Ex-premier convenient scapegoat
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
Anyone visiting the Big Smoke these days should not be deceived by the highway signs announcing they're entering "Toronto."
What they're entering is "Harrisville". Specifically, Mike Harrisville, even though Mike Harris hasn't been Ontario premier for almost six years.
Indeed, since Harris resigned, there's been two premiers, his Conservative successor Ernie Eves, and the present Liberal one, Dalton McGuinty.
There's also been two elections. McGuinty, first elected in October, 2003, has now won back-to-back majority governments and will be premier until at least October, 2011, if he sticks around.
Doesn't matter. Because in Toronto, among liberal elites, if their dog dies, if a bee stings or if they're feeling sad, it must be Harris' fault. Hence the name -- Harrisville.
Consider. Last week, the Toronto District School Board released the findings of a $680,000, six-month study into violence in Toronto schools launched after Grade 9 student Jordan Manners, 15, was fatally shot in the hallway of C.W. Jefferys Collegiate last May 23 in the city's troubled Jane-Finch community. Two 17-year-olds have since been charged.
The three-person task force was headed by human rights lawyer Julian Falconer. Its 1,000-page report makes 126 recommendations and -- I kid you not -- on page four of the executive summary, starts blaming "the Tory government of the late 1990s."
HARRIS FACTOR
Falconer, during his press conference (more like a sermon to captive reporters) and in subsequent interviews, suggested Ontarians who voted for Harris in the 1995 and 1999 Ontario elections need to think about what they did. Seriously.
His logic is that underfunding of the education system by the Harris government, combined with its passage of the Safe Schools Act, which saw a spike in the number
Did he address the massive opposition and demonstrations by the teacher's unions to Harris' plan to put more money into the classroom and students rather than into administration?
of troublemaking students suspended and expelled from schools with no place to go, are at the root of the problem.
Interesting theory. Here's mine. By the time Manners was shot, the Safe Schools Act had been gutted by the current Liberal government, which was good at saying what it didn't like about the law, lousy at saying what it would do instead about the notorious reluctance of many school boards -- especially Toronto -- to meaningfully address school violence.
The Toronto board had already disappeared up its own politically correct butt by striking a bizarre deal with the Ontario Human Rights Commission in November, 2005 regarding the law's application.
The OHRC, acting in its favourite role of prosecutor and judge, decreed the law had been applied unfairly against students from "racialized communities" (translation, black students), resulting in a 17-point "settlement" loaded with bafflegab, but that any sane person reading would come away from with one message -- the number of black students suspended or expelled had better drop dramatically, now.
RELUCTANT
Guess what happened? The Toronto board, always reluctant to address school violence, hid inside its shell, despite the fact the vast majority of decent kids being victimized by a small minority of thugs -- who were now being quietly transferred between schools instead of expelled -- were also black.
Ironically, the board didn't wait for Falconer's report to act at C.W. Jefferys.
Last September, with the whole city watching, it sent in a competent principal and gave him the necessary backing to do his job. Today, everyone at the school agrees things have dramatically improved.
Gee. I wonder how the school board got that one by Mike Harris?
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