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S By Robert Todd T oronto defence lawyer Howard Morton refers to the G20 summit in Toronto last June as "my weekend in Argentina." He compares it to the oppression of a dictatorship and to what happened here 1970, when Pierre Trudeau's federal Liberal government enacted the War Measures Act in the midst of the October Crisis, which made way for the arrests of 465 people. Yet he considers the Toronto summit, during which an estimated 1,170 were arrested, a far more troublesome event in Canadian history. "If you went down there blindfolded, and somebody took the blindfold off of you, you would never assume you were in Toronto," says Morton, who assisted with bail hear- ings at a special court set up during the summit. "It was like an armed camp, and the police action was carried out as if it was a military operation." While the former Crown attorney and Ontario Special Investigations Unit director's Argentina reference is tongue-in-cheek, he says some police officers took the idea that Canadian laws didn't apply in the literal sense. Defence lawyers and civil liberties groups have roundly condemned the actions of officers within the integrated security unit that oversaw the security efforts at the Toronto summit and the adjoining G8 summit in Huntsville, Ont. The Integrated Security Unit was made up of members of forces such as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Toronto Police Service, Ontario Provincial Police, and the Canadian Forces. Observers have suggested the ISU overemphasized the protection of world leaders, at the expense of the Charter rights of those who chose to remain in Toronto's downtown core — whether it was to shop for groceries or peacefully protest — during the summit. The notion that police took extraordinary, and perhaps illegal, steps was borne out by the unprecedented number of arrests, considered the largest stemming from a single event in 26 M A RCH 2011 www. CANADIAN Lawyermag.com MA ESS D Mass arrests, mass court appearances, massive numbers of police, calls for massive public inquiries — but few answers as to who was responsible for what happened at last summer's G20 summit. DI OR R MArk blinch / reUters christinne MUschi / reUters