How We (Canadians) Agonize

The G8 and the G20 delegations have come, they have departed. Canada feted world leaders.

World leaders meeting to reach out to one another in a hail-fellow-well-met atmosphere of getting to know one another on a personal level. They are the political movers-and-shakers of the world. Their personalities are as diverse as the countries they represent. Among them sober, honest, well-meaning and even capable minds. Along with the authoritarians representing as democrats, the slightly insane as well-balanced, the autocratic egotists as concerned with the well-being of the state of the world.

Most of these world leaders are a combination of all those human characteristics. All of them own more than their share of hubris. Most of them are reasonably sincere in their wish to represent the best interests of their countries. They discuss, between them, matters of great world moment. Global finance, security, jurisprudence, social unrest, poverty.

They want to be viewed with respect and they want to view themselves with respect, and this they achieve by the motions required of world leaders to take the stage and lead.

Toronto survived the onslaught of tens of thousands of political hangers-on, news media, NGOs, protesters, and lived to tell the tale. To some it's not a very enlightening tale, to others its satisfactory, but more might have been accomplished. In fact, nothing much was accomplished; the proof of what may be accomplished is yet in the future. But agreement was reached to be agreeable, generally, to the positions put forward.

So, while the politicians and the heads of state discussed issues and made recommendations, thousands of social activists; said to total between ten to twenty thousand, greeted the trained and prepared integrated police and security forces whose purpose it was to ensure that the demonstrations be orderly and not come within spitting distance of the key G20-assembly buildings in downtown Toronto.

It remains a puzzle why police did not immediately step in and arrest both the thuggish events and the thugs involved in torching police vehicles and smashing shop windows, but their attention was, presumably, invested elsewhere. A majority of Toronto residents appear satisfied that the police did their job and did it well, while impressions outside Toronto are that better police work could have been done.

What Canadians take for violence, represents muted dissent elsewhere in the world. What the world takes for violence represents nothing resembling what took place in polite Toronto. Violence is cracked and bleeding heads, and plenty of them, along with the occasional, unfortunate death. With whole neighbourhoods trashed, and lots of looting, and threats and not rubber truncheons but live fire.

Of course comparisons of this kind are rather invalid. Can we really compare civil life, police agencies and freedoms guaranteed under the Canadian Constitution with what occurs in other parts of the world, particularly what is termed the free world? There is, of course, Greece, where demonstrations can get fairly wild, and there is France, where hundreds of vehicles can be torched. And there is Iran where your life can be forfeit.

And then there is Canada, and the country living up to (or failing) the expectations of its people. And so we have the agony of introspection, and how things might have been done better than many people perceive them to have been done. The police have congratulated themselves on their cool. The mayor of Toronto proudly congratulated the Toronto police for their restraint. And suggested another venue next time around.

Both individuals involved in peaceful demonstrations, and those merely gawking, along with some reporters, have claimed to have been involved in incidents where police were rude, uncivil and even physically brutal. It isn't easy being a police officer anywhere, at any time, and certainly not in such a tense, adversarial atmosphere.

It'll all come out in the wash.