The papers are still full of reports about the aftermath of last weekend’s unruliness, and there are still writings about those people still untangling themselves from sudden and unwarranted incarceration.

The news on the radio continues to worry over the sins or otherwise of the rioters and the police. However, there is little in the papers or on the news a mere two days after the fact about the accomplishments of the gathering of the clans in Toronto – the members of the G20.

So, what did they accomplish? What was achieved for all the money and chaos?

Between the honest people who came to use the moment of attention of the world’s press to protest, to point out the many defects of how the world is run – between them and the not-so-honest politicians who came to say how the world is going to be run – what was achieved?

The protesters did not have the chance to air their messages to the world’s press, for the “hooligans” and the cops were the only ones getting attention – and they are still mainly getting the media’s attention.

What did we learn from all this trouble and expense? I will tell you: we learned, for sure, how fragile is our so-called freedom. We have boasted, rightly as I thought until this past weekend, about our freedoms: of speech, of movement, of expression.

But Toronto was a city under the grips of martial law and, in fact, this could have been applied to any city in the country, for the very same reason – that the G20 was being held in Canada.

Think about it. There could have been, and may have been, people marching in cities across the country, protesting about the issues that were or should have been before the G20. Never mind that the actual meeting was in Toronto, citizens anywhere in Canada might have been in tandem with protesters in Toronto to have their say.

Councils and provincial cabinets might have been meeting in secret anywhere in Canada to impose the same rules of martial law that gripped Toronto, well before the event began.

They could have met; they could have decided; they could have kept it all to themselves and police across the land could have been putting anybody and everybody in jail just because they were where they were, as they did here.

There were no fences in other cities, for there were no actual locations in need of theoretical protection, but the reasons were as relevant in Vancouver as they were in Toronto why people might have been on the streets calling out for justice, fairness, compassion – balance, common sense.

Inasmuch as a state of martial law was imposed – unannounced – on Toronto, it could have happened anywhere.

And because it was so easy, so smooth, so completely obeyed, it could so easily come about again.

We really must not lose sight of this.

This federal Conservative government with its policies of control, concentrated power in the PMO, and a disdain for parliamentary process, continually diminishes the freedoms of which we Canadians have justly been so proud.

When Harper saw that his government was certain to fall, he openly prorogued parliament. When he became bored with their questions, their questions, he did it again, this time late on New Year’s Eve with a simple telephone call. He suspended parliament, put the people that the majority of the country voted for – the MPs not in cabinet – out of work for several weeks while he did what he pleased, running the country.

Every budget he brings to parliament carries unrelated articles within it so that even his own senators are calling him to account for his misuse of power.

We can be sure that Harper condoned, if he did not actually instruct, the McGuinty government’s extension of police powers, and how they did it.

And it clearly demonstrated how dangerous it is to assume anything about our governments and the responsibility to us they ought to have.

On the contrary, those freedoms are mere illusions, good only as long as there is a guarantee of good behaviour. The second it looks as though any deviation from completely lawful behaviour might occur, the gates come down and Canada becomes a police state.

Just like that, and with no advanced notice.

The real villains in this piece of theatre are the people who have the power to make this a better world and refuse to do it; the people who could bring the outrageous poverty and pain suffered by a huge proportion of the world’s population to an end; the people who could turn around the disastrous effect we are having on our planet, and do not do it. They are the real villains.

The people who take the massive amounts of aid given to their struggling countries and build palaces for themselves; the people who would rather fly into space and create wars and give taxpayers’ money to wealthy people – they, too, are the real villains.

If the protesters had had the chance to say so, they would have told us many things we did not know about the problems of the world.

Their voices were not heard because the land was under the hammer of martial law and too many lawful people were put in jail, not on soap boxes, while a few were left first to destroy and then to distract.

That was real villainy.