09-10-2021, 03:31 PM
(09-10-2021, 02:53 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:(09-10-2021, 01:55 PM)jeffster Wrote: Yes, spitting is an assault. How easy is it to charge, though, another story (we were told not to bother the police, as back then, police didn't care about stuff like that). I believe it is covered in the second link:
Yelling isn't an assault though, unless you're uttering threats (then it isn't called yelling). It might be considered disturbing the peace though:
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts...n-175.html
I believe following someone could be considered assault, depending on context. https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts...n-265.html
Again, easy conviction? Probably not, as this is sadly a common thing.
Again, being yelled at and chased off property seemed to be pretty normal. In speaking with some people, highest incidence seems to be Quebec.
Unfortunately we have a lot of goons in our society, and they're not just fascist (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatche...-1.6168611) that are doing the attacking, it's all walks of life, and it seems that not many PM's can escape being attacked.
It's happened to both Trudeaus, it's happened to Mulroney, it's happened to Chrétien, it's happened to Harper (this one was a little more serious). I can't recall or Martin, Campbell. Too young for Clark.
Yelling isn't the problem, but pursuing someone *IS* a problem.
If these things aren't being prosecuted, that's a different issue, but that is going to be driven by our social acceptance of this harmful (and illegal) behaviour.
Frankly, I was extremely disturbed to hear our regional councillor Michael Harris agree with the idea that Candidates should just suck it up and accept that they're going to be assaulted on the campaign trail.
Normalizing and tolerating this behaviour *IS* the problem.
As for what happened to the PM, that's a different story. Yes, those kinds of things do happen on occasion, but it's not common at campaign events...yet in this election the liberals have repeatedly been shut down by violent protestors. I didn't see that happening in other elections.
Even worse, the person who threw the shoe, or the pie, a the PM was immediately arrested, the person who threw rocks has not been. Why?! That's unacceptable.
Normalization has been happening for a long, long time. P.E.T. did it, Chretien did it (the pie incident, he didn't want talk), leader of the PPC just did it (egg incident), as did JT (gravel incident). Harpers case was different, since the nut job was pretty close to actually assonating the PM.
I agree it should never happen. And thugs like that should be charged. But in a system of equality, which we *should* have, we then need to be charging everyone that does this. Regardless of background.
Mike Harris, btw, is a Progressive Conservative MPP for Kitchener-Conestoga. He's had similar incidents happen to him. Unless you're talking about the other Mike Harris, same party, same riding, same incidents, different dude.