Activists call for G20 inquiry, resignation of Toronto police chief

TORONTO – Toronto’s police chief should step down and a judicial inquiry must be held to look into "police and political abuses" during last June’s G20 summit, civil rights groups said Friday.

The Council of Canadians, Amnesty International, the Ontario Federation of Labour and individual activists said G20 reviews by Toronto Police, the Ontario Ombudsman, the Office of the Independent Police Review and others aren’t enough.

"Amnesty International welcomes the reviews undertaken post-G20, but they fall far short of a comprehensive public inquiry that would provide a full accounting for the human rights violations that occurred around the summit," said Amnesty’s Toronto Chair Shanaaz Bokool. "We are not just looking for police accountability. We’re looking for political accountability."

Police Chief Bill Blair must resign for allowing officers to hide behind the "thin blue line" of silence and refusing to identify police who were videotaped hitting protesters, said labour federation president Sid Ryan.

"I think we’ve got no choice but basically to say the chief of police should step down, but not just the chief of police," said Ryan. "I do think that the provincial Liberal government has a lot to answer for in terms of the secrecy and the way they allowed this fraud to be perpetuated on the public. I think a lot of heads should roll."

Blair must resign for the "havoc and mayhem waged by police" during the G20, said York University political science professor David McNally. A judicial inquiry would help hold politicians responsible for their role in the summit weekend, he added.

"When you are the chief in command of such a debacle, it is your responsibility, you wear it, and there is no alternative if you want to restore public faith in the judicial and policing systems than for Blair to resign," said McNally. "There is a political command and control side of this whole equation, which is why we need also to have elected officials held accountable."

Blair was not immediately available to comment Friday on the calls for his resignation, but he told Toronto radio station NewsTalk 1010 the Toronto force had learned lessons from the G20 weekend.

"My responsibility to the people of Toronto is to critically and objectively examine everything that happened and share that with the people, and we’ve done that in this report," said Blair. "With the great clarity of hindsight, we see that there are things that could and should have been done better."

Ontario’s Liberal government "has a lot to answer for" after passing a secret law that it allowed the public to believe granted police special powers of arrest during the summit, said Ryan.

"The secret amendments to the Ontario Public Works Protection Act became the fig leaf used to justify the mass violation of civil liberties during the G20, yet the very substance of this law turned out to be deliberately misleading," he said. "This confusion was not the result of miscommunication, but it was an act of wilful and deliberate deceit to make the public believe that police had the legal authority to violate their civil rights."

The civil liberties groups dismissed the report released Thursday by the Toronto Police Service into the G20 as a "joke."

In the 70-page review, the force admitted it was not properly trained or equipped for the tactics of some protesters during the G20 riots.

"It is a complete evasion of their responsibility for stripping citizens of their rights and for massively abusing police powers," said McNally. "Rather than a few bad apples, there was a systematic problem that took place during G20 policing, not just isolated incidents."

The police reported 1,118 people were arrested during the G20. The vast majority were released without being charged or had their charges withdrawn or dismissed by the courts. Thirty-nine protesters reported being injured during the arrests while 97 officers were hurt.

Earlier this week, Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin criticized the Ontario government’s so-called secret G20 law, which led to widespread confusion about the extent of police powers, confusion the Liberals made no effort to clear up with the media or the public.

"It culminates into the granddaddy of all secret manoeuvres, which was the non-publication of a regulation which extended extraordinary, likely illegal, powers to the police during the G20," said Marin.

Also this week, Premier Dalton McGuinty again declined to apologize for the secret law, which he admitted the government should have communicated better. McGuinty said if there was to be a public inquiry into the G20 weekend, it would have to be called by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"It was his G20," said McGuinty. "It was his invitation. It was his choice to bring it to Toronto. It was his police predominantly that ran the security for this major undertaking."

The activists hope many of the protesters arrested during the G20 last June will show up Saturday for a one-year anniversary rally at the Ontario legislature.