This may help explain the otherwise inexplicable reaction of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and Toronto Mayor Rob Ford to last week’s Scarborough shootings.
In a rational world, Toronto citizens might have expected the three leaders to sit down together and come up with some kind of plan for the gun violence that still — in spite of declining crime statistics — plagues this city.
But that’s not what happened, in large part because it was in none of the leaders’ interest to make it happen.
McGuinty did call for a so-called summit of the gun. But that’s because, with his plea for a total ban on handgun ownership, he hoped to pass off the problem to Ottawa — which has sole jurisdiction over who can possess firearms.
Harper’s no fool. He figured that one out. So he declined to attend McGuinty’s summit with Ford on Monday and instead arranged to meet the Toronto mayor alone on Tuesday.
Ford, meanwhile, was happy to have separate sessions with the two senior leaders since doing so elevated his own importance.
That’s the politics behind this week’s farrago of high-level meetings.
What did those meetings produce? In content, not much.
Harper had nothing of consequence to say to reporters after Tuesday’s roughly 45-minute session.
His aim was simply to remind voters that his government has always been tough on crime and, in that sense, has done its bit. Think of it as an excuse not to do more.
McGuinty did agree on Monday to extend funding indefinitely for a province-wide police anti-gang strategy. But his aides insisted that this money would have kept coming even if the Scarborough tragedy hadn’t occurred.
Politically, the three leaders jockeyed to put themselves on the right side of the voters. McGuinty emphasized balance, and talked of spending money on both social programs and policing.
As so often with his Liberals, however, there was more talk than action. The provincial government has in hand a 2008 report authored by former Ontario chief justice Roy McMurtry and former Liberal cabinet member Alvin Curling that details a host of measures to get at the roots of youth violence. That report has been gathering dust since it was handed in.
Of the three, Ford is the most interesting. An instinctive politician, he has little use for logical thought and instead speaks directly to the emotions.
When Ford says, as he did last week, that he wants to use the immigration act to exile convicted criminals from Toronto he is, at a rational level, talking nonsense. Unlike the old Soviet Union, Canada does not tell its citizens where they may live.
But at gut level, Ford connects with many voters. They associate gun violence with recent immigrants, even though Ford didn’t exactly say that. And they just want this violence to go away.
At the end of Tuesday’s meeting with the Prime Minister, Ford said nothing to reporters. Clearly, he didn’t get the extra federal policing money he wanted, but that doesn’t matter. To talk about funding is to engage in rational thought.
At the level of irrationality in which he excels, however, the mayor has come out well. All most voters will remember is that he doesn’t want, in his words, to hug a thug. He wants to run the bad guys out of town. Hang ’em high.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Walkom, Thomas
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