Queens Park G20 Demonstration

Yesterday was the Mass Demonstration Calling for an Inquiry to the G20 Summit at Queens Park in Toronto.  I attended along with some members of the Green Party of Ontario from Toronto Centre. The turn out was pretty good with about 150 people attending. Here are some pictures I took, and some of the news items about the event.

I was asked by the makers of this film to make a comment for a follow up they are working on. All in all it was a success and hopefully an inquiry will be called soon.

The Toronto Sun Story

http://underoccupation.com/g20/

Mass Demonstration Calling for Public Inquiry into G20 Summit

The following is from the Facebook event page for this event. I have added links, images and made minor grammatical changes. 

Please attend this event if you are able to.

WE "THE PEOPLE" DEMAND JUSTICE & ACCOUNTABILITY

WE DEMAND A PUBLIC INQUIRY

The police and governments of Toronto, Ontario and Canada, have now proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they THINK they can literally round up hundreds of citizens, gathered together to exercise their Charter rights to protest, for no real, legal or discernible reason-AND THAT WE THE PEOPLE OF TORONTO, ONTARIANS AND CANADIANS WILL SIMPLY STAND IDLY BY

Suspension of civil liberties

------Just snatch and grab them off the streets, and thrown them in a cage, in many cases without access to legal counsel and in a few cases after being threatened or physically harmed by the police services.

The arrested citizen then has to bear the cost of trying to defend themselves. If the police acted illegally where is the accountability? 

The citizens of this city again have to bear the cost of trying to prove that, and the public pays the damages. Not one single person in government or the police agencies has been held accountable. So in fact, the police are totally and utterly unaccountable. 

The bureaucrats who made the decision to round up peaceful protesters, or just people walking down the street, are unaccountable. 

The politicians are also unaccountable, as apparently they have veto power over investigating themselves and apparently don't even have the guts to conduct any kind of investigation, instead some semblance of an investigation has to be conducted by the Ombudsman. 

Who the hell is accountable? 

So WE THE PEOPLE if the police can illegally detain Canadians without any kind of accountability or oversight, how is this (in any functional way for the citizen) any different from a police state? 

Arbitrary arrests and detentions on the basis of secret laws that nobody knew about, with no accountability.  

That is the very definition of a POLICE STATE. WE THE PEOPLE are still absolutely appalled by what we saw on that weekend and shaken to the core by the hundreds of examples of police brutality that we witnessed and experienced and utterly disgusted by the silence and sheep like acquiescence from the people who are supposed to be representing all of us in Toronto and Ottawa. 

January 8, 2011

Queens Park -Toronto, Ontario

2:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Please attend and please bring your video camera to help protect the demonstrators.

As we have seen the police are free to do as they like without repercussion unless they are caught red handed.

As we have seen last summer in Toronto it is unsafe to freely protest

even though this is our CHARTER RIGHT!

Canada’s prostitution laws unconstitutional, court rules

A Toronto judge has struck down Canada’s prostitution laws, effectively decriminalizing activities associated with the world’s oldest trade.

“These laws, individually and together, force prostitutes to choose between their liberty interest and their right to security of the person as protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” Justice Susan Himel of Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice said in Tuesday’s landmark decision.

The long-awaited judgment had been on reserve for nearly a year.

Himel said that while she has concluded the laws amount to a serious violation of the Charter, she has imposed a 30-day “stay” on her decision to give lawyers for the federal and provincial governments, as well as the women at the centre of the case, an opportunity to make fuller submissions on whether her decision to invalidate the laws should be placed on hold for an even longer period of time.