G Forces

By Volodymyr Kish

I happened to be in Downtown Toronto on the eve of the G8/G20 summit meetings, held the weekend of June 25-27, and was disconcerted to find myself in a city that I did not recognize.  There were fences and barricades everywhere.  The police presence was overwhelming, and though they appeared more bored than menacing, the sheer number could not help but inspire a tinge of intimidation.  For the better part of a week, Downtown Toronto gave us a vision of what a police state looks like.  I had only seen the like once before and that was during the Orange Revolution in Kyiv.

Of course, I knew that this was all very temporary and had no real concern that our rights and freedoms were in any real danger. Nonetheless, it was a potent reminder of what can happen if we take for granted the privileges of living in the free and open society that Canada has built and nurtured over the few centuries of its existence.  As Ukrainians, we are all too familiar with what the other alternatives look like.

As it turned out, this grand show of force proved unnecessary as there were no serious disturbances or riots.  There were the expected handfuls of anarchists who took the opportunity to set a few police cars on fire and smash some store windows on the Saturday, but their numbers were thankfully few and even the majority of legitimate demonstrators who were much larger in number condemned these destructive tactics and disassociated themselves as much as they could from these rabble-rousers and agitators.  Regrettably, on the Sunday, the police who were embarrassed by the anarchists’ rampage the previous day, indulged in a large number of unnecessary pre-emptive arrests that undermined any positive PR they had gained by their coolness and restraint to that point.

The size, scope and expense of the security arrangements have caused some civil rights advocates to condemn them as a serious threat to our basic rights and freedoms.  I am not inclined to think so.  Canada has shown over the past century that it is a resilient and just society that inevitably finds a proper balance between individual rights and freedoms and the structures and regulations that are necessary to ensure a stable and prosperous society.  We have had challenges in the past such as the War Measures Act or war time internment, but inevitably any such overreactions have proved to be temporary aberrations that are eventually corrected and a better equilibrium reached.

I am less concerned with the human rights aspect of this, as with the unconscionable cost of it all.  No doubt we have all read the news stories of how the security bill for these meetings will cost us Canadian taxpayers more than one billion dollars.  This is proof enough that the format of such meetings is not only obsolete but ludicrously and extravagantly unaffordable. 

That is not to say that they are not necessary – within this globally interconnected world of ours, it is more important than ever that the leaders of the major countries communicate and dialogue on a frequent basis.  However, there are far more practical and less expensive ways of doing so than was done for this last set of meetings.

The simplest and cheapest way is to take advantage of modern audio-visual and communications technology.  Video-conferencing is well established and would eliminate travel and security concerns altogether.  Of course, nothing beats face-to-face contact, but that too can be arranged without bringing a large metropolis to a standstill and requiring tens of thousands of security personnel.  Such meetings could be held on a large military base, a small island resort, on an aircraft carrier or even a location such as the United Nations which has security already built in. 

I have no idea whose bright idea it was to have the G20 summit meeting in the heart of one of the busiest cities on this continent, but I would suggest that individual be relieved of any meeting planning responsibilities in the future.