Tomb
The federal government arms itself to host foreign countries
With the largest “security operation” in the history of Canada set to unfold in Toronto this weekend the dominant mood in the city is a heady mixture of fear and loathing.
The official posture of course is one of abject fear — fear of a terrorist attack; fear of an assassination of one or more world leaders; fear of violent protests and carnage in the streets — which is written across the face of the city in the form of an impenetrable three-meter high security fence. Fear has justified the exorbitant security price tag; fear will necessitate the safety checkpoints and the insane gridlock resulting from the closing of major traffic arteries; fear has caused banks businesses and schools to pre-emptively shutter their doors and wait for the storm of democracy to pass them by.
But the loathing is there too brewing in acrimonious town-hall meetings Internet forums and activist organizations that are promising to take to the streets en masse. It is the loathing of people who are instinctively suspicious of “big capital” who wonder why their supposedly democratic leaders must fortify themselves behind security fences and conduct their business in secret who question how the rhetoric of “public safety” is used violently to suppress dissent and protect the interests of the wealthy.
For many the single largest bone of contention in this case has nothing to do with the G20 itself and everything to do with the stupendous cost of hosting the summit in the downtown core of Canada’s largest city.
But then hosting international economic summits has always been an expensive proposition. Just ask Jason Kenney Canada’s Minister of Citizenship Multiculturalism and Immigration and the Conservative MP for Calgary southeast. When the federal Liberals hosted a G7 economic summit in Halifax in 1995 Kenney — then a spokesman for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation — was highly critical of the $8.1 million that the government had committed to host the event. The federal government Kenney argued “should have chosen a location which wouldn’t cost that kind of money.” Surely an advanced nation like Canada “has conference sites where it can host dignitaries without having to spend millions of dollars sprucing up the environment” he added.
Fifteen years later the Conservatives have seen fit to hold the summit in Toronto rather than Halifax and to spend something on the order of $1.2 billion instead of the $8.1 million that had so outraged Canada’s future minister. Where Kenney had once bemoaned the wasteful “sprucing up the environment” his own government has spent $1.9 million installing an artificial lake inside a downtown media centre in order to impress foreign journalists.
Of course the fake lake is merely one set piece in what promises to be political theatre on an epic scale. A colourful cast of thousands will take to the streets for any number of causes including aboriginal rights gender justice anti-globalization global poverty and global warming. They will dance and mingle with some 10000 uniformed police officers and another 1000 private security guards collectively known as the “Integrated Security Unit” (ISU). To put that number in perspective bear in mind that Canada currently has about 2600 troops deployed in Afghanistan.
The ISU has been equipped with all manner of gadgetry to make life miserable for the rabble-rousers. There’s the “Long Range Acoustic Device” or “sonic cannon” a crowd dispersal weapon capable of emitting an ear-splitting blast over vast distances (imagine a smoke alarm audible from a distance of 1.5 km). Electronic signal jammers will be employed to block all cellular transmissions within particular areas. Teams of private security contractors will administer magnetometers (airport-style walk-through detectors) and X-Ray belt-driven scanners. More traditional measures — water canons tear gas tasers rubber bullets — will be employed as necessary. And snipers will be keeping a watchful eye over it all from their heavenly perches.
Contemplating this muscular demonstration of state power it’s hard to shake the feeling that this city has gone very slightly mad. Business people have been warned to dress casually in order to avoid molestation by protestors: apparently these bloodthirsty hordes will go after anything in a suit. Authorities have ripped out all the saplings within the so-called “Red Zone” for fear that the trees might be used as bludgeons. The city isn’t preparing itself for protests; it’s bracing for the arrival of the Incredible Hulk.
The full catalogue of disruptions is seemingly endless. The public and Catholic school boards have cancelled all school buses on the Friday before the summit leaving some 45000 students at home. The University of Toronto has taken the particularly craven measure of closing the downtown campus which includes evicting all residence students from campus housing. Three Blue Jays games have been relocated to Philadelphia. Weddings have been cancelled. Art galleries and theatres are closed. Makeshift detention centres have been opened. Hospital beds have been cleared to make room for the influx of casualties. The United States has issued a travel advisory warning Americans to stay well away from downtown Toronto.
Of course if you don’t like any of this you’re most welcome to voice your concerns in the designated “Free-Speech Zone” in Queen’s Park — the very name of which suggests that the rest of the city will exist in an Orwellian state of enforced silence. Personally I see very little to be gained in declaring one’s allegiance either “for” or “against” the G20 — a nebulous and self-contradictory entity that somehow accommodates our own political interests with those of China Russia America Saudi Arabia Britain South Africa Indonesia India and the European Union (itself a vast and incongruous political conglomeration). But the fact that our authorities have seen fit to establish the Free Speech Zone and to enforce its boundaries at enormous expense is itself cause for protest. I’ll express my opinions wherever I please thanks and I certainly don’t need the government’s permission to do so within a policed “zone.”
One wonders what a sharp young conservative would have to say about this curtailing of free speech to say nothing of the disgustingly profligate cost. But then 1995 must seem like an awfully long time ago for minister Kenney.
