Inquiry, Please

There is a rare consensus in the op-ed pages today, with editorialists across the spectrum calling for a public inquiry into the G20 summit.

The Ottawa Citizen’s editors are convinced by a Canadian Civil Liberties Association report released Monday that recommended a public inquiry into police conduct at the G20 summit in Toronto last June. Calling the allegations in the report “chilling,” the paper’s editors reject Premier Dalton McGuinty’s assertion that the internal reviews already underway are enough. “[O]nly an independent, well-funded and comprehensive inquiry, with power to call witnesses, can get answers about the decision-making that led to the events of G20 weekend.” Furthermore, the Citizen says any inquiry should be broad enough to take into account the emergency laws passed by the Ontario government before the summit and the federal government’s decision to hold the meeting in Toronto in the first place.

The Toronto Star was apparently caught off guard by the report and ran only a brief editorial on the issue Tuesday that consisted largely of quotes from protesters’ testimony. But even that is enough to boil the blood, especially statements made by John Pruyn, who was told to “hop” by a police officer who had just ripped off his prosthetic leg.

There are strong indications that abuse of power was systemic during the summit, says the National Post editorial board, and at the very least an inquiry is needed to push cops to “devise better methods to distinguish between real threats to public safety and garden-variety demonstrators … In an ideal world, police would be able to learn such lessons based on their own internal investigations. But so far, all signs from the Toronto police are that the organization is more concerned with circling the wagons.” The Post notes that police misconduct should especially concern many conservative Canadians, “who embrace the principles of limited government and civil liberties.”

We in the Newsroom wholeheartedly agree. It’s not every day you see the Post and the Star run similar editorials, let alone arch-conservatives aligned with anti-globalization activists. The support the idea of a public inquiry has received from across the ideological spectrum is indication of how clear the need for one is to Canadians, and it's our elected representatives' job to listen.