[Benn]

Thanos Thanos:

Once again, what part of our respective constitutions say that it's legal to conceal one's identity while one is committing a crime?

The thing is I'm not sure the bill just addresses wearing it at riots, but any type of protest. No time to read the bill wording now but extra charges at riots I can stomach more than charges for wearing something on your face during a legal lawful assembly (which is protected under the charter) I would take mush more issue with.

[OnTheIce]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

I guess that's the logical next step for the surveillance state.

This law was already in place. This one has the same penalty and is more specific with respect to riots.

There already is a section in the criminal code about wearing disguises while committing a crime.

Why is this an issue now?

[ShepherdsDog]

raydan raydan:

Isn't rioting a crime by itself?

This is like making it a crime to wear a mask when you rob a bank.

Don't know why I can't rep you for this, but I'm surprised that this obvious fact eludes some folk.

[BartSimpson]

Thanos Thanos:

For a Soviet satellite Canada still...

You're missing my point. I was pretty careful to say that abrogations of rights are uncommon in Canada and that's quite the distinguishing point from the USSR.

But the notion of a constitution or charter that enumerates rights and then also includes a mechanism for the government to nullify those rights at will was first accomplished in the Soviet Constitution. With Canada the mechanism came in the form of the notwithstanding clause in conjunction with the Charter's Section 7 silence on property rights.

The right to property is a fundamental right that underlies all other rights.

For instance, if a person is accused of a crime and then the state seizes all of their lawfully obtained assets then they do not have the resources to mount the most effective defense possible. Thus it is understood in the US and other countries (like China) that property rights are a foundational aspect of liberty and the enforcement of contracts.

For the Chinese it is the latter reason that (IMHO) is why they've given property rights their highest legal protections in the world. It's because the economic benefits of secure property rights are evident.

Again, not that Canada's government makes a practice of tossing people's rights, it's just that they can and on some occasions they do.

I don't see this as a crisis or a condemnation, but I do think one of your political parties should prominently place a property rights charter amendment into their platform.

[Thanos]

It's important to distinguish between theory and practice then. Canada and Britain may have systems that allow for abrogation of rights but in reality, except maybe for a catastrophe scenario like Muslim terrorists setting off a nuclear weapon in London for example that would surely lead to mass deportations and suspensions of civil liberties, these abrogations will never occur. Whatever Pierre Trudeau was able to do in the Quebec Crisis still pales in comparison to what Abraham Lincoln did during the Civil War and what state governors were able to do during the Detroit and Watts riots in the 1960's. We may not have the US Constitution but we're entangled in several centuries, or a thousand years in Britain's case, where judicial precedent has decided the issues as much as any codified Bill Of Rights ever has. And we're not limited or handcuffed by a written code that is too often interpreted as "you have all the liberties listed here, but none more and none less", a terribly abused concept which is used far too often by nullificationists and other *amateur constitutional "experts" in the US to unceasingly attempt to basically have the entire federal government outlawed. We're hardly rookies or pikers at this thing, and in a lot of ways we can still bury the United States with individual protections where Americans have none.

* your rights as Americans really don't include the right to interpret the Constitution on a childish level in order to make it fit your own personal politics and religions; seriously, grow the fuck up already.

[Zipperfish]

Thanos Thanos:

For a Soviet satellite Canada still manages to have a squishier justice system more full of pro-criminal wimps than anything even the bluest states in the US are plagued by. We free freaks of all sorts, folks that most US states would gladly (and quite rightly too, more often than not) strap to a gurney and give a needle in the arm to.

Regardless, my question still wasn't adequately answered. And I'm kind of genuinely puzzled by the New Anarchist claim that lofting a brick at a cop's face whilst wearing a Guy Fawkes mask is now considered by some to be "free speech". Once again, what part of our respective constitutions say that it's legal to conceal one's identity while one is committing a crime?

It is already illegal to wear a mask in the commission of an indictable offence.

This law makes it a crime to to be wearing a mask at an unlawful assembly which is "an assembly of three or more persons who, with intent to carry out any common purpose, assemble in such a manner… as to cause persons in the neighbourhood… to fear… that they will disturb the peace tumultuously."

My problem is with the hazy definition of an unlawful assembly. Being at an unlawful assembly is not an indicatble offence, and the declaration of an unlawful assembly may apply to a peaceful protest. So you could find yourself looking at ten years for wearing a mask at a peaceful protest.

According to one Conservative MP, anyone wearing a mask at a protest has violent intentions. Given the amount of surveillance at protests, I don't think that follows at all. I think there there might be a good reason to wear a mask--such as those noted above.

And in general prinicple, you should have an overriding public safety concern before passing laws restrciting constitutional freedoms. And the general complicity of the population to ever encroaching state power is a concern to me.

That said, the equally hazy "breach of peace" arrest already exists and is probably more egregious. Police regularly use that to round up protest leaders prior to large international events.

[Thanos]

Not counting some tribe of booga-boogas out there that have everything turned reverse in their society, has there ever been a human culture where concealing one's identity hasn't been seen at least as a prelude to a criminal act? The female Muslims in burkas don't count, because that's something that's been done to them by the rather strange antics of their religion-fueled males, in that their fundamentalists see being a female as almost equivalent to a crime that must be covered up in order to avoid shame, whatever, etc. From Wild West stagecoach raiders to highwaymen in Britain to Klansmen in the night to Hollywoodized versions of bank robbers to anarchists in Seattle pillaging the downtown core to worthless punks in Vancouver setting off hockey riots. Mask-wearing, whether fictionalized or not, is almost always in the province of those who are intent on causing mayhem and destruction.

It's also a clear sign of moral cowardice and a weak character too, if anyone wants to get something going about it.

[shockedcanadian]

Newsbot Newsbot:

Title: Wearing a mask at a riot is now a crime
Category: Law & Order
Posted By: Zipperfish
Date: 2013-06-20 08:34:01
Canadian

Good. Now undercover agent provocateurs that the RCMP employ cannot commit crimes without being I'D'ed, a la Montebello, Quebec

[Zipperfish]

Thanos Thanos:

Not counting some tribe of booga-boogas out there that have everything turned reverse in their society, has there ever been a human culture where concealing one's identity hasn't been seen at least as a prelude to a criminal act? The female Muslims in burkas don't count, because that's something that's been done to them by the rather strange antics of their religion-fueled males, in that their fundamentalists see being a female as almost equivalent to a crime that must be covered up in order to avoid shame, whatever, etc. From Wild West stagecoach raiders to highwaymen in Britain to Klansmen in the night to Hollywoodized versions of bank robbers to anarchists in Seattle pillaging the downtown core to worthless punks in Vancouver setting off hockey riots. Mask-wearing, whether fictionalized or not, is almost always in the province of those who are intent on causing mayhem and destruction.

It's also a clear sign of moral cowardice and a weak character too, if anyone wants to get something going about it.

be that as it may, Constitutional rights should only be infringed by overriding state security concerns.

I don't see the need for that here.

[BartSimpson]

Thanos Thanos:

Not counting some tribe of booga-boogas out there that have everything turned reverse in their society, has there ever been a human culture where concealing one's identity hasn't been seen at least as a prelude to a criminal act?

Then here's a bunch of people your government should be very worried about:



Obviously, they're concealing their identities so they can commit a crime.



Yes, that's absurd, but what happens if some cop decides to use this law to declare a Mardi Gras or Halloween party to be an illegal protest or riot? Then are a bunch of drunken revelers facing 10 year prison sentences and the stigma of a felony conviction just because it suits some cop to do this to them?

And don't even tell me that the cops up your way won't abuse this law. There's a whole bunch of them right now planning on adding this to their arsenal of horseshit charges that they routinely file against people they just don't like.

Just wait and see.

[commanderkai]

Thanos Thanos:

Whatever Pierre Trudeau was able to do in the Quebec Crisis still pales in comparison to what Abraham Lincoln did during the Civil War and what state governors were able to do during the Detroit and Watts riots in the 1960's. We may not have the US Constitution but we're entangled in several centuries, or a thousand years in Britain's case, where judicial precedent has decided the issues as much as any codified Bill Of Rights ever has.

I hugely disagree on this point. Trudeau put forth the War Measures Act against the whole city of Montreal due to the actions of the FLQ, which the RCMP could have handled without such assistance. 497 people were arrested, with only 62 of them actually being charged with anything. Lincoln was in the middle of a civil war, and the LA, Watts, and Detroit riots were, well, riots that overwhelmed police forces.

[Thanos]

Given the nature of the times, and the fact that the FLQ had begun murdering people, Trudeau had every reason to believe that a civil insurrection was breaking out in Quebec, and that if the federal government didn't act immediately events would rapidly get worse. The way he smashed it down before it spiraled out of control was one of the few things, if not the only thing, I ever admired him for. It was really no different, and just as necessary, as the British government outlawing the British Union of Fascists or the US clamping down on the German-American Bund at the outbreak of WW2. They were all-but-declared enemies of the government, just as the FLQ was, and they had to be dealt with.

Democracies can withstand an occasional bruising now and then. What is fatal to them is when anti-social and anti-government activities aren't immediately confronted and the perpetrators stopped. None of our rights, codified or otherwise, or respect for the rights of others obligate us to remain in a state of paralysis when violence and other dangerous threats to the social order make themselves apparent.

[raydan]

Fashion statement...

[Jonny_C]

Canadians as a whole don't sympathize with faces being covered in public, for any reason.

I think it's a good law.

[BartSimpson]

Jonny_C Jonny_C:

Canadians as a whole don't sympathize with faces being covered in public, for any reason.

Really?



Here's another someone who is a threat to the state and should be locked up for the next decade for wearing a mask.