about $1 billion in his purchase price by rolling those shares over.

Yup, and we see these moves in all sorts of areas. You can’t order a passport in less than four months now unless you can provide evidence that you will be visiting another country to the passport office. At what point did we have to start sharing this information with passport officials to get the basic service of ordering a passport? It reminds me of Soviet Russia.

Again, it’s not really about left v right or con v lib anymore because that traditional binary assumed that certain fundamentals were unshakable, namely free market capitalism, constitutional rights, and representative democracy. What happens when the people in power aren’t what they pretend to be and the reality of elitist self-preservation is exposed? I’m talking about a system where the government has become so detached from what most people have to deal with each day that they no longer can really claim to represent the public interest. Don’t get me wrong, this has always been possible, but the pandemic exposed just how inane and out of touch these institutions have become. I don’t even blame the Liberals particularly for this creep, but it’s the result of years of consorting with other privileged and out of touch theorists at various conferences and high level forums. It’s the result of an ensconced self-referential political class. We saw many instances of MP’s simply ignoring constituents during the pandemic. Instead of discussing concerns with people, some MP’s, including our PM, vilified people with opposing views. It wouldn’t be so bad if the discussions didn’t impact people’s constitutional rights: freedom of movement, the right to earn a livelihood, medical discretion, etc. Government failed to recognize the importance and necessity of such rights to a free society. What’s more, the old world political binary struggles to account for the totalitarian impacts of data-driven government that uses algorithms and metrics to determine how much freedom or social engineering is necessary to “protect our healthcare system.” Basically our democratic rights are sacrificed to uphold a failed healthcare system. We learned that our reliance on an unsatisfactory government healthcare system has far wider implications for our social conditions and democracy than we thought. With regard to your whole Trump-Fox-American freedom thing, which you set up as an unCanadian evil, that’s also a very problematic aspect of your argument I had issues with Trump and I never watched Fox very much or at all, but Trump tapped into a very real frustration with politics as usual, particularly the kind of detached professional political class that it’s very arguable runs our federal government. If you value economic and political freedom, it’s very hard to argue in favour of our current Liberal government. I don’t think you appreciate just how tentative our democracy has become and just how important it is to affirm our rights within it. Canada and much of the Weat has veered too close to China and too dependent on the state to tell us what we deserve and how we should live. When a sizeable chunk of the country starts to see this unfolding in our government, that’s a real problem that isn’t just about “conspiracy clowns”. Certainly ignoring such concerns just proves how far we’ve drifted as a society from important values that used to be considered fundamental. The safety argument used to justify all sorts of controls starts to look pretty shabby. So I understand your views as a kind of cognitive dissonance, a difficulty with absorbing how much the forces at play have changed. Poilievre is popular because he does seem to understand the forces and talks about people wanting control of their lives back. His rejection of government that’s beholden to unelected international think tanks is also important, because both the left and right parties got too cozy with this out of touch jet set. As for your unquestioned “reality” of “climate change”, I certainly don’t think most people understand the data on this or just how theoretical and hard it is to discern causes and the human impacts of climate change. I certainly think it’s stupid to throw billions of tax dollars at “fighting” it I also think it’s incredibly irresponsible to our energy needs and security to regulate and tax our energy producers into the ground. It makes life more expensive and less secure for Canadians. My politics were always slightly left of centre, but the left used to be about workers. I’ve tried turning to the Conservatives because I think that they now care more about rights and cost of living. Yet I think the Conservatives can easily lapse into the same out of touch, virtue signalling, self-serving phoney woke-green nut jobs as the Liberals have clearly become. Time will tell, but if you don’t think that the government funding of print and other legacy media has helped insert government narratives in our press, I can’t help you.

Your OP says it was bought by a Chinese company, not the Chinese gov't. Why? Can't you answer YOUR OWN QUESTION? AFAIK, there is nothing illegal nor unethical about the VPOTUS's son brokering the sale of a business to a Chinese company. Seems ALL you've got is SUSPICION about a POSSIBLE payoff. Doesn't mean it happened nor that Joe was involved.

The EMA was not a response to people not wanting to be vaccinated. It was a response to the occupation of downtown Ottawa that had no end in site. The occupiers were attempting to coerce the various levels of government to over ride the public health orders. As for talking to the opposition, the Government was in constant communication with mr. O'Tool and Mr. Singh. The occupation was causing a lot of suffering for people who were unable to go to work because the occupation forces businesses to close down, such as the businesses in the Rideau centre. The violation of the rights of the citizens of Ottawa had gone on far too long. You know all this but you seem to gloss over the rights of the people whose lives were disrupted. There are proper ways to seek remedy for grievences.

Do you mean: "Why shouldn't the VPOTUS's son be in business with the Chinese gov't?" I'll leave you to guess.

1) I posted an article from your own leftist rag, the NYT, about Biden's own crime syndicate. You're posting small-time crap from small-time sites. Can you not speak to Biden selling out your vaunted green energy to China? 2) Are you seriously trying to implicate Trump because "people with ties to China poured hundreds of thousands into his re-election bid"? -He has no control who gives him money -hundreds of thousands of dollars from China is literally nothing. Hunter made over $11M from the Chinese gov't and his scams in other countries while his dad was VPOTUS. Hunter made more money from them than 50 US Congressmen make in a whole year from the US gov't. Do you have anything to say about that?

Luckily there are no Republicans investing in China. except the fit 500 hits on Google: Political Donors Linked to China Won Access to Trump, GOP Hundreds of thousands of dollars in political donations opened doors in Washington for Chinese nationals with high-level ties Soon after Donald Trump took office, people with ties to the Chinese state poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into his re-election bid to get close to and potentially influence the new president. The effort had early success in gaining access for those involved, helping them meet the president or top Republicans at fundraisers or at an internal GOP leadership meeting. It reveals how China seeks to build inroads into U.S. politics, gather information on U.S. leaders and if possible affect policy-making. https://www.wsj.com/articles/political-donors-linked-to-china-won-access-to-trump-gop-11592925569 Republican’s wealth boosted by stake in company whose growth linked to China The Wisconsin Republican senator Ron Johnson, a vocal critic of Beijing who has vowed to launch investigations into the Biden family’s alleged relationships with Chinese businesses, declared $57m in income in his first 10 years in office in connection to his ownership stake in a company whose growth has closely been linked to China. A close examination of Johnson’s financial disclosures and other public filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission, legal filings and other public records reveal that Johnson’s wealth was boosted by his company’s ties to another company that was owned and managed by his family, which in turn grew its business in China, acquired businesses in China, and reported having a loan worth tens of millions of dollars from the Bank of China. In one case, the company run by Johnson’s family sued the US government to try to press for softer trade relations with Beijing, a position that Johnson himself adopted in a rare break with Trump administration policies. https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/13/ron-johnson-income-china-links-pacur How a Tycoon Linked to Chinese Intelligence Became a Darling of Trump Republicans Guo Wengui has been trailed by scandals involving corruption and espionage. What is he really after? Donald Trump became the Republican Presidential front-runner that summer, and Guo’s instincts proved well suited to the emerging era; he had already joined Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s club in Palm Beach, and he wasn’t shy about praising his own business acumen (“I’m a genius at making money!”). He boasted of expensive tastes: handmade Louis Vuitton shoes, a rare variety of tea that he reportedly declared was worth a million dollars a kilo. Even before he was introduced to Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, Bannon had heard enough about Guo to pronounce him “the Donald Trump of Beijing.” (Years later, when federal agents went looking for Bannon in connection with an allegedly fraudulent scheme to raise money for a wall on the Mexican border, they found him aboard Guo’s yacht, in Long Island Sound.) …For nearly a decade, he had maintained a secret partnership with one of China’s most powerful spymasters, an intelligence officer named Ma Jian, who had recently been arrested by his own government. Caixin, a Chinese investigative news organization, reported that Ma and Guo had used surveillance, blackmail, and political influence to amass fortunes and evade scrutiny. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/24/how-a-tycoon-linked-to-chinese-intelligence-became-a-darling-of-trump-republicans/amp Republicans blasting China forget that the GOP enabled Beijing’s rise … Beginning in 2000, China’s economic growth began to skyrocket. Beyond its entryinto the World Trade Organization, much of China’s rapid expansion over the last two decades can be traced to a single act of Congress. In a seminal vote, the United States normalized trade with Beijing, opening the floodgates to the mass outsourcing of well-paying American manufacturing jobs to China. Indeed, the astounding, post-2000 decline in U.S. manufacturing employmentfits neatly with a surge in cheap Chinese imports around the same time. A whopping 75 percent of House Republicans voted in favor of shippingAmerican jobs to China. Democrats, wary of the myriad economic, environmental and labor repercussions of normalizing trade with China, rebuked a “centrist” presidentand voted against the measure by a two-to-three margin. A year later, George W. Bush formalized Congress’s vote, granting preferential trade status to China. Republicans, in short, enabled Beijing’s astounding economic and military rise by swapping millions of good-paying American jobs for cheap Chinese imports. But the GOP’s overwhelming vote in favor of unfettered trade with China came at a staggering cost…. https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/497093-republicans-blasting-china-forget-that-the-gop-enabled-beijings/amp/ Texas leaders criticize China, but state continues to invest billions Texas has adopted an anti-China approach from its state leaders, at least the Lone Star State argues that is has done so. The state, however, has at least $9 billion invested in China. This investment exists in the face of Gov. Greg Abbott and other state leaders repeatedly speaking out against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the nation's human rights abuses. The $9.1 billion only includes state-level funds, and not the 92 local funds across the state. In 2021, Abbott signed a law designating China as a “hostile nation” and Attorney General Ken Paxton compared the country to “1930s Germany.” But seven of Texas’ pension funds totaling $9.12 billion are invested in Chinese companies, the majority of that share with large companies like Tencent and Alibaba…. https://austinjournal.com/stories/620998087-it-doesn-t-really-make-sense-texas-leaders-criticize-china-but-state-continues-to-invest-billions Trump clothing also made in China

The Star was always a far left rag. The Globe has been predominantly conservative for as long as I've been alive. The only thing that's changed is that the Globe is rational conservative, rather than conspiracy-clown conservative. Calling the National Post "centrist" is a joke. There are, however, no mainstream conspiracy clown newspapers because conspiracy clowns aren't interested in the news. They're interested in making and listening to the noises they want to hear and very little else.

It’s not that there’s no truth in the news. It’s that it’s watered down in order to never make waves with the employer, which in Canada is now largely the government, because of the heavy government funding. It will get even worse once the CRTC gets their paws on Google, YouTube, etc. and starts telling us what content is “Canadian” enough. The bills are going to the Senate…

It makes sense both ways.

I read this article and agreed with most of it, but it's interesting you're quoting the evil MSM here because they never say anything anti-Trudeau and always rush to his defense...rrrr right?

No I don't believe an election staged by an autocrat in a territory he illegally annexed is legit. I'm not a gullible useful idiot like you are.

Where? There was joint research being done on bovine diseases or something from what I recall. Come on. In what world are we to expect a referendum held under armed occupation without outside observers where none of the options were "remain as part of Ukraine" was even remotely legitimate? I sincerely believe even you know these were a farce. I refuse to believe you're that silly.

That's also true of the US.

Exactly. It shows that the emperor wears no clothes. His failure is written all over the events. He insulted thousands (millions really) of Canadians who had legitimate concerns about vaccine mandates and restrictions after two years of deprivations and serious damage to mental health and businesses. Rather than reaching out and working with people he insulted them, hid, and imposed the harshest measures available, the “nuclear option”. This wasn’t an FLQ terrorist action resulting in kidnapping and murder. Fair minded people who see how our constitutional rights were disregarded and the failure in government leadership are made to feel like their concerns are illegitimate. It’s called gaslighting.

You’re such a sycophant of the Trudeau regime. You think it’s fine to declare martial law (that’s what it is under a euphemistic name) to put down a non-violent legal protest that was in the midst of having its sharpest edges dulled (removal of blockades, ending of honking, shrinkage of protest footprint), and that Trudeau’s disparaging of a large segment of Canadian society that opposed mandates was fine. You know about the freezing of bank accounts, seizure of assets, etc. For you to think this wasn’t a big deal and that it won’t be remembered in our history books is pure denial of the obvious. The Freedom Convoy and the “democratic slippage” of our Canadian government’s overreach won’t be forgotten. In fact it was an international symbol of a modern liberal democracy under threat of lapsing into totalitarianism. People couldn’t believe what was unfolding in Canada. It was highly significant.

I'm just pointing out what you've said in the past. You're the one who's clearly lying, because you say don't care who wins but then you've already explicitly told us: No amount of "context" explains away this. If you didn't care about lies then you wouldn't be spending all of your energy on this thread criticizing everyone but Putin. ?

You mean: Losing at war ?

Fascism is a far-right ideology by definition, goof. Your relationship with facts and reality is...distant.

The Nazi argument is low effort garbage - the same thing as the satanic pedophile cabals. Point at the "others", call them the worst thing you can possibly think of, then see how many susceptible and gullible mooks bite. Even the Russian soldiers in Ukraine don't believe it, else they'd have more than a thimble-full of fighting spirit and would have done more than surrender, retreat or stall for the last 4 months. ?

It is a legally purchased piece of personal property, that is not part of the gun problem, just because you don't have a use or think it is useful, that is reason enough to ban them? It does not bother you at all that this program will cost bils to implement and will not reduce gun violence to any reasonable degree, that and the fact less than 400 k will be spent in combating illegal guns at the border which is reasonable for over 80% of the guns used in violent crimes here in Canada. And all that makes sense to you, i know you switched off a long time ago, you don't really care WTF they do. it all makes sense to you. Even law enforcement does not believe these measures are going to make a difference, what do they know right.

The first page of your cite above shows NO LEGITIMATE SOURCES. FAKED PHOTOS often get WIDE distribution. Why don't YOU find a LEGITIMATE SOURCE? AKA, from a source that has verified it and HAS CREDIBILITY. NY POST has no more credibility than Nat Enquirer.