Premier Dalton McGuinty needs to move quickly to ensure that people who demonstrate in the streets to make their views known are heard as much by his government and the legislature as groups who are better financed and organized and even employ professional lobbyists, including most of his former staff.

This would be a way of helping compensate for his government’s glaring gaffe, in which it secretly changed a law to restrict demonstrators and did not seem to know what it meant.

Police revealed that the law was changed and said it banned, and allowed them to question and arrest, anyone approaching closer than five metres to the security fences surrounding the G20 Summit, and the premier seemed to agree. But it turned out that it banned penetrating more than five metres inside the fences.

The confusion and secrecy have hurt McGuinty’s image, although previously he had expressed more sympathy for demonstrators than any earlier premier.

A week before, avoiding provincial employees demonstrating because they might lose their jobs through privatization, McGuinty said they were an important reminder to proceed with caution.

“It’s important they be there,” he said. “These are people. This is how they earn a living and raise their families.”

Premiers usually have not been as charitable to those who demonstrated against them. Progressive Conservative Mike Harris was the most demonstrated against, because he cut jobs.

Demonstrators followed him in a bus in one election and pelted him with food and an egg splattered his pant leg. They invaded his picnic in his home town and Harris, who was not short of answers, told them it was unreasonable to do business on a Sunday. A bomb threat was phoned to a hotel where he was attending a dinner.

Children booed him when he welcomed South African hero Nelson Mandela in Toronto, and Harris said he was disappointed that children were brought into a political confrontation.

Harris said “I don’t do demos,” and almost all the demonstrators against him were union members probably paid time and half for it, and “I am firm and determined and will not be thrown off my agenda,” and rarely was.

Liberal premier David Peterson suffered his most serious demonstration when he called an election and an environmental activist seized his microphone and took over most of his press conference.

Peterson also had difficulty keeping his temper and when a demonstrator called him “the poverty premier” retorted “get a job,” which prompted complaints that he sneered at the unemployed. He said he would “love to

take a swing” at another heckler, but take a swing” at another heckler, but refrained.

New Democrat Bob Rae faced demonstrations particularly by wellfinanced business groups, one of which erected a sign picturing him as a jackass, which the provincial transportation ministry forced it to remove as a distraction to drivers.

Conservative William Davis in his first election as premier was followed by crowds protesting against his refusal to extend funding to the end of Catholic high school. He faced the biggest demonstration when he announced he would ban teachers from striking and they descended on the legislature in thousands and changed his mind.

McGuinty has faced a few demonstrations by environmentalists, farmers and truck drivers, but nothing on such a scale. One reason is that he has built close relationships with public sector workers by supporting generous pay raises for them before the economic recession, although this could change when has to get to grips with cutting his record Budget deficit.

McGuinty’s problem is not that people have demonstrated against him, but that he sneakily brought in a law to restrict demonstrators.

But he should have genuine sympathy for demonstrators, because more affluent and organized groups such as business, doctors, accountants and other professionals meet politicians in cozy receptions at Queen’s Park regularly and often employ lobbyists.

Those who are less well financed have no similar inside track and are forced to march in the streets. It is time our politicians recognized this.