In Nova Scotia, Canada, the provincial government is running scared of the truckers' protest.
How scared?
Well they just passed an emergency declaration that bans not just blocking traffic in general, but specifically bans a gathering of people beside a road from gathering and cheering in support of the trucker protest, and only the trucker protest and no other.
Cheer by the roadside for BLM or any other favored cause? Cool by them.
Cheer on the freedom convoy? Fines for doing so range from $10,000 to $100,000 Canadian. Clearly the edict is designed to chill support for the trucker protest under penalty of law.
In the USA, this sort of law would be shot down pretty quickly in Court as a First Amendment violation in terms of not being content neutral and having massive viewpoint discrimination.
Canada, however, has no such First Amendment protection, and their Charter of Rights and Freedoms which declares it protects free expression - and standing by the side of a road doing nothing more than cheering on a protest is indeed freedom of expression - comes with a notwithstanding clause that the government can use to override Canadian's rights laid out in that document whenever it deems convenient. This means freedom of expression in Canada and its provinces can be suspended whenever the government feels it may be inconvenient.
Clearly, the protesters simply need to rename the event to “Freedom in 2023” convoy and then section c of the law won’t apply and gathering and cheering by the roadside can take place so long as they don't announce they intend to interfere with the normal flow of traffic.
That is one of the problems at making a law aimed at a specific protest only.
Talk about crafting a law directly at a single protest, sheesh. Methinks the Nova Scotia government really doesn't like the idea that average Canadian is getting fed up with their arbitrary and capricious regulations.
