Talk:The Emergencies Act of February 2022 in Canada was designed to target and arrest white protesters

Dear User:Cyanide Taste Sampler, it seems you have given the worst possible readings of my statement and that of others as part of this analysis. For instance, you claim that that I have committed a "misattribution of the exemptions under the section Prohibition — entry to Canada — foreign national to the prohibitions under Prohibition — public assembly" for which you provide evidence in the form of my appearance on Modern-Day Debate. But in that debate, what I state is "this is racism staring right at us." The claim I make is much broader than what you represent. I claim that having such exemptions is a form of anti-white racism, in that it will affect whites but potentially not other groups ("protect persons"). For instance, even under your interpretation, it would be likely that some American whites would be refused entry into Canada when other races would not be denied entry. Please provide evidence that that interpretation is wrong within the next few days or I will have to delete this analysis. Best, JFG (talk) 20:06, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi User:JFG. In Modern Day Debate video, "Are the Police Fair to the Black Community?", referring to the Emergencies Act, you say that

"the police system has been recruited to operate an anti-white policy."

After reading the the prohibition against public assembly as outlined in the Emergencies Act, you continued:

"[Trudeau] stops the right to protest, the right to be part of an assembly. But he makes a subsection (2) [(i.e. referring to the exemptions of 3(2).)], which puts some limits on the applications of these measures. He says this is not to be applied to [Indians, refugees, and protected persons]. So Justin Trudeau has essentially said 'I'm going to write a law that allows my police forces to only go after white heterosexual truckers."

Then, you further clarify that blacks, LGBT, and Native Indians are all protected persons.

1) Being that Prohibition - Public Assembly was the only prohibition of the Act that you referenced, it is safe to assume that all of the exemptions which you read were in direct reference to this prohibition, and not any other prohibition of the act. The only possible reference that is made to other prohibitions is in your statement "...which puts some limits on the applications of these measures." But then you would be saying that the exemptions applied to more than one measure/prohibition, which you didn't say and which wouldn't be true anyway. Therefore, you were not talking about the racism in the selection of certain classes of migrants (i.e. "foreign nationals"); you referenced only the prohibition against public assembly.

2) Thus, when you say that the "police system has been recruited to operate an anti-white policy," it is clear that you are making reference to the law/measure against public assembly as codified in the Emergencies Act, and not any other prohibition. You are talking about police enforcing the prohibition against public assembly and arresting protesters. Given, also, that you listed the exemptions immediately after you said that Trudeau was stopping the right to protest, this suggests that the exemptions were mentioned as if to say that the Prohibition - Public Assembly was to be enforced selectively and enforced according to the race of the protester. Therefore, the claim that the "police system has been recruited to operate an anti-white policy" is understood to mean that the police have been recruited to arrest and charge white protesters in Ottawa, while neglecting to arrest protected groups and racial minorities.

3) Your interpretation of Trudeau as "essentially" saying, 'I'm going to write a law that allows my police forces to only go after white heterosexual truckers', makes my point 2) even clearer; it means that you believe that Trudeau, using the Emergencies Act, is targeting white truckers (i.e. white protesters).

I understand that you never said the claim exactly as I've titled it, but I think it's fair to interpret your words in the Modern Day Debate debate as the claim that 'Emergencies Act was designed to target white protesters.' You did strongly suggest that Trudeau, the man who is responsible for the Emergencies Act, desired to "only go after white heterosexual truckers." I think that your broader claim that "this is racism staring right at us," ignores the context of what was said in those 2 minutes of the debate.

Note: I agree with you that the exemptions are anti-white even when applied to the proper prohibition (Prohibition - entry to Canada - foreign national); but again, this specific prohibition was never explicitly referenced by you in the debate. Everything that you said is in reference to the Prohibition - Public Assembly; there are no references to the 'Prohibition - entry to Canada - foreign national'. Therefore, the interpretation of your words in the MDD debate as meaning "it would be likely that some American whites would be refused entry into Canada when other races would not be denied entry." has no basis. Again, that prohibition against entry to Canada was never mentioned. All of your statements in the MDD debate center on the Prohibition - Public Assembly and the enforcement thereof.

I want to be clear about intentions in writing this article: I am not an ankle-biter, I am not trying to be nasty. I watched your debate on MDD live, and heard you assert that the Emergencies Act was written in such a way as to target whites exclusively. I thenafter found a few different sources claiming anti-white discrimination of protesters, which I suspected were wrong. I wanted to clear the record so that no one discredits/embarrasses themselves by making this claim in the future. The reason that I included you as a reference is because you were the first person whom I heard make this claim. If you wish, we can just remove all reference to you and your debate, and let the article stand as an informative piece for future readers. Thanks for reading, User:Cyanide Taste Sampler (talk) 05:35, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

In light of your admission that I haven't made the claim as titled, yes, I would like the references to me as stating it be removed. Now here's the problem. Although I haven't had the time to look at the statements of the other people you quote, I don't think your analysis will survive once I review them. Your interpretation fails to take into account why what you call "immigration measures" were introduced in the act. In section 3(1) it states "3 (1) A foreign national must not enter Canada with the intent to participate in or facilitate an assembly referred to in subsection 2(1)." So they are saying in this section that they are writing this section to keep people from doing what is described in subsection 2(1). Now what you seem to ignore is "must not." This means a white trucker coming from the US would be more likely to be arrested at the border on such suspicion than a native trucker coming from the US. The idea that you would read this passage and honestly conclude that this is related to "selection of certain classes of migrants" is ludicrous and I seriously doubt your honest engagement when I read this part of your answer. This is not an immigration policy. This is specifically a measure applied specifically to the problem of people coming to Ottawa to protest. Who do you think will apply this law at the border? It will be a police agent. What happens if someone violates this rule with the intent of crossing the border to access the protest? They will get arrested. What happens if the persons doing such thing are found to be Native Americans? They will be released. Thus the "police system has been recruited to operate an anti-white policy." and the right to protest of white people has been selectively affected as compared to other groups. JFG (talk) 12:14, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Here's the problem: none of these people (including you) mentions the other prohibitions. It is clear that they are misattributing the exemptions to Prohibition - Public Assembly, which is an honest mistake. So everything you're saying about the Prohibition - foreign nation - entry to Canada right now, was not said in the interview. This is a retroactive change made to your claim. I don't think I'm being unfair, especially since I know other people of the Discord who walked away from that debate understanding your words as I understood them. Cyanide Taste Sampler (talk) 17:40, March 25 2022 (UTC)

I've removed Michael News from the references of people who've made the claim, because he included all of the Prohibitions of the Act, and his title was vague enough to be interpreted favourably, and he made no commentary indicating his opinion besides the title. Cyanide Taste Sampler (talk)) 17:57, March 25 2022 (UTC)

I think I've seen enough from this discussion to conclude that you give an autistic reading of what was said in the most disfavorable way. That is not proper steelmanning. Stating that someone has said a falsehood is not to be taken lightly. I will be deleting the article. You can't say "You guys have stated a bunch of true things one after the other, but it misled me into believing some false thing, therefore it is false." Every time I write an article on this Encyclopedia, I include direct quotes representing the claims. Your only representation of the claim is the title, which none of the people quoted as far as I can see have stated. Furthermore, the subsection that you claim to be completely separate is actually referring explicitly to protest activities by referring to them as "activities described in subsection 2(1)." If one unpacks this reference, one realizes that this is one whole law, not a bill containing separates laws. Therefore the law effectively makes it illegal to cross the border as a white person with intent to join this protest. One does not have to mention every detail of the circumstances in which a white person would be oppressed or not oppressed by the law for their statement about the racist nature of the law to be true. JFG (talk) 18:38, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Again, this prohibition against entry to Canada was never mentioned by you; everything you said was in the context of the Prohibition - Public Assembly. You never mentioned that white people (intending to join the protest) would be denied entry to Canada. In the case of Maxime Bernier, he says "First Nations, refugees and temporary residents [have been] exempted from the prohibition to “participate in a public assembly that may reasonably be expected to lead to a breach of the peace." Bernier is literally saying that these groups are exempt from the prohibition against public assembly; he's not saying that they're exempt from entering Canada with the purpose to protest. In the case of ZeroHedge, the article actually omits the "Prohibition - entry to Canada - foreign national" and leads the reader to believe that the exemptions apply directly to "Prohibition - public assembly;" ZeroHedge also links to Maxime Berneir's tweet.

The exemptions against the Prohibition against entry of foreign nationals to Canada allow certain classes of foreign nationals over the border regardless of their intent to protest; but it does not preclude their arrest in the protest. I believe that the Prohibition against foreign nationals entering Canada was written just to allow certain classes of migrants, which the government consider special or vulnerable, to cross the border during the state of emergency, and to disallow foreign nationals (particularly from the USA) to contribute their presence to the protest. The exemptions were not encouraging foreign nationals to protest, nor precluding their arrest. Cyanide Taste Sampler (talk)) 19:20, March 25 2022 (UTC)

The problem, then, is that the article claims to debunk the wrong thing. The question of whether "the act was designed to target and arrest white protesters" has been conceded by you. It was, just not the protesters you thought. It was designed to arrest the white protesters trying to enter Canada, just not those who were already in Canada (who would be arrested regardless of race). Suppose I take Bernier's quote as you bring it here, then the only thing to debunk is not so much its falsehood, it would be its incompleteness. You would be claiming that Bernier's tweet was incomplete because it did not mention that only certain white protesters, not all, would be targeted by the racism of the law. But this is such a smaller case than what you have set out to do, I believe it will be better to start from scratch, if you have interest in making that point. I, for one, find even this alternative to be a point of low interest. We can't list all incompleteness claims because any specific claim is, by nature, incomplete as it claims something within a certain domain while not describing the infinite possibilities that relate to it or not. The exemptions allowed one thing to foreign nationals of certain categories that it didn't allow to foreign white nationals: entering Canada with signs that they intended to go to Ottawa to join protests. These foreign nationals (white or not) were therefore targeted (or not) for their race, and disobeying the law would have resulted in arrests. At this point, you are doing a #notall argument, which when it occurs in the domain of race takes the form of "how can you say _____ have lower IQ, not all _____ have lower IQ," here "how can you say white people are targeted for arrests, not all white people are targeted for arrest." JFG (talk) 19:42, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks JF; your response is very appreciated and is forcing me to think even more clearly on this subject. I appreciate it. Suppose that a black trucker from the USA attempted to cross the Canadian-US border during the state of emergency, and he declared his intentions to protest in the Freedom Convoy. Does the Emergencies Act preclude his arrest? Well, let's look at the exemptions: a) he is not an Indian. b&d) he is not a refugee, nor seeking refugee status. c) he is not a temporary resident of Canada. e) he is not a protected person, because refugee protection has not been conferred to him (see: https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/i-2.5/section-95.html for definition of "protected person" as used in Emergencies Act). f) he has not been conferred a special status by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, nor the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. This black trucker, therefore, is not exempt from the "Prohibition - entry to Canada - foreign national". Therefore, the law would not be targeting white foreign nationals on the basis of their whiteness, but would target all foreign nationals regardless of race. I assumed earlier that "protected person" included all minority populations; but after having read the Act once again, it seems to me that "protected person" is a more restricted category. Perhaps the claim of the article should be changed to something like "The Emergencies Act precluded the arrest of First Nations, Refugees, and Temporary Residents for public assembly during the Freedom Convoy protests." Cyanide Taste Sampler (talk) 21:00, 25 March 2022 (UTC)