In a chat with the Mark, Bob Rae considers last weekend’s anarchy in Toronto.
In a chat with the Mark, Bob Rae considers last weekend’s anarchy in Toronto.
Well I think the first thing is that the violence obviously discredits the notion of protest and I think it’s a very deliberate tactic by those who think that violence is a good idea, or that the destruction of property is a good idea. It’s an obvious tactic to try to get a reaction from the police. And I think that the one thing the NGO community should be doing, should have been done much sooner as the preparations of the event were ongoing, was to do everything they could to separate themselves from those doing the violent destruction of property. And I think that if you’re trying to help world poverty then I think you have to say that I don’t want to be associated with those who are practicing violent destruction. And the other thing is that people have to recognize that it’s inevitable that the very acts of vandalism colour the public’s impression of protests in general.