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Canadian Teen's Slaying Kindles U.S.-Style Gun Control Debate
A woman leaves flowers at the downtown Toronto site where Jane Creba was shot while shopping with her sister a day after Christmas. Crime has become a hot campaign issue leading up to parliamentary elections next Monday.
(By Frank Gunn -- Canadian Press Via Associated Press)
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Also, Canada already has mandatory minimum sentences for many gun crimes, and Martin's call for a handgun ban contains loopholes that would exempt some target shooters as well as any province that objects to the ban.
But the crime issue strikes a chord with voters.
"I worry about my kids. They get driven everywhere now. We don't want them hanging out," said Manny Martinez, 38, a registered nurse at a Toronto hospital.
The alarm was first raised here in Ontario's capital with a string of public shootings. Before the slaying of Creba, Toronto was rocked by the gang-related killing of a teenager on the steps of a church outside a friend's funeral service in November, and the injury of a 4-year-old boy who was struck four times by gunfire outside his family's apartment in August. In November 2004, an 11-year-girl was wounded in the head when she was caught in crossfire on a city bus.
The shootings -- and their victims -- have been disproportionately among blacks and other ethnic minorities, an issue that "Canadians are too polite to talk about," said Nelson Wiseman, a political analyst at the University of Toronto. Canada prides itself on its successful acceptance of a diverse ethnic mix, and the society observes a political etiquette in which race and ethnicity are often not openly mentioned.
"We have Jamaican gangs in Toronto, Haitians in Montreal, Southeast Indo-Asian gangs in Vancouver, Indian and native gangs elsewhere in the country," said Gary Mauser, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.
Recognizing the socioeconomic factors associated with higher crime, all of the political candidates have accompanied their call for tougher laws with proposals to expand spending on social programs. But the violence carried out by ethnic gangs and their increasing use of handguns is slowly breaking the polite silence.
The Rev. Eugene Rivers, a black American leader prominent for his work in reducing violence in Boston, came to Toronto last week and publicly chastised the black community, admonishing its members to take responsibility for fatherless homes and wayward youths.
Jamaican Canadians in Toronto say they object to being singled out, but many also say they must work on problems in their community.
"I don't like it when they play the racial card," said the septuagenarian Clarke, a black immigrant from the West Indies, as she sipped coffee downtown. "But people have to change. They have to take responsibility."
Despite Canada's reputation for safety, its rate of violent crime is not much different from that of the United States when gun crimes are not included, according to Wendy Cukier, president of the Coalition for Gun Control, a Canadian group.
But Canada is keen to avoid the U.S. model, with nearly one gun on average for every person, fueling a homicide rate akin to war-torn countries, she said.
