Uh, how is someone supposed to protest? I mean, I see clear differences between going up to someone's home or into someone's workplace and making noise in the street. Any protest is almost guaranteed to inconvenience someone, unless you want to limit a "protester" to yelling in their own home. So what would you suggest is the line?

You get to make your point in a protest, but the society has the right - and should have the practical ability - to ignore your protest if they wish to do so.

You get to make your point heard to anyone who cares - both to the government and other people - but they don't have to care. If it turns out that general public does not want to hear and support your protest, then you simply wait until elections, and either get what you request or watch your candidate lose and peacefully accept that your requests are simply not going to be met. You don't get to stop the rest of the society until your demands are met, they don't owe you that. If the other voters disagree with your opinion and don't want to listen to it, you don't get to make them listen.

>You get to make your point in a protest, but the society has the right - and should have the practical ability - to ignore your protest if they wish to do so.

I dare say, if you've got things escalating to the point where people from all over your country plop themselves on the Federal government's front door .. do you not realize how much that actually takes?

If one is so eager to dismiss the minority, then pray tell, how does anyone propose getting any change done? Further, why are you blaming the protesters for making your life more inconvenient when the only person who has been harmed already is...wait for it...them?

Because until that road got blocked, nobody gave a care 1.

That is successful protest. That is the consequence of Statecraft failure.

My key point is not all requests for change should result in any change. Some do, but not most, and definitely not all. Protests draw attention to some issue, and a protest is essentially a show of hands, demonstrating how many people care about the issue. It may reveal that there are very many supporters and the public wants something that the government does not provide - but that's not always the case, and certainly does not seem to be the case here, as the majority of Canadian voters seem to oppose their requirements. It does not necessarily raise support to that issue, it's perfectly reasonable for the public to decide that nope, they still oppose what the protesters request, perhaps even more than before as they're annoyed by the protests.

I mean, for every contentious issue there's going to be a part of the population which does not get their way. The whole point of democracy is that in such situations we discuss the issue, vote on the issue, and then the losers accept the decision and go home without escalating to action. The fact that some people are extremely dissatisfied with some decision does not necessarily imply that the decision should be changed nor does it imply a statecraft failure - how about all the people who supported the decision? Like, if the vote was somehow fake and misrepresents reality, then a protest can show that no, the majority does think differently; but if the protests simply confirm that yes, x% people are opposed, then the protest does not provide any information that deserves attention, the decision was made (and had the right to be made!) already knowing that those people oppose it.

The final escalation point of an ignored protest should be a call for general election if the public believes that circumstances have changed and the current government does not represent the will of the people anymore. However, if elections do not get what the protesters want, they should simply not get what they wanted because "we the people" have spoken that they don't want that. And, crucially, they can continue to peacefully request change and wait for public viewpoints to change, but certainly they have no right to disrupt others unless the demands are met, at some point the society has the right to say "we heard your arguments but made the choice to move on", and require you (with force, if necessary) to stop disrupting normal activities of the society.

And my main point is: if whatever compromise that has been enacted, still manages to draw enough crowd to clog up your Federal seat of power's streets, your job as a Statesman/woman has not finished. You're just moving the goalposts and going, "meh, good enough."

I think you've got your view backwards in the sense that every protest you've experienced up until now has been small enough to not be majorly disruptive because that crowd of "I will not accept this" hardliners was small enough where it would literally be folly to belabor the point further. That does not place an effective ceiling on legitimate vs. illegitimate protest, rather it puts a floor on the quality of your Statespeople at doing their jobs in a way that gets enough people not feeling marginalized.

That is clearly not the case here. Each of these protestors is someone feeling they are not being represented. They have the right to hold everything the bugger on up until some level of reasonability comes around. That is the fundamental dimension and action of politics. Just because it's been a good many years since the consent of the governed was pulled back doesn't mean it can't still be.

The number of people pounding the drum of "well these miscreants better watch out, the will of Canada is going to steamroll them!" or "It is the will of Canada that these people be pushed out of the limelight and ignored, so cut off their logistics, make it easier to enact financial violence (fines), and imprison them!" instead of "Well, shit, maybe we did go overboard a bit, didn't we?" disturbs me.

At the end of the day, those people are Canadians too. The mark of a country is how they treat their conscientious objectors.

And yes... I say that with a straight face accepting where the U.S. is on that scale recently. I just hope Canada doesn't follow our lead down the road to hell.

Okay, what would be the good response in your opinion in an ideal world for the scenario when a substantial number of people really, really (to the extent of putting lots of effort and risk) want something that even more people don't want? I mean, accepting their request is obviously not an option, that would be an even worse steamrolling over even more people.

As far as I understand your position, expecting the protesters to back down without satisfying their requests is also not okay - so what would be okay?

Freezing the accounts of the people you just disenfranchised enough to park on your doorstep, especially in the height of winter, and when you expect them to pick up and go away under their own power isn't it. That's just creating even more problems.

I'll be frank. The government committed the first overreach here. These people were hard working, contributing members of society when they were free to do so. That was taken away, and no equitable exchange offered, or convincing justification given besides "father knows best", so I'm not surprised this has blown up as spectacularly as it has. They've been painted with broad strokes by the media as nuisances for making themselves collectively heard. That's what you do in a democracy. The ball is in the government's court to come back to the table, because those prople will still be Canadians at the end of this. So ignoring or squashing the problem won't make it go away.

If the government really has as much support as they think they do, they don't need formal policy, everyone will just do as they do; they just need best practices in place, and people to continue following them. If they actually don't, and the polling has methodology problems, then you're taking a step back toward normalcy and getting people back to work. The fact supposedly, what, two thirds, approve of the measures wasn't necessarily framed in a way where people are taking into account the overall cost in liberties in the long run. I'd have to review methodology.

I'm increasingly finding that as much of a hardline idealist as I tend to be, when dealing with the masses of dissatisfied people, pragmatism is often the better way to go. Get enough of them to leave to decrease the size of the protest. But if you double down on the authoritarian streak, get ready to hemorrhage support. This isn't the kind of thing you get the chance to do twice.

Work with the city to park in a designated spot and then protest on foot in front of parliament. Not 'move-in' and set up hot tubs, saunas, and sleep in your truck on Wellington.

What if the city doesn't want to work with the protesters? Do the protesters have to prove that they tried to work with the city? What if the protest is against the city itself?

I have issues with asking permission to protest, even if it's an issue I don't support.

There have been regular anti-vax protests throughout the pandemic. They are afforded time to disrupt traffic with a procession that usually ends in parking at a central district and legitimately ends that day. No cities have blocked their rights to protest within the legal construct they've been afforded. If this is too authoritarian for balancing the rights of protestors and the rights of everyone else, I recommend finding a new place to live. This is a sad but necessary limit of protest to distinguish protest from occupation. Even "occupy NY" largely allowed people to live their lives without significant burdens (though I'm sure some were unfortunately affected).

Honestly, if they had moved in _purely_ on foot, we would not have gotten to this point. We've had anti-vaccine/anti-mask/anti-mandate protests weekly in most major Canadian cities and they've been untouched, no matter how annoying or inconvenient the population finds them.

The blockades of the border and overwhelming presence of truck/train horns at all hours of the day were the tipping point.