Pepper in Our Eyes: The APEC Affair

Lawrence T. Woods is an associate professor in the International Studies
Program, University of Northern British Columbia.

As a scholar of political science, international affairs, Canadian
foreign relations, and Asian studies, I find this volume to be one of
the most important books I have ever read. Every Canadian should read
it.

Remember APEC? Remember what the meeting was supposed to be about?
Remember the pepper spray? Remember the subsequent legal wrangling over
who did what to whom, why, and on whose orders? At the time of this
writing, the report of the Public Complaints Commission into the
allegations of RCMP misconduct at the November 1997 Asia Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit on the University of British Columbia
campus in Vancouver is still at least six months away. For reasons
canvassed in this volume, it is now a one-person commission led by Ted
Hughes. The contributors to this volume do not purport to be telling Mr.
Hughes what he should conclude, but they do provide him with much food
for thought by way of addressing the historical, legal, institutional,
professional, and social contexts in which the police action against
protesters must be understood.

This balanced, well-constructed, and neatly packaged volume presents a
variety of perspectives on the event and its implications. The
contributors include legal experts, police officers, journalists,
student activists, and social commentators. On reading the accumulated
wisdom and viewing the instructive photographs, which complement the
text, one senses that the photo opportunity that led the Canadian prime
minister to insist upon having the summit held on the UBC campus may yet
lead to his resignation if the allegation that the police acted on
orders from the Prime Minister’s Office are shown to hold water.

For this reason alone, this book is a must-read for all Canadians who
value freedom of speech, wish to preserve our tenuous democracy, and
seek to understand the pressures globalization places on our society.
The editor and the publisher are to be especially praised for their
efforts in this regard.