AWHILE AGO, it was suggested on this page that the sites chosen for the G8 and G20 summits were inappropriate, and that it would have been preferable to hold both conferences at a university campus in midsized cities such as Sudbury, Peterborough or Kingston.

At that time, our main concerns were that holding the G8 summit in Huntsville and the G20 in Toronto had been the main reason security costs had ballooned to more than $1 billion, and that the downtown Toronto location was going to cause enormous disruption.

Little did we know then that police intelligence sources knew there was a real likelihood that planned protests would turn violent because of the presence among the protesters of criminal elements portraying themselves as anarchists.

Of course, as it turned out, the hooligans showed little interest in Huntsville and the protests there were perfectly peaceful, just what Canadians would expect at any meeting of world leaders.

But the few hundred vandals responsible for the massive vandalism last Saturday correctly perceived the Toronto site as the perfect one for the planned mayhem.

After all, they knew the Canadian Labour Congress and other labour groups were planning a massive but peaceful march in downtown Toronto, and that they could easily mingle with the legitimate protesters and carry out their plans without any significant risk of being arrested for their criminal acts.

Not only that, but the planned route of the march took them through the downtown area’s major commercial and retail zones, where storefront windows would be easy targets for their rocks and two-by-fours.

The resultant street violence, witnessed by millions on TV, included police cruisers being set on fire, bank windows smashed with hammers, Starbucks outlets attacked with rocks, media vans damaged and mail boxes were overturned. The images witnessed around the world were ugly and likely led many viewers to conclude that most, if not all, the protesters believed in violence as a solution to the world’s problems.

But in fact most of those in the “People’s First March,” protested peacefully, with signs like, “Save the planet, sink Harper.”

For their part, the police reacted at least initially with restraint, likely aware of the fact that the mayhem-makers were mixed among the peaceful protesters and curious onlookers.

Surely no one could disagree with Toronto Mayor David Miller’s observation that the vandalism had “nothing to do with the right to protest, it’s simply crime.”

One issue that will soon come to the forefront is who should have to bear the enormous cost of cleaning up from the wanton vandalism.

No doubt some of the losses will be covered by insurance, but store owners will undoubtedly have to pay deductibles and many lost all or part of their weekend business, in some cases because they had to close their shops and in others simply because their ordinary customers stayed out of the downtown area.

In the circumstances, we think at least some of the merchants should have at least part of their losses covered by the federal government as the G20 host.

That’s not to say that holding the two summits was a bad idea, or that Canada ought not to act as a host to any future such conferences.

In fact, we still think the idea of holding G8 and G20 summits on a single weekend was a good one. The only problems related to the sites and the size involved.

As for the sites, we still think a university setting would have been vastly preferable to that chosen for the G20 gathering, the Metro Toronto Conference Centre on Toronto’s Front Street. That was what happened last fall Pittsburgh, where the G20 took place successfully with relatively little security and far less vandalism.

We suspect that if the G20 had been held in any one of London, Sudbury, Peterborough, Thunder Bay or Kingston (each of which has a large university campus), it could have taken place at least as successfully as the one in Pittsburgh.

For example, Sudbury’s Laurentian University is on the south shore of Lake Ramsay, far from the downtown area, with only one access road. And even protesters wanted to march along the closest major artery there would be little risk of successful vandalism of the sort witnessed last Saturday.

Although there would have to be some boat patrolling, there would be no need for the huge security fences erected in downtown Toronto, nor for the closing of major highways as delegates moved from Huntsville to Toronto.

As for size, we’ve never seen any explanation of why no limit was placed on the size of delegations at what was portrayed as a leaders’ summit.

For such meetings, which normally last only a few hours, each country should be limited to 20 or so delegates, any of whom could easily communicate with their underlings by phone or Internet.