The G8/G20 Summit in Toronto - Not a Welcome Sight

Isn't there a UN building in Geneva that's hardly ever occupied they can use?

They could just drop them all onto an isolated island and leave them there and we could just put hard working citizens in their places who have to manage much smaller budgets and do a better job of it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100626/...mit_protests_6

I especially like this part of the article:
WOW! I thought America was bad. I wonder if California will boycott Ontario now.

I can't say I'm surprised. Things like this can cause a lot of trouble, especially in Toronto. Canada is mostly a peaceful and peace-keeping nation, but Toronto is entirely different. It's our most populated city and many people are very fixed in their beliefs. One thing escalates to another and before you know it we have a riot.

I'd be willing to bet you that those doing the demonstrating are not from Toronto, in the main.

I'm very happy to see the demonstrators and the protests! $2,000,000,000 dollars of tax payers' money was spent so that world leaders could talk about spending less money and cutting costs in their countries! What BS - don't they know about conference calls? Surely a TWO DAY meeting doesn't have to cost $2 BILLION dollars!

And building a fake lake for reporters that cost $2 million dollars? It's absurd and wasteful! I'm very glad people are protesting!

That doesn't really matter - all of Canada should be outraged. The country is sinking under massive debt, B.C. and Ontario are both getting hit by the HST July 1: 15% tax on essential services now!

They aren't apparently from Toronto - they are referred to as the "Black Bloc" and have been under police radar for quite some time now. Unfortunately they specialize in vandalism and violence which ends up hurting the cause of the peaceful protesters who end up getting "lumped in" with this bad faction and ends up in a lose/lose situation. The police were very lenient with them IMO.

I've lived in and around Toronto for the past 45+ years and it is one of the safest cities in the world. How sad that it gets portrayed so badly all because of this faction.

I think it is very weak of the Canadian authorities to make businesses shut down for a month and not make the vandals PAY for their vandalism with $$$ or jail time.
Telling business owners they have no recourse if their businesses get vandalized is pretty cowardly if you ask me.

Whatever happened to the guilty being made to pay for their crimes?

I could be wrong, but I don't think the businesses are closed for a month - that may be a bit of an exaggeration.

As for $$$ or jail time, that is not determined yet since some arrests were only made today so it's much too soon to be crying "foul".

Sometimes it is good to wait for all the facts before making assumptions or expressing opinions based on erroneos or incomplete information.

I am just going on the assumption that the OP has correct information.

You are right - Kass did say almost a month. I must confess I did not go back and check that before I posted. My bad!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/201006...s/ynews_wl2885

I'm glad that there are many world leaders that are, finally, seeing the handwriting on the wall. I'm just sorry that ours is not one of them.

Toronto, any city who has hosted this monstrosity of a meeting feels your pain. The G8 Summit was held in Denver in 1997. Yeah, just 8 head honchos to hold their big photo ops and taking pleasure in hearing themselves blather on and on with no one else actually listening to them. Nothing is settled, nothing gets done, just a bunch of blow hards blowing hard.

So yeah, we had it almost 15 years ago and the preparations were similar. Huge fences around downtown, huge amounts of police presence, businesses forced to be shut down or why bother being open because no one could get to your business anyway. We were pretty lucky - the anarchists and hard-core protesters didn't hit Denver too hard. Nothing like some other cities have had. Nothing like you guys got.

I don't know if people seem to think that destroying something gets more attention to their cause or if they just want an excuse to destroy stuff. Probably a little of both.

But I have to say, I saw a columnist from Toronto talking with Bill O'Reilly and pretty much saying that it wasn't really the protester's fault that they went nuts because there was a pent up rage against the whole meeting (I don't doubt that). He also disagreed that the reason for the intense police presence and all that was because of the protesters. Not sure why they have all the security if not to prepare for the nutjobs? He said if it's going to take 20,000 police to do security for these people they "should just have it somewhere else." I guess if it's happening anywhere else in the world then it would be OK, just not in his city. Ultimate NIMBY. I'm pretty sure that O'Reilly didn't intentionally go looking for someone that out there, but he sure got him!

I was listening to a panel discussing this just last night and they were saying the Black Bloc tactics were to lure the police away from the meeting area where the leaders were meeting. It didn't work.

I work downtown and while the fence was a nuisance and police were there for about a week before, we were closed for one day not a month - just the Friday the G20 started (we don't work weekends anyway). Businesses were not shut down for a month, they just were worried that people would be put off coming to them because of the police presence and fence before it was fully enclosed.

I have worked through several of these summits and Toronto went way overboard in terms of costs and policing and to some extent the protests were worse because of that. There were plenty of people who had no intention of going who went to protest free speech after the laws were changed and we brought in police from the other side of Canada to help us.

I don't have an issue with G8/G20 leaders meeting, while they are pretty informal gatherings, they do discuss policy and sometimes it does need that personal touch to gain cooperation between countries which would be harder to do by teleconference.

However, London hosted it last year and spent just 30 million on security, Pittsburg just $18 million, we spent over $850mil (before the G20, who knows now) just on security (lets not even go there with the fake lake for the reporters and other stupid costs like that on top of the security cost)

Admittedly, we held both the G8 & G20 at the same time, increasing security costs but even $100million would have been and inflated amount when in reality, the protesters were not that bad. The clashes in London were just as bad and black bloc tactics were used by protesters there too : link to UK G20 news story - protesters broke into banks etc and the police had to deal with that (their initial spending was less than $30mill, that includes final costs), we had a few burnt cars, broken windows and spray paint. With the amount of police we had stationed in Toronto, we wouldn't have to draw them away from the fence, we had enough for all areas where there was trouble.

I think both McGuinty and Harper have a lot to answer with the security issues, both in terms of costs and 'secret laws' passed (although it strictly wasn't a law, that law is in place, the legislation designated the area a 'public works' so it would enjoy the same laws as hydro stations and water dams in terms of needing ID to get onto them)