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This conclusion, obvious to locals and most Canadians who observed the crisis from afar, was recently confirmed by a ruling in the Ontario Superior Court. Justice Kim Carpenter-Gunn found in favour of Randy Fleming, a man who sustained permanent injuries when he was tackled by OPP officers and arrested while waving a Canadian flag near the protest site. Charged with obstructing an officer — a preposterous charge, since he was minding his own business until engaged by police — Fleming ultimately had the charges against him dropped. But he sued the OPP and, last month, Justice Carpenter-Gunn ruled in his favour, awarding him nearly $300,000.

The ruling is obviously a huge victory for Fleming, who was behaving reasonably, and entirely legally, when he was falsely arrested and unlawfully imprisoned by the OPP. But it is also a victory for the people of Ontario. It verifies the truth of what happened at Caledonia: the police abandoned their duty to the people of the province, and were at the very least permitted to do so by a weak premier and a government desperate to avoid a contentious, potentially politically damaging clash with aboriginal protesters. More likely still is that the OPP abandoned their duty not with the government’s mere acceptance, but in fact, under its orders.

No one wanted bloodshed in Caledonia. But the government’s claim that the OPP was “keeping the peace” — McGuinty used those exact words in a meeting with the National Post editorial board — doesn’t hold water. The police keep the peace by enforcing the law, equally and neutrally, without concern for matters of race and political sensitivities. If they are not able to do so, because the situation is too dangerous — in other words, if there’s no peace to keep — the police can request help, via the provincial government, from the Armed Forces. It’s called Aid to the Civil Power and is (for obvious reasons) rarely used in Canada — there’s little need. But the option exists for those dire situations where the police are literally unable to enforce the law because civil order has broken down. That didn’t happen in Caledonia. What was the OPP so afraid of? Why couldn’t police enforce the law?