Some weeks ago Toronto’s chief of police, Bill Blair bragged about how Canada has the safest cities in the world. I would respectfully like to disagree. I’m sure that on the face of it, it would appear that Toronto is lot safer than, say Washington DC or Chicago. But given the fact that Canada has one of the most stringent set of gun control regulations in the world with the Government of Canada spending some $2 billion to date to ensure that every law-abiding gun owner have guns that are registered, I think Chief Blair’s comments are frankly delusional. I also believe that $2 billion might have been wiser spent had it been used to build new maximum security prisons for violent offenders.
The recent spate of shootings that have wreaked havoc in Toronto are indicative of just how delusional our attitude toward crime is. In a country where the privilege of gun ownership is as restricted as it is in Canada, there shouldn’t be any gun violence in our cities at all. But then, this is not something that the powers that be are willing to concede.
We keep hearing that crime statistics are indicating a trend toward less crime. That may be so, but the crime that is being perpetrated sure feels a lot more violent and destructive than the trend that we are moving away from. If less crime means more violent crime, then let’s have more crime! While this may be a bizarre sentiment, it’s no more bizarre than some of the things being said by those charged with the task of protecting society from criminals.
The complacency with which our officials view crime verges on being criminal, pun intended. For nearly 20 years, Vancouver prostitutes were disappearing off that city’s "Low Track" never to be seen again. Several who had been abducted by Robert Pickton and tortured at his pig farm before escaping went to the police to lodge a complaint. But because they were so-called sex trade workers, the Vancouver cops didn’t take them very seriously. The magnitude of the murders that took place at Pickton’s pig farm has only recently come to light, as crime scene investigators unearthed thousands of bone fragments, belonging to over 60 victims. How can a police force not notice 60 women disappearing without a trace over a 16-year period?
Ottawa’s chief of police, Vince Bevan, was the lead investigator in the Bernardo/Homolka affair, in which prosecutors wound up cutting a deal with Karla Homolka because the cops were not thorough enough in searching the Bernardo home and missed the tapes that documented their depraved crimes.
Did Bevan get fired because he was the head of the task force responsible for the search? Since he was subsequently hired as chief of the Ottawa Police Department, the answer is obviously "no.".
It seems that the heads of our cities’ police forces are so intent on showing themselves to be successful crime fighters that they will stoop to really broad stretches to achieve this effect. Chief Blair’s brag about how safe Toronto is is a form of whistling while walking past the graveyard at night. If Toronto (and the rest of Canada’s cities) really were as safe as Blair insists they are, then we wouldn’t hear gunshots echoing through the streets on an almost daily basis.
To be fair to Chief Blair, the politicians aren’t giving him much to work with, either. Combine the lack of a comprehensive gang fighting program with the current prohibition on the release of crime statistics that include the racial background of perpetrators, and you’re pretty well going to get what Toronto now has.
Rather than talk about how safe Canada’s cities are, it may be a much better idea to ensure that what you say is true. a good start might be for the federal government to enact a statue that provides for an automatic 10-year prison sentence for anyone convicted of committing a crime with the use of a gun. To that end, Chief Blair and the rest of Canada’s police chiefs would do well to adopt an aggressive crime fighting policy that results in arrests and jail time for those shooting up our cities’ streets.