Virtually all protests are "illegal". The problem is that the truckers figured out a way to make an illegal protest where the fines / jailtime is minimal compared to the effectiveness of the protest methodology.
Honking a horn carries very little penalty but is massively annoying if done in front of the PM's house. Parking your truck infront of a border crossing is similarly not very penalized, yet killing 25% of the trade between two countries is very damaging to the gov't.
The real reason we never saw these measures before is because of how brutally effective they are while being entirely non-violent.
This is very well put. The only acceptable protests seem to be those which are toothless. Somehow these people found an asymmetric cost situation and now the laws will be updated to take account of this edge case.
It's about whether there is a legitimate state of emergency. Therefore, the context of millions of people dying is relevant. But, you're right, their cause does seem rather counterproductive in this light.
In BC more people died of elevated levels of overdoses (eg. just what was above average) than COVID.
As of this post, 36,116 and not millions of people died of COVID in Canada, and the removal of vaccine mandates / mask mandates are inline with the recommendations of the Chief Public Health Officer. The people were pretty much protesting to get Trudeau to follow the medical recommendations of the Health Officer.
In most countries where masks and vaccine mandates have been eliminated, infections have gone down. Denmark's peak was the last day of restrictions.
Those countries already have > 90% vaccination rates, enough for the vaccines to be useful. They can get rid of their mandates because they statically are no longer necessary.
Yes, many of those countries have lower vaccination rates than Canada. 84% vs 81% in the case of Denmark. I wholeheartedly agree with you that our mandates are no longer necessary.
Honking a horn carries very little penalty but is massively annoying if done in front of the PM's house. Parking your truck infront of a border crossing is similarly not very penalized, yet killing 25% of the trade between two countries is very damaging to the gov't.
The real reason we never saw these measures before is because of how brutally effective they are while being entirely non-violent.