Now I understand what "semantic chicanery" means

I once knew someone whose favourite phrase was "semantic chicanery". Cool combination of words, fun to day, but I didn't grok it. At least not until I heard this quote from Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair regarding Queen and Spadina:

“This was not a site where somebody casually walked up to catch a bus”

This is factually correct. No one at Queen and Spadina would be trying to catch a bus. But this is only because both Queen and Spadina both have streetcars.

However, the connotations of the statement - that this isn't a place where people would find themselves accidentally unless they were deliberately up to mischief - are blatantly, observably false. Anyone who has ever been to Queen and Spadina - or indeed any other major intersection in Toronto - knows that there's myriad of perfectly valid, non-protest-related reasons why someone might be there.

I know the police know better and are well aware of the natural traffic patterns of our neighbourhood. There was once a high-profile investigation in my neighbourhood - mobile command centre parked across the street from me and everything. Internet commentators who were obviously not part of the neighbourhood had theories that were absolutely ridiculous when you've observed how people use the space IRL, but police activity appeared to be directed into precisely the right places, without following any of the red herrings being bandied about on the internet. They know their turf.

So with Bill Blair apparently attempting to mislead the public on the very nature of the neighbourhood, combined with G20 Director General Sanjeev Chowdhury's statement that the downtown core is empty on weekends, I can't help but wonder what else they're lying to our faces about. That Queen & Spadina is full of all kinds of people doing all kinds of legitimate things and that downtown is full of people at all times are both clearly observable facts. There are tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands? millions?) of people who have observed them with their own eyes. You wouldn't even think to fact-check them because you can observe them. It would be like if I lied to you about how many stories tall my building is.

There are lots of other, very important things that are less immediate observable. How much of that are they lying to us about?