By Doug Draper
More than a hundred days may have passed since the chaos on the streets of Toronto during last June’s G20 summit But calls for a public inquiry into the security measures employed continue to mount and Ontario’s never-pull-any-punches ombudsman, Andre Marin, will soon be wading in with a report of his own.
Riot police marching the streets of Toronto near Queen's Park during this past June's G20 summit.
This October 5, civil libertarians lawyers and others ramped up their call for a full and open public inquiry into what unfolded in downtown Toronto when the summit was in session, and the province’s NDP leader Andrea Horwath vowed to soon introduced a bill at Queen’s Park for launching such an inquiry.
Late this September, the province’s community safety and correctional services minister, and St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley announced he was appointing Roy McMurtry – a former justice minister from the Conservative government (close to three decades gone now) of Bill Davis, who ran a left-leaning government compared to what we have provincially and federally now – to review an old law that apparently gave police excessive powers to arrest people for within five metres of a makeshift security fence around the summit site. “This law has been on the books since 1939, when we were probably worried about Nazi saboteurs. It deserves a review,” Bradley was quoted saying for a recent story in The National Post. Given numerous eyewitness reports and video shot in the vicinity of that fence during the summit, one might greet Bradley’s quotation above as an understatement.
Hardly a week after the G20 summit in late June, Marin, who operates independently as Ontario’s ombudsman, vowed to complete an investigation of who and why the provincial government applied that old draconian law around the security fence in 90 days. Well, the ninety days are up and depending how long it takes for Marin to write his report, we should be getting that one relatively soon.
John Pruyn and his wife Sue at their Thorold, Ontario home shortly after his arrest at the G20 summit. Photo by Doug Draper.
Niagara At Large found itself in the eye of the hurricane on this thing this past July when we broke the story here about John Pruyn, the 57-year-old Thorold, Ontario Christmas Tree farmer and federal government worker, had his artificial leg pulled off by riot police swarming those who came to raise awareness for issues like fairer global trade and climate change on the lawns of Queen’s Park. That story, posted on July 5 and still available by scrolling down through older entries on this site, received more than 40,000 hits from online readers all over the world. Niagara At Large promises to bring you all of the latest news and analysis on the Marin report and other investigations into the circumstances around the chaos on the streets of Toronto during the summit as soon as it become available.
We will also endeavor to get back in touch with those from our region who were on the streets and were arrested during that time for their update on an event that resulted in the most arrests of citizens at organized demonstrations – more than 1,000 – in Canada’s history.
(Visit Niagara At Large at http://www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to our greater binational Niagara region.)
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