Bonnie Crombie shows a backbone
Mississauga mayor takes stand against NIMBY rhetoric
No city or town is immune from NIMBY practitioners. Sentiments that lead citizens to declare “Not in My Back Yard” are as prevalent in the Beach as they are in Brampton. How we deal with their often self-serving, insular and discriminatory demeanour — even when the opposition is understandable — is a key indicator of a municipality’s maturity.
Mississauga showed its maturity Monday night when its planning committee approved a two-storey mosque for the Meadowvale Islamic Centre by a vote of 11-1, with the local ward councillor the lone vote against.
Most important, the city’s new mayor, Bonnie Crombie, showed she may be ready for prime time.
Stepping into the enormous gulf left by the retirement of mayor of the world Hazel McCallion, Crombie took on the forces of parochialism head on. That part was easy. The project met all the planning standards and requirements.
Where Crombie shone was in challenging the racist rhetoric of one of the citizen opponents who circulated a reprehensible flyer and posted a website that raised fear-mongering and anti-Muslim rhetoric to the level currently common in political discourse here and in the U.S.
Apparently, should the mosque be built, near the Meadowvale Town Centre, on land zoned for it, in proximity to at least two other places of worship, the good citizens of Mississauga would be subjected to lost property values, traffic chaos, loss of Canadian values, rape and untold violence.
Crombie could have let the matter slide by. The mosque was going to be approved. Easily. But she recognized that, as mayor, she had a responsibility to challenge the ramblings of one Kevin Johnston, just in case they find fertile ground in her city.
“There are a few concerns that you didn’t raise tonight that are on your website. Concerns about vandalism and crime in the area, loss of freedom of speech . . . massive increase in the number of sexual assaults and rapes that will happen in parks and on streets. Is this what you believe in?” Crombie asked.
“It’s what I believe in but I’m not here to talk about that . . .” Johnston replied.
She turned to the gallery, where some anti-mosque supporters applauded Johnston.
Crombie asked: “Is that what you are applauding for?” She added. “I’m sorry. This is heinous.”
“No, it’s not heinous; it’s freedom of speech there. Not heinous in any way,” Johnston pushed back.
“I can go on,” Crombie said, reading more of the website’s claims. “Increase in the number of kidnapping of young girls. Increased random acts of violence . . . You should be ashamed of yourself.”
Earlier that day, Crombie had given her first state of the city address to business leaders at the Mississauga Board of Trade. She waxed on eloquently and enthusiastically about the city of diversity that was home to the world.
Faced with a message totally contrary to hers, Crombie met it head on.
“Well, it was quite offensive. It is reprehensible and hate-mongering. (Challenging it) was the right thing to do,” she said in an interview Wednesday. “All residents must have confidence in the city. As mayor, you have to demonstrate leadership. It’s my responsibility that this doesn’t go unaddressed. So I have to step up.” That she did. With steely resolve. On Friday morning Crombie and the other new mayor in Peel, Linda Jeffrey of Brampton, face another test — one that Toronto Mayor John Tory failed by prevaricating and dithering: trying to stop the evil of racist and biased policing with kid gloves.
Crombie and Jeffrey must jerk the Peel police services into a fair, biasfree future. Like Toronto, the region has been stained by the toxic practice of police carding — or street checks as it is known in Peel. With the Peel statistics showing police there stop and card black residents three times more regularly than white residents, Crombie must demand immediate changes.
Wednesday, she said street checks in Peel “should be suspended while we are studying the issue.”
Now that the ugly facts are known, Crombie has already shown she has the backbone to confront what is nothing short of racism. Royson James usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: rjames@thestar.ca