The G20 Spectacle

The summit will mean violating the basic rights of locals while leaders and their underlings entertain themselves.

World leaders should meet and discuss major global issues whenever they can. That goes without saying. Such meetings are no doubt invaluable in dealing with issues such as nuclear proliferation, global warming, terrorism, and economic instability. Yet the various summits of the last decade or so have attracted so much attention from anti-globalization and anti-corporate protestors that they’ve turned into spectacles where the princes of the new global order are forced to meet behind security walls and regiments of heavily armed police, at least since Seattle turning the cities where they meet into besieged fortresses. A spectacle-hungry media eats all of this up, serving only to accentuate the class divide between the princes inside the gates of the palace and the huddled masses in the streets.

The G20 meeting in Toronto this month threatens to be yet another case of democratic leaders resembling monarchs of the ancien regime – afraid of the very people they supposedly represent. If our governments support a globalized economic order, they should be prepared to accept a globalized right to criticize and protest against that order. It’s only fair. Assuming our rights to freedom of speech and assembly weren’t revoked while I was watching Frisky Dingo last night.

The idea of holding a summit for world leaders in a major metropolis like Toronto makes no sense from the point of view of achieving the diplomatic objectives such conferences claim to espouse. Instead, holding it in a major city is all about the many entertainments that ministers, assistant ministers, secretaries, and the other various underlings of the national delegations can enjoy.

It’s also about creating a Canadian-themed spectacle that the mass media of the world can broadcast globally: in a nutshell, a really big show. There’s not much to show off in small towns except natural scenery, even if they have the facilities to house conference guests. But Toronto is perhaps the best stage for a media spectacle that Canada has, from the CN Tower and the Rogers Centre to the Ontario Gallery of Art and Harbourfront. That’s why the G20 is in Toronto: it’s more fun, and it looks better on TV.

If world leaders really wanted to sit down and iron out important issues, they’d hold their meetings in an isolated town with minimal distractions, rolling up their sleeves and meeting over coffee and donuts as far away as possible from the glitz and glamour of the mass media. And they would bring as few staff as possible. Committee decisions are hard enough without these distractions.

Yet what is perhaps most troubling about holding the G2O meeting in Toronto is the violation of local residents’ basic rights, brought to light by complaints from students and staff at the University of Toronto. The university has decided, in effect, to close down for five days in June, citing fears of property damage, tear gas, violence, and arrests connected to the nearby “designated protest zone” in Queen’s Park. Of course, the very idea of a “designated protest zone” laughably misses the point of public protest, which is to scare political leaders into making decisions they don’t want to make.

The most noxious side of U of T’s decision to close up shop for a week is the shipping of students from its residences to “safer” areas. This is no doubt partly due to the fear that their residences might actually house the very protestors the government and its friends want out of the way. These students (well, most of them) are guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Habeas corpus looms large.

An open letter from students, faculty, and the CUPE to U of T’s administrators argues that the decision to close the school for a week “contradicts the purpose of the university, reinforces harmful stereotypes of protestors, legitimizes police repression, and does not reflect the wishes of students, staff, and faculty.” Quite right on all points. Yet it goes on to suggest that universities are “sites for critical dialogue and engagement.” As anyone who has seen behind the curtain of academic wizardry knows, this is simply false and hasn’t been even remotely true for at least 30 years.

Those who run the McDonaldized university of 2010 are not interested in “the right to raise deeply disturbing questions and provocative challenges to the cherished beliefs of society at large,” as U of T’s mission statement so gleefully puts it. The sacking of high-profile scientists Nancy Olivieri and David Healy at the request of U of T’s corporate masters, not to mention the conservatism inherent in the entire structure of hiring and promotion in higher education, puts any notion that the university can act as a bold voice of free expression to rest.

Yet the students, faculty, and staff who wrote the letter of protest are right in demanding that the University of Toronto – a “bastion of the Canadian ruling class," as Katie Mazer and Patrick Vitale put it in their article “City Under Siege” – rescind its decision to shut its gates to democratic debate and protest. It is, after all, a public institution with public responsibilities, not a private club servicing political and economic elites.

If Louis and Marie could look out of Versailles to the coming summit, they would smile in approval. Cake will indeed be eaten.