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G20 Embarrassment for Harper

Posted on 28 June 2010

Okay, it was Canada’s turn to host the G20 and we had a responsibility to do it in spite of the fact that in my opinion it is just a high priced photo op. You can’t really tell me that the positions of the member countries wasn’t already set before the conference started and for those that feel that “face time” between world leaders is important, they could have accomplished “face time” at another time and place without spending over $1 billion and wrecking a city.

To start with why did they put the G20 in Toronto? The Harper government is telling us that they wanted to show off Toronto. I don’t think that anyone involved in the G20, foreign government or press, were intending to do any sightseeing other than the the drive in from the airport. The 427 and the Gardiner Expressway aren’t that exciting.

The G20 could have been held in Huntsville immediately after the G8. The facilities and security were all set up already. It would have saved a ton of money, they wouldn’t have needed a fake lake and the protesters would have been partially controlled by the mosquitoes. Huntsville could have been secured and controlled a whole lot easier than Toronto.

Why did the government spend a billion dollars on security in the first place. There are always protests and riots at the G20 meetings and no matter how much you spend on security, the protests are going to happen. By announcing that a huge some of money is going to be spent on security and by keeping the protesters as far away as possible from the conference, the government basically threw down the gauntlet and dared the protesters to try to disrupt things. They did. Nothing makes a person or a group more determined to do something than to say they can’t and go to extremes to prevent them.

The protesters could have been given a venue to make the case closer to the conference, negating the need for marches and given air time on the media to present their message. The majority of protester were law abiding legitimate protesters who had a real concern and wanted to be heard. The trouble makers just wanted to create havoc and destruction and could have been controlled easier in a controlled dedicated venue than out on the city streets.

The destruction to the downtown businesses and the disruption of every day life to those who use and work in the downtown core of Toronto should have been foreseen and will add substantially to the costs of this conference. I don’t know exactly what the $1 billion security was intended to secure but apparently it had little to do with protecting the businesses and residents of the downtown core. If it was, it was a dismal failure and was a substantial waste of money.

The Harper government has said it wanted to show off Toronto to the rest of the world. The message the rest of world got was Toronto can’t control protesters with $1 billion dollars and the only images of the weekend in the news were of confrontation and mayhem. God help Canada if they try to promote it.

To be fair, I thought the police did and admirable job considering that the job they were given was basically impossible to do and did prevent an escalation of violence by their self control and professional behaviour. The cards were stacked against them from the beginning.

Once again Harper has wasted a ton of money on a badly thought out idea and embarrassed the majority of Canadians while spouting his success. He really believes that BS baffles brains and unfortunately he’s right in a lot of cases as is evident by his polls.