by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
July 28, 2004
Toronto mayor David Miller is taking some flak these days. Last month the Toronto Police Services Board voted not to renew the contract of popular police chief, Julian Fantino. at a meeting of Toronto City Council last week, a motion was made to request the Police Services Board to reconsider their decision and delay it until the fall when a new board is in place. Mayor Miller ruled the motion out of order.
Miller is part of the left wing cop-hating faction on council and although he denies that he influenced the Toronto Police Services Board, he has made it clear that Fantino should go, a new chief chosen and the citizens of Toronto should just get on with it.
On July 23, the Toronto Sun ran a cartoon by their number one cartoonist, andy Donato. The cartoon showed an outline of a face that was broken up into sections. Each section contained a number from one to four. The caption read "Colour Mayor Miller" and then four colours were shown with directions showing which the colour should be used for each portion of the face. If you merely glanced at the cartoon, it didn’t make much sense. But a closer examination revealed that it was the outline of the face of adolf Hitler.
Some people, including the beleaguered mayor were outraged at the cartoon. and they were right to be so — the cartoon went way too far.
There can be little doubt that after David Miller leaves office huge tomes can be written about how Miller was bad for the city. His idea of crime fighting is to build more basketball courts and to give murderers and drug dealers the big hug that they never got from their mothers. The last thing that the mayor wants to see is a police chief that spends more time fighting crime than coddling criminals. But while David Miller may be a lot of things he’s no adolf Hitler.
Unlike Hitler, Miller isn’t trying to take over the world. He hasn’t killed anybody. More importantly, whatever else he is, David Miller is not evil although the concept of evil is no longer in vogue except for George W. Bush and those on the "fanatical religious right". Miller is a left wing socialist NDP mayor who is running his city the way a left wing socialist NDP mayor would be expected to run it.
When Miller chaired the meeting of Toronto City Council, he ruled that the motion to reconsider the chief’s contract was out of order. a ruling that the chair makes can be overturned by a vote of two-thirds. Even if the purpose of the cartoon was to show that David Miller is a dictator, it failed — it was wrong.
Donato is not the only one in the media who gives Miller a more difficult time than they do other Canadian leaders who act the same way that he does. as an example, Miller is constantly criticized for having interfered with the Toronto Police Services Board by appointing his "friends" on council to the board. It is as if he invented the process of appointing people who believe the same way he does to positions of power.
The comparison of Miller to Hitler was an insult, not only to the mayor, but to those in our city and elsewhere who have suffered at the hands of the Nazis. If andy Donato thinks that David Miller really is like adolf Hitler, perhaps it’s time for him to take his little bird and fly away.