We’re thankful to Maneesh Mohindra of the blog Torontoist for drawing our attention to a ranking of the most dangerous cities in Canada in the most recent issue of Maclean’s. The magazine tracked numbers from the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics for 2006 in six crime categories including assault, sexual assault, robbery, breaking and entering and murder.

The results? As Mohindra writes, “If you’re interested in pursuing a career in crime here in Canada, it looks like your best bet is to pack up and move to Regina.”

And how about big bad Toronto? We ranked 26th on the list, as one of the indisputably safest large cities on the continent. We didn’t crack the top 10 in any of the categories of violent crime or major property crime studied. Whether this fact serves to justify our huge police budget or calls into question its necessity is a question for another day.

But there’s another question: why is this such a surprise? Why do Torontonians (and other Canadians) feel like Toronto’s streets are so mean?

Part of the answer was on display days after the issue of Maclean’s hit the street, on the cover of the Toronto Sun: a huge photo of a gun called the “judge,” which fires shotgun shells. “Police fear it’s heading for Toronto,” the cover story screamed. Inside, a cop gave some perspective, more than halfway through the story. “I haven’t seen any [of those guns] here.”

We can only wonder how afraid they are in Regina, where the crime problem is so much worse.

Reporter-source privilege
An Ontario appeals court has ruled that the Charter of Rights, in its protections of a free press, at least partially protects the right of a reporter to keep his or her sources confidential. This precedent-setting decision is welcome and overdue.

The relationship between the press and society is complicated, and the media often fail to live up to lofty expectations for the high-minded fifth estate. But the press does have an important role to play as a watchdog against abuses by governments, corporations and private citizens.

It is the very nature of investigative reporting that at times the people most likely to have valuable information are most in danger if they share it. That’s where confidential sources come in.

It’s true, especially in political horse-race reporting, that unnamed sources are overused, and often they are people simply trying to score cheap political points. But in many cases they are necessary to uncover scandals of great public interest that would otherwise go unreported.

Until now, the courts did not recognize the importance to society of that confidential relationship, and reporters who failed to reveal sources under subpoena were open to contempt-of-court charges.
This new ruling corrects that oversight, and that is a good thing.

Looking a problem in the teeth
Regarding Premier Dalton McGuinty’s announcement last week that his government would introduce a dental care program for low-income Ontarians, we’re tempted to cheer. Yet we can’t help but wonder why such medically necessary procedures as dental work are not already covered by our universal healthcare program.

If not the coverage for all Ontarians of medically necessary care, what do we mean by “universal”? And what do we mean by “health”?

Coverage for the poorest is a long overdue start. But it’s not enough. Not nearly. 

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