A Comment by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper
(If you missed the February 25 airing of this Fifth Estate story on the policing at last June’s G20 summit in Toronto, it is titled ‘You Should Have Stayed Home’ and you can watch it online in its entirety at www.cbc.ca/fifth/2010-2011/youshouldhavestayedathome/ or if the link fails you, go to your search engine and punch in Fifth Estate and CBC and look in the ‘episodes file’.)
On Friday, February 25 , CBC’s investigative news program, The Fifth Estate focused on what arguablly was one the worst episodes of civil liberties abuse in Canadian history – one that unraveled close to our regional Niagara home, in Toronto, Ontario.
Riot squads, sanctioned by Canada's federal and Ontario governments, roam the streets of Toronto during last June's G20 summit.
The Fifth Estate piece, titled ‘You Should Have Stayed Home’, highlights “untold stories” of younger and older citizens from regions across Ontario and Canada, including many from our Niagara region, who gathered in Toronto during the G20 summit last June to promote environmental protection, fairer trade for our country’s workers, the preservation of publicly funded health care and a host of other social justice causes.
Too many of them – more than a thousand – were arrested and detained with none of the normal reading of their rights that a rapist or serial killer would get, even though many of them were attending peaceful rallies on the lawns outside the province’s Queen’s Park legislature. It was the largest mass arrest of Canadians exercising their right to dissent in the country’s history.
“They were the most unlikely of troublemakers,” says CBC in its own write-up on The Fifth Estate piece. “There were thousands of ordinary citizens on the streets at Toronto G20 Summit marching peacefully until the police closed in and shut them down. Many had gone downtown simply to see what was going on, only to find themselves forcibly dragged away by police and locked up for hours in a makeshift detention center without timely access to lawyers or medical treatment.”
Riot police block the way to Ontario's provincial legislature.
One of those “troublemakers” was John Pruyn, a Thorold, Ontario resident who is an employee of Revenue Canada and operates a small form that grows Christmas trees. After Niagara At Large broke his story last summer about being surrounded and pinned down, and having an artificial leg pulled off by police as he was sitting under the shade of a tree at Queen’s Park after listening to a host of labour, environmental and other leaders, the response from tens-of-thousands of visitors to our site was mostly positive.
Yet there were some, including a number from our own region, who argued that Pruyn deserved what he got, and what he got was more than a full day in a makeshift jail with little or no food and water and no opportunity to call a lawyer or member of his family, for simply going to these rallies. Some even argued that he was a bad father for being there with his young daughter, a university student who was there to support environmental issues she and so many others hoped would be a topic during the G20 summit.
That attitude speaks to the title of The Fifth Estate piece; ‘You Should Have Stayed Home.’ There is a percentage of Canadians – possibly a sizable one – who feel that people should stay home rather than participate peacefully in rallies while our government leaders and those from elsewhere around the world are assembling to make decisions that may impact on our lives for decades to come. These people are apparently oblivious to the reasons why so many of our forefathers fought and died in past wars for freedom and democracy, and have no idea why mostly young people in Egypt, Libya and other countries in the Middle East are putting their lives on the line for the freedoms we take far too granted here.
I urge everyone to check out this Fifth Estate piece, now available for online viewing on the programs website. Having said that, I suspect that those who feel that anyone who protests against the government deserves to be arrested and thrown in jail without a proper hearing will not watch this piece.
They will be the first to focus on the few under hoodlums – the Black Block that the police didn’t go after as they smashed store windows and trashed other property, as if they had anything to do with the many thousands like John Pruyn who gathered peacefully. Nevertheless, they will be among the first to condemn it with anonymous blog messages.
For a little bit more on this Fifth Estate piece, including a short video, visit CBC’s website www.cbc.ca/fifth/2010-2011/youshouldhavestayedathome
(Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to citizens in our greater Niagara region and beyond.)
Niagara At Large 
You’re right, Doug. I still don’t understand how the police were unable to distinguish between peaceful protesters and a few Black Bloc hoodlums. IMHO, the police were at the G20 meeting for two reasons:
– to protect world leaders
– to protect the public
They certainly failed to protect the public. In fact, they made Canada look like the terrible police states we’ve seen recently in Tunis, Cairo, Tehran & & Tripoli.
However, I don’t blame the civilian masters of the police – I blame the police establishment.
How could they let the Black Bloc get away?
How could they let peaceful protesters be beaten & arrested?
How could they embarrass the governments of Ontario and Canada, and every Canadian?
What’s going on in this country, that the police fail so miserably in keeping the peace?
(BTW, this same lousy policing culture is country-wide. It also happened in Québec City at the Summit of the Americas a few years ago. Instead of arresting the few thugs who threatened violence while normal citizens protested peacefully in parades and tent displays, the Québec police immediately shot tear gas into the crowds, and we suddenly found ourselves watching it on TV across Canada.)
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i watched it
not much new since what we saw on you tube during and after but a good doc nevertheless
to CBC: thanks! and BETTER LATE than NEVER!
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Great doc — worth waiting for. It was a terrific idea to show Blair (can we call him “Bliar” now, like his namesake, Tony?) and his lame reactions to new footage showing police manhandling protesters. If he is as totally inept as he claims (he doesn’t know where the orders came from?? Really??), he should have been fired months ago. If he is covering for higher levels of government, then what’s the payoff? At any rate, thanks to the CBC for a tight, professional production with considerable explanatory power for those unfamiliar with the events. And many thanks to you, Doug, for including here some of the important issues we were protesting ABOUT at the G20.
(That hardly ever gets mentioned — nor does the fact that important questions that were supposed to be discussed at the G20 never came up at all. Instead, what emerged from that expensive weekend was the announcement of austerity budgets, sooner or later, for citizens of the G20 nations. In other words, WE are going to pay for the global recession…What will be our response when we feel the brunt of the cuts yet to come, cuts that have the British out in the streets? How are our governments going to react when Canadians REALLY get mad?)
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Class action lawsuit against the police naming provincial and federal authorities who unlawfully arrested a 1000 or so peaceful demonstrators as protected under or Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Private members bill in both the Ontario Legislature and the Parliament of Canada requesting money to pay for the legal bills for the accusers.
It’ll take years but who cares, they’ll think twice about pulling this stuff off again.
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I was at protests at Montebello, Quebec a few years ago when Harper, Bush and Calderon met to discuss the “Security and Prosperity Partnership” – the SPP – an acronim for making decisions and trade deals behind closed doors about Canada’s natural resources and economy without public input or ratification by the House of Commons. Police tactics used in Montebello were similar to those used at the G20. Probably most of you can remember the 3 police officers who disguised themselves as “Black Bloc” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St1-WTc1kow and who were seen not only carrying but throwing stones and trying to provoke the peaceful protesters into violence, apparently so the RCMP, OPP and Surete du Quebec would have an excuse to fire tear gas and rubber bullets at the protesters, which they did. At least one Niagara resident made a formal complaint to either the RCMP or Ontario Ombudsman but I’ve seen no concrete action coming out of any of the complaints.
The SPP is illegitimate and so is the G20. Why host a G20 when we already have the UN? So world leaders can make decisions about the world’s natural resources including water, environment, international trade, foreign affairs etc without public input or scrutiny.
It appears obvious that police tactics used at the G20 were not designed to protect the public or the world leaders, but was politically motivated to silence dissent. Both Chief Bill Blair and Premier Dalton McGuinty need to be held accountable for this. Many of the tactics used were extremely suspicious, such as abandoned police cars. Why were they abandoned? Is there prooof that it was actually protesters who lit them on fire. Just as at Montebello there is video evidence that police were dressed as “Black Bloc” and may very well have helped or set the fires themselves. Why did the police cars not burst into flames earlier or explode weapons in the trunk? Were the gas tanks emptied and the police rifles removed from the trunks before the cruisers were abandoned? Why did it take at least 15 minutes if not longer for fire trucks to arrive on the scene? When vandals were damaging businesses on Queen Street why did it take 45 minutes and longer for police to arrive to stop them when police were visibly within distance of Queen St? All very suspicious. UnCanadian. And undemocratic.
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