I am very used to this arguing against Conservatives in Canada. The Canadian government is… Let’s just say generally less inflammatory and complicated than the American system because “states rights” are less of a duel between systems and more of a handshake.

All Conservatives have to do is throw wood on the fire of the fairly naturally occuring suspicion that a government isn’t following it’s own rules. To have those doubts takes no effort. People naturally resent being told what to do by an authority. Understanding how law works, what checks a government has on itself or understanding where an opinion is coming from and it’s place in the system is the antidote to understanding that your average Canadian does not live in a tyranny (Indigenous people do. Questions of whether stolen sovereignty and genocide makes power ultimately ethically legitimate is a whole different kettle of fish and we got more than a little reconciliation to do on that front. )

Take the trucker convoy that blockaded Ottawa for infectious disease restrictions. People were up in arms about the tyranny of the Federal government… But check the facts and understand the ecosystem that move is in the whole “we have no rights!” reaction starts sounding like bullshit.

The exercise of one of the harshest anti-sedition emergency protections existing in Canadian law that has never been used got activated for the first time. It required both provincial and federal governments to vote it in. It can remain active for a maximum of 90 days but was only active for less than 2 weeks.

The act required an independent inquiry be launched the moment it was voted in with the result presented before Parliament within a year. The people writing up the report for presentation had concern the French language half of the report (all official documents have to be in French and English in Canada) had concerns it would be up to standard so they put in for a paperwork duedate extension to the federal government that had to vote on whether that was okay before the deadline which ended up not being a problem anyway. The report does seem to show that the council the government recieved from Canadian intelligence and police had fairly high concerns of the level of armed civilians in the convoy, the large amount of money coming in from far right groups in the US and the blockade style seige that would impact the welfare and food security of the average citizenship of the places the blockades were in place.

The second half is that after this report launched a Court Justice raised concerns with the report about whether some of the actions taken were an over reach on Charter protections (Think the Canadian version of the Constitution) so the whole report will be reviewed by the Justices of the Supreme Courts with the Canadian government body as a defendant. If they lose this opens the Government to being sued by citizens for damages and creates needed precedent for the execution of the Emergencies Act.

This isn’t a tyranny. It’s a beaurcratic system working as intended. This is a government BEING a government. But all the Conservative media needs to do is withhold context. That paperwork extention request is suddenly “the government not playing by it’s own rules because it extended the act for more time without a vote”. The justice who raised concerns to trigger the full panel review of the report is " definitive proof the government did wrong!"

Conservative politicians here want people to believe they live under a tyranny because they are the opposition and they are gunna be slimy to try and get more seats at the next election… And it’s easy because understanding law in context even under easy baby mode here in Canada requires dedication to learn and understand complicated structures and how the law works on both a technical and philosophical level. They aren’t interested in educating people why this is normal. It doesn’t behoove them to do so.