by arthur Weinreb,
December 1, 2004
Last Sunday, Toronto Mayor David Miller held one of his much beloved forums. a group of about 700 people spent four hours sitting around the Toronto Convention Centre giving the mayor and council advice on how to run the city. Miller and his groupies sat around discussing what the priorities of the city should be.
after the event, the consensus seemed to be that the major issues facing the city are affordable housing, making the city cleaner and begging the provincial and federal governments for more money. Other priorities on the participants’ wish list included more rooftop gardens, more art in public areas of the city and emptying garbage cans more often. It is unlikely that the fact that the federal and provincial governments should fork over money to provide hard core city services like garbage collection; something that should be paid for by way of municipal taxes ever came up. One community activist was quoted in the Toronto Star as saying that the whole purpose of the exercise was to get the group to agree with what Miller and company had decided in the first place. at least there was one person who saw this waste of taxpayers’ money for the sham that it was.
The meeting ended at 5 p.m. and no doubt many of the participants hung around and patted each other on the back about the wonderful job they did and how their input would improve the city. Reports indicate that the mayor was very pleased with the meeting--now he can go to the provincial and federal governments, cap in hand, and tell them that his collective band of worshippers support his efforts to extract more money from other levels of government.
as the meeting was ending and the delegates hanging around or making their way out of the Convention Centre, 11-year-old Tamara Carter was travelling on a Jane Street bus with her mother. a group of up to five young men at the back of the bus became involved in an altercation with another passenger. One of the men pulled out a gun and began firing at the 24-year-old passenger. as the victim ran towards the front of the bus the shooter kept firing and one of the bullets struck Tamara in the head. at the time of this writing, she is in serious condition at Sick Children’s Hospital and may lose her eyesight. as is the custom in that part of the city, there were approximately 40 other passengers on the bus but no witnesses. The passengers took off with the same lightening speed as the bad guys did.
But hey, what the heck. When it comes to priorities in this city, violent crime is not on the radar screen of the mayor and his fellow travellers (who never have to travel by bus). as Tamara and her mother were preparing for their trip to hell, crime was not an issue at David Miller’s taxpayer funded gabfest. Oh, there were the usual suggestions about building bridges between the police and the community but any concrete plans that would make it safer for a child to be on a bus wasn’t worth a mention.
It is hardly a secret that Miller and Company are soft on crime. a root causes kind of guy, Miller believes that crime would disappear if only the other levels of government would fork over more bucks to build more basketball courts. a quick perusal of the City of Toronto’s website, under the heading of "Community Safety" does not deal directly with violent crime. It talks about involving youth in discussions and having a Toronto-Police Summit and about having youth talk about safety in their community. Miller is of the view that since the crime rates are going down, it’s not a major problem in the city; obviously not as important as the lack of rooftop gardens. Miller’s solution to violent crime is to have people sit around and talk about it. If he had the guts, he should go to Sick Kids’ Hospital and tell Tamara what he intends to do to make the city safer for her and all the other innocent children. If Miller does anything about this horrific crime, it will probably be to convene a summit of gang members and TTC bus drivers.
For Miller and all his hangers-on, who think that having a clean city is the number one priority--perhaps they should go up to Jane and Wilson and start cleaning up the blood.