Since this community is about being constructive, let me start off by saying there is a Canadian bill which passed in June 2024, Bill C-70, which can lead to harsher penalties for environmental activism and protest, including life-in-prison. A thread has been created to ask Lemmy users to coordinate and collaborate on creating a petition asking to undo the effects of that bill.
See https://mander.xyz/post/26781834
Now for quotations which may be the most relevant to this community.
https://sencanada.ca/Content/Sen/Committee/441/SECD/briefs/SECD_SM_C-70_Brief_CBACJS_e.pdf "I am writing on behalf of the Criminal Justice Section, (CBA Section) to comment on Bill C-70, Countering Foreign Interference Act. The tight deadlines before the Parliamentary Committees have only allowed time for a brief comment on the criminal offences component of the Bill at this time."
"The CBA is a national association of over 40,000 lawyers, law students, notaries and academics, and our mandate includes seeking improvement in the law and the administration of justice. The Criminal Justice Section consists of a balance of Crown and defence counsel from every part of the country. "
"The Canadian Bar Association Section is also concerned about s. 52.1(2)(i) which deals with the sabotage offence. This section vests the executive with the power to prescribe, through regulation, what constitutes "essential infrastructure" for the purposes of the offence. This leaves a key element of the offence to regulation and thus subject to the whims of the government of the day. More particularly, some political parties have been critical of, for example, foreign environmental group involvement in resource development."
https://sencanada.ca/Content/Sen/Committee/441/SECD/briefs/2024-06-10_SECD_SM-C-70_Brief_CCLA_e.pdf "an environmental protest group which blocks a road to a significant natural resource development may impede access to energy and utilities infrastructure (s. 52.1(2)(d)) and could be accused of seeking to endanger Canada’s security (under proposed s. 52.1(1)(a)). Or, a civil rights group whose protest blocks several major vehicular intersections in a city may impede access to transportation infrastructure (proposed s. 52.1(2)(b)), which, it may be argued, represents a serious risk to public safety (proposed s. 52.1(1)(c)). These are not speculative examples. A broad definition of national safety is contained in other federal legislation. Under s. 3(1) of the Security of Information Act, for example, a “purpose prejudicial to safety...of the State” includes adversely affecting “the stability of the Canadian economy…without reasonable economic or financial justification”."
"It is also important to note the distinction between motive and intent in the criminal law to appreciate the limited scope of the s. 52.1(5) criminal liability exemption. Even if a person acted with the purpose of protesting or advocating on a particular issue, they satisfy the requirement to act with intent if they were certain or substantially certain their act would cause any of the harms enumerated under proposed s. 52.1(1)(a) to (c). In such cases, the sabotage (essential infrastructure) offence would still apply to them."