Rights violated during G20
Posted Dec 7, 2010 02:10:23 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Ontario’s watchdog says the province was “opportunistic” when it granted police “wartime” powers during the G20 summit in Toronto.
The result, ombudsman Andre Marin says in a report today, was a “mass violation of civil rights” during peacetime.
Marin says the Liberal government quietly promoted the use of a “likely illegal regulation” to give police extravagant powers on the eve of the June summit.
The ombudsman says police then compounded matters with deliberate miscommunication about the reach of their new powers.
Police and politicians allowed everyone to believe the law gave police the power to demand identification and detain anyone within five metres of the G20 security fences.
In reality, the update of a 1939 law designed to protect public buildings during war allowed police to ask for identification from people entering the security zone, not outside it.
