THE STRANGE CANDIDACY OF BILL BLAIR
The partisan mind tolerates remarkable levels of cognitive dissonance. We know this. Still, it has been quite something to watch certain people wail and shudder at the notion of Bill Blair — until-recently-Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair! — running for the Liberal Party of Canada — for the Liberal Party of Canada! — in Scarborough. It has variously been described as cynical, a “disgrace,” “troublesome” and “disgusting,” including by some who claim to be current or potential Liberal supporters. Some claim it’s a deal-breaker. Even some dispassionate pundits seem surprised Trudeau would bite on Blair. It’s rather weird.
In the main, the case against Blair is twofold: His role in the G20 debacle in Toronto during the summer of 2010, which resulted in the largest mass arrests in Canadian history; and his support for Toronto police’s controversial “carding” policy, under which officers stop people on the street as they’re going about their days, ask them questions and record the information they receive.
Supporters of carding argue it’s an important crime-fighting tool in high-crime areas. But many of those affected, who are disproportionately black, quite understandably object to routine interactions with police when they haven’t done anything wrong or even suspicious. When the Toronto Police Services Board decided the policy needed to change dramatically, Blair dug in his heels and mostly won.
If you ask me, the G20 was a disgrace. And if police are ever going to resort to stopping random people on the street and recording their details for future use, it ought to be in an emergency situation and with support from the community affected, neither of which is currently in evidence in Toronto.
But I also recognize I’m probably in a minority of Torontonians and Canadians who especially care. A 2012 Angus Reid poll, conducted with various British Columbian RCMP disasters and the G20 looming large, found only 39 per cent of Canadians had “complete” or “a lot of” confidence in their local police forces, and only 38 per cent in the RCMP. Just two years later those numbers had rebounded to 63 per cent and 67 per cent, respectively. The only poll I’m aware of on carding, conducted by Mainstreet Technologies in January, found 47 per cent of Torontonians supported the policy and 42 per cent opposed it — in Scarborough, however, where Blair is running, 54 per cent approved and 37 per cent opposed.
Put your average white Torontonian in a black man’s shoes for a year and ask him what he thinks of carding, and I suspect you’d find some heavily revised opinions. But as it stands, if you’re not black and don’t go to protests, which most Canadians aren’t and don’t, chances are the G20 and carding are not going to be topof-mind issues. Bill Blair is not a cartoon villain except for a small number of very passionate activists. The disappointment over his carding stance is particularly acute precisely because he is otherwise seen to have dramatic- ally improved relations between Toronto police and the black community. Lots of perfectly progressive voices, from former mayor David Miller to lawyer Julian Falconer, well known for representing victims of police, had nice things to say about Blair upon his departure.
It’s also true that there is only so much Blair could have done to prevent the G20 from going pear-shaped: He didn’t invite the world’s leaders, and thereby the Black Bloc, to downtown Toronto; the officers on duty were not all his; and the ludicrously lax deterrents that exist for police misbehaviour were neither instituted nor defended by him.
In the aftermath, he admitted with a smirk that he pretended a temporary security law existed allowing police to search anyone who came within five metres of the downtown security perimeter. That’s indefensible. But who instituted the dodgy law? One Dalton James Patrick McGuinty, Jr., from whom the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, among others, demanded and did not receive an apology. He’s a Liberal, don’t you know.
Who defended the G20 operation in the aftermath? The same Dalton McGuinty. Who else? Toronto City Council, Miller included, which voted 36-0 to “commend and thank Chief Bill Blair and the Toronto Police Service … along with all other police services that participated in this joint venture, on a job well done.”
It was the same Dalton McGuinty who’s proud to defend his surrender on behalf of the people of Caledonia, Ont., to a bunch of thugs; and it was the same federal Liberals who unsuccessfully courted the police chief behind that episode, Julian Fantino. It was the same federal Liberals on whose watch RCMP officers mass-pepper-sprayed protesters at the 1997 APEC summit, and it was that noted civil libertarian Jean Chrétien — whose byline graced a Liberal fundraising email in March, incidentally — who reacted as follows: “For me, pepper, I put it on my plate.” Ho, ho, ho. It was the same federal Liberals under whose watch intelligence officers jetted off to Cuba to help the United States bang up Omar Khadr, and under whose watch the RCMP helped Washington whisk Maher Arar off to Syria.
It’s the same Liberals whose current leader gave a passionate address in defence of individual liberty, but then pledged to support the Conservatives’ swingeing anti-terror legislation because it might be too difficult politically to oppose; whose leader has drawn a very deep human rights line in the sand on abortion rights, but who is happy not to comment on abortion not being available on Prince Edward Island even as he campaigns for the leader of its Liberal party.
I’m not saying Justin Trudeau’s a bad guy, or that he’s not a civil libertarian, or that the Liberals can’t or won’t change, or that there’s an utterly compelling alternative available (though I think it’s reasonable to hope the New Democrats would be better). I’m just saying if you’re bound and determined to vote Liberal, or if you’re considering it, and you’re actually surprised, shocked or appalled that the party would accept Bill Blair as a candidate, then you simply haven’t been paying attention. Bill Blair makes 110 per cent sense as a Liberal Party of Canada candidate. If that disgusts your inner civil libertarian, it’s time to start looking for a different party.
If you’re surprised the Liberals would let him run, you haven’t been paying attention to what else Grits have said and done