As I watched the latest Toronto mayoral debate this past week, I kept asking myself, “Is that all there is?”
It actually became akin to definition of insanity to hear the candidates — all left-of-centre including Mayor John Tory — resort to the same uninspiring, politically correct and downright naive ideas that haven’t worked before.
Naivité came from far-left lawyer Saron Gebresellassi, who, while passionate, kept insisting all we had to do to end the rash of violence in this city was to eliminate poverty and make everything free.
Why, yes, Ms. Gebresellassi, we’ll get right on that.
I really fear for this city watching them.
There’s three weeks to go and so far, Tory and his key rival Jennifer Keesmaat, along with the two leftists handpicked to debate, have successfully and deliberately avoided the real elephant in the room.
We have a real problem with violence in Toronto. Mark my words, it’s not because of too many guns or too few jobs and basketball courts for disenfranchised youth.
It’s because in the past four years there’s been a perfect storm in this city. Cops have been neutered with carding and TAVIS — the tools to proactively police against guns and gangs — taken away from them, along with front line resources.
At the same time, Tory and council, with no thought to the fallout or lack of police resources to keep order, have imposed safe injection sites (eight of them in total) on unsuspecting neighbourhoods.
Like clockwork and taking an example from Vancouver, the areas around the sites have been plagued by lawlessness, vandalism, anti-social behaviour and encampments. The drug dealers have flocked to the new turf, untouched and unafraid of any enforcement.
But Tory and council didn’t stop there. To serve what we repeatedly are told is a huge increase in homelessness they’ve allowed the arrogant and unaccountable city shelter staff to plunk expensive warehouses for transients wherever they choose. It seems cost is no option either as they buy up $2.5-million (each) pre-fab structures, two of which will be plunked in the heart of Liberty Village and in Gore Park across from the Princes’ Gates.
We have no clue where these transients and their pets are coming from (I suspect from outside Toronto) and there are no rules attached to their stay in any of these warehouses.
As residents have discovered in the Asquith-Collier and Augusta Ave. neighbourhoods, they’ve been left to fend themselves against the fallout.
While this all happened under Tory’s watch, rest assured I never heard a note of resistance among Keesmaat’s thousands of tweets per month.
Toronto residents deserve far more than pablum from our mayoral candidates.
They deserve a recognition of what is occurring in this city and some tough talk on how to deal with it.
Whether we’ll get that from Keesmaat or Tory is another story.
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