Today’s front page of The Toronto Star carries an editorial by the Star’s publisher, John Cruickshank. Titled, “A brutal spectacle that failed a city and its people”, the piece doesn’t even attempt to disquise its disdain for the G20 conference, its world leaders, and the police mandated to protect them during the meetings. A few excerpts from Cruickshank’s editorial will illustrate my point:
The G20 security strategy has been spectacularly successful at cocooning the world’s leading politicians and staggerlingly ineffective at protecting the property and peace of mind of Torontonians.
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By bringing in thousands of heavily armed strangers and throwing up barricades everywhere to regular traffic, frightening off good and decent citizens, Canadian authorities created a ghost town in the heart of our city.
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And most protesters conducted themselves faultless as the global good and great met behind rings of gulag-like fencing and battalions of police beating Plexiglas shields with batons in a primitive show of might.
And in what I can only assume is the naive ramblings of a man who probably has never experienced personaly the on-the-edge-of-disaster power of a protesting throng, infiltrated by hooligans intent of mayhem at any cost, he claims:
The only force that can prevent vandalism and mayhem in a city is the presence of its population.
Why then, I ask Mr. Cruickshank, did I watch live television broadcast Black Bloc thugs smashing windows, spray-painting walls, and destroying vehicles while hundreds of citizens stood by – not stopping the vandalism, but photographing it? And why did those same citizens berate the police as they desperately tried to keep crowds under control so that even more destruction did not occur?
Further on in his piece, Mr. Cruickshank writes:
The strategy that ensured G20 leaders would never have to see a Canadian who wasn’t a politician, a police officer or a waiter lacked even a glimmer of common sense when it came to the security of Toronto and Torontonians.
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Canadian authorities knew that this overweening show of paramilitary hubris would draw the violent dregs of nihilism from around the world. Previous summits offered stark and certain warnings. Given that, the attempt to provide security for the city and its inhabitants has been a sad and distrubing failure.
In my view, it would not matter where a G20 summit was held. Those intent on violence and mindless destruction of property would find a target for their hooliganism. I do, however, agree with Mr. Cruickshank, and with Toronto Mayor David Miller (who did have words of praise for how the police handled themselves) that the downtown core was not, given the ubiquitous violence around these events, the best venue.
But having ackowledged that, I commend the law enforcement officers who served as best they could in the circumstances in which they were placed. And I would ask the publisher of Canada’s largest circulation daily to tone down his rhetoric which seems more aimed at scoring political points against Canda’s Conservative government than it is in providing reasoned discussion about important political and social issues.
It is sad when a mainline publisher stoops to conjuring images of police states and freedom-denying politicians who couldn’t care less about the everyday lives of citizens when writing about a significant international summit. Surely the issue deserves more reasoned discourse than this.
One can only speculate on what the editorial would have said had a major terrorist event taken place. When leaders of 20 nations gather in one place, it is an extraordinary setting requiring extraordinary precautions.
I decry the mindless destruction of property, and sympathize with those who have experienced hardship through no fault of their own. But I am grateful that we live in a free society, and that freedom always comes with cost.
