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Peter Sankoff

Feb 10 • 9 tweets • 2 min read

https://twitter.com/mattgurney/status/1491767899828146178

1/ I have a few thoughts about this dispatch as well. First, Matt has been a great source for information. Dispassionate and reasonable. He has pointed out things he’s seen whether they match narrative or not.

https://twitter.com/mattgurney/status/1491767899828146178

2/ So I have a few thoughts about his overall thesis: that police are not intervening because of fear of mass chaos event at Coventry. This fear seems reasonable (though not inevitable) given his reporting.

3/ My usual caveat applies: I am a law professor. I have absolutely no expertise in police operations whatsoever. I will assume Matt is correct and that this is a real threat.

4/ This leads me to several uncomfortable questions. If we are allowing Ottawa to continue because of an inability to combat an unknown threat from a group of 50-100 individuals in a compound, what does that say about our readiness to deal with more overt terrorist threats?

5/ are the police unable to seize the perimeter of this area and ask supporters to leave peacefully or stay inside? Maybe not - this is a real question. But Coventry is not downtown. The two locations are separated. Blockade everything and wait them out.

6/ Fully concede that might not work for reasons I’m not seeing. Next question. How troubling is it that we don’t have any special force in this country that can’t address this type of “incursion”. I’m going with “insanely troubling”.

7/ how is it possible that the largest province in the country has no tactical squad to deploy for measures of this type? If these guys all decided to “take Parliament”, we’d say “fine”?

8/ I am honestly mystified. I do not underestimate the desire to avoid loss of life, and avoid a firefight. But when people aggressively take your city and set up what Gurney describes, effectively, as a “compound”…

9/ It is disturbing to me that we seem to have no adequate response. Maybe that is a federalism problem. Maybe it’s a different problem. But Gurney’s dispatch scares me as much for the next occupation if we are this unprepared. FIN

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Peter Sankoff

@petersankoff

Feb 13

@GarethMorley3

1/ So all of this falls on the executive. (Don’t @ me @GarethMorley3). What the hell is going on? Well, there would seem to be a few options. None of them good. Let’s figure it out.

2/ Option A. We don’t have the operational capacity to deal with any of this. To me, that’s scary. If we can’t deal with this, how can we deal with a bona fire crisis???

3/ To be clear there would seem to be an operational capacity issue at play here and a fair bit of incompetence especially in Ottawa.

Read 17 tweets

Peter Sankoff

@petersankoff

Feb 9

1/ Court of Queens Bench, Friday. Sankoff J. presiding (fictional obviously - no one is insane enough to appoint me to the bench). "Call the first case!" Clerk: "It's the AG Alberta v "Freedom Convoy"" Sankoff J: "Great, another family law case." [Cue laugh track].

2/ AG Alberta: "Your Honour (I love the sound of that), we're here asking for an injunction that will forbid the freedom convoy from operating near the border and blocking all our commerce." Freedom Convoy: "We oppose!"

3/ Sankoff J: "I'm confused. AG Alberta, what are you asking for exactly? Why do you need authority? You can enforce any time." AG Alberta: "Well, we believe that the police are independent, and we need judicial directions to ensure they act properly."

Read 7 tweets

Peter Sankoff

@petersankoff

Feb 9

The first rule of injunctions is that... you do not talk about injunctions. (Sorry. I couldn't resist. Tough day...).

No, the first rule of injunctions is that "the court will generally not grant an injunction for the purpose of enforcing moral obligations or as substitute for the criminal law or quasi-criminal law. There usually must be some property right or some other right infringed."

"When a statute provides a penalty for its breach but is silent as to whether a court may grant an injunction to restrain its contravention, a court must consider the statute as a whole, including its objects, to determine whether the court has such jurisdiction."

Read 5 tweets

Peter Sankoff

@petersankoff

Feb 9

1/ I’ve stated several times that carrying empty gas cans, in these circumstances, is a crime. Perhaps I should briefly explain why.

2/ Its not actually that complex. There seems to be some belief that while carrying in full gas cans might be assisting in the ongoing convoy (mischief and breach of lawful order when they honk), the empty cans don’t really do anything. Thus not a crime.

3/ Not so. If they wished, police could arrest them all. Why? Because every person knows they are trying to create a deception designed to assist the obtaining of more gas for the trucks - the underlying crime that has prompted this behaviour.

Read 7 tweets

Peter Sankoff

@petersankoff

Feb 9

2/ I believe that we are at an important time in history. The manner in which (mis)information can circulate has changed our thought processes and belief systems. This is an oversimplified description of a complex problem, but there's nonetheless some truth to it.

3/ A growing number of people are attracted to ideas that strike many others as preposterous. Without question, there have always been groups of people attracted to conspiracies and falsehoods. That's just humanity.

4/ But this feels different to me. I never would have imagined Donald Trump could be elected. I realize that's the US, and whatever Canada is, we're not the U.S. (yet). But I do think we should not underestimate the power of disinformation.

Read 39 tweets

Peter Sankoff

@petersankoff

Feb 8

Interesting to hear people throwing out all the crimes being committed in Ottawa. I'm far less convinced. Mischief seems clear, but everyone suggesting that this is "clearly" a riot, unlawful assembly, causing disturbance or nuisance needs to look at those sections more closely.

Let's take the "unlawful assembly" section as an example, since a lot of people want the Riot Act read. It requires proof that the peace was disturbed "tumultuously". There's very little jurisprudence on what this means, because this charge is rarely brought.

But it's not hard to know what a historical "riot" is, because we've all seen one. Just think of Vancouver after the Stanley Cup or Montreal. Whatever you think of Ottawa, it has little in common with what happened in Vancouver, and this will matter to any interpretation of s 63.

Read 4 tweets

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