The Toronto Chinatown Business Improvement Area have recently hired a private security firm to patrol their business area during peak periods. If the project proves to be successful, it will only be a matter of time until private security guards will be as common on the downtown business streets of Toronto as they are in shopping malls.
The Toronto Police cannot be blamed for the necessity of having to hire private security. Despite all of the bragging that crime is down, there are enough drive-by shootings, multiple stabbings and other serious crime to leave the police with no time to take care of petty crime that no one sees as damaging except of course, the victims of that crime. Constant begging, petty theft and damage to private property can be more damaging to small businesspeople than the occasional serious crime can. Something has to be done about the homeless that infest downtown streets to the extent that they discourage people patronizing those businesses and so the business association decided to do something about it.
Besides being a major downtown business area, Chinatown is also a destination for the dwindling number of tourists who visit Toronto. There are many reasons why tourism has declined; SARS, increased difficulty in crossing the border, the higher Canadian dollar and the high cost of gasoline. But the number of panhandlers on the city’s streets also acts to discourage those who would otherwise visit Canada’s largest metropolis. It’s been a long time since we’ve heard Americans in large numbers comment upon how clean Toronto is compared to major US cities.
Why there is such a large problem rests solely with the socialists that Torontonians love to elect to represent them at the municipal level. The current anti-business council simply doesn’t care. They care more about those who sponge off society than they do about those who work hard in an attempt not only to improve their lives and the lives of their families but to contribute to the economic well being of the city. To the mayor and the majority on council, those who struggle to run businesses in the current economy come in a poor second to the problems of the homeless, or “street residents” as they are called by those in the poverty industry. Shop owners make poor subjects for the city’s social experiments.
It comes as no surprise that Mayor David Miller is critical of the BIA’s decision to hire a private security firm to police the streets outside of their businesses. Apparently, that’s the city’s job. Miller, a true liberal elite if there ever was one, is treating the business owners as if they just got off the boat from China. They know it’s the city’s job – the city just isn’t doing it. Miller’s solution to the homeless lifestyle is not to bring in security guards or even the police but to hire more social workers. The mayor brags about how many people the city has managed to get off of the streets. Of course, that’s not the problem; the problem is the number of homeless remaining on the streets, in Chinatown and elsewhere. As long as the city puts priorities on programs that have social workers and other do-gooders bring the homeless coffee and blankees in the middle of the night, many of the hardcore homeless will never leave the streets. To people like Miller, many of the homeless lack the ability to ever get off the streets so that’s where they will have to stay.
It is true that policing the homeless should be the city’s responsibility. Since it is acknowledged that the police can’t properly do it, the city should. When it comes to harassing hardworking, law abiding citizens, we already have tree police and smoke police and car-idling police and pesticide police. The city should provide police to police the business areas or at least pay for the job to be done by private security firms.
If the Chinatown experiment is successful, security guards on downtown streets where businesses are located will become a common sight. Perhaps, just perhaps, the city will become “Toronto the Good” once again. But for now it will remain as it is – “Toronto, Home of the Homeless”.
