In certain ways, the world got worse this year. But in other respects, there was gradual tiptoeing toward justice and compassion, reasons to have hope amid the greater unease.
These are the news developments, issues, conversations and turning points that mark how our city, country and planet changed in the past 365 days.
1. Justin Trudeau, superstar
Three stories were writ large on election night. There was the across-the-board collapse of the NDP (its early lead in the polls proved a mirage) and the equally definitive demise of Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. So paranoid had we become after his abusive decade in power that we feared the Cons might pull one out of the bag even when polls showed they were going down in flames. So abject had been our collective psyche that the death of cynicism about our national politics may be the biggest story of #elxn42.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is rewriting the book and garnering international headlines, proving that a little compassion and open-mindedness can go a long way.
Not only was he ready, but he’s shown some of the old man’s presence and knack for soft diplomacy when it comes to international affairs. Now there’s to be a state dinner in the new PM’s honour in Washington hosted by Barack Obama to mark Trudeau’s arrival as a power broker among Western leaders.
Conservative commentators have been falling over themselves to rain on Trudeau’s parade, including those flashy Vogue portraits. The Globe’s Margaret Wente wrote recently that Liberal spinmeisters have done a masterful job of marketing Trudeau, casting him as some latter-day Luke Skywalker out to save the world.
Yes, the PM is a Star Wars fan and did take a few kids to a special screening of the latest release. But he’s also recognized the power of his celebrity. If he can use that to change the world, well, we could do with a few more “superheroes” like him.
2. Canadians answer the call to help Syrian refugees
It took a photo of three-year-old Alan Kurdi lying face down, dead on a Mediterranean beach, to jolt the world from its stupor. After four years of civil war in Syria, humankind finally awoke to the crisis that has displaced upwards of 4 million people.
But even before the new Liberal government assumed office and got the ball rolling on its pledge to bring 25,000 refugees here, Canadians responded to the drowning seen around the world with a generosity not witnessed since the Vietnam refugee crisis, when Canada welcomed 50,000 boat people.
Canada is one of the few countries that let private sponsors supplement government-run efforts. Church groups and individuals organized fundraisers to support their own refugee families, no small feat when at least $30,000 has to be raised, the estimated cost of supporting a family of four for a year.
The Jewish community in particular has taken a leadership role, seizing the opportunity to mend fences with Muslims.
The Harper government’s shifting policy on Syria’s refugees, which many compared to Canada’s rejection of Jews during the Second World War, played on people’s fear of terrorism. But the crisis compelled an urgent response, and Canada under Trudeau has done well to re-establish its reputation as a peace builder.
3. The fall of Stephen Harper and the temple of doom
Stephen Harper was prime minister for 10 years, and during that time some said he changed the consciousness of the nation. Before the writ was dropped for #elxn42, commentators talked up the legacy he would leave, win or lose. In the end, history will show that Harper took the rural rump that started out as the Reform Party and turned it into a slightly larger rump now known as the Conservative Party of Canada, which has few seats in the country’s largest urban centres. Internal polling told the party brain trust weeks before the election that Harper’s reign was over. But instead of taking the final weeks of the campaign to bow out gracefully, the Harp machine doubled down on the politics of fear in a last-ditch effort to save itself.
Harp was left playing game-show host at stops along his final journey into political oblivion, even hauling out the Ford Brothers and one of the actors from the anti-Trudeau “Just not ready” commercial. Like his tenure in office, it was a graceless exit, made more so by a concession speech that made no mention of his resignation as party leader.
Harper waited till hours before Trudeau’s official swearing in to formally resign his position, after appointing a slew of bureaucrats to patronage positions. Typical.
4. Black Lives Matter – but police lives matter more
In late July, the Black Lives Matter Toronto coalition staged a demonstration to protest the police killings of Jermaine Carby and Andrew Loku, blocking traffic on the Allen Expressway. Activist journalist Desmond Cole, who took part in the protest, had this to say about the public backlash that followed: “This is not about people being inconvenienced for one night on the highway. It’s about almost 30 years of police brutality against one community.”
Black Lives Matter originally sprang up in response to the prevalence of anti-black racism in policing south of the border. But Canada has its own history of anti-black racism, and our police have yet to confront the deep-rooted prejudice that underlies the killing of black men here.
At the political level, cops seem to be reloading for the fight of their lives. But increased scrutiny and media coverage of misconduct and ballooning budgets mean that unquestioning public support is no longer the default. A Mainstreet/Postmedia poll in August found that nearly half of Torontonians aren’t confident that police treat all citizens equally regardless of race.
As with police shooting deaths of young men in the States, many factors contribute to police violence in Toronto: an embarrassingly powerless police board, a belligerent police union and, most tellingly, the choice of cop’s cop Mark Saunders to head the force.
Carding, a subtler form of violence against racialized communities, was pulled to the centre of civic discourse this year by determined activists who argued that all people have the right to go about their lives free of arbitrary police interaction and harassment. Thankfully, such formal entrenchment of racial profiling may finally be on its way out the province hopes to eliminate carding and race-based police stops through regulation. But the proposed rules are riddled with loopholes that undermine the government’s stated intention. Although no one expects the new regs to transform policing overnight, we can’t let another generation go by before rectifying this institutional injustice.
Meanwhile, in a University Avenue courtroom, Constable James Forcillo is on trial for second-degree murder for the shooting death of Sammy Yatim. Should he avoid conviction, it will only surprise those who haven’t already discerned that police lives matter most.
5. Truth, reconciliation and indigenous self-determination are Idle No More.
Like his father before him, Trudeau feels a special connection to native communities, unlike his predecessor, who seemed hell-bent on conflict and confrontation. He’s got a tattoo – a Haida raven – to prove it. Harper’s war against First Nations, the environment and democracy has left casualties, especially in native communities on the front lines of resource development. Under his watch, the incarceration rate of indigenous people increased by 56 per cent over the last decade, and indigenous women have become the fastest-growing prison population. Native children are committing suicide at younger ages. The fate of 1,600 missing and murdered aboriginal women hangs over the country like a dark cloud. And injustice in the legal system continues. The murder of Cindy Gladue, her private parts preserved and used as evidence by the Crown, highlighted that reality in graphic detail.
Will we see real change, nation-to-nation respect for First Nations under Trudeau? The prime minister has staked his political and personal reputation on repairing Canada’s relations with indigenous peoples. He’s promised to implement every one of the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and deliver clean water to all reserves within five years. It’s a tall order, and Trudeau’s job may seem overwhelming, but a path has been laid out. The Supreme Court has said Canadian laws and actions must be compliant with aboriginal and treaty rights. Only the political will has been missing.
6. The new queer frontier: conversion therapy controversy thrusts transgender rights into the spotlight
On December 28, 2014, 17-year-old trans girl Leelah Acorn left a suicide note on her Tumblr blog and walked in front of a tractor trailer on Ohio Interstate 71. “Don’t be sad,” she wrote. “The life I would’ve lived isn’t worth living… because I’m transgender.” Her final words were “Fix society. Please.” The U.S. Transgender Human Rights Institute launched a petition demanding that the Obama administration impose a ban on the treatment Leelah received – treatment aimed at keeping young people from identifying as another gender or as homosexual.
In March, NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo introduced a private member’s bill to stop Ontario health professionals from practising so-called conversion therapy, and the provincial government quickly signalled its support.
On December 15, Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health announced it would be shutting down the controversial Gender Identity Clinic in its Child, Youth and Family division, a global centre for “correcting” gender identity in young people.
And when Nathan Phillips Square’s big TORONTO sign lit up in the colours of the transgender flag in honour of November’s Trans Day of Remembrance, it echoed Mayor John Tory’s words to the queer community at the start of Pride: “This is your City Hall.”
There’s so much advancement left to be made, but some times, for some people, things do get a little bit better.
7. Shelter skelter
The death of four homeless people in the span of a week during January’s deep freeze exposed a shelter system in crisis. Two men died outdoors in brutally cold conditions. Then a third man was found dead inside the shelter referral centre on Peter Street. One night later, firefighters discovered a body in a burnt-out shack reportedly being used as a makeshift shelter.
More than 740 homeless people have died on Toronto’s streets since 1980. But there’s no way of knowing what the real number is, because no one’s keeping comprehensive statistics – not the city, not the Coroner’s Office, not the Public Health department.
January’s fatalities shocked T.O.’s conscience and revealed a bureaucracy slow to react when the Medical Officer of Health delayed declaring an emergency and opening warming centres. Mayor John Tory responded by renting blocks of motel rooms to provide temporary spaces. But shelters still operated at capacity.
The system is broken and old, unable to handle the needs of people not only looking for beds but contending, too, with mental health issues or addiction. Now shelters face another looming threat to their very existence in creeping gentrification in the downtown east side.
R. Jeanette Martin
8. The fourth wave of feminism is the shitlist
In September, the University of Toronto was put on alert after death threats against female students and faculty were discovered in the comments of a local blog. In response, a large protest took over Bloor Street, while politicians and activists made speeches demanding an end to the violence, along with education to promote feminist ideas and gender equality. Post-Jian Ghomeshi, the national conversation on violence against women has continued, catalyzed by a fourth, digital wave of feminism that resists and opposes rape culture’s insidious manifestations, from #gamergate to #FHRITP. So it was not surprising when women lining up in the Danforth Music Hall’s ladies’ room during the L7 show on September 6 found a scrawled “shitlist” of the names of alleged rapists, which was instantly Instagrammed.
Dangerous? Maybe. But sadder that some women are compelled to see digital space as their best recourse, including those confronted with silence when they report a rape on campus. Sexual assault allegations against hockey players at the University of Ottawa, hateful social media comments posted by Dalhousie dentistry students, and a frosh week prank by Saint Mary’s University students that glorified non-consensual sex with minors show that the country’s institutions of higher learning have a lot to learn when it comes to protecting women. Sadly, however, it’s just a reflection of a larger, long-standing societal issue we’ve only begun to discuss meaningfully. The Ontario government’s PSAs against sexual assault and harassment provide a solid framework for grasping casual misogyny, but reorienting mainstream attitudes remains an ongoing project. The bizarre popularity of the notion that gender parity in Liberal cabinet appointments has upended a system previously founded on merit shows how far we have to go.
9. A tale of terror: the rise of state-sanctioned Islamophobia in Canada
The country held its breath in March as RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson released the 55-second cellphone video made by Parliament Hill shooter Michael Zehaf-Bibeau moments before his rampage, confirming that his acts were retaliation for Canadian participation in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why was Paulson airing the video in the midst of debate over the contentious anti-terrorism Bill C-51? Few thought to ask at the time. Even before #elxn42 was officially under way, the Harper-Cons were busy whipping up anti-terror hysteria.
The government seemed to have the perfect election-ready narrative for bludgeoning its opponents when Omar Khadr, the face of Canada’s “first family of terrorism,” was released on bail in May. But then the unthinkable happened: the public got to know the other side of the Khadr story, his decade-plus spent tortured and incarcerated. And that made us wonder about all the others caught up in the post-9/11 terror fever: Abdullah Almalki. Ahmad El Maati. Muayyed Nureddin. Abousfian Abdelrazik. Benamar Benatta.
Maher Arar, the victim of false accusations that led to torture in Syrian prison, successfully sued the Canadian government. On September 1, 15 years after his year in hell, the RCMP announced that it had charged Syrian Colonel George Salloum in absentia with Arar’s torture and would seek his extradition to Canada to face trial. Arar welcomed the news in a statement read to the media by his wife, Monia Mazigh. The last two paragraphs stand out: “Canada has lost much of its credibility within the last decade when it comes to supporting important human rights causes. Enhancing national security and protecting human rights can go hand in hand.”
As if on cue, when their electoral victory starting slipping away, the HarperCons doubled down, carpet-bombing the airwaves with talk of nothing but niqabs. Turns out the former PM had commissioned his own poll on the subject months before it became an election lightning rod. Conveniently, the scandal of Senate corruption and a PMO conspiracy and cover-up receded into a choreographed frenzy of Islamophobia.
When a handful of anti-Islam protesters showed up at Olivia Chow’s nomination meeting in August, we hoped it was just a blip, but the same prejudices came to define the election. As in Toronto’s 2014 municipal contest, we saw how little it takes for the latent bigotry in Canadian society to turn explicit when roused for political purposes. The Conservatives tried riding the country’s darker side to re-election, but as Bill Ayers wrote when Barack Obama overcame every manner of desperate attack to win the U.S. presidency in 2008, “Demonization… and the politics of fear did not triumph, not this time.”
Nate Smelle
Quebec City climate change rally April 2015.
10. Climate Summit of the Americas warms over climate action
Before the Paris climate talks, 23 sub-national governments, including Ontario’s, convened in Toronto for the Climate Summit of the Americas, an event that was easy to miss (save for the activists protesting in front of the Royal York Hotel) given that the Pan Am Games were gearing up at the time.
California Governor Jerry Brown, one of the star attendees, offered a stark appraisal of whether we’ve reached the tipping point when it comes to global warming. “We can’t predict with any degree of certainty where we are now headed based on the carbon that is there [in the atmosphere]. Human beings are hard-wired for events, for a gunshot or a wild animal chasing us. Dealing with a condition that slowly builds up is much more difficult,” he said.
His own state, where much of the continent’s food is grown, has been gripped by the worst drought in memory – and is desperately trying to keep crops watered. The summit passed a proposal to keep warming at 2° Celsius. But that resolution would be undermined by approval of TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline, a project that both summit hosts, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, are unwilling to consider shutting down. In a year otherwise full of greenspiration on the climate front (see Ecoholic, page 22), the summit warmed over the global warming crisis.
With files from Bernie Farber, Mira Sucharov, Neil Price, Gary Freeman, Pam Palmater, Jake Pyne, Ben Spurr, Peter Biesterfeld, Antonia Zerbisias, Vidya Kauri, Matthew Behrens and Zach Ruiter.
news@nowtoronto.com | @nowtoronto
