Reference no: EM133186901

The purpose of the assignment is to give you an opportunity to use the skills developed throughout the course to evaluate an extended argument text. You should evaluate the argument using any of the methods we have covered that you consider relevant to the text. You also are allowed to do research if you think that will assist in your evaluation (e.g. if a claim is made in the text and you need to check if it's true). You may need to check any references mentioned in the article to determine whether the arguments given are supported by the evidence cited, but you are not expected to standardise or evaluate these texts separately.

Concise and economical writing is required. If the evaluation is longer than the word count, the excess words may not be marked (but 10% leeway is acceptable). Make sure you reference any sources you use, but doing research outside these texts provided is not a requirement.

Detailed description:

 A broad standardisation of the article provided below (see week 6, also refresh on the basics of standardisation from week 3).

1. Evaluate the arguments in the article (30 marks).  You can structure this evaluation how you prefer, for example, in order of when things are mentioned in the article or by theme (e.g., all fallacies in one section, all rhetorical devices in one section). Ensure that you discuss:
2. Use of rhetoric/language in the article (week 10).
3. Evaluate any particular argument types that you recognise from class (e.g., conditional arguments (week 4), categorical arguments (week 5), generalisations (week 7), causal argument (week 8) analogical arguments (week 9)) that you find in the main text (if there are relevant arguments in the supplementary text that are used to back up the claims in the main text, you can evaluate these too).
4. Comment on and evaluate any fallacies you find in the text (week 12)
5. Comment on the strength of any remaining inferences and plausibility of any unsupported premises (may require research) (week 6)
6. Give an overall conclusion about whether the argument is good or bad, weighing up the evidence you have previously evaluated.

Text to evaluate:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act on Feb. 14 and revoked its use nine days later. The act, which had never been used before, gave authorities broader powers to clear the "Freedom Convoy" protesters who had cemented themselves in Ottawa, including freezing the bank accounts of people involved in the protests. These protesters were mostly demonstrating against vaccine mandates required for crossing the border. These mandates were impinging on the livelihoods of hard-working truckers whose only crime was to choose not to be vaccinated. The act should never have been invoked in the first place.

Everyone was left a little unclear on what happened when Trudeau was adamant that an emergency situation was still at hand - then 9 days later, when little seemed to have changed, the emergencies act was revoked. It must have been because voices were rallying to say no and call for greater accountability. If the only reason to revoke the act was in response to being held accountable, this was just a political ploy. Was there an emergency at all?

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association and Canadian Constitution Foundation were both challenging the use of the act in Federal Court. They contended that Trudeau's invoking of the act was unjustified and as such the use of the act right now is unlawful. You'd be hard-pressed to come up with any expert in constitutional law who believed Trudeau made the right call.

There were also other mechanisms available to bring much-needed scrutiny to how the government handled the act. One of those was the grilling of government politicians and senior public servants at committee hearings.

The House of Commons finance committee heard from witnesses on exactly how the incredible bank powers the government had given itself were unfolding.

"Even a $20 donation to the Freedom Convoy after Feb. 15 could result in the donor's bank accounts being frozen," a Postmedia story on the committee meeting begins. This is truly troubling.

Whatever you think of the convoy, it's outrageous that someone should have their bank account frozen without a court order or investigation because they contributed a small sum of money to what has always been a peaceful if divisive protest movement. Unfortunately, Trudeau's view is that anyone who doesn't agree with him is a Nazi sympathiser. When the opposition party objected to the use of emergency powers, he accused them of supporting Nazis just because some of the people at the protests had swastikas or confederate flags[1].

If the emergencies act is allowed, what's to stop Trudeau from freezing people's bank accounts if they post something negative about him online? He could then silence all dissenting voices, similar to what happens in Russia. Attacks on liberty must be stopped before it's too late.

Even Sen. Pierre Dalphond, a Trudeau appointee and a highly respected former judge, has said he had planned to vote against the act because he believed these very financial issues violated people's rights under the law.

Further, Canadians in general are against the use of the Emergencies act. In a Mainstreet poll, people were asked whether they support or oppose its use. 39% of respondents strongly oppose it, 38% strongly support it, 13 % somewhat support it, 5% are somewhat opposed, and 4% were unsure.[2] The survey interviewed 1323 adults living in Canada. Automated telephone interviews (Smart IVR) were used to collect the responses. Respondents were interviewed on landlines and cellular phones. The survey is intended to represent the voting population in Canada.

Not only were protesters treated unjustly, their protests were completely reasonable since vaccines don't even work.

When countries like Israel and Iceland achieved high vaccination rates towards the end of 2021, they started seeing their case counts rise dramatically. In early 2022, Ontario have over 70% twice-vaccinated people but still had a fourth wave. Clearly, vaccines are ineffective.

Expecting people to reveal their vaccine status at the border to prevent covid is like asking people to reveal their financial status before entering a store to prevent thievery. It doesn't work, it infringes on privacy, and it's discriminatory. No one would accept a "financial status" policy. And neither should we accept vaccine passports.

Good riddance to the Emergencies Act.