When The Toronto Star broke the sensational story during the G20 summit held two weeks ago that Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's Cabinet had secretly passed an obscure and temporary wartime regulation of a law now expired, called the Public Works Protection Act, that allowed police to conduct searches and demand identification from anyone five metres outside the massive security fence erected for the G20 summit, mass confusion erupted for days in the media. It's still confusing. It turns out the temporary law, which was anti-democratic and should never have been passed in the first place, didn't actually ever give police these powers and wasn't actually ever used at all by the police to make arrests. This is confusing because upon reading the law, The Hill Times' interpretation is that police did in fact have the power to arrest and search without warrant civilians who were within five meters inside or outside of the designated perimeter. The Hill Times published an editorial based on this earlier information last week.

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