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zaptheimpaler 2 days ago [-]
The petition to withdraw and amend the bill was presented to the House of Commons today [1]. People whining about how there's nothing they can do basically don't engage in democracy and thats how you end up in a US situation..
I emailed 9 senators and heard back from one. Emailed the other 8 today. Even when you engage, there's little positive feedback. The older I get, the more I believe this is a feature of the system and not a bug.
zaptheimpaler 1 days ago [-]
I feel most of us have been conditioned to prefer only the mildest and most inoffensive ways of protesting as valid and consider the rest impossible. In my view, governments today ignore protests because they don't actually threaten anything. A protest with teeth might be mass absenteeism from work, refusing to pay taxes, something that actually hurts.. although in this case it's probably a bit much, when the threat of real protest is completely gone you end up with authoritarian governments.
AngryData 21 hours ago [-]
All the years of anti-violence rhetoric is probably harmful to democracy and human rights, because the entire point of a protest is to put up a large sign that says "Fix this problem or we will make it your problem."
Its the old MLK Jr vs Malcolm X bit. Everyone praises MLK Jr for his anti-violent approach, but that only worked because Malcolm X represented what would happen if people don't accept the non-violent solution. Gandhi preached non-violence to the extreme, and yet the government wasn't afraid of Gandhi killing himself, they were afraid of the masses of angry people that would fuck shit up if Gandhi successfully starved himself to death.
ornornor 1 days ago [-]
France does protests more effectively. The government is paying attention there and trying very hard to hide the fact that the emperor has no clothes.
raverbashing 1 days ago [-]
They are protesting against the same things that would make their situation better (like increasing the retirement age)
But they're too stupid to realize that
phatskat 1 days ago [-]
How does increasing the retirement age help? Genuinely curious
scratcheee 5 hours ago [-]
Not going to support the “stupid” claim, I suspect the French public do have alternative solutions to their predicament in mind, some better than others no doubt, but ill take a stab at the answer:
Context: The French government is underfunded, their debt burden is not healthy and if nothing changes they’re headed towards Greek-style economic problems (ie cost of debt gets too high, nobody trusts them enough to lend them the money they need, default could mean nobody will lend them money in future, so high risk, but avoiding default could mean enforced austerity as conditions of bailouts, which would be far more painful than just a retirement age change).
Answer: Increasing the retirement age increases the working population (ie taxable population) and decreases the pension burden, so it’s one of the most effective levers to ease the costs to the government. The downside of course is it’s reneging on a contract with their own population, people working their whole lives with the promise of retirement are understandably not impressed when the goalposts are moved.
Geezus_42 19 minutes ago [-]
So make lower income people work longer rather than tax those at the top who take in the majority of wealth while doing the minority of work...
ArnoVW 23 hours ago [-]
Retirning early costs money. A lot. Every year you retire earlier is one year of income to pay extra, and one year of capitalisation less.
To give an idea of the orders of magnitude. France is 70M inhabitants. If 20 million people receive a pension of 24K€ one year longer, that's 480B€. The French yearly budget is 843B€. In total, France has spent between 8B€ - 27B$ on supporting Ukraine since 2022 (one of the other talking points)
France has just managed to increase retirement age to 64 years, and there are voices to re-instate it to 62. For reference:
• Germany: 65 to 67 years (depending on birth year; 67 for those born from 1964)
• United Kingdom: 66 years (rising to 67)
• Spain: 65 to 66.5 years (depending on career length)
• Netherlands: 67 years
The retirement age was moved from 65 to 60 in 1982, by the socialist Mitterand government. Life expectency has increased 9 years since then, and they have been trying (desperately) to move it back up since then.
Not retiring early means that money can be spent on other things. Such as the better schooling that the French kids were asking for.
It will also help in getting the French budget balanced. Something which it has not been since 1974. The EU rules require a national debt of max 60% of GNP. France is currently at 120%. For reference, Germany is at 63%, the Netherlands are at 44%. Spain is at 100%, and slowly falling.
terminalcommand 3 hours ago [-]
In my experience, the major spending of governments goes out in corruption. It is much like the Parkinson's law. Government will eat any budget they have due to corruption and only provide basic necessities.
After moving up the retirement age, that money will surely flow into some rich people's pockets rather than schools/healthcare. This is what the France is revolting about.
zaptheimpaler 13 hours ago [-]
Every western country with a pension system is slowly getting crushed under the weight of an ever-growing share of pensioners relative to the working age population. People live to 85 now, supporting 20 years of pension and healthcare while they vote against property tax increases, building housing, retirement age increases or any cut at all to their benefits is going to wreck the finances of any country. They were using immigration to backstop the system but that's slowing down now and is anyways not a sustainable solution.
Geezus_42 17 minutes ago [-]
Raise taxes on the wealthy.
raverbashing 1 days ago [-]
Pensions outspend every other social expense in France
The retirees have greater disposable income than the young people (read, most people in the labour market)
And of course the number of retirees is going up every day
bparsons 23 hours ago [-]
France has much lower per capita debt and deficit compared to the United States. I find it very funny to hear American media talk about the dire situation of French public finances.
vazark 19 hours ago [-]
They can because the USD is the world's reserve currency. Whenever the economic situation looks volatile, historically, organisations buy up USD and Treasuries as a its seen as a safe haven. That trust has been slowly eroding only due to the actions (and inaction) of the US admin regarding ukraine and iran
drysine 1 days ago [-]
They can imagine themselves growing old which is pretty smart for young people
lotsofpulp 1 days ago [-]
They cannot imagine themselves getting less than they put in because of an ever increasing proportion of non-workers.
Ironically, the younger people from whom to extract productivity to pay for the defined benefit pensions are being supplied by immigrants, who are also politically unpopular.
Vaushite 21 hours ago [-]
They are protesting again non-workers, also known as billionaires.
lotsofpulp 21 hours ago [-]
France’s annual spend on defined benefit pensions is north of $400B Euros and north of $300B Euros on healthcare. Seizing and liquidating the equity of everyone in France with a book value of $1B (or even $100M) would make no difference.
Maybe it would help the budget for 1 year?
Vaushite 18 hours ago [-]
Abolishing billionaires isn't about taking their money and then spending it back to them, it's about ending billionaires as a concept, because they are where all the money is going and the reason everyone else has a money shortage. If we subtract the part of the price of everything that goes to billionaires, things get a lot cheaper, and then we can afford them.
lotsofpulp 4 hours ago [-]
>they are where all the money is going and the reason everyone else has a money shortage.
You can look up all the government spending data, and wealth transfers from workers to non workers dwarfs all the billionaires’ combined net worths. The US federal government alone is 60%+ wealth transfers, not to mention state and local governments. These spending figures are measured in trillions of USD per year.
In France this week they burned down a town hall. Actually burned down - the town hall is gone - not that fake burned-down reporting they had about Seattle during BLM.
0c3ca83 1 days ago [-]
Or even just peacefully blocking the entrance to parliament and forcing them to arrest you to do their jobs.
dennis_jeeves2 20 hours ago [-]
> refusing to pay taxes,
Taxes should be optional to start with. If you pay taxes you get services, if not you don't.
Geezus_42 14 minutes ago [-]
How do you stop the non-payers from using public systems?
grafmax 2 days ago [-]
The fact is this political system of ours is heavily balanced in favor of those with the endless budgets and resources to spend engaging in "democratic" avenues of influence.
h3xK33 1 days ago [-]
Mamdani released 9/11 files that prove Giuliani and his admin lied about toxic conditions
It's balanced in favor of the most nihilistic and toxic self dealing fucks
Boomers were not raised by principles of modern science; it was all being digested and packaged for education when they were kids
They’re religious nutters due to memory of their neurological makeup
kashunstva 1 days ago [-]
> Boomers were not raised by principles of modern science
I’m a Boomer with twelve years of post-secondary modern science education. My spouse, also a Boomer has spent her entire life in the academy. Your claim is false.
> They’re religious nutters due to memory of their neurological makeup
I’m an atheist Boomer. I haven’t a religious bone in my body. Your claim is false.
I’m sure there are other venues that will accept your ageist, angry and patently false generalizations as truth; but by and large this is not one of them.
Geezus_42 12 minutes ago [-]
You are an outlier.
orgr3tactics 21 hours ago [-]
[dead]
parineum 1 days ago [-]
Just Boomers are like that?
great2bnaustin 1 days ago [-]
NYC released files showing internal warnings about asbestos, benzene, reoccupancy, and future lawsuits while Giuliani and others publicly called the air safe, and they show that later administrations withheld those records. They do not show that Giuliani or his administration lied. A lie requires knowing a statement was false, and the documents do not establish what Giuliani knew when he spoke or whether he rejected contrary advice rather than relying on the EPA.
Geezus_42 11 minutes ago [-]
And that's why rich people never get held accountable for their actions.
JumpCrisscross 2 days ago [-]
> emailed 9 senators and heard back from one
Good start. Calls are also excellent. Then get your neighbors to do the same.
For controversial stuff, you want tens to hundreds of outreach events recorded. It doesn’t take all that much for electeds to spell a festering primary threat.
Loughla 24 hours ago [-]
My senator doesn't have a number you can call to talk to an actual person. When you call you get an automated message telling you to fill out a contact form on their website. When you fill out the form all you get is an automated response telling you how the senator is fighting for your rights as a citizen (not even acknowledging that you contacted them) and as a bonus you get signed up for their political bullshit newsletter. If you go to their office, it's behind security and multiple locked doors that you can't get through unless you have an appointment. To get an appointment you have to call the office.
When the maze is only dead ends, why is it surprising that people disengage?
JumpCrisscross 18 hours ago [-]
> why is it surprising that people disengage?
Because it’s volunteering to cede power. If that’s one’s choice, call it what it is.
If your elected is truly stonewalling you, find their last competitive election. Reach out to their opposition. If it truly doesn’t exist, found or find someone who will found it.
(The one easy step you may have skipped is mailed letters. If your elected or electorate is older, this may be how they filter feedback.)
Loughla 10 hours ago [-]
Mailed letters result in a form letter about their stand on shit that doesn't matter to me.
The last time there was a competitive election in my district was the 70's before the state was gerrymandered to hell and back.
Too many people vote for a candidate just because of the little r or d next to their name on the ballot.
franga2000 24 hours ago [-]
Nobody said its surprising. Everyone knows this is on purpose. That's why it's even more important to fight it.
Vaushite 21 hours ago [-]
"Pick a different protein? I'd rather pick a different senator."
8note 2 days ago [-]
electeds? primary threat? i think that might backfire in the canadian senate
i know i voted against the referendum question last week to consider moving to a US inspired elected senate system. i dont think we need that pageantry
JumpCrisscross 2 days ago [-]
> electeds? primary threat?
I'm familiar with American and Swiss elections. In both, the principal threat to an incumbent is from an own-party challenger to their seat.
For an incumbent, particularly one in a comfortable seat, an opposition candidate is usually not an issue. But someone from inside the camp is annoying and requires rhetorical contorting and lots of spending, spending that can then leave one vulnerable to an otherwise-benign opposition candidate. (Also, motivated activists are annoying in the best way.)
A smart elected–in these systems–will thus take a call to defuse anger before it develops into organized activism.
munk-a 2 days ago [-]
Ah, to clarify, Canada's upper house is basically a house of lords equivalent that we expect to be full of puffed up nobodies that get paid a too generous stipend to sit there and keep their mouths shut. Canada has one elected congress body (the one we all talk about) and then this vestigial senate which is generally expected to sit there and silently approve everything that passes through it.
It does technically have power, but it's like the King's power to veto UK legislation - he can do it precisely once and then he'll be stripped of the power.
traceroute66 1 days ago [-]
> but it's like the King's power to veto UK legislation
Honestly this old chestnut comes up time and time again.
As much as many people would love the King/Queen to put the politicians in their place sadly there are two problems.
First, the monarch's role is effectively only ceremonial these days. Even "The King's speech" during opening of parliament is actually a piece of paper written by the ruling-party of the day, the King just sits there in his fancy regalia and reads it verbatim.
Second, if you are referring to veto during the royal ascent process. As per Wikipedia, the King does not have pure veto power, his options are:
- grant royal assent, thereby making the bill an act of Parliament.
- delay the bill's assent through the use of reserve powers, thereby invoking a veto.
- refuse royal assent on the advice of his or her ministers.
None of the above is a pure veto option. The nearest the King can get is delaying it.
Vaushite 21 hours ago [-]
And what happens if he refuses royal accent against the advice of his ministers?
traceroute66 20 hours ago [-]
> And what happens if he refuses royal accent against the advice of his ministers?
Not my area of expertise, but at a guess.
I think that is the reason the His Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition exists as a formalised concept (i.e. the party that came second in the elections), i.e. in the scenario you envisage, the King would still refuse it on the advice, but that of the recognised opposition minister (Leader of The Opposition).
But in reality an early election would likely be triggered the normal way well before things reached that state of affairs.
It would afterall be quite extraordinary circumstances if both the Prime Minister and Leader of The Opposition were pushing the king to grant ascent to a piece of law but the King still felt he should to refuse !
JumpCrisscross 2 days ago [-]
> Canada has one elected congress body
Canadian MPs are electeds. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of the Canadian Senate being referred to as an elected body—it’s irrelevant to the above.
munk-a 2 days ago [-]
Yeah, I think it'd be excellent if we could just disband our upper house and while it's worth pushing them to act on this bill I loathe the senate's continued existence and would rather be in a position where this emergency call happened prior to it passing the house.
buckle8017 2 days ago [-]
There are no primaries in Canada at all.
Parties select their representatives who run in the election.
The system basically guarantees that insiders cannot be removed.
seanw444 2 days ago [-]
That actually sounds crazy to me. At least for the House of Commons. I'm amenable to upper chambers of bicameral legislatures being indirectly elected. That's how the US Senate used to be before the constitution was amended.
gpm 2 days ago [-]
I think you're misreading. MPs are directly elected. Anyone can run to be an MP (You have to collect 50 to 100 signatures from supporters and fill out some paperwork). Whoever wins the most votes in a riding becomes MP.
It's the property of a candidate being affiliated with a party - an indirect part of the election - that is run by the parties rules that are generally less than entirely democratic in nature.
2 days ago [-]
buckle8017 2 days ago [-]
The British system which Canada basically copied is entirely designed to prevent real democracy.
9rx 1 days ago [-]
The only thing that takes the Westminster system away from enabling real democracy is political parties, and they hadn't been invented when the system was designed. It took around 400 years before someone finally found the hack to break it. The original designers would have never envisioned the possibility that it could be hacked like that.
cowlevel 2 days ago [-]
Do you have several parties or just two?
buckle8017 2 days ago [-]
Liberals
NDP
Greens
Conservative
Liberals NDP and Greens would never form a government with the Conservatives so the liberals are effectively always in power.
Which means insiders in the liberal party are in charge and voting is partly irrelevant unless you're voting for the conservatives, but they would need an actual straight majority.
rfrey 1 days ago [-]
The Green party is not a force in Canadian politics,they have one seat and barring radical events will never have another.
Th Bloc has 21 seats, and has had as many as 54. They would certainly ally with the conservatives. (Not the modern maple maga variety, but old school PC).
singpolyma3 21 hours ago [-]
Had two seats literally one election ago and are looking likely to get that second one back.
I know two seats is not "a force" but saying they'll never have another than one seems silly in this context.
Marty Deacon (Ontario) Committee chair 613-943-3429
Tony Ince (Nova Scotia) Deputy chair 343-991-5540
Andrew Cardozo (Ontario) Committee member 613-996-9545
Katherine Hay (Ontario) Committee member 343-991-5536
Rebecca Patterson (Ontario) Committee member 613-995-2185
Hassan Yussuff (Ontario) Committee member 613-944-1108
Kim Pate (Ontario) Committee member 613-995-9220
John M. McNair (New Brunswick) Committee member 613-995-5060
Victor Boudreau (New Brunswick) Committee member 613-947-4110
Judy A. White (Newfoundland and Labrador) Committee member 613-996-2433
EmbarrassedHelp 2 days ago [-]
Paula Simons is almost certainly against Bill C-22, so it probably won't be of any use to contact her about rejecting it. I would focus efforts on other Senators.
NoahZuniga 2 days ago [-]
You won't be able to convince representatives with facts and logic. So many people want their attention that they can't pay enough attention to your arguments to be convinced. Contacting them is about showing that you care about it.
If they receive 100 calls of people saying they're strongly against a bill and no for they might reconsider their position.
Also calling is a better signal of showing you care then emailing.
trollbridge 2 days ago [-]
Why not both?
hluska 23 hours ago [-]
No region in Canada has 17 senators. Are you sure you’re contacting the appropriate offices?
raverbashing 1 days ago [-]
Honestly senators probably don't have the time to answer everybody directly even if their concerns have an impact on their decision
lstodd 2 days ago [-]
Haha. You don't email them, you cut off their funding and smear their public image. This is how you make them move, not with emails. It takes some work though.
pixl97 2 days ago [-]
Careful there, too much of this kind of thinking and the MPs are going to find child porn on your phone, you sick criminal thief trying to overthrow the government.
lstodd 2 days ago [-]
This also. It's a race who's going to find CP where. Or whatever else.
That's politics 101. Read up Mark Twain's Running For Governor.
rightnutwingjob 2 days ago [-]
Where’s the cut-of-their-funding lever?
Dial #lever and say “cut off”.
zetanor 2 days ago [-]
I do not believe that a majority of humans can be made to meaningfully engage with democracy. If this is true and POSIWID, then mass democracy only ever nullifies any real extent of democracy. As I see it, the only real solution is to replace power. I don't know how to do that. Do you?
Nifty3929 2 days ago [-]
This is why it's so important to have guardrails that limit what the government can do. The US tried to do that, and has probably been the most successful at it - though there's still been a lot of scope creep outside their constitution already. And that's probably a one-way street.
margalabargala 1 days ago [-]
Most of Europe is far more successful than the US at restricting what the government can do, it's just restricted differently.
ekianjo 1 days ago [-]
Lol you must be joking. Most individual rights are long gone in Europe.
margalabargala 23 hours ago [-]
Giving people individual rights is just one of many paths towards having a government incapable of doing many things.
MentalM 1 days ago [-]
By what measurements? It seems most of Europe has such unrestricted government that it is borderline fascism.
margalabargala 23 hours ago [-]
In what way? It doesn't seem that way to me.
Vaushite 21 hours ago [-]
Chat Control
margalabargala 18 hours ago [-]
European government powers are shaped differently than US government powers. Spiky in different spots. So, the fact that some aspects of European governments have more control over the populace, is compatible with European governments overall being more limited in the actions they can take.
ekns 1 days ago [-]
LBO maybe. Optimal governance would fix all bad mechanisms e.g. incentive traps, shooting self in the foot stuff, obvious inefficiencies, etc. - so it would result in a better future with more growth and wealth.
The difference can be used to bargain with incumbents to compensate for their current position, while installing a new type of government in its place that is better.
It's a pretty hard problem but I don't think it's impossible. I'm pursuing this kind of thing in Finland presently.
guffins 23 hours ago [-]
You’re pursuing a leveraged buyout of Finland?
JumpCrisscross 2 days ago [-]
> do not believe that a majority of humans can be made to meaningfully engage with democracy
They don’t need to. When the informed minority on an issue gets lazy, stupid or cynical, however, the system dies.
dxdm 1 days ago [-]
This sounds like an interesting argument, but it's damn hard to parse. I think you're saying that real democracy needs political (in the widest sense) engagement, which can't be got from the majority of people, so letting everyone participate without regard to such engagement gets in the way of real democracy, and therefore you suggest to "replace" (redistribute) power?
Anyway, this really needs an explanation of what your idea of "real democracy" is, and what "replace power" is supposed to mean.
Anyway, the answer to your question of "how" is likely: at your own peril. ;)
aetherspawn 2 days ago [-]
Voting for every little thing is compulsory in Australia and it’s honestly really annoying.
EmbarrassedHelp 2 days ago [-]
It also hasn't stopped Australia's descent into tech authoritarianism either.
MentalM 2 days ago [-]
By what logic it is supposed to stop descent into authoritarianism? Сompulsory voting is an instrument to build authoritarianism, not to prevent it.
Supermancho 2 days ago [-]
> Compulsory voting is an instrument to build authoritarianism, not to prevent it.
On what basis does someone make this claim? Authoritarianism is a broad stroke. Most of the time, they eliminate voting, not make it compulsory.
Classically, an authoritarian power only care about voting to initially take hold of power. Every attempt to coerce voting (one way or the other) after that is performative, not instrumental.
MentalM 1 days ago [-]
> Most of the time, they eliminate voting, not make it compulsory.
No, that is totally not true.
Even North Korea doesn't eliminate voting. People there still vote, just very controllable by the government. Compulsory voting is one of the instruments that makes voting more controllable for the government. Voting in North Korea is mandatory.
Supermancho 16 hours ago [-]
> Even North Korea doesn't eliminate voting. People there still vote, just very controllable by the government.
I don't consider this voting. After a regime has already taken power (during which time voting is suspended), there is often (not always) allowed performative ritual as a cultural placebo. Regulated physical acts are not the same as suffrage.
aetherspawn 2 days ago [-]
I think because it stops only stupid people from voting for stupid leaders. It forces smart people to participate.
nik282000 1 days ago [-]
I have noticed that the list of potential leaders is made up of a disproportionate number of stupid, ignorante or corrupt people.
sumedh 1 days ago [-]
> Voting for every little thing is compulsory in Australia
Like what?
Vaushite 21 hours ago [-]
It's not true. You're compelled to go to the polls and enter a ballot, you're not compelled to make any marks on the ballot.
Epa095 1 days ago [-]
> I do not believe that a majority of humans can be made to meaningfully engage with democracy.
Why not? Is it just that you have not experienced it, or is there a more principled argument?
My personal experience is that democracy feels to work much better in smaller (sub 10 million people) than larger, but it could also just be correlation not causation.
zetanor 1 days ago [-]
Size is important (heh). Democracy in ancient Athens had a "demos" only two or three orders of magnitude larger than Dunbar's number.
Let's ignore the "massification" of democracy (by which I mean entrenched power gaining leverage over the "demos" by targeting propaganda at the low-agency portion of the population, but this may be controversial?). Population scale has changed but Dunbar's number hasn't, and if the 0.1% of the population that is deeply invested in a topic manages to organize, there's a high likelihood that they can get critical reach. However, population scale has changed and Dunbar's number hasn't, so the first step of actually organizing 0.1% of the total population becomes a lot more difficult with scale.
Arguably, my distrust of modern democracy doesn't help, but I have no idea how anyone could manage to find and fish out 20k specific individuals from a pool of 20M people. And that's what needs to be done, IMO, not signing petitions (and in Canada, there's already a little bit of debanking-based chilling effect re: out-of-band political organization).
tensor 2 days ago [-]
Indeed. I've also sent several emails to my MP. Sadly I've received no response. :-/
dennis_jeeves2 21 hours ago [-]
> People whining about how there's nothing they can do basically don't engage in democracy and thats how you end up in a US situation
If I tried to engage in the thousands of laws that I do not like, hat is all I'd be doing. So stop your democracy lecturing. Of course there might be exceptions. Like somebody here pointed out it a feature of the system not a bug. The system is rigged at it's fundamentals.
brailsafe 2 days ago [-]
Hmm that's odd, it was presented by my MP but wasn't aware of a chance to sign it
2 days ago [-]
loufe 2 days ago [-]
I'm getting an error loading the page.
dolorian 1 days ago [-]
I'm not saying you shouldn't sign petitions, but no law has ever been changed or stopped because of a petition. Look at the most popular petitions to amend laws. They ignored all of them, from firearms to electoral reform. Petitions give the government a good excuse to do something they want to do anyway, but won't change their mind about something they're set on.
The only thing that will change their minds is taking their seat, but without electoral reform you can be quite certain that only those loyal to Liberal, NDP and CPC will get elected. And PQ, but they're just Quebec NDP.
The general public of Canada is more concerned with Trump than what any Canadian politician is up to, so good luck.
EmbarrassedHelp 2 days ago [-]
If the bill isn't dramatically changed or killed, all the major messaging services along with tons of other services will end up blocking Canada.
sandworm101 2 days ago [-]
There are lots of laws in Canada that are not enforced. Ap owners/controllers will wait to see how the government wants to handle this. If the government starts making demands then they will pull out, but I doubt the bill itself will trigger anything immediate.
mitthrowaway2 2 days ago [-]
Signal, NordVPN, Psiphon VPN, Tailscale, Windscribe, and DuckDuckGo have already confirmed that they will stop offering their services in Canada, and not route any of their European services through Canadian proiders.
Vaushite 21 hours ago [-]
Good guys leave, bad guys stay. Exactly as intended.
donmcronald 2 days ago [-]
Hopefully it doesn’t get CRA (tax) enforcement where the little guy is relentlessly pursued while the rich are too much trouble to go after.
EmbarrassedHelp 2 days ago [-]
Canadian law enforcement have publicly stated that they intend to target encrypted messaging apps as soon as possible if the legislation become law.
cute_boi 2 days ago [-]
Or some will bend their knees and things will continue as normal.
tensor 2 days ago [-]
Important services have already said they won't. It will be a disaster.
munk-a 2 days ago [-]
They will say that regardless of their intentions - that doesn't mean we should ignore that possibility but that isn't a great indicator.
tensor 2 days ago [-]
Apple in fact did withdraw their security features in Britain over a similar law. It's not simply crying wolf, these companies will withdraw.
matteoraso 2 days ago [-]
It's very rare for the senate to kill a bill. I would say that we alreadt ran out of time.
wmchen 2 days ago [-]
You're not wrong, the unelected senate generally chooses to defer to the elected lower chamber and only truly contentious legislation have been "killed" (as in dropped dead) at the Senate (think abortion and climate change).
Generally the Canadian Senate will propose amendments to the bill after its study (around a quarter of the time if I recall, not always), but the lower chamber has no obligation to agree, so it has some sway in that consultative sense. And the Senate has been more active in proposing amendments to legislation after independent senators became a thing.
At this point, I think the soft landing that privacy advocates can hope for are amendments that curtail the worst aspects of this legislation.
pkphilip 1 days ago [-]
We have a version of this law in India which is even worse and has been used extensively by the govt to crack down on dissent and to do wholesale censoring of content that the establishment doesn't like.
All of this is done with ZERO due process - even the minimal due process that has been built into these draconian laws.
petcat 2 days ago [-]
> also expand the sharing of Canadians’ personal data with foreign law enforcement, including the United States. Canada has been negotiating a cross-border data-sharing agreement with the U.S. that would allow American police to get information about Canadian internet users without any Canadian court oversight.
This is actually even more amazing to me that with all the talk of data sovereignty, the EU and Canada are still negotiating reciprocal Cloud Act treaties that will give the US government warrantless access to basically all digital services and communications. The UK and Australia have already codified these agreements with the US.
Trump's loud mouth brought these issues to the forefront, but really it seems like everyone is just waiting for it to blow over when he's gone in 2 years and then it's back to usual.
sellmesoap 2 days ago [-]
I wonder why the Canadian government would share citizens data with the u.s. while all this 51st state talk and terrif stuff is going on, does Canada get access to Americans data in return?
petcat 2 days ago [-]
> does Canada get access to Americans data in return?
It probably is reciprocal, but in reality Canadian companies sell very little (if any) digital services to Americans. There isn't much they can even access. It's why the arrangement is so lopsided.
sellmesoap 2 days ago [-]
I think reciprocity would be in violation of the 4th amendment, and why don't Canadians have protection in the same way!
petcat 2 days ago [-]
> why don't Canadians have protection in the same way
Well, they might have their own Fourth Amendment if they chose to fight against the British instead of with them during the American revolution!
History aside, now they have what they have.
sellmesoap 2 days ago [-]
We have a Canadian Constitution and the Charter of rights and freedoms, section 8 covers search and privacy, it even looks like a warrant is needed for messages just laying around a server https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/2013/2013scc16/2013scc1... but this bill aims to put a harpoon through our charter rights!
EmbarrassedHelp 2 days ago [-]
Canada is relatively unique among the common wealth countries as its founders were smart enough to remove parliamentary supremacy and have real judicial review.
I just wish that they would have also included a constitutional review council that reviews legislation before it comes law like France did (Constitutional Council), because a massive amount of damage can be done while waiting for the Canadian Supreme Court to rule on something.
rubberstamp 1 days ago [-]
Judicial review is below parliamentary supremacy. Judicial review can be easily corrupted and relies on a few persons. Parliamentary supremacy on the other hand cannot be easily side stepped as more members needs to be corrupt to do corrupt things. Swiss type cantons/districts and direct democracy by people is much more stable system.
vkou 2 days ago [-]
You should probably educate yourself about the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which has so far held up far better than the Amendments. Its language is far more specific and precise, and the document itself provides justification and context for its requirements... Unlike the amendments, which have largely been re-interpreted and gutted by partisan judges into absurdity.
Do the 13th, or the 14th, or the 4th amendment mean anything these days?
petcat 2 days ago [-]
We'll need to see some examples of this. Especially given the topic at hand.
vkou 2 days ago [-]
Examples of what? An insurrectionist assuming the office of president? SCOTUS approving gerrymandering aimed at suppressing minority votes? Armed, masked thugs with a license to kill asking for your papers when you walk the street? Trump running for a third term in office? Immigrants arrested, held without trial, and deported without due process or access to a lawyer?
We have lots of examples of that. Are there lots of examples in Canada of basic charter rights being violated in such a manner? Or do you dispute that the text of the charter is unclear?
> Are there lots of examples in Canada of basic charter rights being violated in such a manner?
Plenty, it's just usually against unpopular targets. The most notable recent one being the trucker protest[1]. And what were the consequences for those in charge for this charter violation? I believe the answer is "nothing".
So what we have in Canada is a charter that theoretically protects citizens, but in practice can be violated by the government with impunity.
I don't understand a bit of your complaint. As you yourself described, the system worked exactly as intended. The government does something illegal, the courts mull over it, and decide that it was, in fact, illegal. The government's currently not doing it.
Surely you can see a difference between an one-off that after the fact was found to be illegal, and hasn't been repeated, versus a pattern of the courts making batshit insane rulings?
Since you think that the truckers had to right to do what they did... If the courts ruled against them, would you have taken that as evidence for the quality of the charter, and the legal system that stands behind it? Or is this a tails I win, heads you lose situation?
No piece of paper can ever prevent a government from doing something illegal, or from passing an illegal law. The courts are only ever an after-the-fact remedy.
In the US, meanwhile, that remedy doesn't even work.
dolorian 1 days ago [-]
If what the government did was illegal, why were the people responsible not convicted and punished? The truckers who did illegal things got time for it. Even the guy who hacked/leaked the donor list got his conviction.
The charter is meaningless weasel words and is used just as often to curtail the rights of Canadians as it is to protect them.
The situation is exactly "tails I win, heads you lose" but in favour of whoever has the majority of MPs. They can take illegal action to thwart political opponents and face no consequences. Just as how police officers should be punished when they break the law (but often aren't), those who hold political office should be punished when they step outside their bounds.
vkou 1 days ago [-]
> If what the government did was illegal, why were the people responsible not convicted and punished?
So, just to clarify, do you believe the executive responsible should go to prison as soon as one of their decisions is found to be illegal?
Or is there a higher bar that needs to be crossed? Where, roughly, would you put this bar?
AlexandrB 1 days ago [-]
> If the courts ruled against them, would you have taken that as evidence for the quality of the charter, and the legal system that stands behind it? Or is this a tails I win, heads you lose situation?
That's a fair point. Though the truckers are just an example.
I just don't think the charter offers guarantees anywhere as strong as the US constitution. For example, Canada's hate speech laws have taken a big chunk out of both the right to free speech and now the freedom of religion[1] set out in the charter.
FATCA shows how promised reciprocity works (spoiler: it does not)
2 days ago [-]
2 days ago [-]
sandworm101 2 days ago [-]
>> everyone is just waiting for it to blow over when he's gone in 2 years and then it's back to usual.
Trump is the symptom, not the disease. It will not go back to normal. US politics has changed. The US people have changed. There won't be a Trump 2.0 but there will be other equally horrible leaders. Maybe not the next president, but likely the one after that. Canada must adapt to the new realty rather than deny and wait.
bvan 2 days ago [-]
Exactly. If it’s happened once, it will happen again.
torton 1 days ago [-]
Correction: it has already happened twice.
lenerdenator 2 days ago [-]
Canadians acting like the consequences will never be the same because of one man, when you can walk over the French-German border today with a passport instead of a rifle.
munk-a 2 days ago [-]
Yeah, I'm pretty certain the Americans don't want the solution the Germans got to correct that problem.
lenerdenator 2 days ago [-]
Yeah, it’s nowhere near as bad as things were in 1940, so I don’t think that it’s even the same problem.
watwut 2 days ago [-]
It took world war splitting country ... and AfD won loval elections.
Vaushite 2 days ago [-]
[dead]
osmukka 1 days ago [-]
"...create a backdoor to their services for law enforcement, as long as it doesn’t lead to a 'systemic insecurity.'"
Since when a backdoor hasn't been a systemic insecurity?
joshdavham 2 days ago [-]
Be the change you want to see in the world! If you disagree with this bill don’t sit idle!
betaby 2 days ago [-]
I too receive auto-replies from my MP.
kennywinker 2 days ago [-]
I have an MP i can reliably count on to vote against bullshit like this, which means i have nobody who is accountable to me to write emails to.
I wouldn't except a liberal MP to vote against this, it's their own plan. I wouldn't expect a conservative MP to vote against this, they believe in neoliberalism and entrenching gov and corporate power the same way the liberals do (see bill C-39, supported by both the liberals and conservatives).
Luckily we don't have a two party system in canada.
ipaddr 2 days ago [-]
If not living in Quebec does any other party even hold party status?
kennywinker 1 days ago [-]
Official party status impacts a party’s ability to fight something like this through procedural means - but it doesn’t impact my MP’s ability to vote against it.
And i’m quite sure we’ll be seeing a green party or ndp with official party status again - two parties just isn’t as entrenched systemically as it is in the states.
betaby 2 days ago [-]
Green? NDP?
ipaddr 1 days ago [-]
They don't have enough seats.
LeBit 2 days ago [-]
I am Canadian.
I think this bill is absolutely horrible.
What do you want me to do?
EmbarrassedHelp 2 days ago [-]
Raise awareness about the legislation and what it means for the average person (bans on iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal, VPNs, etc...) You need to also start emailing and calling members of the Senate, telling them to reject the bill.
ipaddr 2 days ago [-]
Drive to Ottawa and take over the downtown core.
Grum9 1 days ago [-]
Just dont honk your car horn too loud, or your bank account will be frozen.
LeBit 1 days ago [-]
And if residents are saying they are driven crazy by the constant horns, forget about them. They don’t matter. Remember: only you matter.
deadbabe 2 days ago [-]
It’s over. If it got this far, they wanted this.
1 days ago [-]
cute_boi 2 days ago [-]
This is a coordination problem, so people can't do anything.
slopinthebag 2 days ago [-]
there is literally nothing people can do. the party in charge has a majority government and a media biased enough to sell this bill as a positive thing.
the only thing that could make a difference is if apple, whatsapp, and instagram all blocked canadians from using those services. the liberal party and the media would still find a way to blame trump for it, and the pm's popularity would increase.
EmbarrassedHelp 2 days ago [-]
> the only thing that could make a difference is if apple, whatsapp
That is literally what is going to happen if this legislation is allowed to pass. WhatsApp will block Canada, and Apple will remove any impacted service from Canada, like iMessage.
ekianjo 1 days ago [-]
No way they will block Canada. They will be happy to comply
cowlevel 2 days ago [-]
If that's true, wouldn't it be a good thing? It would be repealed.
But I don't think that's true. They will comply. They always comply.
EmbarrassedHelp 2 days ago [-]
> If that's true, wouldn't it be a good thing? It would be repealed.
The Liberals will not be able to quickly reverse the legislation when that happens, and they may even be stupid/evil enough to double down on it. It can also take a year or more for the Supreme Court to strike down the legislation.
> But I don't think that's true. They will comply. They always comply.
It is true. Apple for example removes impacted services when a country targets it, like ADP in the UK. So iMessage will no longer work for Canadians.
WhatsApp will not compromise their global security and value of their brand for a tiny market like Canada.
cowlevel 2 days ago [-]
The law in the UK that makes ADP illegal is basically the same as the Canadian one: it says all messaging and cloud storage (for consumers) has to be backdoored. Apple responded by disabling the non-backdoored version, which is ADP. They'll do the same in Canada, and WhatsApp was always backdoored so doesn't need to change.
shovas 2 days ago [-]
Remember that media bias comes from being state funded media. Of course they're going to massage the narrative towards the party giving them funding.
cmrdporcupine 2 days ago [-]
what are you even on about, this is complete nonsense
nevermind half the population doesn't even pay attention to traditional "the media" these days
the bulk of "the media" in Canada is US owned, not "state funded" (which is only the CBC) and I haven't gotten any particular pro-vibes around this bill from them
tredre3 2 days ago [-]
I've never gotten such vibes either (that being said the alignment of the CBC isn't exactly neutral either, their french counterpart seems more neutral).
But I have spent/wasted enough time online to know that Conservatives do truly believe that the CBC is very biased against them and thus should be defunded (or, alternatively, they often suggest giving the same amount of money to Rebel News).
ToucanLoucan 2 days ago [-]
Is the worldwide liberal conspiracy in the room with us right now? Because all I see all over the place are various reactionary movements gaining power, ruining everything, and continuing to blame liberals for the failings of their quarter-brained policies.
slopinthebag 2 days ago [-]
there is no worldwide liberal conspiracy, i'm talking about the Liberal party of Canada
Canada has a free press, and many of its largest media outlets (the Sun, the National Post, the Globe, etc.) are strongly right-leaning and had no problems tarring Trudeau's Liberals night and day when he was in power. This is a problem you've invented, not the actual issue here.
Grum9 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
munk-a 2 days ago [-]
Canada has problems - a state media that barks the party line isn't one of them. One political party would love you to believe that and it's aligned with the party south of the border that's trying to destroy media credibility across the board, but that's a political effort because transparency is an impediment to their agenda.
This isn't to say there aren't biases in media - there always is, everyone is biased in their own way - but the presence of that bias can be understood and having a robust pipeline for news is more important that trying to futilely eliminate all bias.
ipaddr 2 days ago [-]
A group of newspapers / media outlets friendly to the government gets $35,000 per employee.
EmbarrassedHelp 2 days ago [-]
Just recently there was a large number of anti-encryption and anti-private messaging news reports/articles in Canada. They all came from a single shitty article from The Canadian Press News that was written by Nono Shen.
Major Canadian news outlets like CTV News were blindly following that article, and saying "something has to be done" about encrypted messaging: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLHkcOmcZOA
CTV news anchor Carolyn Jarvis was continuously pushing for AI-powered mass surveillance of all private messages in Canada throughout the news segment. And CTV News also falsely labeled Liz Repking as a "cybersecurity expert" and let her promote her anti-privacy views: https://www.ctvnews.ca/video/2026/10/07/they-have-a-shared-r...
Other articles on the subject had various anti-privacy/anti-encryption dog whistles like "going dark" included in them.
BigGreenJorts 1 days ago [-]
CTV is owned by Bell Media.
dolorian 1 days ago [-]
Bell is highly integrated with the government to the point of being defacto state funded. CTV does defend the interests of Bell, which includes continuing to get nice government contracts and free money to build out their infrastructure. What would be the value of being a dissenting voice? Bringing CRTC scrutiny?
cmrdporcupine 2 days ago [-]
All of this can be true without stupidly calling it "state sponsored."
The US mainstream media is equally stupid -- "liberal" or "conservative" -- CNN or Fox both make me want to gouge my eyes out.
Those of us on the (real) left have been pointing out the problem with the broadcast media for decades. Concentration of ownership and private interests are the problem, and frankly the CBC is the least worst of the bunch here in the country.
Canada is currently under a mass nationalist fervour under which the Carney gov't is getting away with a lot. The thing is the stuff he is getting away with... is exactly the stuff the Conservatives also wanted to do anyways. So people on the right frothing at the mouth about the liberals just baffles me. He is literally implementing the full CPC platform from the last election.
2 days ago [-]
canadiantim 2 days ago [-]
It's true the liberal party is aligned with the democratic party and otherwise joined at the hip, but I wouldn't say the democrats are trying to destroy media credibility across the board, the media has already done that themselves.
slopinthebag 2 days ago [-]
there is bias though. even prominent journalists agree, and cbc (the state-owned media) is rated as left-leaning.
Being left/right leaning is not the same as towing the party line.
1 days ago [-]
glitchc 2 days ago [-]
The public would rather be safe than be free. We see that time and time again with how people are tough on crime, how they want government to step in if they are ever defrauded or stolen from. Politicians are simply mirroring the people's wishes.
zingplex 2 days ago [-]
You say that, but mass surveillance was never on any ballot I recall seeing. All these laws always seem to get quietly pushed without consulting anybody other than the security services.
EmbarrassedHelp 2 days ago [-]
I don't think that's true. Even the privacy hating general public of the UK is against mass surveillance of private messaging.
And by public you mean rich assholes that have the ability to purchase freedom piece-meal but are otherwise okay with everybody else being restrained and surveilled so that they aren't a threat to them.
Politicians =/= The public
ipaddr 2 days ago [-]
Crime limits regular citizens free. Scared to go out at night, open their door or go to certain parts of town. Safety allows freedom.
rubberstamp 1 days ago [-]
Surveillance of communications of private chats is never okay. Law enforcement can access chats via device directly from the arrested person if necessary. Backdoors via service providers is bad idea. Democratic countries, you know the so called "government rule of the people" doing this or pushing for this is deeply anti-democratic. Non-democratic countries and monarchies obviously has fickle laws that can change at any moment and one cannot expect "democracy" from them. For me democracy means inclusive of all citizens, considerate of every citizen and citizens not having to worry about sneaky laws trampling upon privacy or rights. Democratic governments making mass surveillance laws or making deals with foreign governments to side step constitutional rights and privacy is wrong on a different order of magnitude. Providing security for nation doesn't require mass surveillance. Decent physical non-overreaching policing on the ground is all that is necessary for decent acceptable level of security.
dead_hn_theory 23 hours ago [-]
> Democratic countries, you know the so called "government rule of the people" doing this or pushing for this is deeply anti-democratic.
... what?
Vaushite 21 hours ago [-]
You won't disagree with the government if the government can see everything you say.
geephroh 2 days ago [-]
Dear Canada,
Please cease this kind of behavior immediately. We're supposed to be the only dumbshits around here.
Yours truly,
'Merica
cowlevel 2 days ago [-]
The truth is this can happen in any country, but the rich people who are causing it go after the most lucrative governments first.
cmehdy 2 days ago [-]
Most of the world has become the dumbshits emulating Trumpism.
Source: am French citizen..
SV_BubbleTime 1 days ago [-]
Is your president emulating Trump? Is he one of the smartshits?
cmehdy 24 hours ago [-]
If you can't understand which one it is from the original comment, I guess you are lucky to not know about the unhinged violence and abuses of Macron's government.
Dear Merica
We decided to get it over with and HELP pull the roof down on our heads, the simple fact is that there is a direct linear relationship between how advanced our technology gets and how poor our overall experience of it becomes.
Caniba
donmcronald 2 days ago [-]
I read it a few weeks ago. Something that really bothers me is that parts are written like big tech ToS that are designed to make it sound like they’re doing something for you, but they’re not.
The restrictions on powers are one example. There’s almost nothing there, but they say something like “are not allowed to compel service providers to retain data that will identify the content of your communications.”
That’s bullshit weasel words. Everyone is keeping that stuff and nothing restricts the “written sometime in the future” rules from compelling service providers to produce all of the data they’ve collected. There’s also no restriction on compelling real time wire taps.
If that was a real restriction it would say something like “retain, capture, or produce.”
There are also gag orders falling out of the sky like it’s raining and no mechanism to eventually force transparency when they’re used. They also have broad latitude to define and redefine a ton of rules that haven’t even been written yet.
I know of some places that do conferences and I don’t know what they’ll do if classified as a service provider. Imagine KYC on a couple hundred people trying to participate in a 2 hour conference.
Edit: And I think it’s a big win for organized crime. The police will only know how to use the easy tooling to catch the lowest level, dumbest criminals. The higher up criminals will (or probably already do) use private servers for communication.
Does anyone think organized crime is relying on WhatsApp or Snapchat? That’s what the low level suckers will be using (and getting caught by) so everyone can pretend the police are doing their job.
loufe 2 days ago [-]
I'm not sure what more to do then to annoy my friends and family and speak with my MP (done), who had already voted against it. Canada's political system seems healthy compared to the USA, but it doesn't feel healthy objectively.
Throwthrowbob 2 days ago [-]
Thank you for speaking with your MP!
Call/contact senators is my next step, because the Senators are the next-to-last step for this bill.
refurb 1 days ago [-]
People keep thinking “healthy” politics is a lack of dissent. I hear this all the time from people.
When I lived in Singapore I heard how lucky they were to live in a country where there wasn’t much disagreement (the truth is it had been squeezed out of the population)
slopinthebag 2 days ago [-]
it's not healthy, even compared to the states. it's just not crazy like the states.
shovas 2 days ago [-]
US politics might be "crazy" but definitely healthier than the managed decline we're seeing in Canada.
munk-a 2 days ago [-]
As a Canadian-America - nope, Canada is far better off than the US. I don't know if the US has a route out of the hole it's digging at this point.
nxm 2 days ago [-]
As someone who’s met countless Canadians who are thankful and grateful to be in the US and not in a perpetual decline that’s been the case in Canada for year now, I beg to differ.
munk-a 2 days ago [-]
Do you think that perhaps a sample of Canadians that emigrated to the US might not be representative of all Canadians?
Also, if you're in a tech sphere then there's even a notable bias of folks in SF that are happy to have left whatever other part of the US they used to reside in.
AlexandrB 2 days ago [-]
Politically or economically? Because economically Canada is headed to the bottom of the G20.
It has the same problem that the US has, which is it is stuck in a two party duopoly, with both major parties sharing fundamentally the same political economic outlook. Just with different takes on culture wars stuff.
The only significant opposition to this bill has been coming from the NDP, which was decimated to a small number of seats by people piling into the Liberals because of nationalism and by its previous pathetic fealty to the Liberals in the last two parliaments.
ActionHank 2 days ago [-]
So let's assume it goes forward, what are my options to maintain privacy?
Unfortunately Signal has threatened to leave the Canadian market should this bill go through, as have NordVPN, Windscribe, DuckDuckGo's VPN, Psiphon VPN, and Proton VPN. I imagine more may follow suit.
privacyishuman 1 days ago [-]
That's the biggest problem with iOS because Apple can be ordered to block them from the App Store and it would be instantly kill these privacy services market share.
john_strinlai 2 days ago [-]
any serious answer to that question would need more context, and will have to wait until after the bill passes to see how companies/services react.
LeBit 2 days ago [-]
Will TOR be blocked?
EmbarrassedHelp 2 days ago [-]
One of the main lobbyists behind Bill C-22, The Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P) has been trying to target Tor's funding for years now. So unfortunately it would be unsurprising to see them convince the Liberals to try and target Tor.
tamimio 2 days ago [-]
Don’t use Canadian or 14 eyes products. Keep your cell on an airplane mode most or all times. Use cash as much as possible. That however is a technical response to a political one, which usually won’t last long or it will be ineffective or even illegal, a proper political response is the right way.
dolorian 1 days ago [-]
Oh yeah totally, you'll 100% beat surveillance with a chinese phone and a Russian email service. No way anyone at all will spy on you that way.
The best privacy tech comes from people who live in these 5 and 14 eyes countries. Try a little bit of threat modeling instead of thinking about the problem emotionally.
I'm Canadian, and this matters a lot to me, but people don't care
The culture here is so mired in political apathy that it feels futile to even bother. People just do not care at all
I'm not a huge activist but I have been involved in a number of things when they matter a lot to me over the past twenty years or so, starting in college, but not a single one of them has ever gone my way
I'm unemployed now and worried I'm going to have an incredibly hard time ever finding work in software again, and AI is taking over, and here I am. Defeated again
I don't have it in me to fight this stuff anymore. The machine has won against me at least
shovas 2 days ago [-]
I'm Canadian, too. I think most Canadians are just not informed. Most Canadians still get their news from state funded media which of course spin for the state because 'follow the money'.
swat535 2 days ago [-]
We have a very complacent population, which explains the lack of innovation coming out of the country. People's idea of "business' right now is simply renting out their basement.
Most go to work, accept whatever policy the government decides is good for them, and don't push back as their living conditions decline. Given that, is it surprising that we don't see much activism?
I wish it was different but I don't know what to do. Perhaps Canadians should steal a page from the French?
bluefirebrand 2 days ago [-]
I would love if more of the world's populations were as politically active as the French
nxm 2 days ago [-]
And riot/loot?
bluefirebrand 2 days ago [-]
Well we shouldn't leave all of the looting to Private Equity firms
cobbzilla 1 days ago [-]
Spend more time offline! You spend too much time here. I’ve been on HN 3x longer and have a third the karma, and most of my comments get upvotes (except the rare ones like this when I happily burn a little to make a point, in spite of the HN groupthink). Your karma here is great, too great. Enjoy the world and find happiness elsewhere.
ambione 2 days ago [-]
hey bud, right there with you. these are the hardest times we've faced in a very long time, but humans are nothing if not adaptable. we're fucked today but we'll see about tomorrow. wishing you the best.
bluefirebrand 2 days ago [-]
Thanks dude, back at you.
Vaushite 2 days ago [-]
[dead]
allthetime 2 days ago [-]
Sounds like you’re just as apathetic as those you despise.
Watching our provinces fall one by one to corrupt/kleptocratic “conservative” governments has certainly done a number on me, but it’s only made me more vocal and more involved in local advocacy.
All that apathy out there is an opportunity to awaken care and turn the tide.
Get off your ass and help.
bigyabai 2 days ago [-]
Well, I'm American, and I watched my peers lose this fight 10+ years ago.
I was in school when the Snowden leaks came around, and asked dozens of students and teachers what they thought about it. The majority of them had no idea what had happened, some even outright rejecting it as a foreign smear campaign. A handful of people showed interest, but lost interest when there was no connection to aliens or the Bermuda triangle. My freedom-loving cohort was too preoccupied with YouTube, Twitter and Instagram for it to matter.
Fast forward to today, you're probably running USA-designed spyware on whatever computer and phone you import from America. Canada already belongs to FIVE EYES, your mobile handset market is almost entirely captured by pushover US corporations that backdoor Push Notifications and rename lakes apropos of nothing.
No matter what happens with this bill, the threat of surveillance will loom long over Canadians. Political motivation is important, but trusting the United States is an albatross on the neck.
joshdavham 2 days ago [-]
I’m also Canadian and I don’t share your pessimism at all.
The people I know are not apathetic and I’m sorry that things don’t go your way politically, but that’s life. For example, the recent Vancouver election didn’t go my way - big whoop.
shovas 2 days ago [-]
But the Vancouver elections are a microcosm of left-leaning Canadians across the country. There's no hope for the foreseeable future while boomer power remains.
adamgordonbell 1 days ago [-]
Also if Canadian, join the CCLA. They are the ones fighting for these rights.
The only reference to membership I see from the Commissioner for Lobbying states [1]:
> Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) has two classes of members: ordinary members and voting members. Membership in CCLA shall be available to persons interested in furthering the Corporation's purposes and who have applied for and been accepted into membership in the Corporation by resolution of the board or in such other manner as may be determined by the board, in accordance with any membership criteria set by the board. Voting members are members who have been accepted as voting members by the board. A voting membership expires 12 months after the date of board acceptance, unless renewed by the board.
I don't see anything to this effect on the website, like a membership application form.
This is in contrast to the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association which just published the decision this week to have a flat $5 open membership.
TFA contains a link to a CCLA petition. Can you provide more context for your statement?
xbar 1 days ago [-]
Don't blow it, Canada. You think Rogers is bad now....
FLeXMurphy 2 days ago [-]
I remember a few people who opposed this bill, including a Canadian professor of law/lawyer Michael <something>, who wanted to oppose this. What happened to that? HN had blog posts about it I believe.
EmbarrassedHelp 2 days ago [-]
Pretty much every group in Canada is opposed to this bill, except for law enforcement, the Brampton city mayor, and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P).
slopinthebag 2 days ago [-]
michael geist. yes pretty much everybody knowledgeable about this bill, regardless of political stripes are against this bill. except for the party in power.
the media spends almost all of their time attacking the opposition leader instead of the current pm (who has a majority gov), so people are unfortunately quite under informed on c22 and other things the gov is doing.
creaturemachine 2 days ago [-]
CPC should take down the punching bag if they're tired of it being used.
slopinthebag 2 days ago [-]
[flagged]
notnullorvoid 2 days ago [-]
> except for the party in power.
The votes for this bill seem to indicate that nearly all MPs regardless of party voted in favour, and none of them voted against.
EmbarrassedHelp 2 days ago [-]
> The votes for this bill seem to indicate that nearly all MPs regardless of party voted in favour, and none of them voted against.
Where did you see that? Every non Liberal MP voted against C-22.
I didn't even read the text or look at the date... Reading what that C-22 was actually about I'm glad that one got a near unanimous yes vote.
And seeing the actual results makes me more hopeful that the senate may not allow it through.
slopinthebag 1 days ago [-]
tbf the way they post these things online is pretty confusing...
i do not have much faith in the senate but i would be pleasantly surprised. the fact 100 of them were appointed by the previous liberal government does not have me optimistic however.
shovas 2 days ago [-]
[flagged]
shovas 2 days ago [-]
Unfortunately, our state funded media have no interest in pushing back on that because they're state funded by the state pushing the bill. And, in my experience, if you're not on X, you just don't know about these things. That's most Canadians. We're doomed until boomer power fades.
2 days ago [-]
tamimio 2 days ago [-]
Fun fact: the government is already talking to companies who have customers to prep the infrastructure needed to handover any data requested, as in, they are almost guaranteed it will pass.
EmbarrassedHelp 2 days ago [-]
Do you have a source for that?
FLeXMurphy 2 days ago [-]
Love this. Looking forward to a private keys being `4` because the govt needs it that way.
slopinthebag 2 days ago [-]
the largest voting block in canada (seniors) aren't really capable of understanding this issue let alone prioritizing it. in fact, for liberal voters the only thing they care about is opposing and antagonizing trump, or at least the appearance of doing so. keeping housing unaffordable is a distant second priority.
so bills like this will continue to go through since the liberals have a majority and the PMs popularity counterintuitively goes up as things go from bad to worse. im finding it hard to have any motivation to oppose this bill since resistance seems to be futile.
the dark liberal decade gets longer and darker in canada.
aceofspades19 1 days ago [-]
> in fact, for liberal voters the only thing they care about is opposing and antagonizing trump, or at least the appearance of doing so. keeping housing unaffordable is a distant second priority.
This is a conservative talking point. I'm a liberal voter, and I know lots of people who voted for the liberal party. None of them want to oppose and antagonize Trump for just for the sake of it. Most Canadians and liberal voters just want Trump to follow his own agreement in regards to trade, to stop with the 51st state rhetoric and his unnecessary antagonism of Canada.
Most Canadians I know have friends and family in America and don't want a rift between our countries. It's that Trump has seemingly gone after Canada for made up reasons just to cause problems that has made Canadians angry.
slopinthebag 1 days ago [-]
it's not a conservative talking point. i know many people who voted liberal to "stick it to trump" (their words). all they do is talk about trump. they have no idea what is happening in their own country, it's just trump vs canada and carney is the hero. it's ridiculous. and the media fuels it constantly.
as a liberal voter how do you feel about this bill?
aceofspades19 1 days ago [-]
>it's not a conservative talking point. i know many people who voted liberal to "stick it to trump" (their words). all they do is talk about trump. they have no idea what is happening in their own country, it's just trump vs canada and carney is the hero. it's ridiculous. and the media fuels it constantly.
The liberal voters I talk to are very rational, normal people. I also disagree the media fuels it constantly. Trump does a lot of exceptional things that make it into the news and so its difficult not to speak about his actions. It's not difficult for Carney to appear hero-like when compared with Trump. All Carney has to do is appear to be the rational foil to Trump's insanity.
> as a liberal voter how do you feel about this bill?
To be honest, I have not done a ton of research into it, but on the face of it, it looks like its a terrible and unnecessary bill.
While I voted liberal and in general support Carney, I don't worship him, or feel that he can do no wrong. I disagree with him and the liberal party on several things, this being one of them.
slopinthebag 1 days ago [-]
i know there are rational, normal people who are liberal supporters, just like there are rational, normal people who voted for trump. but i think broadly speaking, trump supporters and liberal supporters have a lot in common despite large difference in political beliefs.
aceofspades19 1 days ago [-]
Yet you have not provided any minimal amount of reasoning or evidence to support this claim. You're just being purposefully inflammatory and not responding to anything that is being said.
slopinthebag 1 days ago [-]
??? we're providing our own personal experiences, you aren't providing any "evidence" or "reasoning" to support your own claims either? tf? you want a peer reviewed study on the people i've interacted with? what is your problem dude
you're just like every other liberal supporter i've encountered. feel free to provide "reasoning or evidence" to deny this claim.
aceofspades19 19 hours ago [-]
No I never said that. You just said I think liberals are similiar to Trump supporters. Okay but why? You haven't provided any reason why you think this. I have provided lots of reasoning of why I have these opinions, you just haven't cared to read or respond.
There's no reason to be mad, I'm just simply asking you to provide some sort of thought more than "haha liberals are dumb".
krunck 2 days ago [-]
Does "liberal" mean the same thing it does in the USA?
rangestransform 2 days ago [-]
You can think of them as the equivalent of the DNC-preferred wing of the democrats
It does not and it's quite confusing. You'll often see people use the term LPC or Liberal and avoid lower-case liberal due to the confusion of that word. In Canada the Liberal party is a fiscally centrist/corporate & socially liberal(ish) (aka it's similar to the traditional British definition of Liberal). The Conservatives are a large right wing reactionary block that seems to be perpetually in the minority but with a large loyal voting block while the actual opposition mostly comes from three parties that rotate in and out of relevance as a left-wing voice BQ (Bloq-quebecois), NDP (New Democratic Party - fading since the death of Jack Layton), and the Greens (Environmental sorta, but also weirdly anti-science sometimes). And that's on the national level - at the provincial level it gets even weirder with the BCLiberals (recently named BCUP) being socially and fiscally conservative and opposed by the BC NDP and other minor parties.
Liberal doesn't mean the same as it does in the US because it barely has a consistent meaning up here.
canadiantim 2 days ago [-]
In Canada, it just refers to the Power Corporation
slopinthebag 2 days ago [-]
No, I probably should have used "Liberal" to indicate I'm talking about the Liberal Party of Canada.
it's a bit of a misnomer imo. if we're talking about classical liberalism, the conservatives fit that label better. if we're talking about "liberals" i.e. the left, the NDP would fit that label better. the modern Liberals are more like neoliberal technocrats, who favour top-down state interventionism and who are the ones driving surveillance bills and attacking privacy.
2 days ago [-]
drop_star 2 days ago [-]
[flagged]
shovas 2 days ago [-]
This is Canada, he's spot on. It's insane here.
drop_star 2 days ago [-]
I'm also in Canada no its not this is a stupid take both Liberals and Conservatives push the same neo-libral crap. The only difference is the Cons want to push a culture war on us. Go back to Russia bot
hellgas00 2 days ago [-]
>Cons want to push a culture war
You could say the same thing about the social agenda of the Liberal party. They will expand the Temp Foreign Workers program undermining wage growth for the poorest while pushing controversial social issues front and center.
tech_army 22 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
likelybot 2 days ago [-]
[dead]
morrocanrapist 2 days ago [-]
[flagged]
trallnag 2 days ago [-]
FYI /pol/ is up again
bluefirebrand 2 days ago [-]
Frankly surprised that username didn't get some kind of auto flag on its own
elmer2 2 days ago [-]
Liberalism is all about government control. Many here seem to think you can have one without the other, and it's just not possible.
cowlevel 2 days ago [-]
"liberalism" isn't really a word that refers to any coherent concept. It can mean whatever you need it to mean.
motohagiography 2 days ago [-]
This govts to attitude to the dignity of its citizens is demoralizing. I have more hope in the outcome of a US annexation than I do for any significant positive policy direction. it’s done. Bureaucracy has triumphed and there’s nothing to save.
shovas 2 days ago [-]
Same here. We've disqualified our own sovereignty.
ak2372 2 days ago [-]
Traitor.
tarpitt 2 days ago [-]
traitor to what? what does our country even stand for?
tensor 1 days ago [-]
You should leave and revoke your citizenship.
motohagiography 20 hours ago [-]
there's a really amazing program for Canadians who have skills or startups, its to exit the country before they become encumbered by assets and any fruits of success that would have to be liquidated and double-taxed if they leave. probably the most successful capital flight/rescue op in history. its named something mathy, combinatoric? combinator?
SkyeCA 2 days ago [-]
The bill is going to pass, there is quite literally nothing I can do to stop it.
And when I say literally nothing, I mean literally nothing. My MP (the man I voted for) crossing the floor to join the current ruling party showed me exactly how much political power I have: absolutely fuck all.
petermcneeley 1 days ago [-]
The meta analysis on this is is quite interesting
HN tends to have a positive opinion on modern Canada.
They then find it difficult to understand why it moves towards a tech dystopia.
How will these HNers square the circle of their cognitive dissonance.
Read the above to find out!
weaksauce 1 days ago [-]
how is it cognitive dissonance when canada is mostly in the right about a lot of issues that america is in the wrong about? just because you disagree with some dickhead politican's point of view doesn't mean you disagree with the country. there's plenty of shitty bills like this being thrust upon americans against their will. what a weird argument.
petermcneeley 1 days ago [-]
When did I mention america?
refurb 1 days ago [-]
Canadians can’t help it. They’ve been spoon fed their whole lives whenever they complain that “yeah but we’re not the US!” (even if the US does better on that particular issue)
slopinthebag 1 days ago [-]
surely the government is only wrong about privacy. they're right about everything else.
[1] https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Peti...
Its the old MLK Jr vs Malcolm X bit. Everyone praises MLK Jr for his anti-violent approach, but that only worked because Malcolm X represented what would happen if people don't accept the non-violent solution. Gandhi preached non-violence to the extreme, and yet the government wasn't afraid of Gandhi killing himself, they were afraid of the masses of angry people that would fuck shit up if Gandhi successfully starved himself to death.
But they're too stupid to realize that
To give an idea of the orders of magnitude. France is 70M inhabitants. If 20 million people receive a pension of 24K€ one year longer, that's 480B€. The French yearly budget is 843B€. In total, France has spent between 8B€ - 27B$ on supporting Ukraine since 2022 (one of the other talking points)
France has just managed to increase retirement age to 64 years, and there are voices to re-instate it to 62. For reference:
• Germany: 65 to 67 years (depending on birth year; 67 for those born from 1964)
• United Kingdom: 66 years (rising to 67)
• Spain: 65 to 66.5 years (depending on career length)
• Netherlands: 67 years
The retirement age was moved from 65 to 60 in 1982, by the socialist Mitterand government. Life expectency has increased 9 years since then, and they have been trying (desperately) to move it back up since then.
Not retiring early means that money can be spent on other things. Such as the better schooling that the French kids were asking for.
It will also help in getting the French budget balanced. Something which it has not been since 1974. The EU rules require a national debt of max 60% of GNP. France is currently at 120%. For reference, Germany is at 63%, the Netherlands are at 44%. Spain is at 100%, and slowly falling.
The retirees have greater disposable income than the young people (read, most people in the labour market)
And of course the number of retirees is going up every day
Ironically, the younger people from whom to extract productivity to pay for the defined benefit pensions are being supplied by immigrants, who are also politically unpopular.
Maybe it would help the budget for 1 year?
You can look up all the government spending data, and wealth transfers from workers to non workers dwarfs all the billionaires’ combined net worths. The US federal government alone is 60%+ wealth transfers, not to mention state and local governments. These spending figures are measured in trillions of USD per year.
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...
Taxes should be optional to start with. If you pay taxes you get services, if not you don't.
It's balanced in favor of the most nihilistic and toxic self dealing fucks
Boomers were not raised by principles of modern science; it was all being digested and packaged for education when they were kids
They’re religious nutters due to memory of their neurological makeup
I’m a Boomer with twelve years of post-secondary modern science education. My spouse, also a Boomer has spent her entire life in the academy. Your claim is false.
> They’re religious nutters due to memory of their neurological makeup
I’m an atheist Boomer. I haven’t a religious bone in my body. Your claim is false.
I’m sure there are other venues that will accept your ageist, angry and patently false generalizations as truth; but by and large this is not one of them.
Good start. Calls are also excellent. Then get your neighbors to do the same.
For controversial stuff, you want tens to hundreds of outreach events recorded. It doesn’t take all that much for electeds to spell a festering primary threat.
When the maze is only dead ends, why is it surprising that people disengage?
Because it’s volunteering to cede power. If that’s one’s choice, call it what it is.
If your elected is truly stonewalling you, find their last competitive election. Reach out to their opposition. If it truly doesn’t exist, found or find someone who will found it.
(The one easy step you may have skipped is mailed letters. If your elected or electorate is older, this may be how they filter feedback.)
The last time there was a competitive election in my district was the 70's before the state was gerrymandered to hell and back.
Too many people vote for a candidate just because of the little r or d next to their name on the ballot.
i know i voted against the referendum question last week to consider moving to a US inspired elected senate system. i dont think we need that pageantry
I'm familiar with American and Swiss elections. In both, the principal threat to an incumbent is from an own-party challenger to their seat.
For an incumbent, particularly one in a comfortable seat, an opposition candidate is usually not an issue. But someone from inside the camp is annoying and requires rhetorical contorting and lots of spending, spending that can then leave one vulnerable to an otherwise-benign opposition candidate. (Also, motivated activists are annoying in the best way.)
A smart elected–in these systems–will thus take a call to defuse anger before it develops into organized activism.
It does technically have power, but it's like the King's power to veto UK legislation - he can do it precisely once and then he'll be stripped of the power.
Honestly this old chestnut comes up time and time again.
As much as many people would love the King/Queen to put the politicians in their place sadly there are two problems.
First, the monarch's role is effectively only ceremonial these days. Even "The King's speech" during opening of parliament is actually a piece of paper written by the ruling-party of the day, the King just sits there in his fancy regalia and reads it verbatim.
Second, if you are referring to veto during the royal ascent process. As per Wikipedia, the King does not have pure veto power, his options are:
None of the above is a pure veto option. The nearest the King can get is delaying it.Not my area of expertise, but at a guess.
I think that is the reason the His Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition exists as a formalised concept (i.e. the party that came second in the elections), i.e. in the scenario you envisage, the King would still refuse it on the advice, but that of the recognised opposition minister (Leader of The Opposition).
But in reality an early election would likely be triggered the normal way well before things reached that state of affairs.
It would afterall be quite extraordinary circumstances if both the Prime Minister and Leader of The Opposition were pushing the king to grant ascent to a piece of law but the King still felt he should to refuse !
Canadian MPs are electeds. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of the Canadian Senate being referred to as an elected body—it’s irrelevant to the above.
Parties select their representatives who run in the election.
The system basically guarantees that insiders cannot be removed.
It's the property of a candidate being affiliated with a party - an indirect part of the election - that is run by the parties rules that are generally less than entirely democratic in nature.
Liberals NDP and Greens would never form a government with the Conservatives so the liberals are effectively always in power.
Which means insiders in the liberal party are in charge and voting is partly irrelevant unless you're voting for the conservatives, but they would need an actual straight majority.
Th Bloc has 21 seats, and has had as many as 54. They would certainly ally with the conservatives. (Not the modern maple maga variety, but old school PC).
I know two seats is not "a force" but saying they'll never have another than one seems silly in this context.
Paula Simons has also been actively listening to Canadians on this subject. https://sencanada.ca/en/senators/simons-paula/
Marty Deacon (Ontario) Committee chair 613-943-3429 Tony Ince (Nova Scotia) Deputy chair 343-991-5540 Andrew Cardozo (Ontario) Committee member 613-996-9545 Katherine Hay (Ontario) Committee member 343-991-5536 Rebecca Patterson (Ontario) Committee member 613-995-2185 Hassan Yussuff (Ontario) Committee member 613-944-1108 Kim Pate (Ontario) Committee member 613-995-9220 John M. McNair (New Brunswick) Committee member 613-995-5060 Victor Boudreau (New Brunswick) Committee member 613-947-4110 Judy A. White (Newfoundland and Labrador) Committee member 613-996-2433
If they receive 100 calls of people saying they're strongly against a bill and no for they might reconsider their position.
Also calling is a better signal of showing you care then emailing.
That's politics 101. Read up Mark Twain's Running For Governor.
Dial #lever and say “cut off”.
The difference can be used to bargain with incumbents to compensate for their current position, while installing a new type of government in its place that is better. It's a pretty hard problem but I don't think it's impossible. I'm pursuing this kind of thing in Finland presently.
They don’t need to. When the informed minority on an issue gets lazy, stupid or cynical, however, the system dies.
Anyway, this really needs an explanation of what your idea of "real democracy" is, and what "replace power" is supposed to mean.
Anyway, the answer to your question of "how" is likely: at your own peril. ;)
On what basis does someone make this claim? Authoritarianism is a broad stroke. Most of the time, they eliminate voting, not make it compulsory.
Classically, an authoritarian power only care about voting to initially take hold of power. Every attempt to coerce voting (one way or the other) after that is performative, not instrumental.
No, that is totally not true.
Even North Korea doesn't eliminate voting. People there still vote, just very controllable by the government. Compulsory voting is one of the instruments that makes voting more controllable for the government. Voting in North Korea is mandatory.
I don't consider this voting. After a regime has already taken power (during which time voting is suspended), there is often (not always) allowed performative ritual as a cultural placebo. Regulated physical acts are not the same as suffrage.
Like what?
Why not? Is it just that you have not experienced it, or is there a more principled argument?
My personal experience is that democracy feels to work much better in smaller (sub 10 million people) than larger, but it could also just be correlation not causation.
Let's ignore the "massification" of democracy (by which I mean entrenched power gaining leverage over the "demos" by targeting propaganda at the low-agency portion of the population, but this may be controversial?). Population scale has changed but Dunbar's number hasn't, and if the 0.1% of the population that is deeply invested in a topic manages to organize, there's a high likelihood that they can get critical reach. However, population scale has changed and Dunbar's number hasn't, so the first step of actually organizing 0.1% of the total population becomes a lot more difficult with scale.
Arguably, my distrust of modern democracy doesn't help, but I have no idea how anyone could manage to find and fish out 20k specific individuals from a pool of 20M people. And that's what needs to be done, IMO, not signing petitions (and in Canada, there's already a little bit of debanking-based chilling effect re: out-of-band political organization).
If I tried to engage in the thousands of laws that I do not like, hat is all I'd be doing. So stop your democracy lecturing. Of course there might be exceptions. Like somebody here pointed out it a feature of the system not a bug. The system is rigged at it's fundamentals.
The only thing that will change their minds is taking their seat, but without electoral reform you can be quite certain that only those loyal to Liberal, NDP and CPC will get elected. And PQ, but they're just Quebec NDP.
The general public of Canada is more concerned with Trump than what any Canadian politician is up to, so good luck.
Generally the Canadian Senate will propose amendments to the bill after its study (around a quarter of the time if I recall, not always), but the lower chamber has no obligation to agree, so it has some sway in that consultative sense. And the Senate has been more active in proposing amendments to legislation after independent senators became a thing.
At this point, I think the soft landing that privacy advocates can hope for are amendments that curtail the worst aspects of this legislation.
All of this is done with ZERO due process - even the minimal due process that has been built into these draconian laws.
This is actually even more amazing to me that with all the talk of data sovereignty, the EU and Canada are still negotiating reciprocal Cloud Act treaties that will give the US government warrantless access to basically all digital services and communications. The UK and Australia have already codified these agreements with the US.
Trump's loud mouth brought these issues to the forefront, but really it seems like everyone is just waiting for it to blow over when he's gone in 2 years and then it's back to usual.
It probably is reciprocal, but in reality Canadian companies sell very little (if any) digital services to Americans. There isn't much they can even access. It's why the arrangement is so lopsided.
Well, they might have their own Fourth Amendment if they chose to fight against the British instead of with them during the American revolution!
History aside, now they have what they have.
I just wish that they would have also included a constitutional review council that reviews legislation before it comes law like France did (Constitutional Council), because a massive amount of damage can be done while waiting for the Canadian Supreme Court to rule on something.
Do the 13th, or the 14th, or the 4th amendment mean anything these days?
We have lots of examples of that. Are there lots of examples in Canada of basic charter rights being violated in such a manner? Or do you dispute that the text of the charter is unclear?
If it's the latter, you're free to read it for yourself. Is there a lot in https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/const/page-12.html#h-44 that you find unclear?
Plenty, it's just usually against unpopular targets. The most notable recent one being the trucker protest[1]. And what were the consequences for those in charge for this charter violation? I believe the answer is "nothing".
So what we have in Canada is a charter that theoretically protects citizens, but in practice can be violated by the government with impunity.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergencies-act-federal-cou...
Surely you can see a difference between an one-off that after the fact was found to be illegal, and hasn't been repeated, versus a pattern of the courts making batshit insane rulings?
Since you think that the truckers had to right to do what they did... If the courts ruled against them, would you have taken that as evidence for the quality of the charter, and the legal system that stands behind it? Or is this a tails I win, heads you lose situation?
No piece of paper can ever prevent a government from doing something illegal, or from passing an illegal law. The courts are only ever an after-the-fact remedy.
In the US, meanwhile, that remedy doesn't even work.
The charter is meaningless weasel words and is used just as often to curtail the rights of Canadians as it is to protect them.
The situation is exactly "tails I win, heads you lose" but in favour of whoever has the majority of MPs. They can take illegal action to thwart political opponents and face no consequences. Just as how police officers should be punished when they break the law (but often aren't), those who hold political office should be punished when they step outside their bounds.
So, just to clarify, do you believe the executive responsible should go to prison as soon as one of their decisions is found to be illegal?
Or is there a higher bar that needs to be crossed? Where, roughly, would you put this bar?
That's a fair point. Though the truckers are just an example.
I just don't think the charter offers guarantees anywhere as strong as the US constitution. For example, Canada's hate speech laws have taken a big chunk out of both the right to free speech and now the freedom of religion[1] set out in the charter.
[1] https://www.cccb.ca/media-release/proposed-restrictions-on-r...
Trump is the symptom, not the disease. It will not go back to normal. US politics has changed. The US people have changed. There won't be a Trump 2.0 but there will be other equally horrible leaders. Maybe not the next president, but likely the one after that. Canada must adapt to the new realty rather than deny and wait.
Since when a backdoor hasn't been a systemic insecurity?
Luckily we don't have a two party system in canada.
And i’m quite sure we’ll be seeing a green party or ndp with official party status again - two parties just isn’t as entrenched systemically as it is in the states.
I think this bill is absolutely horrible.
What do you want me to do?
the only thing that could make a difference is if apple, whatsapp, and instagram all blocked canadians from using those services. the liberal party and the media would still find a way to blame trump for it, and the pm's popularity would increase.
That is literally what is going to happen if this legislation is allowed to pass. WhatsApp will block Canada, and Apple will remove any impacted service from Canada, like iMessage.
But I don't think that's true. They will comply. They always comply.
The Liberals will not be able to quickly reverse the legislation when that happens, and they may even be stupid/evil enough to double down on it. It can also take a year or more for the Supreme Court to strike down the legislation.
> But I don't think that's true. They will comply. They always comply.
It is true. Apple for example removes impacted services when a country targets it, like ADP in the UK. So iMessage will no longer work for Canadians.
WhatsApp will not compromise their global security and value of their brand for a tiny market like Canada.
nevermind half the population doesn't even pay attention to traditional "the media" these days
the bulk of "the media" in Canada is US owned, not "state funded" (which is only the CBC) and I haven't gotten any particular pro-vibes around this bill from them
But I have spent/wasted enough time online to know that Conservatives do truly believe that the CBC is very biased against them and thus should be defunded (or, alternatively, they often suggest giving the same amount of money to Rebel News).
https://liberal.ca
This isn't to say there aren't biases in media - there always is, everyone is biased in their own way - but the presence of that bias can be understood and having a robust pipeline for news is more important that trying to futilely eliminate all bias.
* https://www.thecanadianpressnews.ca/national/tumbler-ridge-c...
Major Canadian news outlets like CTV News were blindly following that article, and saying "something has to be done" about encrypted messaging: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLHkcOmcZOA
CTV news anchor Carolyn Jarvis was continuously pushing for AI-powered mass surveillance of all private messages in Canada throughout the news segment. And CTV News also falsely labeled Liz Repking as a "cybersecurity expert" and let her promote her anti-privacy views: https://www.ctvnews.ca/video/2026/10/07/they-have-a-shared-r...
Other articles on the subject had various anti-privacy/anti-encryption dog whistles like "going dark" included in them.
The US mainstream media is equally stupid -- "liberal" or "conservative" -- CNN or Fox both make me want to gouge my eyes out.
Those of us on the (real) left have been pointing out the problem with the broadcast media for decades. Concentration of ownership and private interests are the problem, and frankly the CBC is the least worst of the bunch here in the country.
Canada is currently under a mass nationalist fervour under which the Carney gov't is getting away with a lot. The thing is the stuff he is getting away with... is exactly the stuff the Conservatives also wanted to do anyways. So people on the right frothing at the mouth about the liberals just baffles me. He is literally implementing the full CPC platform from the last election.
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-two-prom...
https://www.allsides.com/news-source/cbc-news-media-bias
https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/08/30/turns-out-br...
Politicians =/= The public
... what?
Please cease this kind of behavior immediately. We're supposed to be the only dumbshits around here.
Yours truly,
'Merica
Caniba
The restrictions on powers are one example. There’s almost nothing there, but they say something like “are not allowed to compel service providers to retain data that will identify the content of your communications.”
That’s bullshit weasel words. Everyone is keeping that stuff and nothing restricts the “written sometime in the future” rules from compelling service providers to produce all of the data they’ve collected. There’s also no restriction on compelling real time wire taps.
If that was a real restriction it would say something like “retain, capture, or produce.”
There are also gag orders falling out of the sky like it’s raining and no mechanism to eventually force transparency when they’re used. They also have broad latitude to define and redefine a ton of rules that haven’t even been written yet.
I know of some places that do conferences and I don’t know what they’ll do if classified as a service provider. Imagine KYC on a couple hundred people trying to participate in a 2 hour conference.
Edit: And I think it’s a big win for organized crime. The police will only know how to use the easy tooling to catch the lowest level, dumbest criminals. The higher up criminals will (or probably already do) use private servers for communication.
Does anyone think organized crime is relying on WhatsApp or Snapchat? That’s what the low level suckers will be using (and getting caught by) so everyone can pretend the police are doing their job.
Call/contact senators is my next step, because the Senators are the next-to-last step for this bill.
When I lived in Singapore I heard how lucky they were to live in a country where there wasn’t much disagreement (the truth is it had been squeezed out of the population)
Also, if you're in a tech sphere then there's even a notable bias of folks in SF that are happy to have left whatever other part of the US they used to reside in.
https://www.bcbc.com/insight/oecd-predicts-canada-will-be-th...
The only significant opposition to this bill has been coming from the NDP, which was decimated to a small number of seats by people piling into the Liberals because of nationalism and by its previous pathetic fealty to the Liberals in the last two parliaments.
Signal for messaging
Ente Photos
NotesNook for notes
A good VPN: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/
If you need other replacements lmk.
The best privacy tech comes from people who live in these 5 and 14 eyes countries. Try a little bit of threat modeling instead of thinking about the problem emotionally.
The culture here is so mired in political apathy that it feels futile to even bother. People just do not care at all
I'm not a huge activist but I have been involved in a number of things when they matter a lot to me over the past twenty years or so, starting in college, but not a single one of them has ever gone my way
I'm unemployed now and worried I'm going to have an incredibly hard time ever finding work in software again, and AI is taking over, and here I am. Defeated again
I don't have it in me to fight this stuff anymore. The machine has won against me at least
Most go to work, accept whatever policy the government decides is good for them, and don't push back as their living conditions decline. Given that, is it surprising that we don't see much activism?
I wish it was different but I don't know what to do. Perhaps Canadians should steal a page from the French?
Watching our provinces fall one by one to corrupt/kleptocratic “conservative” governments has certainly done a number on me, but it’s only made me more vocal and more involved in local advocacy.
All that apathy out there is an opportunity to awaken care and turn the tide.
Get off your ass and help.
I was in school when the Snowden leaks came around, and asked dozens of students and teachers what they thought about it. The majority of them had no idea what had happened, some even outright rejecting it as a foreign smear campaign. A handful of people showed interest, but lost interest when there was no connection to aliens or the Bermuda triangle. My freedom-loving cohort was too preoccupied with YouTube, Twitter and Instagram for it to matter.
Fast forward to today, you're probably running USA-designed spyware on whatever computer and phone you import from America. Canada already belongs to FIVE EYES, your mobile handset market is almost entirely captured by pushover US corporations that backdoor Push Notifications and rename lakes apropos of nothing.
No matter what happens with this bill, the threat of surveillance will loom long over Canadians. Political motivation is important, but trusting the United States is an albatross on the neck.
The people I know are not apathetic and I’m sorry that things don’t go your way politically, but that’s life. For example, the recent Vancouver election didn’t go my way - big whoop.
https://ccla.org/
The only reference to membership I see from the Commissioner for Lobbying states [1]:
> Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) has two classes of members: ordinary members and voting members. Membership in CCLA shall be available to persons interested in furthering the Corporation's purposes and who have applied for and been accepted into membership in the Corporation by resolution of the board or in such other manner as may be determined by the board, in accordance with any membership criteria set by the board. Voting members are members who have been accepted as voting members by the board. A voting membership expires 12 months after the date of board acceptance, unless renewed by the board.
I don't see anything to this effect on the website, like a membership application form.
This is in contrast to the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association which just published the decision this week to have a flat $5 open membership.
[1]: https://lobbycanada.gc.ca/app/secure/ocl/lrs/do/vwRg?cno=376...
the media spends almost all of their time attacking the opposition leader instead of the current pm (who has a majority gov), so people are unfortunately quite under informed on c22 and other things the gov is doing.
The votes for this bill seem to indicate that nearly all MPs regardless of party voted in favour, and none of them voted against.
Where did you see that? Every non Liberal MP voted against C-22.
https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/votes/45/1/172?view=par...
https://www.ourcommons.ca/Members/en/votes/44/1/190?view=par...
I didn't even read the text or look at the date... Reading what that C-22 was actually about I'm glad that one got a near unanimous yes vote.
And seeing the actual results makes me more hopeful that the senate may not allow it through.
i do not have much faith in the senate but i would be pleasantly surprised. the fact 100 of them were appointed by the previous liberal government does not have me optimistic however.
so bills like this will continue to go through since the liberals have a majority and the PMs popularity counterintuitively goes up as things go from bad to worse. im finding it hard to have any motivation to oppose this bill since resistance seems to be futile.
the dark liberal decade gets longer and darker in canada.
This is a conservative talking point. I'm a liberal voter, and I know lots of people who voted for the liberal party. None of them want to oppose and antagonize Trump for just for the sake of it. Most Canadians and liberal voters just want Trump to follow his own agreement in regards to trade, to stop with the 51st state rhetoric and his unnecessary antagonism of Canada.
Most Canadians I know have friends and family in America and don't want a rift between our countries. It's that Trump has seemingly gone after Canada for made up reasons just to cause problems that has made Canadians angry.
as a liberal voter how do you feel about this bill?
The liberal voters I talk to are very rational, normal people. I also disagree the media fuels it constantly. Trump does a lot of exceptional things that make it into the news and so its difficult not to speak about his actions. It's not difficult for Carney to appear hero-like when compared with Trump. All Carney has to do is appear to be the rational foil to Trump's insanity.
> as a liberal voter how do you feel about this bill?
To be honest, I have not done a ton of research into it, but on the face of it, it looks like its a terrible and unnecessary bill. While I voted liberal and in general support Carney, I don't worship him, or feel that he can do no wrong. I disagree with him and the liberal party on several things, this being one of them.
you're just like every other liberal supporter i've encountered. feel free to provide "reasoning or evidence" to deny this claim.
There's no reason to be mad, I'm just simply asking you to provide some sort of thought more than "haha liberals are dumb".
Liberal doesn't mean the same as it does in the US because it barely has a consistent meaning up here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_of_Canada
it's a bit of a misnomer imo. if we're talking about classical liberalism, the conservatives fit that label better. if we're talking about "liberals" i.e. the left, the NDP would fit that label better. the modern Liberals are more like neoliberal technocrats, who favour top-down state interventionism and who are the ones driving surveillance bills and attacking privacy.
You could say the same thing about the social agenda of the Liberal party. They will expand the Temp Foreign Workers program undermining wage growth for the poorest while pushing controversial social issues front and center.
And when I say literally nothing, I mean literally nothing. My MP (the man I voted for) crossing the floor to join the current ruling party showed me exactly how much political power I have: absolutely fuck all.
How will these HNers square the circle of their cognitive dissonance.
Read the above to find out!