So much to look forward to

In case anybody thought any substantial lessons had been learned from the big-money, zero-rights G20 debacle in Toronto, the McGuinty government's response to a scathing ombudsman's report about says it all:

In his report, Mr. Marin finds the province shouldn't have passed the regulation in the first place - that it was, in his opinion, illegal and unconstitutional to do so. But he adds that even had it been valid, “the government should have handled its passage better. ... It gave police powers that are unfamiliar in a free and democratic society. Steps should have been taken to ensure that the Toronto Police Service understood what they were getting.

“More importantly, the passage of the regulation should have been aggressively publicized.”

Premier Dalton McGuinty declined to comment on the report Tuesday, saying he hasn't yet read it. In a letter, Community Safety Minister Jim Bradley said he appreciates the concerns Mr. Marin identified.

“The ministry could have, and should have, handled the enactment of Regulation 233/10 better,” he wrote. “In future, we will take greater care to ensure that the Ontario public is given more adequate notice of regulation changes of this nature.”

So the McGuinty government has interpreted the issue to be solely one of publicity - not one of whether massive civil rights violations were justified in the first place. Which presumably means that we can look forward to a nice, glossy Rabble Suppression Action Plan (TM) next time Canada is supposedly showcased to the world.

[Edit: corrected Marin's title.]