I think sometimes that we're all prisoners of the expected. The federal government just spent over a billion dollars on the expectation that there would be trouble at the G20, and even brought in offensive laws that would be welcome in totalitarian countries to deal with the potential violence.
Protestors showed up to provide the expected violence, and the media - well-prepared with their own expectations - broadcast the expected pictures, highlighting the expected violence, while non- violent protestors made the expected complaint that their actions had been lost in the melée started by the expected few.
A few who are now so choreographed they have their own cutesy name - the Black Bloc - and their own trademark outfits. (Isn't that funny? They say they are anarchists, but they have a uniform. They need to do some research on what "anarchist" means.)
Why bother? Seriously.
No one is listening, anyway.
The leaders, safely insulated behind security barricades, were basically unreachable by the demonstrations. If they saw anything at all, they saw a few television shots of street violence, with broken windows and burning police cars.
Face it: broken windows and burning police cars aren't a well-thought-out statement about political ideology, whether they're happening during a G20 summit or just after the latest hockey playoff win or loss. It's just breaking glass and the occasional looting opportunity.
The leaders didn't hear a message about the fact many people feel disenfranchised by elite meetings of the heads of the richest nations.
They probably didn't hear much beyond the murmurings of their own minions, and the usual glad-handing banter that accompanies international meetings ("I bet you a beer my nation's soccer team beats your nation's soccer team. Oh look, a 0-0 draw. That's surprising.")
The location doesn't matter, either: the leaders aren't going to see much of it, and whether there are canoes on the lakeshore in Huntsville or not, you somehow can't imagine that any one of the leaders is going to hop aboard and go for a paddle. As a backdrop, you could use pretty much anything.
But, you say, there's the opportunity for journalists and other government officials to get an idea of what a wonderful place this is.
Baloney.
Journalists at the summit are herded like sheep, working odd hours, suffering from jet-lag and unfamiliar beds, and badgered by telephone calls at all hours from their newspapers and television stations, asking if the expected violence has burst out anywhere. If it hasn't, "Why not, and why did we spend so much sending you there?" And if it has, "Get your butt moving and see if you can get tear-gassed for a colour piece."
It would be much better if we shed the expected and simply sent the leaders off somewhere relatively uninhabited to see if they can work out something worthwhile. Whether they're in a bunker in Toronto or a bunker in Dieppe, N.B., the experience is pretty much the same, and the leaders could pursue the same purpose.
If the meetings actually do have a purpose anymore.
Officials reportedly spent 45 hours wrangling the final communiqué into a form of tortured official language that everyone could accept as meaning something, and that still had enough loopholes for every nation to safely wriggle out through, if they so wish.
Elements of the communiqué had been the subject of discussion and back-and-forth negotiation long before the summit occurred, and what we got was the showtime portion. Lookit the leaders go!
This has all become some great expensive morality play: the leaders of the G20 perform their ritual dances for a parade of media that follows them, while outside the security fence, and every bit as choreographed, protestors march and, as always, a certain number of them require tear gas as their theatrical smoke.
It's like a Super Bowl halftime show, but with bricks and thrown excrement. (Wait a minute: I'd prefer a Super Bowl halftime show with bricks and thrown excrement. It would cost a fraction of the price, it would be over much, much sooner, and it would have about as much impact. "Look, the G20's over. Must be time for the second half.")
The only thing about it is that we paid through the nose for this performance.
I can't for the life of me understand why.
Russell Wangersky is The Telegram's editorial page editor. He can be reached by e-mail at rwanger@thetelegram.com.
Yawn, it's the super-duper G20 show
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- Published on June 29th, 2010
- Published on July 20th, 2010
- Russell Wangersky
I think sometimes that we're all prisoners of the expected. The federal government just spent over a billion dollars on the expectation that there would be trouble at the G20, and even brought in offensive laws that would be welcome in totalitarian countries to deal with the potential violence.
Protestors showed up to provide the expected violence, and the media - well-prepared with their own expectations - broadcast the expected pictures, highlighting the expected violence, while non- violent protestors made the expected complaint that their actions had been lost in the melée started by the expected few.
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Comments
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- Russell
- - July 20th, 2010 at 13:03:02
Ken: Fintip's pretty thorough and always makes a good case, and his arguments are pretty straighforward this time, as always. I'd only argue with one small part:if you actually go back and read my column about the Highway Traffic Act, you'll see that I don't actually support the changes anywhere - what I said is that, given the fact they're made as driving rules rather than under the Criminal Code, they will probably be successful even in a challenge to the Supreme Court. The same can't be said for the rules made in Ontario under the Public Works Protection Act, because those rules clearly interfere with several parts of the Charter. The tricky bit that I was trying to point out in the Highway Traffic Act is that driving is not a right, even though it is essential for everyday life. And that's where the HTA changes will probably be successful, while someone will challenge the PWPA regulations, post-G20, and win a hollow victory that they were a violation of rights (hollow, because by then the police will have used them for exactly what they wanted to use them for). There might be successful suits for damages, though. I think the real difference is that I have a more pragmatic view about how the HTA changes will wriggle through the courts, while Fintip thinks the HTA is the right place to take a definitive stand on personal rights and freedoms. And he may well be right. Russell Wangersky
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- Billy
- - July 20th, 2010 at 13:02:58
Jolly good show, Fintip & Russell!
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- OH MY
- - July 20th, 2010 at 13:02:57
Fintip, stop it with the sophistry. And Ken, relax. The two are like comparing apples and oranges. You have a RIGHT to walk on the public right of way. There is no RIGHT to drive. Driving is a highly regulated, licensed, and strictly controlled activity, with legitimate restrictions on driving by age, time of day, type of vehicle, and state of sobriety. Making sure that drivers do not drive after drinking is a legitimate exercise in protecting the public. Of course, it is illegal in this province to be drunk in public, another example of legislation intended to protect people, even if it means protecting them from themselves, and so even the RIGHT to walk the sidewalk is not unlimited. Yes, the sidewalk-walking in the road is also prohibited. And no, we are not headed down the slippery slope with the improvements to the Highway Traffic Act; instead, hopefully we will bury fewer Matthew Churchills. So, Fintip, stop the foolishness.
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- ken
- - July 20th, 2010 at 13:02:43
Answer the last comment please Russel. I'm very interested. Without a rebuttal I will be forced to lose faith.
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- fintip
- - July 20th, 2010 at 13:02:41
No one can accuse Mr. Wangersky of not being able to suck and blow at the same time. Says Wangersky, the federal government just spent over a billion dollars on the expectation that there would be trouble at the G20, and EVEN BROUGHT IN OFFENSIVE LAWS THAT WOULD BE WELCOME IN TOTALITARIAN COUNTRIES ... It was barely a week ago that Wangersky was defending the newly expanded powers of police in this province to stop, detain and subject drivers to medical tests without cause, warning or caution. Because these new powers were included in the Highway Traffic Act and not the criminal code, and because they were ostensibly for a good cause (keeping drunks off the road), then reasoned Wangersky, they werent really an infringement on our basic rights. It was, of course, the government of Ontario and not the federal government which secretly rushed through unprecedented new policing powers for the G8/G20 albeit at the behest of the federal government. Ontario took advantage of what Id like to call the Wangersky Wormhole to abrogate the rights of its citizens. Rather than have the feds toy with the criminal code and thereby invite an immediate charter challenge, it upgraded 71 year old wartime legislation called the Public Works Protection Act to allow police to arrest, strip search and hold without legal recourse anyone walking the streets of Toronto. Like Wangersky, politicians felt that this back door infringement of human rights was more likely to fly under the radar of human rights watchers. As it turns out, of course, most of those detained were peaceful protestors or indeed merely people going about their business in the downtown. Very few of the thugs who were separate from the protest group and who were responsible for widespread destruction of property were ever stopped let alone arrested. As the case with our own Highway Traffic Act amendments, these new laws are increasingly undermining our civil rights and putting us on a slippery slope to a police state. It is easy and even appealing at times to rationalize one such small encroachment but over time it portends the death by a thousand cuts of our democratic birth right. Sad to see what the People have fought for, so valiantly for so many years, to be protected from the arbitrary actions of the state can be relinquished so easily for the sake of political convenience. Sadder still to see it carried out with the full endorsement of newspaper columnists like Wangersky.
