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emptybits 9 hours ago

Regarding warrantless searches and access ... reading the text of the bill (OP link) warrants seem to be required. Simple, right?

Well, no, this is a recently inserted block of text in the bill (confirm at the link above):

    Exception
    (2. 7)(b) However, a copy of the warrant is not required to be given
    to a person under subsection (2. 6) if the judge or justice who issues
    the warrant sets aside the requirement in respect of the person, on
    being satisfied that doing so is justified in the circumstances.
That's a pretty big, subjective loophole to bypass civil liberties IMO.
sunir 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Consider: you don’t give a warrant to a wiretap subject. That itself is not that big a loophole. And therefore is unlikely to provoke change.

b112 an hour ago | parent [-]

I don't even understand the concern here. Perhaps the parent thought this meant "a warrant is not required", which is absolutely untrue. Instead, the judge still creates the warrant, and any trial/arrest/action must have a warrant.

(Finding out what ISP a user belongs to, isn't really that private. If you look at the US comparatively, Homeland has a list of every single credit card transaction ever. The US doesn't need to ask an ISP if someone is a customer. What this does is simply confirm, and then the judge can create a warrant specific for that ISP.)

Such as compelling the ISP, or what not, to take action. The ISP is not the subject here. And obviously hiding the warrant from the ISP makes zero sense, as they're going to know who the person is anyhow.

This is stuff that goes back to phone taps. Nothing new here.

godelski 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm not Canadian, but it seems similarly written to how laws in the US have been exploited to be used to spy on Americans. And despite not being Canadian, as an American I have a horse in this race, as the OP notes...

  | many of these rules appear geared toward global information sharing
I see a lot of people arguing that these bounds are reasonable so I want to make an argument from a different perspective:

  Investigative work *should* be difficult.
There is a strong imbalance of power between the government and the people. My little understanding of Canadian Law suggests that Canada, like the US, was influenced by Blackstone[0]. You may have heard his ratio (or the many variations of it)

  | It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.
What Blackstone was arguing was about the legal variant of "failure modes" in engineering. Or you can view it as the impact of Type I (False Positive) and Type II (False Negative) errors. Most of us here are programmers so this should be natural thinking: when your program fails how do you want it to fail? Or think of it like with a locked door. Do you want the lock to fail open or closed? In a bank you probably want your safe to fail closed: the safe requires breaking into to access again. But in a public building you probably want it to fail open (so people can escape from a fire or some other emergency that is likely the reason for failure).

This frame of thinking is critical with laws too! When the law fails how do you want it to fail? So you need to think about that when evaluating this (or any other) law. When it is abused, how does it fail? Are you okay with that failure mode? How easy is it to be abused? Even if you believe your current government is unlikely to abuse it do you believe a future government might? (If you don't believe a future government might... look south...)

A lot of us strongly push against these types of measures not because we have anything to hide nor because we are on the side of the criminals. We generally have this philosophy because it is needed to keep a government in check. It doesn't matter if everyone involved has good intentions. We're programmers, this should be natural too! It doesn't matter if we have good intentions when designing a login page, you still have to think adversarially and about failure modes because good intentions are not enough to defend against those who wish to exploit it. Even if the number of exploiters is small the damage is usually large, right?

This framework of thinking is just as beneficial when thinking about laws as it is in the design of your programs. You can be in favor of the intent (spirit of the law), but you do have to question if the letter of the law is sufficient.

I wanted to explain this because I think it'll help facilitate these types of discussions. I think they often break down because people are interpreting from very different mental frameworks. Disagree with me if you want, but I hope making the mental framework explicit can at least improve your arguments :)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio

oceanplexian 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> A lot of us strongly push against these types of measures not because we have anything to hide nor because we are on the side of the criminals.

I had this view as well until I realized it’s predicated on living in a high trust society. At some point you reach a critical mass of crime that is so rampant, and the rule of law has so broken down that it’s basically Mad Max out there, and then these idealistic philosophies start to fall apart.

You can look to parts of SE Asia or the Middle East to see some examples where that happened, and where it was eventually reigned in with extreme measures (Usually broad and indiscriminate capital punishment).

I know your comment is about fixing failure modes in the legal system, and I’m not defending government surveillance, or the idea of considering someone innocent until proven guilty, but what happens when the entire system fails due to misplaced idealism? Much worse things are waiting on the other end of the spectrum when people don’t feel like the government is adequately protecting them.

somenameforme 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think a practical argument against what you're saying here is simply that solving the mad max stuff doesn't require anything at all like this. The type of crime that's scary and impactful (e.g. terrorism is scary, but so extremely rare that it can't really be considered impactful) is generally trivial to bust.

_heimdall 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Are you of the opinion that peoples' default state is a Mad Max-like existence?

The question isn't about idealism or the realistic possibility of said idealism. The question, in my opinion, is whether we can only succeed as a species if a small number of people are entrusted with creating and enforcing laws by force when necessary.

That isn't to say we never need some level of hierarchy or that laws, social norms, etc aren't important. Its to say that we need to keep a tight reign on it and only push authority and enforcement up the ladder when absolutely necessary.

It will end poorly if we continue down the road of larger and larger governments under the fear of Mad Max, and this idea many people have that "someone has to be in charge."

protocolture 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>I had this view as well until I realized it’s predicated on living in a high trust society. At some point you reach a critical mass of crime that is so rampant, and the rule of law has so broken down that it’s basically Mad Max out there, and then these idealistic philosophies start to fall apart.

I see "High Trust Society" so much as a weird racist dogwhistle, but feel free to disabuse me of that notion.

I live in an extremely high crime area. Because cops abuse the law to keep their numbers up. If someone checked they would see that my local McDonalds car park is one of the biggest crime hotspots in the country because of administrative detections made on minor drug deals there.

It just so happens that my area is also where the government dumps migrants, refugees and poor people. Its also the case that they test welfare changes here.

I haven't had a single incident here in 6 years. We often forget to lock our doors. My wife takes my toddler walking around the neighborhood at night. I wave hello to the guy across the road who I have like 99% certainty is dealing drugs (Or just has a lot of friends with nice cars who visit to see how long it has been since he trimmed his lawn).

That said, if you turn on the tv 2 things are apparently happening. 1. We are under attack by hordes of immigrants tearing the country apart. 2. We are under attack by kids on ebikes mowing kids down in a rampage of terror.

Politicians, in order to be seen to be doing things, bring laws in to counter these threats. People bash their chests and demand more be done.

But the issue is that its just not happening. My suburb is great. The people are generally lovely, even those in meth related occupations.

When you complain about the trustiness of the society, consider that your lack of trust might actually be the problem? Nothing is necessarily going to break down because you didnt make your neighbors life worse by supporting another dumb as shit law. "Oh no crime is so rampant" buddy you need to get over yourself. Societies don't fail because of socially defined Crime they fail because people prioritise their perceived safety over everyones freedom.

> I’m not defending government surveillance, or the idea of considering someone innocent until proven guilty

Exactly what you are defending.

>what happens when the entire system fails due to misplaced idealism?

Its at threat from the idealism that you can just pass one more law to fix society.

>don’t feel like the government is adequately protecting them.

They come up with a bunch of dumbshit laws like the OP. Thats the result.

nobodywillobsrv 25 minutes ago | parent [-]

Re: High trust society general means people are pointing to some implicit unwritten structures that stop something from happening.

Collective notions of shame, actual networks of friends and families that reinforce correct behaviour or issue corrections.

Think about simply how credit networks form and function. And why visiting a food truck or medieval travelling doctor for your vial of ointment is different from buying special products from a brick and mortar establishment.

Basically if you or the network has a harder time back propagating defaults and bad credit in a way that prevents future bad outcomes then that is a loss of high trust.

This isn't about race really unless you are operating at the level of some biological or genetic connection to behaviour ... But that is a pretty strange place to be as there a whole host of confounding factors that are much more obvious and believable and I cast serious doubt that even a motivated racist would ever credibly be able to do empirical studies showing causal links between any given genetic population cluster and the emergent societal behaviour. These are such high dimensional systems it just seems insane to even think one could measure this effect.

The invisible substrate is the society unfortunately ... And we are all bad at writing it down and measuring it.

godelski 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

  > until I realized it’s predicated on living in a high trust society.
I don't think it's predicated on that. It's based on low trust of authority. Not necessarily even current authority. And low trust of authority is not equivalent to high trust in... honestly anything else.

  > You can look to parts of SE Asia or the Middle East to see some examples where that happened
These are regions known for high levels of authoritarianism, not democracy, not anarchy (I'm not advocating for anarchy btw). These regions often have both high levels of authoritarianism AND low levels of trust. Though places like China, Japan, Korea etc have high authoritarianism and high trust (China obviously much more than the other two).

  > but what happens when the entire system fails due to misplaced idealism?
It's a good question and you're right that the results aren't great. But I don't think it's as bad as the failure modes of high authoritarian countries.

High authority + low trust + abuse gives you situations like we've seen in Russia, Iran, North Korea. These are pretty bad. The people have no faith in their governments and the governments are centered around enriching a few.

High authority + high trust + abuse is probably even worse though. That's how you get countries like Nazi German (and cults). The government is still centered around enriching a few but they create more stability by narrowing the targeting. Or rather by having a clearer scale where everyone isn't abused ad equally. (You could see the famous quotes by a famous US president about keeping the white population in check by making them believe that at least they're not black)

None of the outcomes are good but I think the authoritarian ones are much worse.

  > when people don’t feel like the government is adequately protecting them.
But this is also different from what I'm talking about. You can have my framework and trust your government. If you carefully read you'll find that they are not mutually exclusive.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, right? That implies that the road to hell isn't paved just by evil people. It can be paved even by good well intentioned ones. Just like I suggested about when programming. We don't intend to create bugs or flaws (at least most of us don't), but they still exist. They still get created even when we're trying our hardest to not create them, right? But being aware that they happen unintentionally helps you make fewer of them, right? I'm suggesting something similar, but about governments.

trinsic2 3 hours ago | parent [-]

This and the previous post is well thought out, thank you for the clarity.

mx7zysuj4xew 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"He who gives up a little freedom for security deserves neither"

catlifeonmars 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The issue I have with this quote is that it implies that some people deserve freedom and others do not.

I think a better way to phrase it would be:

> he who gives up a little freedom for a little security ends up with neither

crummy 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I never understood this quote. I happily gave up the freedom of driving without a seatbelt for security, what does that say about me?

kuerbel 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Exactly nothing because you can release the seat belt yourself.

It's about giving up freedoms you might never get back, because it's not your decision anymore after giving them up.

godelski 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's become more a shorthand for saying much more. Though the original context differs from how it is used today (common with many idioms).

People do not generally believe a seat belt limits your liberty, but you're not exactly wrong either. But maybe in order to understand what they mean it's better to not play devil's advocate. So try an example like the NSA's mass surveillance. This was instituted under the pretext of keeping Americans safe. It was a temporary liberty people were willing to sacrifice for safety. But not only did find the pretext was wrong (no WMDs were found...) but we never were returned that liberty either, now were we?

That's the meaning. Or what people use it to mean. But if you try to tear down any saying it's not going to be hard to. Natural languages utility isn't in their precision, it's their flexibility. If you want precision, well I for one am not going to take all the time necessary to write this in a formal language like math and I'd doubt you'd have the patience for it either (who would?). So let's operate in good faith instead. It's far more convenient and far less taxing

salawat an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The quote refers to a Faustian bargain offered by the Penn's. They'd bankroll securing a township, as long as the township gave up the ability to tax them. The quote points out that by giving up the liberty to tax, for short term protection, ultimately the township would end up having neither the freedom to tax to fund further defense, or long term security so might as well hold onto the ability to tax and just figure out the security issue.

Moral: don't give up freedoms for temporary gains. It never balances out in the end.

protocolture 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You dont deserve either.

gotwaz 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

People are let go off all the time. Not because of the law but because who needs the work of chasing and punishing every law breaker in the land. In your own workplace,family and friend circle, count how many times you have seen some one do something dumb(forget illegal) that has caused a loss or pain to some one else. And then count how many times you have done something about it.

sundvor 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I use the speed chime in my Model 3 car to alert me if I'm more than 2 km/h over the posted speed limit, which it infers from its database with the autopilot camera providing overrides.

If I'm over that when passing a speed camera in Victoria, AUS, I'll be pinged with a decent fine to arrive shortly.

Imagine if instead of a chime I got fined every single time, everywhere? All this new monitoring makes it a bit like that, at an extreme. I don't want to live in such a society.

post-it 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't really see an issue with this section. A judge still needs to issue a warrant, they can also additionally waive the requirement that the cop gives you a copy right away, in special circumstances.

Like are you envisioning a "I totally have a warrant but I don't have to give it to you" type situation? I think it's fairly unlikely, and you would likely be able to get the search ruled inadmissible if a cop tried it.

0xbadcafebee 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Are you familiar with parallel construction? That's what this is for. If they have a warrant and show it to you, it says what they can search and why. If they don't tell you what they're searching for and why, they can look for anything, and then construct a separate scenario which just happens to expose the thing they knew would be there from the first fishing expedition. They then use this (usually circumstantial) evidence to accuse you of a crime, and they can win, even if you didn't commit a crime, but it looks like you did. And now they can do it with digital information, automatically, behind the scenes, without your knowledge. (or they can take your laptop and phone and do it then)

8note 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

i know this is an american thing, but does it actually happen in Caanda?

raydev 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Respectfully, whether it "actually happens" is irrelevant. We want to prevent it from happening.

kwar13 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

one of those 'does it happen' vs. 'can it happen'. the latter is all that matters.

5 hours ago | parent [-]
[deleted]
SecretDreams 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

But the warrant still has to originally exist with, presumably, a timestamp that shows it existed prior to the search. And modification of the timestamp or lack of such a feature would be a good way to get the evidence thrown out?

freeone3000 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That’s not how evidence works in Canada. Illegally obtained evidence is still evidence - you simply also have a tort against the officer for breaching your rights.

dataflow 8 hours ago | parent [-]

It would be inadmissible if the court deems it to impact the fairness of the trial, no? https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/chec...

godelski 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You used a conditional so I assume you also know how such a system can fail. It's not hard to figure out how that can be exploited, right? You can't rely on that conditional being executed perfectly every time, even without adversarial actors. But why ignore adversarial actors?

sunir 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe. Courts aren’t magic machines that do the right thing.

mnkyprskbd 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The existence of a category of warrants that allows operation that is indistinguishable from warrantless searches creates a kind of legal hazard and personal risk that is hard to overlook. Police lie on the regular.

SecretDreams 7 hours ago | parent [-]

This is a good perspective, thank you.

dataflow 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't get why people downvoted you, this is a very reasonable question.

godelski 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There were two commenters that responded 15 minutes prior to your comment. I'd suggest starting there if you want to understand. Then if you disagree with those, you can comment and actually contribute to the conversation ;)

linkregister 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I agree with you. However, talking about downvotes is not interesting and against guidelines.

Improperly down voted comments typically even out in the end anyway.

1123581321 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s a huge problem. The warrant is the document the absence of which lets the public know something wrong is being done to them. A warrant is not just a term for judicial approval.

The public must have the ability to easily verify police conduct is appropriate, and it must match the cadence of the police work.

dataflow 8 hours ago | parent [-]

> The warrant is the document the absence of which lets the public know

Er, the warrant is still there to be examined later, no? It's just not necessarily shown to the subject at the time of investigation.

1123581321 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Hence my second paragraph. “Don’t worry, we have a warrant” leaves the public vulnerable to misconduct, actions that potentially cannot be reversed or sufficiently compensated.

Incipient 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Wouldn't having a warrant, with the purpose redacted - if that's the concern, be a good balance of "proof of legitimacy" but also keeping some presumably sensitive information private?

1123581321 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't think so, no. The purpose is essential.

godelski 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A warrant usually isn't a free pass to search everything. They are often narrow.

The warrant is the receipt. Even if you believe it's fine most of the time I'm pretty certain most people would feel uncomfortable if they went to the grocery store and weren't offered one. You throw it away most of the time, but have you never needed it? Mistakes happen.

The stakes are a lot higher here. The cost of mistakes are higher. The incentives for abuse are higher. The cost of abuse is lower.

And what's the downside of the person being searched having the warrant? Why does it need to be secret?

lazide 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How can you be sure, when no one ever knows it is there to examine it?

_heimdall 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Unless I'm mistaken, it doesn't define what such special situations are. It leaves the determination of providing the warrant to the suspect entirely to a judgement call of the court.

There may well be reasonable scenarios a majority of people would agree that providing a warrant isn't feasible, but that needs to be codified in law in more detail than whenever the judge deems it so.

b00ty4breakfast 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

why even allow for the possibility of misuse? what is the utility of this little addendum?

layla5alive 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why... would you think this is unlikely? Have... you seen videos of ICE agents claiming to have warrants when they don't?

mpalmer 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If the statute doesn't lay out exactly where exceptions can be made, it can be abused.

And everyone should be skeptical enough of government power that they mentally switch out "can" with "will".

everdev 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This makes police indistinguishable from thugs.

verisimi 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think warrantless access, deanonymising the internet, etc, are things that go together. If you want auto-governance (technocracy), to micro-manage every citizen, these are the foundations you need. As it is already determined that this is what will be happening, no amount of discussion will make a material change - the legislation is going in whether people want it or not. The individual justifications for each legal step in the construction are either going to be done with low visibility, or a trope like ('for the children/terrorists') will be wheeled out. Works every time, so why change?

b112 an hour ago | parent [-]

There is no warrantless access to data here though. None. It's merely showing the warrant to the person being 'searched'. As mentioned elsewhere, the same has been true for decades with someone's phone being tapped.

The ISP can see the warrant. The judge creates a warrant. The court sees the warrant.

refurb 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How would a wiretap work if you sent the person notice you're listening to their phone?

Clearly some criminal investigations require not notifying the suspect.

kaliqt 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Even so, the exceptions don't nullify the rule: find a better way to investigate, citizen rights > all else.

Countries AND the government exist for and at the pleasure of their respective citizens.

lysium 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Clearly, list the specific cases instead of letting the judge feel what is appropriate is the way to go. Also helps the judge doing the right thing.

ActorNightly 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

airstrike 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

you should probably add a SPOILER alert on your most recent comment

hrimfaxi 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The truth is, most of the time when people complain about surveillance state or privacy, its because they just want to spout of a bunch of baseless propaganda like race realism or anti vax. Normal people aren't affected by this - nobody cares enough about politics, and most people aren't intelligent enough to form a dangerous opinion.

Where did you get that idea?

edit: it seems the comment I replied to was edited

ActorNightly 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Because that has literally been the history of the past 10 years.

When people criticized the left, nobody was arrested, nobody got put in jail. During Obamas term, despite the fact that the Patriot act was renewed, nobody ever went to

Its only when right wing people started getting deplatformed for anti vax or race realism rhetoric is when this whole idea started that "liberal governments are actually evil and want to control every citizen and suppress free speech", which all contributed to Trumps victories, and consequently Republicans proved that they were the ones anti free speech in the first place.

lovich 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Yea, I like how quickly they moved to jailing people over stuff as trivial as jokes once they got in power.[1]

[1]https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/17/politics/retired-cop-jailed-o...

ipaddr 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why would you think Canada is fine when the government can freeze your accounts at will?

Why should Trump's actions be the measure to okay to Canada's measures against personal freedom? Trump and Canada can both take away personal freedoms and both are bad.

nucleardog 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Why would you think Canada is fine when the government can freeze your accounts at will?

Can we stop with this nonsense at any point?

The government can declare an emergency. Certain actions can be taken during an emergency which are outside what is typically allowed or bypass normal processes. The actions are subject to a mandatory judicial review within 60 days. The judicial review happened. The government was found to have acted out of line. It's current working its way through appeal courts.

The way you phrase this is, imo, intentionally implying "the government is ALLOWED to freeze your accounts at will". The reality is more in line with "I can murder someone at will.". Yes, yes I can. Because we don't have precogs and a pre-crime division. That doesn't mean it's allowed or accepted.

Direct your energy at this law. This is _actually_ a huge fucking problem.

ActorNightly 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Because Canada did it in regards to people specifically going against public safety. Trump does it to people who hurt his ego.

And again, the only argument against this is "well you don't want to have the government have power to deem anyone as in breach of public safety in case there is a tyrannical government that misuses this power"

which is hilarious because people think a tyrannical government is going to give 2 fucks about laws in the first place, which is literally happening today.

diacritical 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The truth is, most of the time when people complain about surveillance state or privacy, its because they just want to spout of a bunch of baseless propaganda like race realism or anti vax. Normal people aren't affected by this - nobody cares enough about politics, and most people aren't intelligent enough to form a dangerous opinion.

That's not the truth. Everyone's affected and the risk will only continue to rise if we let such bills pass. One day it will be too late to do anything, as mass surveillance will be so entrenched as to not be able to form any kind of opposition or to do any kind of serious journalism without getting squished in the beginning before you even get started.

Grum9 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

[dead]

ActorNightly 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

blackqueeriroh 7 hours ago | parent [-]

The Prisoner’s Dilemma has been shown to have significantly limited applicability in real-world scenarios. This has been covered again and again and again.

ActorNightly 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Its not the dilema part that has been proven. If you basically see other people not cooperating and profiting, the incentive is there for you to do the same.

transcriptase 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

“Canada is doing just fine”

Found the federal govt employee or boomer who bought real estate in the 90s

ActorNightly 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Im not even Candadian, but are you implying that Canada has mass homelessness?

SecretDreams 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Even people who bought up til like 2015 are doing well. Housing in Canada really imploded 2015-2023 or so. Before that, it was still very frothy, but low rates and high immigration and poor policy around speculation and flipping of homes really turned the whole country tits up re: housing.

brailsafe 8 hours ago | parent [-]

What, $600k for a 1 bedroom condo on a busy arterial road doesn't seem reasonable to you!?

/s

The federal housing minister literally 2 days ago stood up in the House of Commons and associated the housing cost catastrophe with the war in Iran that's been happening for a week.

Thankfully prices on that front are slowly declining. Another $200k to go at least before they make any sense.

bluegatty 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's not bad. Judges are not crazy and they'll require a reason for this. It could mean 'fraying at the edges' of the law but this is not bad at all.

You can tell where things will land with this generally it's not bad.

If it were Texas or the South where the justice dept. leans a different way it could be a problem.

Canada is a bit like Europe where they have statist mentality, kind of hints of lawful, bureaucratic authoritarianism - not arbitrary or political or regime driven, but kind of an inherent orientation towards 'rules' etc. where the system can tilt wayward, but that's completely different than regime, or 'deep institutional' issues and state actors that do wild things.

R_D_Olivaw 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

While this might be true and we'll and good (for now) isn't it still a worry and a threat that the law is written as such?

That is to say, though the "vibe" may be as you say, the law now permits, if not now, at some future instance people with different perspectives or vibes can use the law as written, to other ends.

In short, yeah it may not be Texas now, but a "Texas-like" vibe could germinate and use the laws in the books later.

bluegatty 5 hours ago | parent [-]

"though the "vibe" may be as you say, " it's not a vibe so much as a real characteriztion of the law in the context of the system in which it operates.

There is no such thing as a set of 'hard fast rules' like 'software' which governs us.

It's always going to depend on the quality, characteristic and legitimacy of institutions, among other things.

'The Slippery Slope' can be applied in almost anything and I don't think that it is a reasonable rhetorical posture without more context.

'Written Laws' is not going to really stop anywhere from 'becoming like Texas'

markdown 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Canada is a bit like Europe where they have statist mentality

If the last decade and a half has taught us anything, it's that you can't rely on the state and arms of the state to remain consistent permanently.

In the absence of a free media, as in the US where it's controlled by a handful of billionaires, the people can be manipulated to vote in a government that will run roughshod over precedent and norms.

bluegatty 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I totally agree, but that's a question aside from the institutional authoritarianism of statist countries.

Canada and European nations are not very 'liberal' in the sense a lot of people would like - they are communitarian.

We lament Trump breaking norms ... the office of the Canadian PM is almost only bounded by norms, he has crazy amounts of power - on paper.

A Trump-like actor in Canada (maybe UK as well) could do way more damage.

I think that the quality of the judiciary is subjective but real, it can be characterized.

I don't have a problem with this law as it is written, to the extent it's used judiciously, which I generally expect in Canada - but that's only because of an understanding of the system as a whole, not as it is written.

ghssds 5 hours ago | parent [-]

On paper, there is no Canadian PM. The Constitution reads: "The Executive Government and Authority of and over Canada is hereby declared to continue and be vested in the Queen." The existence of a Prime Minister and the fact executive powers are delegated to them are customary.

A Trump-like actor in Canada would do far less damage than in USA. There is no position they could held that would give them the power to do lot of damage. The Queen (nowaday King) has no power. If they tried to use it's constitutional powers as written they would be laughed out. The Governor General, who may act on behalf of the Queen would be laughed out too if they tried to take any decision. The Prime Minister seems all powerful but they are one motion from the House of Common from being overthrown. When one's become POTUS, they are basically POTUS until the end of their term. The exception is impeachment which is a very complicated process that never worked. In Canada, the House of Common can simply vote the Prime Minister out. The Prime Minister is very powerful, I agree, but only as long as they behave.

bluegatty 4 hours ago | parent [-]

"are one motion from the House of Common from being overthrown." - so this is a form of political constraint, which we can see in the US doesn't work very well if the ruling party wants to ignore concerns and acts at the behest of the Executive.

If the PM holds enough popular support and has even a narrow majority that he can effectively whip, he's almost above reproach.

Everything at the top in Canada is 'convention' even the Constitution and there's barely any real constraint at someone driving a truck through all of it.

XorNot 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes but that's marginal because support is entirely contingent on whether the legislative branch members believe that support won't get them voted out.

The US executive is very different because it's an independent election: it's almost impossible to get rid of a President, and relatively easy to deflect blame.

Australia's round of axing prime ministers had some essential logic to it despite the move being relatively unpopular with the electorate: it wasn't about whether the party would lose power, it was about whether replacing the prime minister would let them retain seats they faced otherwise losing.

It's a mammoth difference when the election for executive power and legislative power are linked and it shows.

JohnnyLarue 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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