The Group of 20 meeting is taking place today and tomorrow here in Ottawa. Yesterday I watched from my office window at the corner of Bank and Albert Streets as a snake march made its way through the downtown of the city. This particular action was, I suppose, only mildly disruptive until they passed the wretched Bank Street McDonald's. As if on cue, a few of the marchers pulled bricks out of their backpacks and broke all the windows of the fast food restaurant. The targeting of Mickey D's was quite deliberate: the marchers passed many other stores and restaurants as they made there way through the downtown, yet even Starbucks two blocks south wasn't singled out.

The Ottawa Citizen, true to form, played up the vandalism with a sarcastic caption: "Breaking Windows for Democracy". The mainstream media's coverage of the anti-globalisation movement over the past three years has provided us with some of the best examples of media bias one will ever see. We can count on stories about supposed acts of vandalism along with editorials condemning the peaceful protestors, and then virtually no coverage of what is actually being objected to. Randall Denley's column in today's Citizen is a good case in point; he argues that finance ministers and bankers meeting behind closed doors is "democratic," but that peaceful protesters marching for fair wages and democracy somehow are not.

I have wondered for some time about the wisdom of hosting the G-20 in downtown Ottawa. Because of security concerns in the wake of September 11th, the conference was moved from Delhi to Ottawa. When I first heard that the meeting would be here, I thought it might end up at a nice golf resort in Gatineau, isolated but accessible. Instead, the Conference Centre downtown is the site. Anyone who knows Ottawa understands the problems this causes: the Centre sits beside the Rideau Canal, very close to the corner of two busy streets, Rideau and Sussex, across the street from the city's largest shopping mall, and within a block of the Byward Market. "Securing" the Centre has meant shutting two of the bridges and most of the entrances to the mall, and the mall is the hub for the Ottawa public transit system.

Why should thousands of Ottawa citizens be unconvinced by this meeting? How will we benefit? Can anyone tell me?