...and the law, since they've been going crazy (I think that's the right word for it) during protests at the G20 meetings: see, e.g., this or this or scroll through all the material here. Oddly, this has gotten almost no coverage in the major media in the U.S., at least not that I have seen.
Meanwhile, the U of T simply shut its campus 'in honor' of the G20 meetings!
(Thanks to Denise Reaume for several of these pointers.)
UPDATE: Thanks to Ingo Brigandt for additional links:
Rape threats and sexual assault against female detainees:
http://drdawgsblawg.blogspot.com/2010/06/if-toronto-police.html
Amputee has his artificial leg ripped off by police before arrest:
A very detailed detention account:
http://backofthebook.ca/2010/07/01/how-i-got-arrested-and-abused-at-the-g20-in-toronto-canada/3476/
An excellent commentary by a constitutional lawyer on the secretly passed law that amounted to a temporary martial law in Toronto:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kZwps4CPwc&feature=player_embedded
Up to a point, this has figured in Canada's mainstream media:
Meanwhile, Michel-Antoine Xhignesse calls my attention to another piece on the secret declaration of a kind of martial law in the area of the G20 meetings!
What's happened to Canada?
ANOTHER UPDATE: Mohan Matthen (Toronto) writes to take issue with some of the preceding:
I was quite surprised by a number of misstatements in the pieces that you linked to in your post on G20 Toronto. I'll try to be brief.
With regard to the Public Works Protection Act, it is essentially about trespass on Government and Court property. There are two issues with regard to its use at the G20:
First, did the police have new powers granted them by any G20 related action? I don't think so. As the lawyer in the You Tube piece acknowledged, the Act has been in effect since 1939, and was once amended in 1990. So I think the "martial law" talk, insofar as it was meant to denote new powers, is misleading, at least.
The second issue is this. The Ontario cabinet proclaimed a large fenced off area around the G20 to fall under the provisions of the act. Now, what is scandalously incompetent (er. . . or something) is that this proclamation was not properly promulgated, so that people outside the designated area were subject to illegal search etc. The legal force of the cabinet proclamation was that it was illegal for people to be where normally they may freely go. But this area was fenced off in any case. The cabinet made it illegal to walk behind the fence -- to enter the Convention Centre, for instance -- but then nobody did or could have done that given the presence of the fence. The problem is that some people were illegally searched or questioned just outside the fence. (By the way, the number of arrests and detentions under this provision was, under different estimates I have heard, zero, one, or two. One was the number given in the interview.)
The lawyer in the interview, Paul Cavalluzzo, is a very senior and well-respected figure around here. I am sure he is very fine lawyer. But he made a big deal of the burden of proof provisions in the Act. Now, I really don't know the answer to the following question, but you do. Suppose I walked into my house one day, and found you sitting there. Is the burden of proof on me or on you to show that you were there innocently? The Public Works Protection Act simply extends a "trespasser is presumed to be in the wrong" answer to public property. If I was caught inside the Convention Centre during the G20 meetings -- like the soccer fan who wandered into the English dressing room at the World Cup, claiming to be in search of the lavatory -- the burden of proof would have been on me to show that I was not in the wrong. Similarly, the knife-armed individual who was found inside our Prime Minister's residence one night a few years ago.
There was, unfortunately, a number -- I don't know how many -- incidents where innocent bystanders were roughly treated by police. There were also a number of frighteningly violent acts -- mostly against property, it should be said -- by a small group of violent protesters, who (as at Seattle, London, and other such places) came to Toronto in order to disrupt the G20 in this way. There were also many peaceful protesters who thought it right to protect these violent few from arrest, mainly by shielding them. I don't doubt that they did so from the noblest motives. I see them as engaging in civil disobedience, and I am not against civil disobedience as such -- in fact, as a proud Indian, I endorse it as a form of activism. Putting aside any violence perpetrated on such people by the police, which I don't condone, surely civil disobedience protesters expect to be detained or arrested -- or at any rate can't complain if they are. I find it ridiculous for these people to say things like: it's my right to be at the corner of University and College (though police had ordered them away).
A large number of such people were arrested (nearly 1000). Most were released the next day. Charges are pending against about 200.
Sorry to have gone on at such length.
I'll open comments for those who want to address the issues raised by Professor Matthen. Comments must include a full name in the signature line and a valid e-mail address; they will be edited, as necessary, for relevance and content.
