A Commentary by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper
With the G-8 Summit hosted this third week of June, 2013 in Ireland, it is hard not to recall the G-20 summit Canada’s Harper government, with the blessing of Ontario’s McGuinty Liberals, hosted in Toronto, Ontario a mere three years ago this June.

John Pruyn, being dragged way by riot police after having his artifical leg removed. The Welland Ontario federal government worker and part-time farmer was locked in a makeshift jail, then released without any charges or explanation for his detention, a day later. He had been sitting on the grass near Queen’s Park in Toronto, listening to citizen activists offer talks on jobs, environmental protection and other issues before being dragged away.
I imagine that few people would remember what transnational business transpired inside the heavily fortified walls and fences of that summit, which officially took place on June 26 and 27, and yet had a heavy presence in the city of Toronto, Ontario for the better part of a week. But few will forget the epic clashes that between police and demonstrators and others, including citizens that had absolutely nothing to do with those demonstrations – clashes that included hundreds of arbitrary arrests in what Ontario’s independent, provincially appointed Ombudsman Andre Marina later described as a “sad legacy” of “ugly scenes” where Canada’s respect for civil liberties gave way to “martial law.”
It remains, in my view, one of the most disgraceful assaults on free expression and democracy in Canada in the six decades since my birth and life in this country, and it was particularly disappointing that so many Canadian citizens, not to mention politicians, reacted by saying that’ you don’t have to worry’ about a massive police assault ‘if you have done nothing wrong,’ and that the people who went to what were mostly peaceful rallies and were hauled off to makeshift jails ‘must have deserved it. …. They should have stayed home.’ Continue reading




