Police attack on G20 protests condemned across Canada

Canadian labor unions, the parliamentary New Democratic Party, and civil rights, community and religious groups have all joined in demonstrations to condemn police attacks on protesters at the June 26-27 G20 summit in Toronto and to express solidarity with those arrested.

These attacks resulted in 900 people being detained, the most ever swept up in Canada during peacetime.

Protests in Montreal on July 1 also focused on how Toronto cops singled out Quebecers because they were speaking in French. About 50 Quebecers had been taken into custody on June 27 at a University of Toronto student building where they were being billeted. Another 150 were picked up during the actual marches. (Montreal Gazette, July 2)

According to Danie Royer of Anti-Capitalist Convergence, the group that organized in Montreal for the G20/G8 protests, 450 people from Montreal rode on buses to Toronto on June 25 but only 125 took the buses back.

Other protests on July 1 took place in Toronto, Windsor and Ottawa in the province of Ontario, as well as Winnipeg in Manitoba and Edmonton in Alberta. The Vancouver Community Mobilization Network has scheduled a protest for July 4 in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The Ontario section of the Canadian Union of Public Employees issued a statement saying its members had gone to Toronto on June 26 “to make our voices heard on economic, environmental, equality and trade justice issues which were ignored by the G20 leaders.”

It added that the union “actively supported and participated in the G20 protests.” While distancing itself from those accused of burning cop cars and damaging property, it went on to focus on what the cops did: “What we have witnessed is nothing short of the abandonment of the rule of law ... by a massive and heavily armed police force who were charged with overseeing them [the protests]. Due process, civil liberties and the right to peaceful protest have been the victim.

“It is a sad day in Canada when those who would peacefully protest, those who are charged with reporting on it, even those who simply happen upon it, are subject to the level of excessive and arbitrary force and violence we have all witnessed either in person or watching our televisions and computer screens.

“It’s a sad day when over a thousand people can be arrested and detained for hours, even days, without due process of their rights to legal counsel or any contact with family or friends, without any evidence that they actually broke the law, and with 700 being released without any charges.”

CUPE Ontario represents about 235,000 workers.

CUPE along with Amnesty International, the Council of Canadians and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association are calling for a full and impartial inquiry into the events. The Toronto police and the Ontario government are stonewalling any investigation.

The Globe and Mail, one of Canada’s major newspapers, has debunked the cops’ charges that the protesters were armed. Nevertheless, the police blithely ignored the growing furor over their brutal methods, which are amply documented by video clips on rabble.ca, a major alternative media presence in Canada.

The police left the area just before some demonstrators set fire to police patrol cars. Prominent Canadian activist Judy Rebick alleges the police had a secret agenda. Rebick wrote on her blog on rabble.ca, “They abandoned their police cars and allowed them to burn, not even calling the fire department until the media had lots of time to photograph them. They had a water cannon but they didn’t even use a fire extinguisher. Why?”

Rebick goes on to allege this inaction came from the “police playing politics, justifying the expense and responding to the critiques building all week about excessive and arbitrary police powers.”

What the cops did in Toronto on June 26-27 shocked a lot of Canadians who have not before experienced such naked police repression of dissent.