Mr. Speaker, last May I asked the government to justify the $1 billion cost of security at the G8 and G20 summits. At that time, it said that this spending was necessary to ensure a safe and secure summit that would protect participants and protect the rights of Canadians to demonstrate their views.
I would like to quote a member of the government, the member for Edmonton—St. Albert, who stated:
—these allocations will not be used only to ensure we protect the safety and security of visiting heads of state and their delegations. Indeed, they are being used to protect the safety and security of all Canadians, including those who wish to engage in peaceful protests during those summits. Clearly, our government believes in freedom of expression.
He stated that on June 1.
He went on to say:
We believe that everyone has the right to be heard. That is why the community relations group within the G8 and G20 integrated security unit has been proactively reaching out to individuals and groups who may wish to protest in order to ensure their needs are accommodated and also to ensure that we can facilitate peaceful and lawful protests at both summits.
Once again, that was the member for Edmonton—St. Albert, speaking on behalf of the government and a member of the public safety committee on which I sit.
Those lofty promises were betrayed. Instead, the $1 billion in summit security did not prevent violence or property damage and resulted in the largest mass arrest in Canadian history. More than 1,100 individual Canadians were arrested over a 36-hour period in Toronto. Those arrested included journalists, human rights monitors, lawyers, protesters and even innocent passersby. More than 800 of those arrested were later released without even being charged and 58 more had their charges dropped later.
The government criticizes previous governments for wasting $1 billion setting up the gun registry, but it managed to squander $1 billion in 72 hours alone on the G8 and G20 summits.
Over the summer, the public safety committee was recalled to study this issue. Yet instead of voting on the motion to launch a federal inquiry into what went wrong, the Conservatives defended the mass arrests and the violations of the rights of Canadians. They filibustered the debate and accused those who supported a federal inquiry of promoting “the agendas of the violent mob made up of thugs and hooligans”.
I met two of the G20 protesters and I think Canadians would be interested to hear their stories. They are not thugs or hooligans. They are law-abiding Canadians who were exercising their freedom to peacefully assemble and express their views. Their names are Kirk Chavarie and Grayson Lepp.
Kirk and Grayson are students at the University of British Columbia's Okanagan campus. They are leaders in the student movement, serving on the executive of their student society and on the provincial executive of the CFS. They were in Toronto representing their student union to attend rallies in support of strengthening public education in Canada and around the world.
They told me that they were transported to a makeshift detention centre and detained there for 24 hours. These are the conditions that they described to me: holding cells cramped full with 30 to 35 people in them, with concrete floors and a steel bench; women forced to toilet themselves in front of other detainees and police officers with their hands still zap-strapped behind their backs; requests for water repeatedly denied; requests for toilet paper repeatedly denied; hundreds of detainees forced to sleep on bare concrete floors; diabetics refused insulin and others refused needed medication; detainees left with hands zap-strapped for up to 16 hours at a time; leaking porta-potties in cells, garbage and unsanitary conditions; abuse, profanities and open threats of violence, sometimes imbued with racism from police officers; and mass arrests of innocent people who committed no crime at all.