PUBLICATION:              The Toronto Sun 

DATE:              2004.02.08

EDITION:                      Final 

SECTION:                     Comment 

PAGE:                          C1 

COLUMN:                     Editorial 

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WAKE UP AND SMELL THE GUNSMOKE

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Amid all the crowing last week about "the start of a beautiful friendship" between Toronto and the feds, you'd think someone might have mentioned this city's No. 1 problem: gun crime.

But no. The "new deal" announced by Prime Minister Paul Martin is little more than a token tax break for cities - especially Toronto, where the $50-million windfall wouldn't even cover the budget increase Police Chief Julian Fantino says he needs to fight the growing gun scourge. (His cries have so far fallen on deaf ears at City Hall.)

What is it going to take for our politicians to wake up?

Mayor David Miller and his new "friend," Prime Minister Paul Martin, can dream all they want about building a magnificent city, but unless they directly address the guns, gangs and drugs that are destroying neighbourhoods, there will be few people left to enjoy it.

As the special seven-part series starting in today's Sunday Sun demonstrates, gun crime in Toronto has escalated to the point where innocents are being caught in the crossfire and visitors are being scared away.

People like Fantino, his frontline cops, and Scarborough Coun. Michael Thompson - who is calling for a strong community response to the problem, as well as police action - get it. They understand the lethal combination of guns, gangs and drugs is scarring our city.

If Martin is suddenly so interested in the health of cities, he cannot ignore this. But where in his "new deal" does he address his government's role in Toronto's blight?

So far, the PM has seemed more intent on supporting the botched, costly long gun registry - which is irrelevant to Toronto's handgun crime - and the myth that it represents "gun control."

Yet as Det.-Sgt. Gary Keys, of the city's guns-and-gangs task force, told the Sun's Ian Robertson, what we really need is criminal control. Most of the shooters on our streets already have criminal records, yet they revolve easily in and out of jail, which just fuels fear.

"The sentences they're getting aren't significant enough," Keys laments. "The people aren't going to come forward because they know two weeks later (the gangsters) are going to be out on bail."

And when and if they do go to jail, they get out too early.

"All the early release of violent, gun-carrying individuals does is imprison citizens in their own community, in fear of the criminals," says Keys.

Martin could address this frightening situation without much ado, or money: by toughening some laws and merely enforcing others already on the books.

Impose a mandatory prison term for anyone using a gun in a crime - and anyone caught with an illegal gun. Such sentences are already in the Criminal Code but get plea-bargained away. Stop the deals, the easy bail and the early release.

It's time for Martin, Miller and their mutual friend, Premier Dalton McGuinty, to send a strong, co-ordinated message that gun crime is intolerable and will be dealt with severely. That's the kind of "new deal" that will actually make a difference to this city.