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Lost in the revelations that are coming out about Canada allowing a foreign spy agency access to world leaders (and who else?) is the knowledge that we’re finally getting more information about what actually happened during the G20.

A fuller picture is emerging that adds embarrassing details to the already long list of offences committed by Canadian authorities. Now we know that not only did we host a summit that has historically brought protests, violence, and punitive security measures; we permitted the United States to spy on the leaders we were hosting.

Essentially, during this time did we cease to be a sovereign country?

Let’s look at what happened. The state did not protect its citizens from authoritative violence. Basic legal freedoms were denied to several citizens. Many of the human rights that we purportedly export through democracy to third world and developing nations were trampled. Both our government and at least one other government were collecting intelligence (almost certainly illegally). Our national anthem was not affected.

Craig Forcese, an expert in national security at University of Ottawa’s faculty of law told the CBC, “If CSEC tasked NSA to conduct spying activities on Canadians within Canada that CSEC itself was not authorized to take, then I am comfortable saying that would be an unlawful undertaking by CSEC,”

The Harper government’s only comment so far is this robotic statement (please-read-in-robot-voice)

“We do not comment on operational matters related to national security. Our security organizations have independent oversight mechanisms to ensure that they fulfill their mandate in accordance with the law,”

All of this is troubling, but if there is a silver lining it’s that as documents continue to be released we’re finding out more about our government, and their secrets, than we ever have. It’s particularly important when these revelations shed light on one of Canada’s lowest moments, the 2010 G20 Summit.

Indigenous Day of Action against the G20 in Toronto, June 2010. Photo by Velcrow Ripper.

I am glad This has decided to celebrate this wonderful anniversary by looking at the organizations and individuals who are pointing the way to future change. It is time to stop talking about what went wrong with the left that was so effective in the 20th century and identify the forces who are leading change in the 21st century. Primary among these, in my view, are indigenous peoples and movements.

In Canada, the most important new group is one that many readers of This may not even have heard of: Defenders of the Land. I will let them tell you who they are, as they explain on their website:

“Defenders of the Land, a network of indigenous communities and activists in land struggle across Canada, including elders and youth, women and men, was founded at a historic meeting in Winnipeg from November 12–14, 2008. Defenders is the only organization of its kind in the territory known as Canada—indigenous-led, free of government or corporate funding, and dedicated to building a fundamental movement for indigenous rights.

“We reject the extinguishment of Aboriginal title through treaty, and any interpretations of historical treaties which falsely claim, against the united voices of our elders and ancestors, that we have extinguished title to our traditional territories. We reject any policy or process which aims at extinguishing Aboriginal title, including contemporary treaty and comprehensive land claims processes.

“The Indian Act is a fundamental injustice and the product of racism and colonialism. It has no basis in any treaty and has been imposed on our peoples by Canada without our consent. It imposes on us a foreign system of government in which accountability is to masters in Ottawa and not to our peoples. It denies us our freedom to define for ourselves who we are and who are the members of our nations. Only indigenous peoples have the right to make these determinations.

“We have the right to choose and practice our own systems of government, in accordance with our customs.”

While you may not know their name, you probably know some of their leadership, like veteran activist Arthur Manuel and youth leader Ben Powless. You will certainly know some of the 41 communities actively working together, including Barrière Lake, Ardoch Algonquin, Grassy Narrows, Haida, and Lubicon.

Defenders were also the central actors in the powerful Indigenous Day of Action against the G20 in June 2010. They also organize Indigenous Sovereignty Week, which was held in more than 10 cities across Canada in November 2010. At the sessions I attended, the majority of the audience were indigenous and they were discussing and debating strategies. I learned a lot.

Defenders are working across the numerous divisions created by colonialist structures to build strategies and solidarity among all indigenous peoples, using their wisdom and strength rather than trying to fit into a colonial system—whether it is created by corporations, government or left activists. They hold a gathering every year, bringing together indigenous leaders of land struggles from across Canada, including traditional and elected leaders, elders, women, youth, and non-native supporters. It is the only gathering of its kind in this country.

Defenders of the Land are slowly and carefully building a powerful grassroots movement of indigenous peoples to work together in defending their land and promoting their sovereignty. The primary work involved is indigenous-to-indigenous education on issues, movement strategy, and organizing skills. They are developing a very ambitious plan that needs lots of funding.

One of the central weaknesses of the left in Canada has been our failure to support indigenous struggles and our ignorance of their history and culture. As settlers on this land, we have responsibility to learn and offer support. Because they don’t take government or corporate money, Defenders need financial aid from those of us who support their approach.

But it is not a guilt trip. Canada is a key strategic place in the global ecosystem because of our wilderness, almost all of which is on indigenous lands. Not only is the indigenous struggle key to saving the planet, I cannot see how we have a true democracy in this country based on the exploitation and marginalization of indigenous peoples. For me, indigenous sovereignty is central to progressive politics in Canada.

Defenders of the Land is thus the most exciting organization in the country right now.

A protester at a Vancouver demonstration calling for Canadian al Jazeera journalist Dorothy Parvaz to be freed by Syria's government. Photo by al Jazeera/Isaac Oomen.

I’m sitting in a room surrounded by hundreds of people, kindred spirits, a number of whom would normally not cross paths. Chiselled-faced anchors sit side by side with journalists who have been exiled from their homes around the world.

Then a series of startling images jolt me up in my seat. Footage of riot police in full gear, faces covered, knocking journalists to the ground, along with demonstrators. A news photographer tells a story of being shot with a rubber bullet. This isn’t Gaza City or Cairo. It’s Toronto, during the G20 Summit in June 2010.

A few minutes later, a voice emanates from above, directly from Cameroon. It’s the brother-in-law of Cameroonian journalist Bibi Ngota, who died in prison. He’s listening in on cellphone and recording the evening’s events on his end, to be broadcast on radio later.

It was a powerful moment at a gala organized by the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, a group that got its start 30 years ago. The organization was appalled at the kidnapping and murder of media workers during the bloody civil wars in Latin America of the 1980s. After a few decades and a couple name changes later, the CJFE has become enormously ambitious, mixing together high principles with clear-eyed pragmatism. The group’s president, a committed unionist, thanks a major bank for supporting its work building connections with Latin American journalists. Some of those journalists are here tonight.

Throughout it all, CJFE has avoided the false dichotomy that afflicts groups working on human rights internationally: that injustice only exists “over there.”

At home, CJFE has fought hard to broaden press freedom in Canada. It’s zeroed in on overreaching libel cases meant to silence journalists. It’s campaigned for more open access to information laws and is now pushing for an inquiry into the actions of police during the G20 Summit. Each year it reminds us that, even on our own doorstep, journalists can be targets of violence, naming an award after Tara Singh Hayer. Hayer was an outspoken Canadian journalist and editor of Vancouver’s Indo-Canadian Times who had been critical of Sikh extremism, and was murdered for those views in 1998.

Internationally, the group has broadened in its scope from Latin America to all corners of the globe. CJFE created a program for exiled journalists, lobbies for the release of detained media workers, and now runs what the group calls the world’s largest free-expression network, IFEX (International Freedom of Expression Exchange), which monitors abuses in over 60 countries.

Whether it’s drug cartels or corrupt regimes, CJFE has (often against the odds) tried to hold the powerful to account at home and abroad, firmly believing that democracy rises and falls based on the freedom of its media.

At various times in the run-up to Canada’s 41st trip to the polls, the Conservative Party was the target of accusations—most of them confirmed—which should, in theory, have been sufficient to bring down any government. There was the scandal when Bev Oda directed the doctoring of ministry documents to deny funding to humanitarian group Kairos* and then misled parliament about the origins of that change. Then, there was the revelation that the Conservatives had, under the guise of preparing for the G8 conference in 2010, provided slush money to valued Conservative ridings like industry minister Tony Clement’s, some of which were not even affiliated with the conference. That scandal was followed shortly by an announcement from Auditor General Sheila Fraser saying that a Conservative report on the G8 and G20 summits had used a quote of hers out of context. Way out of context.

(Fraser had, in 2010, said that the Liberal party’s security expenditures in the wake of the 9/11 World Trade Centre attacks had been “spent as they were intended to be spent.” The Conservatives’ report, however, claimed that Fraser had made that statement in reference to their own party’s summit spending, supposedly absolving them of the slush fund allegations.)

On top of those scandals, of course, there was also the spectre of the Conservatives’ recent contempt of Parliament charge, which had been predicted to be a pall that would loom over the entire campaign.

And yet, just when it was beginning to look as though the Tories’ controversies would have a significant impact, they didn’t. Harper was re-elected, Clement was re-elected, Oda was re-elected, the Conservatives were handed a majority, and any scandals surrounding the party seemed to quickly dissipate, having had little to no effect on the election’s outcome.

So let’s take the long view: political scandals aren’t always as toxic as they may seem. But, with that being the case, it is absolutely worth questioning why Brosseau has undergone so much public scrutiny in the last few days.

Relative to allegations of partisan slush funds, lying about Auditor General reports, and directly disobeying parliamentary law, questions about the vacation plans and postsecondary achievements of opposition backbenchers seem less earth-shattering. And yet while Canada’s media outlets are abuzz with Brosseau updates, the scandals surrounding the Tories have not only gone away but, in retrospect, were scarcely this well-discussed even in the thick of the election run-up.

It is unfair to politicians and voters alike to suggest, as some commentators have, that Brosseau is facing this criticism simply because she is a woman, or young, or attractive. Yes, Brosseau is an outsider on Parliament Hill, but in the wake of a race which saw massive turnover in ridings all over the country, it is difficult to make the case that Canadians are opposed to seeing new faces in government.

Instead, it seems more likely that Brosseau is merely a hot story in the post-election news vacuum, a victim of circumstance rather than prejudice. She’s a convenient foil in a slow part of the news cycle.

During this comparatively inactive post-election period for domestic political news, the media and the public have the time to pick apart cases such as Brosseau’s. Harper and the Tories, meanwhile, had the benefit of having their scandals revealed during the campaign. Already flooded with elections coverage and mudslinging from all sides, Canadians found it harder to keep up with the scandal stories as they developed.

As bigger stories begin to float in again, Brosseau and her introductory mini-scandal will eventually be pushed out of the spotlight. What is required in the interim is a little perspective. Brosseau’s is not a major scandal—certainly not when compared to the recent scandals surrounding other politicians. If the Canadian public wants to examine political issues with such depth, and it should, the big issues, the ones that were largely glossed over during the campaign, ought to be first in line. In time, they will be.

*Disclosure: Kairos is an occasional advertiser in the print edition of This. – ed.

February 4 anti-Mubarak protest in Alexandria, Egypt. Creative Commons photo by Al Jazeera English

In Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, even Italy, citizens are rising up, risking their lives to protest their corrupt governments. Egyptians, in a historical event, have proven they can be successful in overthrowing years of dictatorial leadership. Canadians were mostly cheering along (though our government wasn’t), but’s hard to put ourselves in their place—Canada, flawed though it is, is simply not Egypt. Corruption here is less pervasive; the military less present in our everyday lives; we have a functional political opposition. But since freedom, democracy, and human rights are on everyone’s mind right now, perhaps it’s time for a little self-evaluation session.

The uprisings in the Middle East should prompt Canadians to take a closer look at the state of our own politics. For just one recent example, see the recent KAIROS “not” scandal and assess how democratic our government’s behaviour truly is. Murray Dobbin on Rabble stopped just short of comparing Steven Harper to ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, and called Harper’s Conservative cabinet a squad of “hit men.”

But would Canadians ever reach the point where we just couldn’t take it anymore? Could we rebel in  Egypt-like protests? Would our rants to friends or angry blog comments ever manifest as rebellion in the street?

Stereotypically, Canadians are polite and retiring; unconfrontational if you’re being nice about it, apathetic if you’re not. But there’s data to prove that we really don’t like things to get politically messy. Besides our dismal-and-getting-worse voter turnout rate, A 2000 General Social Survey by Statistics Canada found that only 9 percent of Canadians (age 15 and up) had participated in a public debate that year (things like calling radio talkback shows or writing letters to the editor). Half of those individuals researched information on political issues, and 10 percent volunteered for a political party. We also seem naturally more inclined to express our opinions with a group that we know will share or agree with our own opinions.

Historically, if Canadians take the time to understand a politcal issue, then get mad about it, we will find a way to express it. Like the time time the Conservative government decided prorogue parliament; a 63 day break while 36 government bills lay untouched. While plenty of us apparently didn’t know what the heck that meant, 200,000 Canadians got angry, logged onto Facebook and joined a group called Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament. Many attended actual rallies across the country.

If you were in Toronto in the summer of 2010, you witnessed Canadians in a more traditional form of protest during the G20 conference. Over 300 people were arrested and the images of Toronto streets seemed almost unrecognizable, as if it were a different country altogether.

The erosion of Western democracy seems to be everywhere you turn lately. Paul Krugman identified the union-busting tactics of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker as just the latest example of a hemisphere-wide push by anti-democratic forces: “What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy,” Krugman wrote.

Dobbin’s Rabble column sounds the same alarm for Canada: He calls Minister of International Cooperation Bev Oda’s corrections of the CIDA report “political thuggery worthy of a dictatorship.”  This seems to be just one example of our democracy moving backwards while citizens of Italy, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen are actively involved in taking back control of their respective countries.

Protests outside the British parliament in London. Creative Commons photo by Selena Sheridan.

Almost five months to the day and I’m just now realizing that I didn’t learn my lesson from the G20.

Sure, I found out first had the power and importance of community organization and activism; and I was forced to come to terms with the tragic ease with which our government could abuse our fundamental democratic rights when it suits them.

But neither of those lessons, important though they are, concerned me last Wednesday evening.  As I stood huddled with several thousand other angry, frustrated but mostly just cold students in between two immovable walls of police officers, I wondered how I hadn’t learnt my lesson about kettling the first time.

After being held for hours in the rain at Spadina and Richmond by riot police this summer, I promised I’d never let that happen again. I never wanted to feel so violated and so helpless—as you stand there and stare into the faceless wall of riot police you can’t help but feel impotent, vulnerable and exposed.  And yet, here I was again, hopping from foot to foot to maintain feeling in my toes standing in front of a feeble fire of placards and protest posters trying to fend off the cold London night.

How did it come to this: thousands of students–a large minority of whom were under the age of 16–held for eight hours without food, water or access to washrooms outside the houses of British government on Whitehall?

I suppose it starts with the cuts: devastating austerity measures that will affect every aspect of British life, but will prove particularly ruinous for higher education in the U.K. Under the scheme, government funding for universities will be cut by 40 percent (around £4.3 billion) and will raise the current cap on tuition. For a country that in recent memory offered free university education (universal free higher education was only ended in 1997) the prospect of tripling the fees from roughly £3,000 to more than £9,000 per year has many concerned that the halls of higher education will soon become the domain of the rich exclusively.

But the anger stems from something more emotional then merely the cuts.  Many of the estimated 50,000 students and protesters who walked out of classes and took to the streets across the country recently voted for Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democratic party in the last election; he promised, in light of the Tories’ proposed fiscal austerity, to oppose any increases to education fees.  And yet, here we are, not six months later, with the Tory/Lib Dem coalition government poised to pass legislation that will gut much of the social service sector and force universities to hike their tuition fees.

It’s understandable, then, why “Nick Clegg, shame on you, shame on you for turning blue,” is such a popular chant here, and why central Londoners awoke to find an effigy of Clegg burning Tuesday morning. Students expected this from David Cameron and his Conservatives; from Clegg and the Lib Dems, it feels more like personal betrayal.

This passion, so evident in the November 10th protest that saw “lawless riots”—to quote one sensationalist, though representative, retelling—has traditionally been hard to maintain in British protest movements in recent years.  “Brits just don’t demonstrate,” one protester told me during the march; the only conclusion, he went on, is that “this is something special.”

In a moment of depressing deja vu, I watched as students vented their frustration and anger on a police van left abandoned in the midst of the protest march and recalled how police had similarly left patrol cars on Queen Street this past summer, allegedly for protesters to vandalize.  The three destroyed police cars were used as justification for the authoritarian crackdown the following day in the streets of Toronto; likewise, the vandalized police van became the spurious excuse used for the mass kettling near Parliament Square that I was caught in, along with thousands others.

So there we stood—for hours.

There was something ominous about the entire experience: thousands of people surrounded, towered over by the imposing facades of the buildings of British government and hemmed in by lines of riot-armoured police, yet with plenty of space to move around—the atmosphere ranged from block-party and frenetic to frustrated and lethargic.  As the hours wore on and the cold set in, a few protesters with guitars milled about feebly singing “Give Peace a Chance” but were easily drowned out by the whirl of the helicopters circling overhead, the police sirens’ near constant wailing and, fittingly for London, the reverberating deep bass of the dubstep blaring from the sound system brought for the Carnival of Resistance.  The entire scene was illuminated by sporadic and dying fires of placards, posters and the remnants of a bus-stop lit more for their warmth then their menace (despite what the papers said) and the roving police spotlights.

Eight hours of standing still is a long time—and when your fingers are too cold to play on your smartphone and your mind too numb to do your school readings, you get to talking. The topic du jour was, of course, the cuts and the protests.  Several hours in, the dominant sentiment was frustration bordering on complete exasperation. If the intent of the police kettling had been to intimidate the protesters into silence, it failed; we were given free rein on the street and the non-stop music led to an impromptu dance party. But if they wanted to prove a point about how futile protest can feel in the face of heavy-handed police measures, well, they certainly made an impression.

The question that kept on creeping into the conversation: where was the space for autonomous dissent?

When we were finally let out at 9 pm, eight hours after the kettling began, most were too cold and angry to be anything but amenable.  When the Clash’s “I fought the Law” came on over the speakers, everyone joined in for the chorus, “…and the law won.”  Whether it was intended to be ironic or not, it was fitting.

It was, in short, a low-point.

Many who had been passionate and energetic at the start of the day felt their spirit sapped by the process, and, even more discouraging, many felt despondent about the prospect of an effective protest movement in Britain, myself included.

No matter how special this mass movement is—and you can’t help but marvel at  the sheer size of the country-wide protests—we have to acknowledge the limitations of peaceful protest when the police reaction to the first sign of trouble (graffiti, for instance) is mass kettling. But violent protest doesn’t strike me as being the answer either. For one, it merely galvanizes people away from the cause and serves to justify more repressive police tactics (many see the election of Rob Ford as Toronto mayor, complete with his promise for 100 new police officers, as a knee-jerk reaction to the “mayhem” during the G20).

But if you’ll excuse my use of a tired adage: the night is darkest right before the dawn.

The following day, still numbed and disheartened from the kettling, I joined the student occupation already in progress on my campus at the School of Oriental and African Studies. I admit, I initially opposed the occupation and voted against it in the emergency general meeting on the cuts; I felt like it would channel student anger at the wrong target: our school administration as opposed to the government. But sitting with students and staff members in the reclaimed space–open to anyone who wanted to join and used as a lecture space, music venue, forum for discussion, or simply a place to hang out—showed the dynamism of the student movement and wiped away the ennui I’d felt the day before.

The students’ demands are straightforward: financial transparency in the school’s decision-making; a commitment not to raise tuition fees; and a statement opposing the proposed cuts. If these demands seem overambitious (the school is, after all, at the mercy of the government if they do decide to go through with the cuts) their protest techniques are equally enterprising.  They propose more creative responses: instead of one protest of 5,000 people, which will inevitably be kettled, violent or not, they organize 500 people in 10 separate marches—”flash mob” protests that garner positive media attention. And they’eve built international solidarity networks with students facing similar cuts in other countries such as France, Spain and Italy.

Most of all, British students talk of retaking the means of their own presentation outside of the parameters of the police/media stranglehold on their image.

The school administration served the occupying students with an injunction last Thursday, making their presence in the building illegal as of 7 pm.  I was there as the clock ticked down and more students, staff and supporters kept pouring into the room in solidarity.  As the clock neared 7 and the threat of arrest became ever more real, we voted on defying the High Court Injunction and maintaining the occupation.

Every protest movement has its song: the anti-war movement of the 1960s had countless anthems from Bob Dylan, Helen Reddy’s “I am Woman” became an anthem for the women’s liberation movement and the G20 in Toronto this past summer had “O Canada.”  In a poetic turn of events, as the clock struck 7 and the occupation became illegal, students in occupation echoed those kettled the day before and began singing The Clash’s song once more, with fittingly altered lyrics: “I fought the law AND I WON” resounded through the hall.

It may seem merely symbolic; but the student movement is alive and well in London.

Naomi Klein addresses the G20 Legal Defence Fundraiser concert at the Great Hall, Toronto, November 11, 2010.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has been hosting a public hearing into last summer’s G20 protests and the police response to them, and if you’ve been following the testimony being given there, things sound pretty grim. The CCLA has been doing amazing work live-tweeting the proceedings and the stories that people have to tell are shocking and saddening. We definitely recommend taking the time to read what they’ve already recorded in Toronto over the last two days; they’ll be continuing the hearings in Montreal today. To add insult to the injury many protesters sustained in the G20 police’s lockups, they now face the prospect of lengthy legal proceedings to defend themselves against the law that was supposed to protect them. It’s easy to feel down about the whole thing.

But it’s Friday, and this is Friday FTW! which means we’re going to look on the bright side (even though yes, I know, looking on the bright side isn’t my forté). Because despite the injustice of the situation, there are lots of people working hard together to help. Last night, that took the form of a big fundraising concert at the Great Hall in Toronto, where This alum Naomi Klein, comedian Martha Chaves, musician Hawksley Workman, and electronic ensemble Lal. Funds from the concert went into the G20 Legal Defence Fund, which provides financial aid to G20 arrestees. You can donate to the fund through Toronto Community Solidarity Network, which estimates up to $400,000 in legal costs by the time all is said and done.

Our friends at Rabble were there filming the whole event, and you can watch the rebroadcast right here or on their Livestream page.

Consider this: the population growth of racialized or non-white groups continues to outpace that of white Canadians. This has created a shift in the demographic balance of the Canadian mosaic, with our population on its way to becoming a “minority majority.”

According to Statistics Canada, by 2031, over 70 percent of Canadians living in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver will be from a visible minority or racialized group. Already, almost half the population in the Greater Toronto Area is a visible minority. Yet we are not seeing an equivalent shift in the halls of power: in business and in government, visible minorities—particularly African-Canadians—still represent a small fraction of the decision-makers relative to their overall population.

In April, a report by the Law Society of Upper Canada looked at the legal profession relative to others and made the following observations: “In Ontario in 2006, members of a visible minority accounted for 30.7 percent of all physicians, 31.7 percent of engineers, 17.6 percent of academics and 11.8 percent of high-level managers, compared to 11.5 percent of lawyers.”

A recently released study, entitled “DiverseCity Counts: A Snapshot of Diverse Leadership in the Greater Toronto Area,” showed that while some sectors are doing better at reflecting the general makeup of the population, visible minorities are underrepresented in leadership positions. Today, visible minorities comprise 49.5 percent of the population, but only 14 percent of senior-level leaders.

The implications of this imbalance will only become more significant as the population continues to shift. Canada must demonstrate the potential of harnessing the best of all of our peoples. Diversity in the leadership of our institutions matters. Far from being a form of tokenism, a significant increase in the number and diversity of visible minorities at all levels of leadership is essential to Canada’s competitiveness.

In May, Governor General Michaëlle Jean addressed business, academic, and socialsector leaders in a speech to the Canadian Club. She told the audience that “saying yes to diversity is saying yes to modernity, to opportunity, and to the very future of our country.” There is an economic case for embracing diversity: to create a “brain gain” by recruiting, hiring, mentoring, developing, and retaining a qualified and diverse workforce. Imagine the dividends for Canada’s global competitiveness when all its citizens have an equal opportunity to lead, to innovate, and to contribute to our social, economic, cultural, and political landscape.

The DiverseCity study also found that visible minorities are underrepresented in the media, accounting for only 19 percent of appearances by broadcasters, reporters, print columnists, subject experts, and commentators. Diversity in media leadership and representation of visible minorities is improving incrementally, but larger gains are needed. Why do we not see or hear from more visible minorities in daily coverage? How long must we wait for media outlets to do the research and start assigning these stories?

One initiative to improve the coverage of racialized minorities is DiverseCity Voices, a new electronic database of experts who are also visible minorities. Journalists can turn to the website to find underrepresented leaders who are able to provide commentary and opinion on current affairs.

Since joining the website, I have appeared in a variety of local and national print and radio, television, broadcast, and social media outlets, providing my opinions on subjects ranging from the Olympic Games, the G20 summit, and Africentric Schools. I’ve received more calls from journalists looking for comment, and that’s important to me. Young people become what they see, and role models of all backgrounds need to be seen and heard.

Sociologist John Porter’s Vertical Mosaic, published in 1965, remains the touchstone for a deeper understanding of the structure of Canadian society. Porter’s findings portrayed Canada as a hierarchical racial pecking order, with attendant consequences for social mobility, access to power, and economic success. In the Canadian mosaic, whites were (and still are) the dominant culture at the top of the heap. Fifty years on, Porter’s study still rings depressingly true. But there is reason to be optimistic.

With a conscious effort to create and sustain diversity in all our institutions, it is possible that Canada’s vertical mosaic will be replaced by one that is inclusive, linear, and beneficial to us all—no matter where we come from or the colour of our skin.

Truth and lies flourish equally online. Exhausted readers are in retreat. Illustration by Matt Daley.

Though you might reasonably condemn the modern internet for a variety of reasons—ruining attention spans, turning all public discourse into a shouting match, or insulting your sexual prowess with badly punctuated mass emails—one thing the medium could always reasonably claim was its potential for spreading truth. Decentralized and egalitarian, the web seemed to herald the end of the coverup: with no authority to stop the spread of information, facts would inevitably slip the bonds of corrupt politicians, crooked industrialists, and tyrannical generals. Sooner or later, we believed, the real facts would always come to light. The Truth Is Out There.

It turns out that’s not, uh, true.

That’s if the results of a recent study from the University of Michigan are anything to go by. The researchers found that people are remarkably resistant to facts that deviate from beliefs they already hold; the phenomenon is particularly acute in those with strong political leanings. This is the “truthiness” that satirical news anchor Stephen Colbert famously named—a trust in gut instincts instead of documented facts. That intuitive concept has now, somewhat ironically, been scientifically proven. In other words, The Truth Is Out There, But Nobody Can Be Bothered To Go Looking For It.

We already know that falsehood, distortion, and bullshit flourish online just as much as fact. The internet is home to climate-change deniers, 9-11 conspiracy nuts, and fringe politics of all sorts—in part because it is so easy to find “facts” that support whatever you believe. The sheer glut and variety of information online has made it difficult to distinguish fact from invention and truthfulness from truthiness. The result, for many people, has been to retreat into the comfort of the mainstream media.

Canada experienced this during the G20 summit in Toronto in July. After some protestors caused property damage early in the weekend, many journalists found themselves at the centre of what they believed to be an excessive police reaction. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube were central to this real-time reporting, and people who were following the demonstrations and police actions online had a very different experience than live-TV viewers—who mostly saw sensational footage of a burning police car on a continuous loop for two days.

TVOntario’s Steve Paikin—a man who has built a career on measured neutrality—told of what seemed like an illegitimate round up of legal protestors and the beating of a reporter from the U.K.’s Guardian. The Globe and Mail’s Lisan Jutras wrote of her experience being detained in the rain for hours and taken into police custody.

New media seemed to finally be fulfilling its promise: coverage that was richer, more immediate, more diverse, and faster.

Yet a few days after the summit, an Angus Reid poll revealed that a full two-thirds of Canadians not only supported the police action, but were also “disgusted” with the protestors, despite the fact that the majority of them did nothing more than walk down streets holding placards. Images of anarchists breaking windows dominated big media, and the fact that there was plenty of information online offering a different interpretation mattered little, if at all.

The problem is that, unlike TV, you have to choose what you view online. That means that unless you’re already looking for an alternative take, it’s unlikely to find you. But more than that, the web is full of so many different versions of the truth, from the legitimate to the lunatic, that their very existence undercuts the medium’s validity for many people. When it is as easy to stumble upon a cogent, well-researched critique of global capitalism as it is a raving theory about “the moon-landing hoax,” the tendency is to discount the medium altogether.

By allowing anyone to publish and disseminate information, the web broke the historical link between power and publishing. Many people cheered that change, and for understandable reasons. The web embodies the contemporary collapse of all the things that once seemed beyond question: truth, fact, authority. But when nothing is objectively true, it also means nothing is objectively false. Presented with an almost infinite mass of options, most people, rather than diving in, simply retreat into what they already know—and for the majority, that’s still television.

Tremendous excitement accompanied WikiLeaks’ July release of 91,000 military documents related to the conflict in Afghanistan. Perhaps it’s justified. But earlier this year, when the same organization released “Collateral Murder”—a video that showed an American helicopter crew killing unarmed civilians in Iraq—excitement and controversy produced nothing lasting.

Despite the video’s incendiary content, and the clip’s seven million YouTube views, almost nothing changed. In the face of the official story and people’s faith in the authority that stood behind it, the clip was nothing more than a grain of sand, like those blown about by that helicopter’s blades—one more “fact” among millions, lost in the roar of a rushing, directionless storm.

Last week we learned that the federal government spent $107,749.52 on Nikon DSLR D300s for the G20. For those of you who, like me five minutes ago, don’t know anything about photography let me tell you all you need to know about the D300s: it’s a really good camera. You can check out the reviews but, take my word for it, this is a whole lot of camera for a whole lot of money.

Now I don’t know what these particular cameras are used for but I do have a guess: mug shots. I asked a friend of mine who was arrested at the G20 protests about this. Here’s his response:

DSLRs? Well there were a whole bunch of cops with point-and-shoots — but I honestly think that was mostly for themselves: “Posterity’s sake?” I asked one of the (many) officers taking a picture of me with cuffs on, and he looked a little embarrassed. Initial “mug shot” at Queen’s Park was an SLR, but for some reason they had to do it again at the jail — an SLR there too… And then they had to do it again at the jail — which I assume was just a lack of organization. So yeah, at least two DSLRs, two high-quality video cameras, and piles upon piles of point and shoots, for what it’s worth to you.

To be fair, I’m sure the lighting conditions at the Eastern Ave. Jail weren’t exactly optimal so, um, maybe the cops did need something slightly better than a cell-phone camera. Either way, cameras, and lots of them, seem to be part of the new policing.  Again, my friend:

I remember one cop saying to another, in reference to some of the people that had been arrested, “that’s the biggest thing: You just don’t take pictures.” There is, in short, something they really don’t like about all the protesters with cell phones/cameras, etc., and they literally armed themselves with their own cameras in anticipation of this… and apparently arrested some people for the same reason.

In other G20 expense news: the feds also spent just under $18,000 on snacks at the Pickle Barrel. At that price, you’d think they might choose a better restaurant to eat at.