It's always interesting to compare how protests are handled in other countries. Coincidentally, in Russia today, wide-spread protests against government corruption are happening in cities across the country. According to independent reports, arrests were peaceful and so far total in the hundreds. This is in what we're told is an authoritarian nation run by a brutal dictator. Yet a few years ago, in free and democratic Canada,  20,000 police in Toronto enacted the largest mass arrest in Canada's history, while using tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper spray and ad hoc detentions against the 10,000 protesters and onlookers. Two weeks before the G20, the Government of Ontario secretly enacted legislation granting sweeping powers of arrest to Toronto police.

We like to comfort ourselves with the belief that Canada is a land of freedom and individual rights. The reality is that the instant our government faces a challenge, it resorts to authoritarian tactics worse even than in Russia.