The mantra of the left, including Mayor David Miller, Police Chief Bill Blair and Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, is that poverty is responsible for the rash of gun deaths and shootings that have recently been on the rise in what used to be referred to as Toronto the Good. Even when they are forced to concede that more enforcement and tougher penalties are needed, they always return to the issue of poverty. If only there were more basketball courts, the would-be gangbangers would be shooting hoops instead of shooting guns. If only there were more community centres, pre-teens would be making macramé at 3 in the morning instead of selling drugs to earn enough money to by a semi-automatic. Even Ontario PC leader John Tory, who started off being critical of the extra police officers that Dalton McGuinty has never put on the street, has now jumped on the "we need more community resources" bandwagon.
The politically correct crowd wouldn’t be caught dead singling out the black (or more accurately, the Jamaican) community, even though the vast number of both shooters and victims are from that group. Yet when the group huggers blame poverty for the violence, they are at least implicitly targeting not just the bad guys but all of the poor, especially those that because of their circumstances are forced to live in areas like Jane and Finch; areas where David Miller, the mayor of some of the people, fears to tread.
Their willingness to blame poverty for violent crime is a slap in the fact to all those who although they may be in dire economic circumstances, are law abiding citizens. The lefties don’t want you to know this but there are actually children who grow up in these areas who don’t join gangs, don’t have a gun, don’t have a criminal record and who manage, despite the adversity of their surroundings, grow up to be good citizens.
The increase in crime comes not from a lack of community centres but a lack of responsible parents. We live in an age where everyone clamours for their rights but many are unwilling to take responsibility for themselves. This is aided and abetted by governments who are constantly telling these people that they are not responsible for themselves or their children; that is the duty of the state. a perfect example of how out of touch some of those who seek to justify this lawlessness on a lack of resources are, occurred on Michael Coren’s television show earlier this week. When the subject of young children wandering the streets at all hours of the night came up, NDP MPP Peter Kormos said that it because was the parents, often a single mother, had to hold down two or more jobs to make ends meet. Toronto Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, whose ward includes the crime-ridden Jane/Finch corridor countered that that may be true in the part of Niagara Region that Kormos hails from but it wasn’t the case in his area. Mammoliti said that only a very few parents work two or more jobs. The problems arise because many parents choose to simply sit around the house all day and either don’t care about and or can’t be bothered looking after their children properly.
This is the real problem — a total breakdown of the family unit, coupled with a refusal to take responsibility for one’s own children. and because we are such a tolerant society, we can’t say anything. after all, in the concepts of multiculturalism and equality is such that all cultures and cultural practices must be treated equally. We can’t say, let alone do anything to those who consider fathers to be mere sperm donors and where baby mothers take the place of mothers in a nuclear family. It’s not the Canadian way. The media is inundated with grieving mothers whose innocent offspring have been murdered. It would be a lot more instructive if we could examine the parents of those who not only kill other people but who are oblivious to innocent people that surround their target.
Providing more resources will never solve the problem. It’s also unlikely that higher minimum sentences, the abolition of house arrest or less judicious granting of bail to violent offenders will accomplish anything other than to remove dangerous offenders from society for longer periods of time.
It is an unfortunate fact that we are governed by leaders who think that it takes a village to raise a child. The really sad part is that Toronto is led by the village idiot.
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