412
Canada separatists accused of ‘treason’ after secret talks with US state department
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
412 points (99.5% liked)
World News
52854 readers
2192 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF OCTOBER 19 2025
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Hi there, you seem to be confused about how laws work in Canada. See, unlike our neighbours to the south, we have this crazy notion that civil rights do in fact matter.
That includes the right not to be subject to investigation without reasonable suspicion of a crime. There being no evidence that someone has not committed a crime is not a reasonable basis for an investigation.
Do you drive? Prove you haven't ever committed vehicular manslaughter. Do you own bolt cutters? Prove you've never used them to break and enter. Do you have alcohol or weed in your home? Prove you've never sold them to minors. Have you ever been near a school? Prove you're not a child rapist.
See how this works? Saying that someone was in a situation where they could have a comitted a crime cannot be the basis for a criminal investigation, or else we'd be investigating everyone, all the time.
The Alberta separatists are pathetic scumbags, but they're not automatically criminals just because you don't like what they did. That's toddler logic.
I think you're mistaking "investigation" with "prosecution" or something else. The cops can investigate literally anyone. You can hire a PI to investigate anyone.
There are limits however on what investigative actions can be legally taken by cops based on the evidence they have. Even with no evidence, they can still do things like interview people who know the POI, even follow them around in public. They can't, for example, detain them and beat a confession out of them, or search their house willy nilly.
If we're going to get technical, yes, there are extremely limited forms of investigative action that could be taken based on a broad suspicion. But without "reasonable grounds" the police are forbidden from interviewing suspects, detaining people, or performing any form of search or seizure. That's not an investigation, that's walking up to a guy in the street and going "Yo, did this guy do any crimes?" What on earth do you imagine would come out of that beyond wasting police time?
As for your comparison with private detectives, do I really have to explain that constraints on state power only apply to state actors? Private detectives are, by definition, private individuals. And they're still basically constrained in all the same ways anyway, because you can't just break into someone's house or hack their computer. I know PIs in Canada. 100% of what they investigate falls into exactly two camps; infidelity, and insurance fraud. That's it. They're not Sherlock Holmes.