Do We Live In A Democracy? The Answer Seems To Be ‘No’ For Neo-Cons Among Us – They’ll Tell You Not To Question Government. Just Stay Home And Shut Up!

A Commentary by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

Over the first week of this July, Niagara At Large experienced an unprecedented number of hits on this fledgling news and commentary site – close to 40,000 in a span of two days – for a story we posted first on a Thorold, Ontario amputee, John Pruyn, who was attending a peaceful rally during the G20 summit on the lawns of the provincial legislature at Queen’s Park in Toronto.

Toronto during G20 summit - 'This ain't Canada right now'.

The 57-year-old federal employee and part-time farmer says he could not maneuver his one good leg and walking sticks fast enough for police lines sweeping in on the Queen’s Park lawns and ordering people who had attended the rally to  “move.” So in short order, he had his artificial leg ripped off by riot police, had his hands tied behind his back and was held in detention for 27 hours before he was finally let go without charges.

While in detention, he was never read his rights and was not allowed to make a phone call to a lawyer or member of his family. Instead, he and other detainees were kept with their hands tied behind their backs, making it hard to perform the most simple of functions like going to the bathroom. In other words, they were afforded fewer rights than those enjoyed by notorious killers like Paul Bernardo and Clifford Olsen when they were taken into custody.

Indeed, as one security cop was heard saying in a video to a group of young people who were questioning why their backpacks should be searched by police before they could walk further down the roads of Toronto; “This ain’t Canada right now.”

It ain’t Canada right now? If it isn’t, or ain’t according to this police, then what was it during the G20 weekend – North Korea? The former Soviet Union?

Whatever Canada was during this secretive meeting of 20 leaders and some 10,000 faceless bureaucrats – the latter who did most of the carving up of our lives with trans-continental corporations before the summit even began – it is not the country I was born in to and grew up feeling proud of four and more decades ago. It is not the country my older friends and so many other Second World War veterans I have been honoured enough to meet and interview over the years put their lives on the line for over the skies of England and on the ground in Europe.

Is this our country?

Maybe that cop, who was caught on video saying; “This ain’t Canada right now,” and some of his tough friends who dragged an aging amputee like Pruyn away ought to be shipped off to the fighting in Afghanistan where they can show how tough they are over there. Show some real guts and engage yourself in a real shooting war against people who see us as the enemy instead of playing storm trooper with your own fellow citizens.

Sign up for a mission or two in Afghanistan and show us how much gut you have really got for our country, for God’s sake!

As for those who think people like Pruyn deserve to be arrested for being there, would they feel the same if they were rounded up by cops in a rally over the HST, income tax increases or some other issue they might want to speak out on?

For those who may feel what happened in the streets of Toronto around police security during the summit doesn’t apply to them, let me remind that a year ago this spring, we caught a dose of this medicine in south Niagara when hundreds of Fort Erie area residents gathered around their hospital to protest plans by the provincially sponsored Niagara Health System to close the hospital’s emergency care services. If you want a dose of how the province and police respond when it comes to something like that, click on the following video of a newscast by CHCH TV. Here it is –  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM6ri8YUiiY .

Did you watch that? And is that where we want to go as a country? They take a doctor, one who is respected in his community and who cares enough about his community to demonstrate the closing of the community’s hospital emergency services, and bend him over the hood of a police car and handcuff him as if he was a crack dealer or some brute who had beat the pulp out of his wife and children. Is that where we want to go in this country?

We pay the salaries of our police and the cost of policing is becoming ever more of a burden on property taxpayers across this region and province. We pay for them and they have slogan that says; “to protect and serve.” But who are they protecting and serving?

Is it us or them? – the political and corporate elites that are diminishing our health care, downsizing and down waging our jobs, despoiling our environment and transporting more of the opportunities for a future for present and future generations of Canadians offshore?

Don’t the police we pay for belong to unions too? Even while they are ordered to push back members of unions representing countless tens-of-thousands of other Canadian workers, and others who gathered in Toronto during the G20 summit to speak for decent job opportunities in this country, are they not concerned about the future of their jobs too?

Whose side are they on? Who are they protecting and serving, and why?

All of these questions and more speak to the need for a thorough, independent public inquiry into the security activities of police and our provincial and federal governments during the recent G20 summit in Toronto.

Join the gathering in Montebello Park this coming Saturday, July 17, supporting a public inquiry on the G20. You can learn more about that upcoming event by clicking on Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com.

(Click on Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to residents in our greater binational Niagara region.)