Scott Stinson finds that the constant warnings about disruptions, delays, closures, and protests has had a positive effect: anyone who can avoid downtown Toronto is avoiding the place.

We were to be besieged by The Man, and those who would shake their fists at The Man.

So it was more than a little surprising to find the commute on Thursday morning not one of snarled traffic and honking horns, but one of fast-moving, wide-open freeways. Given the number of vehicles on Toronto’s normally packed roads, you’d think the area had been hit a day earlier not by a mild earthquake, but by a nuclear bomb. From northeast of the city to the western waterfront in 40 minutes? If this is nuclear winter, then sign me up for Armageddon!

I’ve certainly been avoiding going into downtown since the barricades started to go up. I’m apparently one of the majority following the same basic script.

And why wouldn’t residents have made alternate plans? Consider this traffic advisory, issued on Tuesday: “Expect closures and restrictions in and around Toronto resulting in significant delays on major highways such as the 427, 401, Queen Elizabeth Way, Gardiner Expressway, the Don Valley Parkway and connecting roads.”

If you are unfamiliar with Toronto’s highways, a little background about those mentioned in that advisory: That’s pretty much all of them. Other than one highly expensive toll road across the north of the city, there’s no way to cover much ground in this place without traversing those highways that officialdom warns will have “significant delays.” Due to the prevailing security-first practice of releasing as little information as possible — which is to say, nothing — that road closure advisory doesn’t say which highways will be closed when, either. If we knew that, at least we could plan around the delays. Instead we get travel warnings that boil down to this: Seriously, stay away.

Update: Don Martin thinks it’s like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie:

This is what a billion-dollar security net buys you. Canada’s largest city as a post-apocalyptic movie set. Massive worker inconvenience. Horrific productivity losses. Legions of bored cops on overtime. And a tourist scare-off that makes SARS look like a Halloween prank.

Everywhere in a city core swept clean of garbage collection bins and newspaper boxes, a fence runs through it.

The notorious barricade has gaps too small even for a child’s fingers to grasp and that makes it impossible to scale although, protesters take note, at three metres high it’s only half the world pole vault record so there’s at least one way to leap over it into the waiting hands of riot police.

Speaking of police, they already gather in jawdropping numbers as omnipresent clusters at every intersection or wander aimlessly as enforcement groups around buildings and down streets, wearing bulletproof vests with helmets dangling from their belts and earpieces connected to voices of undetermined origin.

At least there’s the scene set for some great TV and photography moments later in the weekend, when the massed forces of global anarchism (plus every other disgruntled group with both an axe to grind and physically active membership) look for their golden opportunities to induce police over-reaction. The only tourists in town aren’t interested in the sights or the shopping: they’re here for media appearances, protest marching, and (hopefully a tiny minority) a taste of violence.

Update, the second: Kelly McParland points out that the massive security precautions have actually made the protesters redundant:

[. . .] The [Toronto] Star edited out Dave and dwelt instead on the new law, which wasn’t debated in the legislature and resulted from an ‘extraordinary request’ by Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, who wanted additional policing powers shortly after learning the G20 was coming to Toronto.” Evidently it didn’t occur to Premier Dalton McGuinty that he could say no. And why should he? It’s pretty clear that no one in any government — municipal, provincial or federal — has said no to anything dreamed up by any level of the national security apparatus since the day Stephen Harper told them he’d agreed to hold two summits at once. A billion dollar budget? You got it. New sound blasters for Toronto cops? You got it. An asinine fence snaking through the centre of the city? Done. The country’s financial centre brought to a screeching halt . . . all the major tourist spots closed . . . restaurants emptied . . . hotels commandeered . . . the waterfront shut down on a hot summer weekend . . . a million or so people kept from earning a living? Done, done and done.

This is what happens when you give security people a blank cheque and let them impose whatever paranoid restrictions they can dream up at their most fevered moments. Hey, let’s rip the saplings out of the ground! Let’s get a fork lift and move that three-ton elephant sculpture someplace where less ‘dangerous’! What’s dangerous about a three-ton elephant sculpture? Who knows, but we can do whatever we want! It’s about security!

What the protesters have missed is that they weren’t needed. The government’s done a fine job of making itself look foolish without any help from them. They could have stayed home for the weekend and watched the Michael Jackson testimonials. They sure wouldn’t have missed anything important.