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By Michael Valpy, The Globe and Mail
A shadow of evil lies over the town. It showed itself yesterday in Committee Room 2 of Toronto City Hall where Consuelo Rubio finally gave up her struggle against tears. She cried in the room, with the politicians and journalists and the public watching. She said: "Once is too many."
Ms. Rubio is a legal worker with the Centre for Spanish Speaking Peoples. She appeared before the Toronto Transit Commission to explain how the city's Hispanic community has been hurt by the disgusting advertisement paid for by the Toronto Police Association in the Bloor-Yonge subway station during the provincial election campaign.
The advertisement, Ms. Rubio said, "displayed our community as a community of pimps and drug pushers."
It did just that. An advertisement paid for by the union representing most of the officers of the Toronto police force, approved by the company that puts up transit ads, defended by the Canadian advertising industry's regulatory body and somehow authorized by the TTC.
As well as an advertisement on which Police Chief David Boothby has yet to make public comment.
It showed a photograph of five menacing young Hispanic men. The caption said: "There's only thing that those guys fear. Your vote." The message was clear: If you're a young Hispanic in Toronto, you're bad -- and the police say so. The police association endorsed the re-election of Mike Harris's Progressive Conservative government and its get-tough-on-criminals platform.
As Elvira Sanchez de Malicki, founding president of the Canadian Hispanic Congress, put it: "It makes us feel in a very dangerous position. The police force is licensed to carry guns."
It is good to report that the advertisement was removed once members of the Hispanic community complained. (Although it was taken down when the contract ended, its prompt removal was undoubtedly because of complaints.) And that the TTC's interim general manager has formally apologized and that motions promptly were approved by the transit commissioners to review its advertising policy and to work with the Hispanic community to portray it positively in advertising.
It also is good to report that Councillor Judy Sgro (North York Humber), vice-chairwoman of the Toronto Police Services Board, told the transit commissioners that she would recommend that representatives of the Hispanic community be invited to appear before the board at its next meeting.
But all that good is not good enough.
The ad is evil. It is not mere stupidity dressed up as a big idea.
It is the demonizing of the Other. It is the manifestation of the perverse logic that identifying others as evil justifies all manner of evil against them, the logic that allows the "Aryan" to kill a Jew, the apartheid white police of South Africa to use their guns, whips and dogs against blacks.
The Toronto Police Association placed the ad. The Urban Outdoor Trans Ad company saw nothing wrong with putting it up. It raised no eyebrows with the TTC. It came down only when there were complaints.
Linda Nagel, president of Advertising Standards Canada, the advertising industry's regulating body, said the ad fell within the bounds of election advertising and was therefore excluded from the Canadian Code of Advertising Standards -- a statement on the edge of transcending stupidity.
The police association has neither acknowledged complaints from the Hispanic community nor apologized. No individual police officers have publicly dissociated themselves from the association. Chief Boothby has not apologized.
Chief Boothby has written a magisterial letter to Craig Bromell, president of the police association, saying he has done the force a disservice "by stereotyping in this manner." What he should have told Mr. Bromell and his association executive is that they are a disgrace to the force, and to the city, and he should have gone on every TV and radio station in Toronto to say so.
Councillor Brian Ashton (Scarborough Bluffs), a TTC member, said yesterday that the matter is almost beyond apology. I am with him.
He said the two institutions that most affect newcomers to Canada are the schools and the police. Within those institutions, he said, lies the nature of the home Toronto creates for those who have suffered transgressions elsewhere.
E-mail: mvalpy@globeandmail.ca
Copyright - The Globe and Mail
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