My latest: the ghost of Bill Blair


NEW YORK – Bill Blair haunts us still.

He’s not dead or anything. In fact, he’s still the Minister of National Defence. He’s alive.

But his legacy as Toronto’s Chief of Police haunts us, as noted. And not in a good way.

Remember the G20? International leaders coming to Canada, to agree on things that few can can remember, and literally no one now cares about?

Bill probably wishes you wouldn’t. The G20 took place in Toronto at the back end of June 2010. More than 1,100 people were arrested, many of them illegally, just like in they do in Russia or China.

As media and others looked on, Blair’s G20 police force used excessive force, teargas, pepper spray and rubber bullets against protesters – but also people who weren’t protesting at all. They beat and brutalized people who had done nothing wrong. They turned Toronto into a mini-police state, basically.

Litigation dragged on for a decade, but the Toronto Police Service was eventually forced to pay almost $20 million in damages to citizens who had been illegally detained or beaten. And the courts forced them to acknowledge their mistakes, as well.

Here’s what they said; “We understand and acknowledge that in attempting to preserve peace and safety during those two days, there were times when matters were not addressed in the way they should have been and many hundreds of member of the public were detained or arrested when they should not have been and were held in detention in conditions that were unacceptable. We regret that mistakes were made.”

That word – “mistakes” – doesn’t quite cover it. Not even close. This writer, for example, would drive along Eastern Avenue every day before, during and after the G20, and see scores of incarcerated citizens behind chain link fences, looking out. It was like our very own Guantanamo North.

Also: a mother and veterinarian I knew woke up, mid-G20, to find men in black standing above her in the dead of night. They yelled at her to take her screaming baby, and go outside, where she saw her husband – also a professional – hogtied on the front lawn. They did not identify themselves as police.

They were, however. And they were in the wrong place. Without so much as an apology, they untied the woman’s husband and left. They had the wrong address.

And: one day I agreed to drive my teenage daughter to the MTV video awards on Queen Street West. Back then, we had a toy crow on the front dash of our family van. Another van, full of burly men in civilian clothes who were clearly police, pulled up close beside us and stared through the open windows.

They loudly demanded to know the significance of the crow. Seriously, they did that. I told them it was a toy. They glared some more, then sped away, in the direction of some sirens.

And: a lawyer friend was near a barricaded street downtown, and alongside a young woman who was blowing bubbles, like kids do. As my friend looked on, a burly cop demanded that the young woman stop blowing bubbles – or he would have her arrested.

She pointed out she wasn’t hurting anyone with soap bubbles. He arrested her.

Those are just the things I experienced myself. Across Toronto that June, many people heard and saw similar things. Bill Blair’s G20 police force essentially lost their minds, and unleashed the biggest violation of civil rights in Canada in living memory.

Which brings us to now, and why the Toronto Police Service is really doing nothing about the wave of anti-Semitic crime targeting the city’s Jews.

Jewish businesses have been firebombed. Jewish businesses have been vandalized and attacked. Jewish citizens have been assaulted and vilified and threatened. Jewish places of worship, and Jewish neighborhoods, have been targeted for intimidation campaigns.

There has even been attacks on places – like hospitals – simply because anti-Semitic thugs considered them to be too Jewish.
And, after all of that, the Toronto Police Service have been essentially invisible. They have done little or nothing to prevent Jews from being attacked in the city of Toronto.

Why? Well, there are three possibilities.

One, they don’t care. I have heard from enough rank and file police officers, however, to know this is not true. Many do.

Two, they have been told to do nothing by the city’s political leaders. But this isn’t true, either. Most uniformed Toronto police are not fans of Mayor Olivia Chow or her city councilors. And besides: politicians are not allowed to direct police, ever.

Three – and this is the likeliest possibility: it’s the ghost of Bill Blair, haunting us like some Dickensian nightmare.

More than a decade after they were humiliated for their conduct at the G20, Toronto police have gone to the opposite extreme: having once been accused of doing too much, they have now decided to do too little.

The message to Toronto’s Jewish community has been clear: you’re on your own, folks. Unlike in places like New York City, where I now am, Toronto’s police don’t seem to give a sweet damn about the fact that Toronto in 2024 sometimes resembles 1938 in Berlin.

For that, I think we can thank the ghost of Bill Blair.

Too much policing has given way to none at all.