From guns and gangs to safer streets: How each federal party plans to combat GTA gun crime
As Election Day nears, CTV News Toronto is taking a deeper look into the issues that matter most to local voters, breaking down the party promises as they apply to Battleground: GTA.
The Issue
As Scarborough resident Louis March surveys the park near his home, he explains what he calls the ‘playground test.’
“It speaks a very loud story about the safety within the city of Toronto,” he says.
His theory: when gun violence is up, in certain neighbourhoods, the swings and slides sit empty, even on the nicest of days.
“Parents are not letting their children out to play,” he says. “It’s not difficult to see it.”
“My two boys, my two grandsons, they basically stay in the house,” echoes Michelle Bowen, who is still shaken by a shooting in her Chester Le neighbourhood a few weeks ago.
“You can’t even go out of your house now,” she says.
“We need to step up and do something,” her neighbour Cliff Stunden maintains.
The Background
With 291 shootings in Toronto so far this year, and 28 people killed, it is clear that gun violence remains a major problem—one that federal party leaders are vowing to address.
March, who founded the Zero Gun Violence Movement group, calls political solutions to date reactionary, fragmented, and inconsistent; a national strategy that addresses root issues and stems the flow of illegal guns into the country is needed to affect real change, he says.
“The fact that gun violence continues to increase, trending upward, means that what government is doing is not working,” he says.
“It shouldn’t have to take people getting shot for this to be done,” Bowen adds.
The Liberal Promise
“Community safety is not up for negotiation with the gun lobby,” Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau proclaimed Sept. 5 in Markham.
Trudeau’s Liberal government banned the use, sale and import of assault-style firearms, and the party is vowing if re-elected to make it mandatory for the owners of barred guns to sell them back to the government or have them rendered inoperable.
The Liberals are also looking to crack down on high-capacity magazines, hike penalties for gun trafficking and smuggling, and spend $1 billion to help provinces and territories ban handguns.
The Conservative Promise
Weeks after his party pledged to scrap the Liberal ban on assault-style weapons, Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole reversed his position—but maintained that he wanted a review of the firearm classification system.
“We have a plan to tackle this rise in illegal gun activity in our cities,” O’Toole said on Sept. 6
The Conservatives are also promising to hire an additional 200 RCMP officers to combat gangs and gun smuggling, and establish an entities list for criminal gangs.
They are pledging to overhaul the Firearms Act and strengthen firearm-related provisions in the Criminal Code, and expand programs to keep youth out of gangs.
The NDP Promise
The New Democrat promise on gun violence is more vague, the party’s platform noting that the NDP will “work to keep assault weapons and illegal handguns and assault weapons off our streets, and to tackle gun smuggling and organized crime.”
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is also promising to provide funding for anti-gang projects to deter at-risk youth from joining gangs.
“New Democrats believe in keeping people safe, keeping our communities safe, and that means making sure we have a program that actually works to keep these weapons off the streets,” Singh said on Sept. 6.
The Green Promise
The Green Party supports a ban on assault weapons and is pitching a program to phase out handguns by tightening eligibility requirements over time.
They also support a confidential buy-back program for handguns and assault weapons, a ban on large-capacity magazines, clearer regulation of gun storage, and tighter border controls to intercept illegal handguns.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three Quebec men from same family father hundreds of children
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
Jurors in Trump hush money trial hear recording of pivotal call on plan to buy affair story
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
B.C. mayor stripped of budget, barred from committees over Indigenous residential schools book
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Captain sentenced to 4 years for criminal negligence in fiery deaths of 34 aboard scuba boat
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
New scam targets Canada Carbon Rebate recipients
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.
Southern Alberta store broken into by burly black bear
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
President Joe Biden calls Japan and India 'xenophobic' nations that do not welcome immigrants
President Joe Biden has called Japan and India “xenophobic” countries that do not welcome immigrants, lumping the two with adversaries China and Russia as he tried to explain their economic circumstances and contrasted the four with the U.S. on immigration.
Universities grapple with the complicated politics of campus encampments
Montreal police are facing pressure to move in and dismantle a pro-Palestinian encampment on McGill University campus on Thursday, as a growing number of universities across this country grapple with the tough decision of how to handle the protests.