It was messy, violent and bruising.

But Prime Minister Stephen Harper insists the summit that turned Toronto’s downtown into an armed fortress and sparked window-smashing protests and mass arrests was all worth it.

“We obviously deplore the actions of a few thugs. But the reality is, unfortunately, that these summits attract this element and (that) has been a problem, as we know, around the world,” Harper said as the G20 summit wrapped up Sunday afternoon.

“That said, I think that goes a long way to explaining why we have the kind of security costs around these summits that we do,” Harper said.

His fellow leaders, who were well-shielded from the turmoil on the streets, gave Toronto an enthusiastic thumb’s up, with U.S. President Barack Obama thanking “our wonderful hosts.”

“The success of these summits—the G-8 in Muskoka and the G-20 here in Toronto—is a tribute to Canadian leadership,” Obama said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, asked about the value of Canada’s billion-dollar-summit, said it’s always useful for world leaders to meet face-to-face, particularly at the G20, which represents 85 per cent of the world’s economy.

“Each summit is not historic for the content of its decisions, but each time it’s important that we have these discussions,” he said.

The reviews might not be so glowing on the streets of Toronto, where summit hang-over—and the clean-up—promises to linger well into the week.

But Harper said the costs and the hassles that go with a summit are the price to be paid to be a member of the global economy.

“It’s not really a Canadian economy anymore. It is a global economy,” Harper said.

“That’s why it’s so critical that we participate and play a major role, because Canadian jobs and Canadian futures are intimately linked to what goes on here,” he said.

Indeed, for Harper and his Conservatives, who had taken bruising criticism for their eye-popping bill for summit security, the rioters who busted store windows and torched cop cars may have done the government a favour.

Government officials didn’t say it in so many words, but there was a “told-you-so” tone to their comments as they praised the thousands of police officers—part of a security bill that totaled nearly $1 billion—for holding the line against “thugs.”

“Our police services did a magnificent job to ensure that these thugs don’t rampage around the city wreaking more havoc,” said Dimitri Soudas, Harper’s director of communications, earlier Sunday.

But Ned Franks, a retired Queen’s University political science professor, said it is odd for the Conservative government to crow about the great job police did when the downtown was ransacked.

“Yes, (police) did a fine job of protecting the participants in the G20 but that’s about as far as it went. The city itself was left pretty vulnerable,” he said.

“Will Toronto feel happy about hosting it (the G20)? I think the answer is no,” Franks said.

Still, a single afternoon of violent protest helped blunt weeks of criticism aimed at the Conservatives over the $1.1-billion price tag for the back-to-back summits, the G8 in Huntsville and the G20 in Toronto. More than 80 per cent of that spending went to pay for the massive security operation that saw officers brought in from across the country and turned downtown Toronto into an armed, fenced fortress.

As police and protesters squared off for a second consecutive day Sunday, the Prime Minister’s office insisted the billion-dollar tab for summit security was money well-spent, saying officers saved the city from a broader rampage.

From the “get-go,” Ottawa’s goal was to ensure that not only “the delegates, the leaders and over 3,700 international media . . . were able to do that in a secure way, but ultimately the importance of making sure the citizens of Toronto also feel safe,” Soudas said.

“What we saw (Saturday) was a bunch of thugs that pretend to have a difference of opinion with policies and instead choose violence to express those so-called differences,” he said.

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But there were questions about police, who appeared more focused on protecting the summit site—and the downtown hotels housing the leaders—than safeguarding downtown businesses that got hit by protesters.

Security expert Alan Bell said the primary goal of police is to protect the security zone sheltering the G20 leaders, and that is likely why anarchists were able to smash windows and burn police cruisers in the streets.

“They were well aware of the fact that the anarchists were inclined to draw police attention away from their primary role by having these types of rampages,” Bell said.

“There have been no serious injuries and there have been no deaths. There has been vandalism. You can repair vandalism, but you can’t repair people who get injured or killed, so that’s one way to look at it.”

Still, Bell said holding the summit in a different location would have been a better way to keep it safe than spending an unprecedented amount of money on security.

The protests only sparked further questions about why the Conservatives decided to locate the G20 gathering smack in the heart of Canada’s largest city, knowing it would make Toronto’s downtown ground zero for riots and protests.

NDP Leader Jack Layton said the Conservative government is left with a “black eye” as result of G20-related rioting.

“What we see here so clearly demonstrates that the Harper government did not plan this photo-opportunity meeting properly at all. If fact, it was predictable … that what we saw here would unfold,” he said.

Layton said the billion dollars worth of security didn’t prevent the violence.

Liberal MP Mark Holland (Ajax—Pickering) said the last-minute decision to host the G20 in Toronto gave officials only a few months to prepare, while Huntsville had a couple of years to get ready for the G8.

“They left police with very little time to respond and they put it right in downtown Toronto, and that is why we had this situation and that is why we had this mess unfold,” Holland said.

But Soudas defended Toronto’s selection as the summit site, saying a big city was the only option given the need for hotel rooms and work space to accommodate almost 4,000 media and 10,000 delegates.

“It is very difficult to do it, for example, in Muskoka, because there would be no accommodations,” Soudas said.

With files from Allan Woods

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