“The promises of yesterday are the taxes of today.” – William Lyon Mackenzie
Crusading publisher, republican rebel, and first Mayor of Toronto William Lyon Mackenzie was an ardent supporter of the patriation of sovereignty to the colony of Upper Canada from the distant British Crown. One can only imagine then what he might think these days if, scanning his city’s dailies, he were to lay aside his old friend George Brown’s Globe and Mail and come upon the following headline in that recent upstart, The Toronto Star: G20 Security Could Strangle Downtown
Though he may not have been above a bemused grin at the thought of a de facto occupation of the city centre, accompanied by “thousands of police and endless kilometers of security fencing” (history, it seems, has a way of repeating itself) it is certain that upon reflection and a closer look at the nature of the G20, the dour publican’s old indignant fire would start to rise. Managed by a ‘troika’ of three rotating chairs and consisting of national leaders, finance ministers, and central bankers from global economic institutions such as the IMF and World Bank, the G20 is no abstract debating society. Its power is as real as its accountability to Canadians is tenuous: At the Pittsburgh summit in September 2009, the G20 declared itself the world’s new ruling economic council. At the time Gordon Brown, UK Prime Minister announced that “The old system of international economic co-operation is over, the new system, as of today, has begun.”
Continued. . .
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