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Politically Incorrect

MIGHTY MEL--THE MOUTH THAT ROARED

by Arthur Weinreb
August 3, 1999

Megacity mayor Mighty Motormouth Mel is like the energizer bunny. Just when you think that he couldn't possibly top his last statement, he keeps going and going and going.

In the aftermath of the July 14 shooting of Toronto Police Constable Patrick Ferdinand, Mel called for a total ban on guns. The mayor only wants guns banned from the City of Toronto; people living in the wild west (like Mississauga) and the rest of the country can still have them.

His reasoning? Mel doesn't like guns. The mayor who declared martial law last winter when it snowed a bit doesn't like guns. Who, with the possible exception of Adam Vaughan, cares whether or not Mel likes them? The answer should be Noooooobody!

Any other politician who would have made that statement would be accused of trying to capitalize on the shooting of a police officer. But not Mel.

Everyone knows that just because Mel talks does not necessarily means he is saying anything. If we are going to ban things just because the mayor doesn't like them, we should ban what other councillors don't like. Let's ban vehicles, except those used for emergency purposes from the streets of Toronto. That would make Jack Layton happy and we should do something to make Jack happy since his homeless are not likely to get cooled off in Metro Hall.

And, it would be highly unlikely that police officers would be shot by armed bad guys riding bicycles to a robbery. But Mel is still the mayor and in deference to him, an exception would have to be made for Bad Boy delivery trucks. That would put all the other appliance stores out of business including the one which, according to The National Post, Mel swore he would he would never enter, and in which Adam Vaughan is holed up.

If guns end up being banned from the city then everything else Mel doesn't like would have to be banned as well--reporters, squeegee kids, the firefighter's union, Howard Moscoe, David Collenette. The list, much like the mayor, resembles a certain mechanical toy of the rabbit persuasion.

In some ways Mel Lastman resembles Pierre Trudeau who, as prime minister said anything he felt like saying. Of course Trudeau, an intellectual, put a lot more thought into saying "fuddle duddle" than Mel ever put into anything he's ever said.

But you have to give Lastman credit. Unlike other politicians, he doesn't spend a lot of taxpayers' money commissioning studies, forming committees and interfacing to come up with some esoteric reason why what he feels like doing that day is for the public good.

There is also the practical problem of how the city could ban guns. All firearms would have to be given to squeegee kids just before they are run out of town to the suburbs. Then the streets of 905 country will be filled with gun carrying window washing engineers.

That'll fix the burbs for voting Tory.