Nearly two years after the G20 fiasco in Toronto, two reports issued last week by Ontario's Office of the Independent Police Review Director concluded that several senior officers of the Toronto Police Service acted unlawfully. Their preparations for the event and the orders they gave during the weekend are being blamed for the abuses committed by some rank and file officers, including beatings, kettling, mass arrests, and the horrific conditions at the detention centre.
But the police should not be left to bear the blame alone. They were only following orders. And those orders came right from the top. It was Stephen Harper who decreed that the downtown core of Canada's largest city be turned into a war zone, at the cost of over a billion dollars, all for the sake of a photo op lasting a few hours.
Or was there more to it? Did Harper intend to send a message to Toronto? To Canadians? We'll never know his real motivation. But we do know we couldn't count on our other elected leaders to protect us from his premeditated and cold-blooded show of force: Dalton McGuinty's provincial government secretly aided and abetted the illegal suspension of civil liberties, while Toronto mayor, David Miller, congratulated the police on a job well done.
In what was this generation's version of the October Crisis/War Measures Act, "… the G20 was a demonstration of just how stupid, arrogant, and brutish official Canada has become." And Christopher Hume has much more to say in this scathing indictment of the politicians ultimately responsible.
One can argue that Trudeau panicked and overreacted (certainly, no good reason has ever been provided for his decision). But at least the FLQ were real terrorists. They had carried out bombings. They had kidnapped a Québec cabinet minister and a British diplomat. They would later murder the cabinet minister.
By comparison, the so-called Black Bloc are hooligans, their vandalism the same as that seen after a Stanley Cup game. But while the hooligans were allowed to smash windows and burn a police car, unmolested, in front of the TV cameras, 5400 police were deployed to violate the civil rights of thousands of law-abiding Canadians.
Certainly any police officers guilty of crimes or misconduct should be held responsible and suffer the consequences. But so should the politicians.
As Catherine Porter points out, during the G20, politicians and police trampled our rights and most of us just sat back and let them do it.
Always thought it couldn't happen here? Think again: it already has.
Follow me on Twitter: @AeneasLane
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