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Making Toronto a safer city

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Amid the rash of gun violence that has afflicted Toronto recently -- 16 shootings during a two-week span, including one in which a four-year-old boy was wounded -- the temptation has been to find scapegoats and quick solutions. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the responses of Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and Toronto Mayor David Miller, both of whom have attempted to blame the flow of illegal handguns from the United States.

It's not that Messrs. McGuinty and Miller are wrong to be concerned about firearms crossing into Canada; better border security would no doubt help get guns off the streets. But it is at most a small piece of the puzzle. If Canada's largest metropolis aims to maintain its long-held status as one of North America's safest cities, each of the following would be at least as useful as concentrating on the borders, and in some cases more so:

- Tougher sentencing. Nearly a decade ago, Bill C-68 amended the Criminal Code to include mandatory four-year sentences when firearms are used in the commission of any of 10 serious offences. But judges and prosecutors have been lax in following through on this requirement, bargaining most sentences down. As a result, sentences serve as insufficient deterrents, and repeat offenders find themselves back on the streets in short order -- leading to as many as 25% of suspects arrested in gun crimes having previous records for similar offences. On other fronts, Messrs. McGuinty and Miller have both gotten results with concerted efforts to lobby Ottawa. It is incumbent upon them to turn their attention to this issue. The length of mandatory sentences should be upped significantly, and courts should be compelled to enforce them.

- An increased police presence. The hiring of 1,000 new police officers across Ontario was recently announced, with the provincial government picking up half the cost. But that's not good enough. Statistics collected in other jurisdictions demonstrate an inverse relationship between the number of officers on the street and the number of offences committed. In light of the mounting challenges it faces, Toronto's force should be beefed up substantially, with new resources directed toward the city's trouble spots.

- Community leadership. It is widely known that the bulk of recent gang violence has afflicted Toronto's Jamaican community, but political correctness has led to this fact being mostly ignored. This must change. Politicians and officials must direct their efforts toward that specific community -- as former police chief Julian Fantino did in travelling to Jamaica to explore the roots of Canada's gang violence. But even more importantly, leaders within the Jamaican-Canadian community must take tangible steps to help tackle the problem -- including helping to forge a better relationship with police that encourages witnesses to come forward after crimes are committed.

- Tougher immigration and deportation policies. As has been well-documented, much of the gang violence plaguing Toronto's Jamaican community was initiated by recent arrivals with a history of gang violence. While we can't turn back the clock, we must be more vigilant about whom we let in -- and we must enforce the deportation process so that those ordered out of the country do in fact leave.

- Learning from others. While excessive gang violence may be relatively new to this country's streets, Americans -- as left-leaning Canadians are fond of pointing out -- are more familiar with it. In New York, Los Angeles and other U.S. cities, police have adopted complex strategies to cut down on gun violence. Many of their methods, no doubt, could usefully be applied here.

Not one of these steps, taken on its own, will be enough. But by implementing these and other strategies together, it should be possible to stem the tide of gang violence in Toronto.