One Year Later

...and nary an answer for why so many were arrested, so many businesses damages, so many police swung batons, or why Toronto hosted the G20 Summit in the first place.

This weekend marks one year since the G20 summit descended on Toronto and left little but destruction, arrests, and doubt in its wake. The National Post's Megan O'Toole handily compiles where matters stand some 364 days after the summit, among the more depressing aspects being that just 24 of the 1,118 people arrested during the weekend have so far been convicted of any charges, meaning more than a thousand people were locked up under questionable circumstances for essentially no good reason. For small businesses, the toll is no less gut-wrenching – the federal government has paid out only $1.9 million to companies who were affected by the destruction and loss of revenue wrought by the summit, a far cry from the $11 million sought by 367 businesses who did nothing wrong but situate themselves in the heart of the nation's financial capital.

Gerald Caplan of The Globe and Mail saves a wallop of scorn for the Black Bloc, whose decision to turn Queen and Yonge streets into battlegrounds led to a police crackdown the likes of which the country had never before seen. “They legitimate an authoritarian, violent response,” he writes. “They divide and weaken social movements. They discredit progressive ideas. They alienate ordinary citizens from just causes.” (That doesn't even touch on their intellectual rationale for their actions, which give the less enlightened membership of the tea party a run for their money as far as illogic goes.) “They are no better than the nihilistic Vancouver rioters, who at least had the grace not to pretend to noble goals,” says Caplan, and we agree. Truly, too few commentators, particularly from the left, have spilled enough ink on the idiocy of the Black Bloc's selfish anarchy and their responsibility for Toronto's nightmare.

The Toronto Star, which has done more to shed light on the whole fracas than all the province's and country's investigative forces combined, renews its call for a public inquiry to answer dozens of questions yet to be answered. Namely: “Why did Prime Minister Stephen Harper ignore advice and hold the summit in downtown Toronto in the first place?” and “What possessed Premier Dalton McGuinty to grant police additional powers without telling the public and (Police Chief Bill) Blair to mislead the public about the extent of those powers?” Those first two men have said what amounts to bubkus in the year since the crackdown scarred a generation's view of the police and those who tell them what to do. That is hardly the legacy either would man should want to their prized summit to leave.