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Canadian history. With just 320 of those detained appearing before the court on formal charges, questions have been raised about the legitimacy of most of the arrests. By the end of November, 230 of those charges had disappeared, mainly follow- ing stays or withdrawals, providing further evidence of possible police misconduct. If that's not enough to suggest officers were instructed to operate under a differ- ent set of rules — or were grossly misin- formed about their powers — there are the words of York Regional Police Sgt. Mark Charlebois. He can be seen in a YouTube video telling a man who refused to con- sent to a search that, "This ain't Canada right now." An unidentified female officer continues with, "You're in G20 land right now." Charlebois later asserts, "There is no civil rights here in this area." Of course this is just the tip of the ice- berg in terms of alleged police wrongdoing during the summits. Several allegations of unlawful arrests and police brutality have rug, to the detriment of future generations. Canadian Civil Liberties Association general counsel Nathalie Des Rosiers acted as one of the organization's 50 sum- mit protest monitors, several of whom were themselves arrested. She recalls feel- ing a "sense of shame" while observing the summit action, along with a "sadness that we could not do better as a society." She recalls the Saturday of the summit weekend when a minority of protestors "[The government] will pay public money to make them disappear — your money and my money. And they'll do it two years down the road, when everyone doesn't care quite so much. This is not a satisfactory solution. This is just using the civil law system to bury a problem." Clayton Ruby come to light, and various forums are probing those claims. Questions have also been raised about the now infamous secret law brought in by the provincial cabinet using the Public Works Protection Act, which people were wrongly led to believe permitted police to randomly search any- one within five metres of a security fence. All of this is aside from controversy over a $50,000 fake lake, part of a whopping $1.3-billion total price tag for the generally fruitless meetings among world leaders. Those involved in cleaning up the G8 and G20 mess are eager to discover all that went wrong and identify how those mistakes were made, in hopes of averting a repeat performance. But they're finding that answers are elusive, and say the prob- lems could end up being swept under the employed mass vandalism and Black Bloc tactics, which seemed to prompt a more aggressive approach by police. Quiet pro- testors who sat down and sang O Canada at Queen's Park were charged by police, and further mass arrests were made that evening. Police utilized the "kettling" tac- tic to box in protestors gathered at Queen Street and Spadina Avenue, leaving them in the pouring rain for hours. Des Rosiers' appraisal of the security response during the summit is simple: "The planning and the delivery of crowd control at the G20 fell short of what we would expect from a police force in Canada." She says it's now time to measure the accountability provisions that were cre- ated to address police malfeasance. That will be tough to do based on the multi- 28 M A RCH 2011 www. CANADIAN Lawyermag.com force presence at the event, with officers from police services across the country contributing to the security effort. "This makes the accountability exercise much more complex and much more costly and repetitive," explains Des Rosiers. Individual complaints have already been lodged with the RCMP and the Security Intelligence Review Committee, which handles complaints directed at members of Canada's spy agency. The Toronto Police Services Board has hired former associate chief justice and Heenan Blaikie LLP counsel John Morden to con- duct an independent civilian review of police actions during the summit. Former Ontario chief justice and Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP counsel Roy McMurtry has been engaged by the Ontario gov- ernment to review issues surrounding the secret law. The province's Special Investigations Unit is handling several cases of alleged police brutality. The SIU was particularly busy in the months fol- lowing the summit, reopening cases it had earlier dismissed after receiving additional video and photos. The latest came Jan. 27, when a case involving Joseph Thomson, who apparently suffered a fractured nose in an altercation with police, was revis- ited. The SIU also reopened cases involv- ing Dorian Barton, who suffered a bro- ken arm during the summit, and Adam Nobody, who suffered a broken nose. Toronto police Const. Babak Andalib- Goortani faces an assault with a weapon charge in relation to the Nobody incident. Barton has launched a $250,000 lawsuit. The new Office of the Independent Police Review Director is also probing police actions, while the Toronto Police Service is conducting its own internal review. In December, Ontario ombudsman André christinne MUschi / reUters