Beware the echoes of Toronto's 'Year of the Gun'

A terrible crime.

A short term surge in gun violence.

A seeming escalation to out-of-control according to right-wing media types and hysterical CBC/ CTV / Global/ CITY TV fellow travelers.



Suddenly, some politicians and the police are on the offensive demanding new measures, new laws, new funding and new or continued powers.

Sound familiar?

Well it should. Because it happened in Toronto before in the wake of the tragic innocent bystander shooting of Jane Creba that was the culmination of the notorious so-called  "year of the gun" of 2005.

After Creba died in the crossfire on Yonge St on Boxing Day, the Harper led Conservatives and the forces of so-called law-and-order were quick to seize the initiative in portraying the situation as a "crisis" in Toronto and beyond and in calling for draconian changes to criminal law in the country.

The desperate for power and pandering progressives in both the Liberals and Jack Layton led NDP were quick to follow suit.

With the appropriate parliamentary gravitas and sloganeering, the new mandatory minimum sentencing laws were launched, initially with the full acquiescence of the "left".

And one-by-one they were later struck down by the Supreme Court.

Remember this as we head into a new supposed upsurge in gun violence in Toronto that has not lasted long enough to be seen as anything other than a statistical blip, and as another horrific "wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time" killing of a pregnant woman rightly enrages a city.

The Toronto police union -- quick as always to seek to justify their department's staggeringly bloated funding and the massive and continual diversion of civic funds to their members and their alleged needs -- took out a full page ad in two major newspapers condemning recent and long-overdue talk of reigning in police spending.

Predictably the media is also wringing its hands and spreading the fear that so bolsters police bottom lines.

Yet, as in 2005, this hysteria is hardly warranted.

In 2013 Canada's crime rate was at its lowest point since 1969. In 2014 it declined even further.

While it is true that gun crimes (at least according to the somewhat dubious stats of the police themselves) are experiencing a likely temporary spike, they have historically not been experiencing that at all.

By the Toronto Police's own statistics the total "year end shooting" occurrences were 279 in 2012, dipped to 205 and 178 in 2013 and 2014, and then rose to very slightly above 2012 levels to 282 in 2015.

Homicides were actually lower in Toronto in 2015 than in either 2013 or 2014 despite the alleged increase in gun crime.

In other words, there is nothing to see here yet unless you want to.

After a brutal crime it is always easy to inflame passions with fear over reason.

That does not make the police narrative anymore true. Carding was and is still racist and ineffective. The police budget is still outrageous. And there is no evidence at all that Toronto is any less safe than it was a generation ago.

Quite the opposite.

See also: Unconstitutional mandatory minimums and the role of pandering progressive politicians

See also: Toronto budget prioritizes policing -- Yet again

Unconstitutional mandatory minimums and the role of pandering progressive politicians

In the wake of the great news that the Supreme Court had ruled that the gun related mandatory minimum sentencing provisions of the Tackling Violent Crime Act were unconstitutional, the decision was widely heralded as a blow to the Harper government's reactionary "get-tough-on-crime": agenda by both the media and progressives.

And it is.

But it is also a lesson in how reactionary agendas are often built with the aid of pandering "progressives" who capitulate to these narratives out of what are purely cynical and crass electoral considerations.

The Tackling Violent Crime Act was passed after a wave of media and right wing political and pundit hysteria born out of the so-called "Year of the Gun" of 2005 and especially after the tragic killing of innocent bystander Jane Creba by a stray bullet during a shooting on Boxing Day of that year.

Harper and the Conservatives, of course, immediately seized on the shooting to advance their electoral ambitions at the time:

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, meanwhile, blamed the growth in crimes involving guns, gangs and drugs a consequence of the Liberal government’s inaction, and its “failure to deal effectively with crime.”
“This government is running a revolving door sentencing system,” said Harper before highlighting again his party’s pledges to introduce mandatory prison sentences for serious crimes.

Sadly, however, he was not alone. As a rabble.ca piece about a community meeting looking at gang violence at the time noted:

After the Boxing Day shooting that killed Jane Creba, a 15-year-old white woman, [Rinaldo] Walcott says all politicians started advocating harsh penalties for youth with guns — even traditionally left-wing figures like David Miller and federal NDP leader Jack Layton.
“All three levels of government came out with law-and-order responses in the aftermath of Jane Creba's death. Our premier, Dalton McGuinty, found $50 million plus to invest in the justice system,” says Walcott.
“Our mayor, who is normally leaning left, took a right approach and started talking law-and-order too. And he's the one in the city of Toronto that we have to make accountable.

The stampede to the law-and-order narrative was crossing  party lines and despite the fact that the alleged crime wave was actually overstated and despite the clearly dog-whistle racial politics that were at play, progressive politicians bought into it and fed it. As was, again, noted at the time of the rush to facilitate new "anti-crime" legislation:

"They're not attacking the real problem, which is poverty, lack of education, affordable housing -- the root cause of crime," said Canadian law professor Wesley Crichlow, who researches gang violence among black youth. "Their proposals are purely reactionary."

In the end, and it is important to both remember and reflect on this, the act, along with its now unconstitutional provisions, was passed with the full support of the Liberals and the Jack Layton led NDP in a minority parliament. It became law in early 2008.

They could have stopped this bill, but they made the choice not to.

The sole parliamentarian with the courage of their convictions who stood against it was NDP MP Bill Siksay, who was disciplined for this by Layton.

This is far from the only example of Canadian "progressives" aiding and abetting right wing narratives -- but it is a particularly egregious and vile one.

As we try to turn the tide against the right wing ideas that dominate our political discourse we need to demand much better from those politicians who try to stake a claim to being on the "left" -- a demand that would include them actually standing up for basic principles even when this might, in the short term, cost them some votes.