As the G8 wraps up in Huntsville Ontario today, the G20 is starting tonight with a dinner by the Canadian Prime Minister.

Protest organizers have started a Get Off The Fence! protest by working people, with a heavy dose of far left terminology. The site runs Drupal, with a link "open source technology" in the footer linking to Drupal.org.

The protests are already turning violent, with at least two police cruisers being torched so far.

As we were heading north to the Parry Sound area, I saw first hand how security was ramped up from the 407 up the 400, with police cruisers at many exits on the southbound ramps. I also saw a motorcade with motorcycle and police cars accompanying some near Barrie. I also saw two large helicopters heading south like the one that flew Obama from the Pearson airport to Huntsville yesterday.

Further north from Barrie, all trucks were stopped on the southbound lanes, and passenger vehicles were diverted back via a U-turn to head back north. The northbound cottage traffic was unaffected at this time of day.

Taking the 407 instead of the 401 east then 400 north probably saved us from the rolling traffic blocks reported on the radio as G20 leaders are escorted from Pearson airport to downtown.

And to top all that, the bill to Canadian taxpayers is reported to be 1.2 billion Canadian dollars! Many times more previous G8/G20 summits held elsewhere.

Huge waste of money for sure. Hope some progress is/was made to offset some of that.

Contents: CanadaPoliticsTags: Drupal PlanetG20G8ActivismProtestGovernment spendingWaste