G8/G20 Summit in Toronto

Factual Questions
21

I don’t doubt that police forces are using the event as an opportunity to score lots of cool new gear. (The Toronto police just got four LRADs, for example.)

But there’s also a lot involved. Much of the downtown core of Toronto is being blocked off. The central area includes the convention centre where the G20 is being held, of course, but also the adjacent hotel.

The secondary perimeter about a block out includes the headquaters of the English-language services of the CBC, the main data centre for the Royal Bank, the headquarters of Worker’s Compensation, the CN Tower, the Rogers Centre (the domed stadum), at least one residential condominium, and other major hotels and office buildings.

Arrangements have to be made for all of these. Workers have to get to theeir offices. Baseball games at the Dome were moved to Philadelphia; the CN Tower is closed for the duration (which probably means they had to book all its time); the poor sods who live in that condo have to be issued passes and go through checkpoints whenever they go out for a litre of milk.

The tertiary perimeter includes the RBC Centre, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Roy Thompson Hall (home of the Toronto Symphony), half the financial disctrict, subway stations, the main railway station, freeway access points, all sorts of stuff.

That’s just in Toronto.

Huntsville, where the G8 is taking place, is a small town of 15,000 or so about 2 hours north along Highway 400 and 11. I was staggered to see a picture of an actual town of barracks for the thousands of security personnel there. The G8 will be meeting at Deerhurst, a ritzy resort just outside town. The entire town has been spruced up, and they’ve built kilometres of three-metre-high fence around the place.

Then the leaders of the G8 will be traveling between Huntsville and Toronto. So… are they motorcading? Are they flying in? Does Hunstville even have an airport? (I wouldn’t put it past them to build one just for this…)

Consider the US president.

He will be staying in the hotel attached to the convention centre. He probably gets an entire floor, with reserved space above and below so no-one hides any surprises under the floor of his bedroom.

How is he arriving? You can’t land Air Force One, the 747, in downtown Toronto or in Huntsville. So you land it at Pearson Airport. It has to be protected. Do you motorcade to Huntsville (the roads have to be protected), or do you fly and meet the motorcade there?

Multiply the above by 8 for the the Chinese president, the Russian president, and all the others in the G8. Multiply by 20 for all the participants in the G20. I saw a report that there would be as many as 83 motorcades during the event, each with dozens of vehicles, and each needing escort.

Securitywise, this is bigger than the Winter Olympics. I’ve seen military police on the streets of Bancroft. We’re hundreds of kilometres from Huntsvile or Toronto, but we’re close to the main highway through Algonquin park… which leads to Huntsville.

22

Here’s an article from the CBC on who’s coming.

23

Here’s the official Government of Canada G20 site.
Here’s the official Government of Canada G8 site.
Here’s the official City of Toronto site.
Here’s the official Town of Huntsville site.

24

I thought the same thing too. Come within 10 miles of it and a submarine surfaces under your boat… and then re-submerges.

25

I have friends in the army that are being deployed in the outlying woods for the area. They are going mad with security. That having been said, you’re asking the same question everyone in Canada is, as well. How can the security costs here be over triple what they were in other cosmopolitan cities where the events were held?

26

For him , I would either imagine that he would have the motorcade, as the city said that the 427/QEW/Gardiner expressway were going to closed to normal traffic at different times, which irratates me no end, as I remember when bubba came to town and we had to put up with that shit. Or option two , have marine one take him from pearson and land inside the skydome.

The other 18 leaders can take the TTC, there is no call for them to disrupt the city.

But for your other question, Huntsville wont be seeing airforce one , but North Bay has had its airport upgraded, so thats a possible.

Declan

27

Many of Toronto’s largest (and most sophisticated) hospitals are located in or near its downtown core. I am told that access to them will be problematic at best. In fact, my hospital (which is not in the core) has already begun transferring patients out in order to make room for the deluge of patients we are anticipating to arrive on our doorstep around the time of the summit.

There has already even been implementation of a government edict mandating that patients currently in our hospital awaiting transfer to long-term care facilities are to receive priority over other hospitals’ patients (in other words, unlike usual where waits of many months for such transfers are the norm, patients at our hospital who are in line to go to nursing homes, convalescent hospitals, etc., are now waiting only days to weeks).

I am more than pleased not to be on-call during the duration of the summit (although it would be a highlight of my career to perform a rectal exam on, say, Barack Obama. Or Angela Merkel. ;)).

28

Which reminds me: The CBC headquarters are within the perimeter. How is normal broadcasting going to go on? Will they move normal operations to Ottawa or Montreal? Or will it be all summit, all the time?

29

English-language headquarters. I guess we’ll have to watch it in French. :wink:

30

What the hell? Why does the CNE, located more-or-less on the shores of freaking Lake Ontario, need a fake Muskoka-like laketemporarily built into it? And a steamboat?

Someone please tell me the laws of this country are such that we can force Stephen fucking Harper to pay for this bullshit out of his own pocket! Please?!?

31

You know, it occurs to me that the money spent on an event like this might be a bit more justifiable if the participants would ever actually fucking do something.

Serious question; has anything ever been decided at one of these summits that led to a real, substantive change in the world? When?

32

I’m curious to know the answer to your question, too, Robot Arm.

It seems the organizers of the summits have managed to hire a security firm that isn’t actually licensedin Ontario (despite this being an explicit requirement in the contract tender…and the firm was awarded the contract in a rather suspiciously short amount of time). It is getting fast-tracked (read: mistakes will be made/additional costs incurred) in order to be approved and licensed in time for the summit.

I’m beginning to get rather embarrassed by the whole thing.

33

So now police and RCMP are looking for a guy who used fake ID to buy 1600 kilos of ammonium nitrate…

34

They found him. He was just stocking up, it appears.

35

This will all run really smoothly as a result of the $1 billion in security spending, though. Everything will be calm, there won’t be hordes of rioters using the G20 as an excuse to wreck things and loot stores, the disruption to people’s lives will be minimal, and the summit will likely come up with a lot of useful solutions to the world’s problems.

Also, this afternoon, winged simians will emerge from my anus.

36

I hadn’t heard that…scary tho. A guy with missing fingers buying almost as much ammonium nitrate as Timothy McVie.

37

CBC News article.

38

To be fair, though, the kind of people who would have legit uses for ammonium nitrate - i.e. farmers - are also more likey than the average to have missing fingers. :stuck_out_tongue: