G20 Aftermath
• G20 fence costs $9.4 M, nearly double original estimate [ Toronto Star ]
• Council commends ‘outstanding’ police G20 work [ Toronto Star ]
• Toronto police board inundated with G20 complaints [ Toronto Star ]
• Police seek pictures to help root out G20 suspects [ Toronto Star ]
• McGuinty invokes Trudeau, Nixon to defend G20 actions [ Toronto Star ]
• Neither brutes nor heroes [ Globe & Mail ]
• Police should not take all the G20 blame [ National Post ]
• Downtown Toronto wrong place for summit: McGuinty [ Toronto Sun ]
• Boosting post-G20 tourism a priority [ Toronto Sun ]
• Blair witch-hunting [ Now Magazine ]
Heatwave
• The hottest spots in Toronto [ Toronto Star ]
• Heat puts halt to city road work [ Toronto Star ]
• Ontario surges past expected power consumption hours [ Toronto Star ]
• In the heat of the night [ Globe & Mail ]
• Keeping our cool [ Eye Weekly ]
City Hall
• Rae’s $12Gs party ruled OK [ Toronto Sun ]
• Beware the unmuzzled Rob Ford [ Eye Weekly ]
• Council may withhold Pride funding next year [ Toronto Star ]
• Council to delay future Pride grants to ensure anti-discrimination policy followed [ Globe & Mail ]
Other News
• New eco fees catching consumers by surprise [ Toronto Star ]
• Ontario to beef up pool safety regulations [ Toronto Star ]
7 comments
Wouldn’t discriminating against people who criticize the government of Israel violate the anti-discrimination policy? How about their constitutionally protected freedom of expression?
Darwin…I tend to agree.
The criminal code suggests that for speech to be deemed “hate speech”, it must incite hatred, violence or advocate genocide against an identifiable group, which in this case I assume is Israeli Jews.
Although I think it showed poor judgement on the part of the parade organizers to allow Israeli/Palestinian politics to have a place in Pride, it doesn’t seem on the surface that the message of QuAIA is in fact hate speech. Of questionable integrity perhaps, but not essentially hateful. As such, sanctioning Pride based on “promotion by association” seems illegitimate.
The troubling part is that the city seems to have completely ignored it’s responsibility to prove the speech hateful before proceeding with sanctions.
As a matter of interest, in the Supreme Court’s 1990 ruling on hate speech (R. Keegstra), the Court said the following:
1) Communications which wilfully promote hatred against an identifiable group are protected by s. 2(b) of the charter. Section 319(2) of the Criminal Code, therefore, represents an infringement of the charter.
2) Section 319(2) of the Criminal Code constitutes a reasonable limit upon freedom of expression under Section 1 of the charterbecause a) there is obviously a rational connection between restricting hate propaganda and fostering harmonious social relations between Canadians b) it doesn’t unduly impair freedom of expression and c) its harmful effects don’t outweigh the advantage gained from limiting freedom of expression.
From the Star: “A flashpoint for criticism came when riot police boxed in protesters and bystanders for hours in pouring rain at Queen St. and Spadina Ave., arresting large numbers.”
As far as I have been able to find out, this operation was conducted by the OPP (although I know one person who claims RCMP officers were there too). As far as I know, there were no TPS officers present during this operation.
Was Chief Blair in charge of this operation, or was he just in charge of TPS officers? Why isn’t Fantino taking any heat? Why are we focusing only on the Toronto police?
I encourage people to read QuAIA’s FAQ page. http://queersagainstapartheid.org/faq/
While I have no desire to articulate my opinion on the Israel-Palestine conflict, I do think the move to ban anti-Israel speech from Pride was a bad one tactically.
All it did was amplify the message, as I saw scores of people wearing stickers and buttons that made some reference to “Israeli Apartheid” during Pride.
Toronto is pretty much incapable of holding any event (been to an Olympic Island ‘festival’ lately?)
Are you catching Pan Am fever?