Profound, far-reaching public inquiries followed state-initiated violence at Oka, Quebec, 1990 and Ipperwash, Ontario 1995. Democrats and civil libertarians now also demand a thorough federal inquiry into official misdeeds surrounding the 26-27 June 2010 Toronto G20 summit. Inception of such an inquiry would herald major progress in Turtle Island and across the Pacific.

Nathalie Des Rosiers, general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association welcomed the appointment of former Ontario chief justice Roy McMurtry to lead an examination of the provincial Public Works Protection Act, legislated in 1939 to counter former “homefront security threats.” (Toronto Star, 23 September 2010, p A8)

Des Rosiers argued that the McMurtry appointment “does not change the need” for a broader public inquiry into all aspects of the Toronto G20 catastrophe.

“We’ve got a law that’s been on the books since 1939 and that law was put into effect during wartime – probably they were worried about Nazi saboteurs at that time,” Ontario Community Safety Minister Jim Bradley told the Star . “It may have made sense in 1939- it still might make sense, who knows - in 2010, but I want McMurtry to look at that from various aspects so he will look at it very carefully.”

Bradley wavered: “the ball is in Ottawa’s court if there is to be a judicial inquiry.”

Ontario New Democratic Party leader Andrea Howarth countered: “that’s a cop-out because McGuinty’s cabinet secretly rushed through the regulation that Toronto Police later misused to erroneously claim anyone coming within 5 metres of the summit fence would be required to provide identification or submit to a search.”

“From day one, we have been calling for a full and complete inquiry into this debacle,” affirmed Howarth, condemning G20 police arrests of 1015 people, only 278 of whom were judicially charged.

The Star reported on 22 September 2010, p A15:

“It was a regulation under the [Public Works Protection] act, quietly rubber-stamped by Premier Dalton McGuinty’s cabinet in early June, that designated areas within the downtown G20 security zone as a ‘public work.’ Misunderstandings over the significance of the regulation catapulted the Ontario government and Toronto police chief Bill Blair into controversy. McGuinty’s cabinet made the temporary change at Blair’s request. The chief wanted clarification for officers if they had to apprehend anyone inside the restricted area, including the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and Royal York hotel, where world leaders met June 26-27. The Star first revealed the unusual modification June 25, three days before it was to expire and eight days before it was published in the Ontario Gazette. After that story, the prevailing, incorrect impression was that police had been given power to arrest people who refused to provide ID or submit to a search within five metres of the security zone’s outer perimeter. But Blair, McGuinty and then community safety minister Rick Bartolucci, who defended the ‘extraordinary’ powers during the summit, didn’t set the record straight until two days afterwards. Blair admitted there was no five metre rule, saying: ‘No, I was trying to keep the criminals out.’ "

The Star continued:

“Bartolucci was replaced by Bradley in a recent cabinet shuffle, taking Bradley’s former post as minister of municipal affairs and housing as a sign of McGuinty’s displeasure over the fiasco. McGuinty later acknowledged there was no five metre rule. It was constantly published in print and republished on TV and radio and there was no foundation in fact. ‘And we should have acted on that sooner to make it clear.’ The regulation was published on the specialized provincial legislation website known as e-Laws on June 16, more than a week before the G20. But the site is not well known. ‘When passing regulations under this act, we have to make sure we provide the public with proper information and notice,’ a senior government official said . . . McMurtry is expected to report next spring after consulting lawyers, police, civil liberties groups and others. He will also consider recommendations from Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin’s previously announced review of the act and take into account the Toronto Police Services Board investigation of the G20 command structure and policing model. The province’s Special Investigations Unit is also probing five alleged incidents of police brutality against protesters. A number of the more than 60 complaints to the ombudsman’s office were critical of the government for confusing the public in the way the policy change was communicated, Marin said in July.”

PETER RUSSELL LAUDS IPPERWASH AND RCAP INQUIRIES

Peter Russell, political scientist and legal scholar, studied the major constitutional shift towards epic official public inquiries following the crises at Ipperwash, Ontario, 1995 and Oka, Quebec, 1990. Prof. Russell epitomized his scrutiny of Canadian institutions in Constitutional Odyssey: Can Canadians Become a Sovereign People? (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004); Toronto Public Library call number 342. 7103 RUS.

Russell observed in 2010:

“The horrific use of an armed tactical response unit to break-up a family picnic and barbecue beside a provincial park demonstrated clearly to senior officials of the Ontario Provincial Police, if not to their political masters, that a new approach for policing Aboriginal occupations was needed. Soon after the Ipperwash tragedy, OPP Commissioner Gail Boniface began a process of reforming the policy for policing Aboriginal occupations and blockades based on a peacekeeper approach developed by the RCMP. This approach recognizes that breaches of laws at issue in these events are not simply violations of trespass and public convenience laws but violations of treaties and other laws governing Canada’s constitutional relations with Aboriginal Peoples.

Russell then continued in his chapter “From Oka to Ipperwash” in “This is an Honour Song: Twenty Years since the Blockades”  (Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2010) pp.41-43:

“The police intervention in these situations should aim at minimizing violence while a credible process of resolving underlying issues through negotiations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal governments is mounted. [Ipperwash Inquiry Commissioner] Judge Linden reports progress in applying this policy in various flashpoint events across Canada and strongly recommends such a policy for Ontario... A significant consequence of both Oka and Ipperwash was the establishment of major commissions [of] inquiry into relations with Aboriginal Peoples. It was the Oka affair’s stark demonstration of the absence of policy mutually acceptable to Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canada that moved Prime Minister Mulroney to commission retired Chief Justice Brian Dickson to consult with Aboriginal Peoples on the terms of reference of a commission on inquiry and advise him on the composition of such a commission. The result was the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) . . . The Commission conducted a process of public consultation that took it to over 100 Aboriginal communities and towns and cities in every part of Canada. RCAP was the first time in any settler country that there was an effort to have Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people review their past relationships, study their present conditions and develop a plan for going forward together.”

In conclusion:

“The Ipperwash Inquiry fulfilled a promise made by the Liberal party when it was in opposition and was established soon after the McGuinty Liberals gained power in 2003. The Ipperwash Inquiry was led by a single judge, Sidney Linden, who carried out an extensive program of public consultations with both Aboriginal communities and non-Aboriginal communities in Ontario and invited and received submissions from many Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal organizations.”

At time of publication, the editors of This is an Honour Song identified Peter Russell as Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Toronto, and noted that professor Russell chaired the RCAP research advisory committee and served on the research advisory committee for the Ipperwash Inquiry.

Late evening on 6 September 1995, an Ontario Provincial Police sergeant fatally shot unarmed Anishnabe activist Dudley George, who was peacefully protecting community graves and cemeteries on their land claim beside Ipperwash Provincial Park in southwestern Ontario.

Conservative Party of Ontario Premier Mike Harris had closed off options of negotiation and communication which could have resolved park disputes peacefully.

Recently, another dedicated Anishnabe activist, Marilyn Poucachie of Barriere Lake First Nation, 300 km north of Ottawa, drove nine hours to Toronto from her Quebec community to oppose Canadian Government tyranny at Barriere Lake and also the Toronto G20 summit.

The ACTivist reported arbitrary police maneuvers on the University of Toronto (UT) campus and across Toronto during the summit protests, and studied UT penetration by state stratagems.

Poucachie told Toronto Native News that “The Canadian government has been trying to assimilate … our people for a long time… Barriere Lake First Nation has a traditional government system, a system that the Indian Act does not recognize . . . The Canadian government have been trying to impose Section 74 in our community from the Indian Act . . . It favours the Canadian policy on how we should govern and select our leaders . . . That will extinguish our Aboriginal title and treaty rights . . .” (July 2010, p.2)

Stephen Harper aide Tom Flanagan describes the Indian Act as “the most important piece of Indian legislation in Canada . . . It was a consolidation of previous colonial Indian legislation into one act, with power over Indians centred in the superintendent general of Indian Affairs.” Beyond the Indian Act: Restoring Aboriginal Property Rights (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010) p.66.

Centering of “power over Indians” in one Ottawa superintendent or minister is distasteful to Barriere Lake Algonquins and other indigenous communities across Canada, many of whom regard the Act as paternalism in the extreme.

In Flanagan’s 2009 McGill-Queen’s book, Canada’s top conservative ideologue, Indian Act expert and author of the polemical “First Nations? Second Thoughts” termed himself the “business manager” who helped structure, shape, finance and direct Harper’s current minority Conservative Party Government of Canada. Harper’s Team: Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power, p.5.

Many Turtle Island inhabitants, from the Maritimes in the east to the woodlands in central North America, identify culturally as Anishnabe, or alternatively Anishnabek. These include numerous Algonquin communities in Ontario and Quebec, like Barriere Lake; culturally Ojibway nations such as Serpent River First Nation, locked in struggle with the Elliot Lake uranium industry on the north shore of Lake Huron; and further south along the lake the embattled Stoney Point community of Dudley George, which the colonialists named “Chippewa.”

ANISHNABE FIRST PEOPLE

In his new biography of a leading latecomer, historian David Hackett Fischer explains that the Algonquin communities encountered by Samuel de Champlain called themselves “Anishnabe, the humans.” Champlain’s Dream (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2010)  p.609.

Commentary from US Bureau of Indian Affairs explained that the Ojibway “referred to themselves as Anishnabe, meaning ‘people’ or ‘first people.’” Barbara Leitch, A Concise Dictionary of Indian Tribes of North America (Algonac, Michigan: Reference Publications, Inc., 1979) p.320; Toronto Public Library call number 970.103 LEP.

Indigenous-origin experts invited to the Ipperwash Inquiry, including Prof. Darlene Johnston stressed Anishnabe communities’ absolute respect and reverence for their ancestral tombs and crypts.

JAMIESON, ROSENTHAL AND KLIPPENSTEIN OPPOSE TORONTO BRUTALITIES

Toronto Native News editor Alex Jamieson questioned Toronto G20 summit policing: “Why was there such police brutality? . . . It happened at Ipperwash in 1995 and Oka in 1990 and Kent State during the Vietnam era. People ended up dying in those conflicts with confusion being the primary cause of the resulting gunfire and bloodshed.” (July 2010, p.5)

Toronto-based lawyer Peter Rosenthal, a tenured UT professor of mathematics and counsel for the George Family Group at the Ipperwash Inquiry, also objects to state violence at Ipperwash and the Toronto G20 summit. Rosenthal told Toronto Globe and Mail on 2 July 2010: “The results of the Ipperwash Inquiry emphasized the notion of police restraint as opposed to attacking protesters very late at night for no obvious reason and killing a man in the process. In the G20 case, there was a protest that obviously had to be policed… they didn’t have to be so restrictive of freedom of expression…Those lessons [from Ipperwash] don’t seem to have entirely been learned if we look at the events of the past few days…The right to protest is an issue in all three of these events [G20, Ipperwash and the June 2000 OCAP anti-poverty demonstration at Queen’s Park, Toronto]. One thing I’ve found remarkable about the G20 is the limitation of the area. There was a lot of talk about whether people were being kept five metres from the fence, but in the demonstration on Saturday, people were kept 300 metres away. That was part of the frustration.”

Murray Klippenstein, Toronto-based lawyer for the Dudley George estate at the Ipperwash Inquiry, is also focussing renewed advocacy on Toronto G20 injustices, as co-counsel for Sherry Good and fellow plaintiffs in their class action prosecution of Toronto Police Services for specified brutal acts on 27 June 2010 in downtown Toronto.

First Nations of Turtle Island, through their persistent advocacies for the Ipperwash Inquiry and the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, have broken trail for the prompt establishment of a federal commission of inquiry into the stark official failures at Toronto G20. “Toronto G20 stakeholders can surely follow the paths we have tediously but clearly blazed,” said an Anishnabe campaigner from the north shore of Lake Huron.

SEOUL CRUSHING

Outcomes in Toronto and Canada are being monitored closely by Liem Wol-san and Michel Catuira in South Korea. Liem represents People’s Solidarity for Social Change, and told NOW Toronto: “The G20 is trying to push a failed model that has created inequality and poverty in South Korea and the rest of the world. We want to build a unified movement.” (16-22 September 2010, p.27)

Catuira, described as a Philippine national who serves as president of the Migrants Trade Union grieved: “it’s dangerous to organize more migrant resistance since the crackdown is going to extend until at least after the summit.”

Steven Borowiec, “Seoul crushing: Signs already present that South Korean protesters could share our summit pain”.

Borowiec reported that G20 leaders will converge 11-12 November 2010 on Seoul’s Coex Convention Center, where “we’ll see the next instalment of global anti-corporate activism. The G20 meeting seeks to build on decisions made in Toronto. But South Korean government officials [have] watched the policing, and activists here fear they’ve drawn the wrong conclusions.”