OUR STREETS ARE SAFE: THE NUMBERS TELL THE REAL STORY

Here are some facts. They come from Statistics Canada. You can check
them on the agency's website, if you don't believe them.

Here they are. Violent crime dropped from 2001 to 2004. The homicide
rate -- murders per thousand -- rose slightly (to 2.0 per 100,000
population in 2004 from 1.8 per 100,000 in 2000), but not so several
other categories of crime. The attempted murder rate dropped during
that period. Sexual assaults dropped. Other sexual offences dropped.
Robbery rates dropped. Property crimes dropped, including break and
entry and theft. (Motor vehicle thefts rose slightly.) Drug offences went up.

Read the numbers for yourselves, as citizens. They're easily
available. They are apparently irrelevant, however, to newspaper and
television line-up editors who sell their products in part through a
heavy emphasis on crime reporting.

They are apparently also unknown to Canada's new Prime Minister. Or
perhaps they are known to Stephen Harper and his Conservative
government, but these politicians have deliberately decided to
distort and misrepresent what is happening in Canada.

Take the Speech from the Throne. There, the government declared:
"Unfortunately our safe streets and healthy communities are
increasingly under threat of gun and drug violence." On Monday, Mr.
Harper took his tough-on-crime message to the Canadian Professional
Police Association. He warned that "safe streets and safe
neighbourhoods. . . are threatened by rising levels of crime." He
asserted that the "homicide rate is on the rise." The language of
fear was omnipresent. "Times are changing," he said, threatening "our
peaceful, law-abiding communities that are part of Canada's
traditional identity and values." He continued: "In the last few
months and years, we have witnessed growing media reports of drug,
gun and gang violence, especially in the city of Toronto." Note the
phrase, "media reports." The media, not just in Toronto, has feasted
on crime as a way of boosting circulations and ratings. The old local
television adage, "if it bleeds, it leads" has spilled into
broadsheet newspapers.

Ace crime reporters have been hired. Crime stories are being pursued
with special vigour. No wonder that citizens, when asked by
pollsters, think that crime is rising. This is what their media are
fixated on. The facts show the reverse.

Put another way, there are few areas of collective life where
perception and reality are so at variance. And into that gap flow
politicians with an agenda.

No wonder that citizens are misled when their own Prime Minister so
wantonly misstates the facts.

When a murder occurred on Toronto's Yonge Street midway through the
election campaign, all media hell broke loose. Politicians of every
stripe jumped on the story, promising to get "tough on crime." Even
Jack Layton of the NDP wore that ill-fitting political suit.

The Conservatives, of course, reminded everyone of their policies to
impose mandatory sentences for gun-related offences and those related
to drug-trafficking, paroled offenders and repeat offenders; the list
served up again this week by Mr. Harper.

The promise, pollsters found, was wildly popular but of course not
very useful in clamping down on serious, violent crime, the seeds of
which lie elsewhere and the antidote to which is seldom a minimum sentence.

The promise was successfully directed to a political target (Toronto)
that felt itself under siege, whereas the city is beset by particular
problems related to gangs.

Gang violence is a serious challenge but it requires a pointed
response rather than a blunderbuss approach. It must be dealt with
through better and more omnipresent policing, but also policies that
get at the social roots of gang violence. And that isn't easy, since
those roots often lie in broken families, no male role models for
young teenagers, widespread violence and disorder within the
community itself, low levels of education.

There is a need for a more serious attack on crime, especially in
those pockets of urban areas where it has grown. But escalated
rhetoric about "safe streets" being threatened and "healthy
communities increasingly under threat" represents political pandering
that violates the facts.