City crews are adding more fencing to secure parts of Calgary's downtown core and police acknowledged Friday they've bolstered their arsenal to combat violent protesters during next week's G-8 summit with a couple of homemade water cannons.
After police had said for months it would essentially be business as usual in Calgary during the summit in Kananaskis, security preparations have been noticeably ratcheting up in the days before the gathering of the world leaders at the nearby mountain resort.
Barricades have already gone up around City Hall and elsewhere in the city.
"I've never seen so much evidence of security in my whole life," Premier Ralph Klein said after a speech Friday in Calgary. "I am confident that all the security precautions that are necessary, and are indeed possible, have been put in place."
Some energy companies have covered signs bearing corporate logos and some shops have boarded up windows. In addition to physical changes, there are also more police officers on city streets and convoys of RCMP and Canadian Forces vehicles routinely travel the highway between Calgary and the site of the meeting hosted by Prime Minister Jean Chretien at Kananaskis Village.
A one-metre high metal fence will be erected around the Telus Convention Centre -- which serves as the main media centre during the three-day summit -- despite evidence fences became flashpoints in confrontations between police and protesters at previous summits.
The low fence will be used primarily for traffic control, said Calgary Police Service Insp. Al Redford. "This is much smaller in scale and size than what we put up for the World Petroleum Congress," Redford said. A two-metre high fence secured the area around the convention centre during the meeting of global energy industry in June 2000.
Redford added police can quickly put up higher fences should protests turn violent.
"If any spot becomes a target . . . we will be able to respond," he said.
Barbed wire was also used to protect key sites from protesters during the World Petroleum Congress although the event went off essentially without incident.
Anti-G-8 activists have been arriving in Calgary all week and some protest groups were meeting around the city on Friday to practice civil disobedience tactics. Members of the protest movement said the decision to set up even low fencing is a "red flag" of provocation.
Security fences proved to be lightning rods for some protesters at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in April 2001 and at the G-7 finance ministers meeting last week in Halifax.
Police here will be able to draw on water-cannon tankers which were cobbled together by city workers this spring to clean bridges and roads as well as water flowers and trees. City of Calgary G-8 spokesman John Chaput characterized the unit, which is operated from inside the cab of the tanker, as "glorified garden hoses."
Redford said the water cannons provide "a non-lethal way"of assisting police in managing large crowds. The variable-pressure nozzles can fire volleys of water at more than 150 pounds of pressure per square inch, which, he said, is more than enough force "move people back."
With millions being spent on security for the G-8 leaders, protesters are condemning the measures as overkill.
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