The billion dollar security price tag for the G8 and G20 summits taking place respectively in Huntsville and Toronto June 25-27 started to make sense about the time somebody bought enough ammonium nitrate fertilizer to make a good-sized bomb.
Buying a large amount of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in a rural area is not exactly unusual. It is a relatively inexpensive and excellent fertilizer. However, when the purchase takes place an hour from the site of the G20 summit in Toronto a couple of weeks before the summit, and the purchaser identifies himself as a regular customer but is not, alarm bells go off.
Agricultural supply businesses are supposed to report any unusual purchases of ammonium nitrate, the substance used by Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995 that killed 168 people. The business in Lincoln, near St. Catharines, reported the purchase because employees were unable to identify the buyer. Police certainly wasted no time in locating him. No threat, no bomb. False alarm – this time.
Surely no coincidence, about the time the search hit the news, critics of the expenses involved with the summits shifted focus from security, to the “fake lake”.
All of a sudden, that concrete and chain link security fence around the summit area in Toronto looked less like someone’s pricey paranoid fantasy, and more like a sensible idea. So did controlling traffic in and out of the conference area, closing off access to the CN Tower, and hiring a lot of extra security people.
Opinions vary on whether Canada should be hosting the G8 and G20 events, but even those of us who regard such summits as expensive exercises in futility hope the ones at the end of the month go off without a hitch. If the only reason for the fence were keeping out placard-waving demonstrators, the security measures would be ridiculous. The fertilizer incident opened our eyes.
It is a sad commentary on our world that providing world leaders with the chance to join forces and discuss issues of mutual interest has to be treated as a security nightmare. There are probably a dozen different groups that would like nothing better than to claim responsibility for a bomb that killed many international leaders at a G8 or G20 summit. Whether any group is actually planning an attack remains unknown at this point. All we can do is hope those high-priced security people know their stuff.
There was a message for us in the search for the fertilizer guy. We are are only an afternoon’s drive away from the site of both summits. In this community, there are undoubtedly people acquainted with someone who will be present in Huntsville or Toronto for the G20 or G8 – perhaps one of the emergency services personnel beefing up the local departments, a server in one of the hotels, or a security person. The impact of something going wrong would affect us in a very personal way.
Spending a billion dollars on security makes sense. It also makes sense for people in communities like Lincoln – and Wingham – to keep our eyes open. If something seems a bit weird – a mysterious guy missing a couple of fingers, looking to buy a substantial amount of ammonium nitrate or aviation fuel, for example (another key ingredient in McVeigh’s bomb) - we cannot afford to shrug it off. We need to let the police determine if the danger is real.