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.
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.