G20 cleanup in Toronto begins

Toronto is slowly returning to normal after the conclusion of the weekend G20 summit, which prompted violent protests that resulted in hundreds of arrests.

As the world leaders headed home, shopkeepers on Monday were cleaning up the mess left by Black Bloc protesters and police officers were standing down.

An officer from the Chatham-Kent Police, one of thousands who came to the city to provide G20 security, tweeted Monday that he had been proud to help but was missing his family. "Two weeks in Toronto — one more day and I get to go home to my wife and baby girl."

The security fence that surrounded the site where the G20 leaders met was starting to be dismantled, a spokesperson for the Integrated Security Unit said early Monday.

Staffers arriving for early-morning shifts at the CBC said that for the first time in three days, they did not have to show special identification to police officers guarding the security fence. The CBC building in Toronto is within the security zone.

Transportation systems, closed or operating on special schedules or routes because of the meetings and the violent demonstrations, returned to their regular schedules.

Ontario Provincial Police traffic officer Sgt. Dave Woodford tweeted early Monday that the commute on the major highways around the city is back to normal.

Regular transit service resumes

Via Rail said service from the downtown Union Station, which had stopped from June 24 to June 27, was resuming Monday. Passengers taking Via trains had to arrive or depart at suburban stations during the summit.

The Toronto Transit Commission rerouted several downtown streetcars Sunday because of demonstrations, but late in the evening said normal service had resumed.

The commuter train and bus service, GO Transit, stopped using Union Station Saturday because of the Black Bloc protests, but normal service resumed Sunday.

Sunday was a calmer day than Saturday, when four police cars were set on fire as bands of militant protesters abandoned the peaceful main march and went on a rampage for hours.

There were scattered protests throughout Sunday, but they were neither as large nor as violent as Saturday's, when thousands of people marched through the downtown core.

400 'will be held accountable'

Speaking on CBC Radio One's Metro Morning, Toronto police Chief Bill Blair said several hundred people were engaged in a "criminal conspiracy to attack the city."

"I'm quite confident that close to 400 of the people that were involved in those criminal acts in our city will be held accountable and we're continuing in that investigation," Blair said.

Const. Wendy Drummond of the Integrated Security Unit confirmed close to 900 people had been arrested over the weekend.'

But there have been several criticisms of the police tactics as reports emerged that journalists, non-violent protesters and others who say they had no involvement in protest activity were being taken into custody.

Freelance journalist Jesse Rosenfeld alleged he was beaten by police Saturday night as he was at a non-violent protest on The Esplanade, a downtown Toronto street.

Toronto police have said Rosenfeld, who has hired a lawyer, is welcome to file a complaint.

"Quite frankly, because of the volume of the people that we were dealing with, because of the continuing issue of the several thousand who were there lawfully to peacefully protest, we had no way of determining what all of their intentions were," said Blair.

Amnesty International Canada said human rights suffered considerably during the protests and is calling for an independent review of the security measures put in place for the G8 and G20 summits.

Toronto Mayor David Miller acknowledged watchers of the summit had not seen the best of Toronto over the weekend.

"If you step outside of Canada for a moment, these kinds of summits attract violent protests, they have everywhere," he told CBC News.

"By those standards, Toronto's police acquitted themselves very well and I think most people around the world are not going to associate Toronto with these violent acts, they will associate the G20 with those acts."

He also criticized the organizers of the summit for holding the meeting at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in the city centre.

"The event was downtown. The city had argued very strongly that it should be at a self-contained place. Our choice was Exhibition Place."