John Tory, Mark Saunders get cover from Queen’s Park on carding issue: James

Royson James on the Ontario government’s public consultations on carding:

There is little reason to believe that the provincial Liberal government consultations on carding will yield anything more satisfactory than the chaotic farce the Toronto Police Services Board has delivered, led by Mayor John Tory.

To expect meaningful reform from the current initiative, with a stop in Toronto at the reference library Tuesday night, is to be overcome with naiveté borne of willful blindness.

In fact, the evidence points to a provincial government in cahoots with Tory and the Toronto police brass; one whose intervention is designed to offer pap and a public relations show, while preserving the essence of police street checks.

Notwithstanding the lofty statements about the government’s intolerance of discrimination, the impact of any new rules passed will likely be: police will have the ability to stop anyone, anytime, for any reason, stated or unstated, to psychologically, if not expressly detain said person, record personal information from said subject, and record the same in a police database.

And we know who will be targeted most.

And we know — or have been told ad nauseum this past year — the real, psychological, and social costs borne by the black community, particularly young black men.

But carding is a useful tool — according to opening statements on the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services website, announcing the review.

Done properly, the new police chief has said, carding is legal.

Done properly, we wouldn’t be here debating the matter, attempting to tame it, wrestling with the chief to find reasonable constraints on the practice, and advocating for reform.

Done properly, street checks in Toronto would follow the protocol drawn up in April 2014 by a Toronto police board that studied the matter and came up with as good a compromise as possible.

That was before John Tory and (now board chair) Andy Pringle and former chief Bill Blair turned the file into a horrible mess, a political hot potato and a public relations disaster.

Pringle, a member of the board in 2014 and Tory acolyte and Blair’s fishing buddy, convinced Tory that he should back Blair in his refusal to implement the board’s decision. Tory, while condemning carding, destroyed the 2014 policy designed to fix it, brought in new guidelines that created a firestorm of controversy, and was forced to go back to the very 2014 board policy he meddled with.

And this is where the province mysteriously entered the fray.

Why? Few can explain the motivation. How? In a manner that only fosters cynicism. Who would enter this messy situation, with the epicenter in Toronto, and decide to hold consultations in Ottawa and Thunder Bay but not Toronto? Who would set up private sessions with groups familiar with the issue and not include the Black Action Defence Committee (BADC)?

Source: John Tory, Mark Saunders get cover from Queen’s Park on carding issue: James | Toronto Star