G-8 and G-20 Recap
Posted Jun 28, 2010 03:29:18 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The world’s most influential leaders are headed home after a weekend of summits that had to compete for headlines with violent protests.
The G-20 wrapped in Toronto yesterday, with the leaders agreeing to a Canadian-led plan to cut deficits and stabilize the world economy.
But the politicking at the conference centre was overshadowed by further protests in the streets outside. Yesterday police broke up a demonstration outside a detention centre where hundreds of protesters arrested Saturday were being held.
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The G-20 leaders are leaving Toronto with an agreement agreed to cut their deficits in half by 2013 and stabilize their debt loads by 2016.
Prime Minister Harper pushed hard for a deficit-cutting deal. He and like-minded allies had to convince colleagues worried the belt-tightening will hurt global trade and undermine the recovery.
To ease such concerns, the final communique also cautions that cutting too deep or too fast could plunge the world back into economic turmoil.
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A special court set up to handle G-20 summit arrests will be busy today. Dozens of people have travelling to a Toronto-area court to bail out friends and family members arrested during the G-20 rioting.
Five courtrooms have been set aside to hear the cases in a building on the outskirts of Toronto.
Reporters and spectators going into the courtroom are being searched. More than 600 people were arrested over the weekend, mostly on Saturday, after protesters torched police cars and vandalized stores.
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A Montreal protest group is planning to hold a news conference today to denounce police handling of the G-20 protests.
Some members of the Montreal-based Anti-Capitalist Convergence were among those arrested. Police say they were found with bricks and bottles of liquid –but a group spokeswoman brushed that aside. Dani Royer says her group unites a number of groups and individuals who protest using different methods.
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Police and intelligence agencies fear the so called Black Bloc tactics used by militant protesters at the G-20 is on the rise. C-SIS spokesman Marc Boyer says authorities have been following the type of protest tactic for years.
But Boyer says no one expected the kind of violence that erupted on Toronto’s streets on Saturday. Despite the thousands of police officers on hand, it turned into the most violent outburst the city has ever seen.
The Black Bloc strategy involves militants hiding amongst a legitimate protest group, then suddenly donning black clothing and breaking away to commit acts of violence against targets representing capitalism.
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Police arrested two people yesterday as they emerged from a manhole in downtown Toronto, and two more nearby.
Summit security officials says they don’t know what the pair were doing underground.
They say they believe it was a G-20 related issue, but don’t think it was a larger security threat.
One man says he spent 10 hours inside the G-20 summit detention centre for accidentally taking food off a police officer’s plate. Edward Canavan says that watching a police car burn in downtown Toronto on Saturday, he noticed a box of food nearby and decided to grab a couple of oranges — not realizing the food had been left for police.
Canavan says he soon found himself under arrest — but on the upside, he says the oranges were tasty.
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The G-8 and G-20 meetings may have been the most expensive three days of meetings ever held. But was the $1.24 billion dollar tab worth it to Canadian taxpayers?
Depends on who you ask. The G-8 host, Huntsville, Ontario, gained some new infrastructure.
But in Toronto, G-20 security paralysed Canada’s financial hub and left dozens of businesses vandalized. American tourists were urged to stay away from the city and many restaurants said it was a brutal weekend for business.
Ontario M-P-P and former Winnipeg mayor Glen Murray says the summits were probably great for Canada to host — but he adds it’s hard to understand why you’d hold a G-20 in the heart of Toronto.
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Forget global economy — bring on the soccer, on in this case perhaps more accurately football.
Germany’s Angela Merkel and British P-M David Cameron broke away from the G-20 discussions yesterday to watch the second half of the marquee England-Germany tilt at the World Cup.
They and their officials gathered in front of a big screen T-V for what was described as “a good-natured” hour.
But it was probably a lot more fun for Merkel, as Germany pounded England 4-1.
