Previous
The last, worst G20
?A billion dollars doesn’t buy what it used to, we’re forced to assume.
Despite that much amount spent on “security”, we still see images of professional “protesters” smashing shop windows and setting police cars on fire, seemingly unimpoeded. We still see a motorcade of dignitaries holding up traffic for hours on the roads to and from cottage country, when the helicopters that could have whisked them into downtown Toronto fly overhead instead.
It would hardly be an overstatement to say that Mr. Harper’s hordes of security men, who were arrayed as if they belonged in Tiananmen rather than Nathan Phillips Square, didn’t have a clue what they were doing last weekend on the wicked streets of what absolutely turned out to be the Big Smoke. Okay, so you can’t just assume that because a bunch of people are dressed in black with bandanas across their faces so they can’t be identified, that they’re necessarily going to do anything nasty or illegal. You can’t stop them from assembling and strolling down the street.
But, having watched the film from other G8 and G20 conferences in various other cities over the last few decades, you might suspect that there are a couple of loose cannons amongst the crowd, folks who aren’t here because they’re remotely interested in protesting anything, but are here literally as agents of chaos. So maybe as they stroll down the street, you stroll with them, on either side of them, not very far apart so that a backup is never far away.
If they remain peaceful, you do, too. You listen respectfully to their speeches and stay alert until they disperse. But if they get wrangy, you’re ready. If blunt instruments suddenly materialize in their hands, you make sure they’re dropped. And if they start to jump on a police car, you put an end to the march, pronto. You don’t stand around and watch.
One comforting thought from this weekend is that if world leaders persist in holding these summits, at least Canada will never be asked to host one again this century. The French leader, Sarkozy, was pretty blunt when he said that even in spending a tenth of the money on the G20 next year in his country, he can pretty well guarantee a more successful effort. One would hope so.
So now we can tear down the fences and drain the fake lake and return all the police to the municipalities who apparently don’t really need them on a warm summer weekend (do you think maybe we’re overstocked?), and reflect on whether it was a good or bad idea to spend the money in this fashion.
As we said last week in this column, it is to be fervently hoped that the G20 never physically happens again, that the powers who decide these things conceive of a better way for consensus to be gathered. Or next time, hold it somewhere outside the G8, maybe even outside the G20, somewhere where they can’t even conceive of wasting the kind of money we did.
Somewhere where a billion dollars still gets you something.
