State Violence: Toronto Police Academy of trained Assassins for Torture and Assassinations.

Toronto Police Kill Rodrigo Hector Almonacid Gonzalez
 10 Percent Is Not Enough: Defunding Toronto’s Police

By Adam Lee: Across Turtle Island, uprisings against police violence have given power to calls to defund and abolish the police. No longer able to sweep police conduct under the rug, politicians have been scrambling to respond.

On June 7, Minneapolis City Council promised to disband their police department. The very next day, Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders announced his resignation. Not wanting to be left behind, Toronto city councillors Josh Matlow and Kristyn Wong-Tam announced a motion to cut the Toronto Police Service’s budget by ten percent, or $122 million of the $1.22 billion police budget.

                                                              POLICE BRUTALITY - Toronto Police MURDER Disabled Man While In Their Custody

On June 19, Black Lives Matter Toronto (BLM-TO) responded to the proposal, with cofounder Rodney Diverlus calling ten percent an “unacceptable” number “meant to placate the public.” Among a list of demands, the organization called for an immediate police budget cut of at least 50 percent. City Council’s proposed ten percent cut falls short when you consider that the call to “defund the police” is rooted in the abolitionist movement’s efforts to end the institution of policing, efforts that BLM-TO put at the heart of their vision in a way that Matlow and Wong-Tam do not. On the heels of Minneapolis disbanding their police department, ten percent looks even smaller. But in the context of Toronto’s history of runaway police spending, the proposed cut looks infinitesimal – not just as an end goal, but even as a first step. To understand the meager impact of the proposed motion we must understand the recent history of police funding in Toronto and why ten percent is not enough.
Police Funding after ‘The Year of the Gun‘

2005 was Toronto’s original ‘Year of the Gun‘ a year that saw fifty-two gun-related homicides and widespread media discussion about violence in the city. Instead of addressing the systemic roots of violence, the city responded by throwing money at the police to target, criminalize, and incarcerate oppressed communities. The Toronto Police boasted a greatly expanded “Guns and Gangs” task force heading into 2006 and made much ado of their “Community Policing” and “Community Safety and Security” goals in their budget outline. City Council rewarded them with a whopping $74.72 million increase in funding, bringing their gross expenditure budget allotment to $796 million for the year 2006.                                                                                                           

                                                                 James Forcillo A Trained Assassin   

  What any of the city’s public services could have done with an extra $74.72 million is an open question. But before you start dreaming, the numbers get worse.

For the first time in Toronto’s history, the 2012 municipal budget saw City Council approve over a billion dollars in gross expenditures for the police, officially clocking in at $1.01 billion. That same year, funding for Paramedic Services, Public Health, and the Toronto Public Library each fell by several million. Funding for the city’s Shelter, Support & Housing portfolio fell by over $130 million (more than the $122 million cut being proposed now).                                                                                

 Dafonte Miller Brutalized by Toronto Cop
 When you think about those numbers – a billion dollars for police and a $130 million cut for housing – it’s important to remember that 2012 also saw a five-year high in street deaths of underhoused people in Toronto. Even when the city and the police aren’t killing people through their actions, they are killing people by diverting resources away from crucial support systems.The police budget hasn’t gone under a billion dollars since then. Toronto City Council has continued pumping money into policing at a rate that outstrips almost every other public service. 2014 and 2015 came with increases to the police budget totalling $130 million. Following two consecutive years of cuts in 2016 and 2017 (for a total cut of $21 million), the last three years have seen a total increase of roughly $92 million for the police. This brings us to today’s number: $1.22 billion for the police in gross expenditures, a total increase of nearly $500 million for Toronto’s cops since 2005 (which, accounting for inflation, is roughly $300 million over the 2005 funding rate).
10 percent is not enough

In light of these numbers, how should we understand the proposed ten percent cut? How can we understand a cut of ten percent when the police killings of Ejaz Choudry (June 20 in Toronto), Regis Korchinski-Paquet (May 27 in Toronto), Chantel Moore (June 4 in Edmundston, New Brunswick), and Rodney Levi (June 12 in Boom Road, New Brunswick) are still fresh in our minds?

To start at the end, every cent that goes to funding the police is an investment in state-sanctioned violence, enacted primarily against Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. As abolitionists have made absolutely clear in past decades and the last weeks, nothing short of a principled commitment to complete defunding and abolition will solve the problem of policing. A ten percent cut wouldn’t have spared the countless people in Toronto brutalized and murdered by police power, and it won’t do anything now.

 
I was born Free and I will die Free, without being Accomplice of Any Infamy.

But even as step one of a much longer defunding process, ten percent is like throwing a deck chair off the Titanic. Police spending went up by over $40 million last year, and at that rate, the proposed $122 million cut would be replenished in three years. When you consider that previous increases have been over $60 million and even $70 million, ten percent looks smaller and smaller.

The call to defund the police in Toronto must come with a vision of a world where we don’t need any police funding. If that seems impossible now, ask yourself if an extra $610 million (50 percent of the police budget, as BLM-TO demands) for resources and supports makes it seem more possible. The proposed $122 million could sure be used by Toronto’s underfunded social programs, but so would the other $1.098 billion that the police would have left over after the cut. In the face of police violence, justice requires much more than what Josh Matlow and Kristyn Wong-Tam are proposing. We must imagine a world where everybody is supported and police and prisons are unnecessary. As BLM-TO makes clear, we must fight for that world today – starting at 50 percent, and onward until the police are disarmed, dismantled, and abolished.

Canadian Dimension a Trudeau Magazine: Leave the Lima Group and rescind the sanctions against Venezuela

 Arnold August:
Canadian Dimension a Trudeau Magazine: Leave the Lima Group and rescind the sanctions against Venezuela

On June 17, the Trudeau government suffered a humiliating defeat by losing the United Nations Security Council elections to Ireland and Norway. It was a strong refutation of Trudeau's policy of "colonialism at home and imperialism abroad." It should be obvious by now that serious questions need to be asked about Trudeau's foreign policy, particularly with regard to Venezuela and the Lima Group.
Canadian Dimension a Trudeau Magazine: Leave the Lima Group and rescind the sanctions against Venezuela

Over the course of the last few months, and faced with the prospect of the United Nations Security Council vote, an open, democratic and critical discussion on Canada's colonial legacy and the treatment of indigenous peoples — as well as on politics A foreign woman from Ottawa aligned with Trump — she practically disappeared from the mainstream media.

In the last federal election, Trudeau had to deal with some challenges coming from citizenship. Mockingly and insultingly, he evaded the protests of indigenous complainants suffering from mercury poisoning. He also avoided the peace activists who were questioning him, as well as ignored the double standards that the Foreign Minister, Chrystia Freeland, handles regarding sanctioning Russia for its annexation of Crimea, while passing unnoticed the illegal construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank that are taking place.

Canada immediately recognized the fraudulent election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil (after the judiciary incarcerated leader Lula da Silva on spurious charges), at the same time that it refused to recognize the constitutionally elected Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro. Trudeau and his cabinet also faced protests by activists opposing the sale of weapons from Canada to the notorious human rights violator Saudi Arabia and Ottawa's unconditional support for Israel at the expense of Palestinian self-determination. While the corporate media had no choice but to broadcast these protests, they soon returned to the normal course of business, meekly keeping all these vitally important issues away from public scrutiny.

For those of us in Canada who are involved in the campaign "NO to vote for Canada in the United Nations Security Council" (in English, "# NoUNSC4Canada"), with the inclusion of Canadian Dimension, it is evident that we managed to break the blackout of virtual corporate media. The main objective of this censorship was to end the indispensable debate on Canada's foreign policy and its notorious internal colonial practices against indigenous peoples.

# NoUSNC4Canada campaign takes shape                                                                                           


 

On May 19, this media position was forced to change course. That day, a letter signed by more than 100 Canadian, Quebecois, and indigenous personalities was published by the Toronto Star newspaper. The letter criticized the Canadian government's foreign policy and the continued intrusion of the Trudeau government into unauthorized indigenous territory to force the installation of gas and oil pipelines. The letter argued that Canada does not deserve a mandate in the United Nations Security Council due to the twisted angle of its foreign policy towards Venezuela, Haiti, Bolivia and other Latin American countries in favor of the United States, along with its ambitions. neo-colonialists in Africa, their open contempt for Palestinian rights and much more.

Following the publication of the letter in the Toronto Star, Trudeau was asked during his daily press round on the Covid-19 about divided public opinion around his candidacy for a term in the United Nations Security Council. Instead of broaching the subject, he arrogantly rejected the questions, as if they didn't exist, saying that in his opinion there was no division, and then pointed to Maduro to avoid the question.

Apparently thereafter, criticism of the Trudeau government over his candidacy for a mandate in the United Nations Security Council continued to mount.

On June 11, the Canadian organization Just Peace Advocates published an open letter about Palestine, which was then sent to the 193 United Nations ambassadors and signed by 100 organizations and dozens of personalities. This immediately impacted the Canadian political scene as Canada's ambassador to the United Nations, Marc-André Blanchard, was forced to write a response to all UN ambassadors, defending Canada's unilateral policy in Israel. This manifestly desperate move did not go unnoticed, even in the mainstream media, raising further doubts about the credibility of Canada's bid for a mandate in the United Nations Security Council.

Canadian Dimension columnist Yves Engler appealed to the Caricom nations to vote against Canada. This was followed by a similar appeal that I made and which was sent to each of the United Nations ambassadors representing the Caricom nations. The Canadian Foreign Policy Institute published my appeal on YouTube in English, French and Spanish. It consisted of a call that was widely disseminated to many United Nations ambassadors to vote against Canada for violating international law regarding its policy that advocates regime change in Venezuela, in support of the United States, which constitutes a flagrant violation of the principles of the United Nations.

There are many other examples. Did our campaign inside and outside of Canada influence Trudeau's electoral defeat before the United Nations Security Council? We may never know for sure. But, what we do know is that since 2017, Trudeau has been calling and meeting with heads of state from all continents to address the issue of Venezuela. He has been urging them to side with Trump and his carefully chosen "interim president" Juan Guaidó. Trudeau did everything possible to give Guaidó an official reception in Ottawa during the month of February. In fact, the embarrassing selfie photo of the two, who were taken at that treat - since then removed from the Government of Canada website, has gone down in history thanks to activists - is emblematic of slavish Canadian foreign policy.

The cost of Trudeau's ties to Trump is very high
 

 Palestine Children in Pictures

 Since the June 17 vote, the fact that Trudeau lost as a result of his close and public ties to Trump has been a matter of general recognition in progressive circles and now even in some corporate media, much to the chagrin of the latter. Probably the # NoUNSC4Canada campaign provided an additional boost to anti-Trudeau sentiment already brewing in the context of growing global resistance to western liberal hypocrisy, motivated by issues such as Trudeau's support for Israel and disdain for the rights of the Palestinian people.

It has also been noted, and with good reason, that Trudeau's support for Israel was a key factor in its defeat. However, one should not underestimate the Venezuela factor. Trudeau fell victim to his own mythical belief that "the world is against Maduro." In fact, it is enough to point to the Non-Aligned Movement, which groups 120 members that recognizes Maduro. The influence and esteem enjoyed by Venezuela and its leaders in the third world should not be underestimated. Former President Hugo Chávez is respected in many places to a degree that Trudeau cannot even begin to imagine.

In many ways, Maduro follows in the footsteps of her predecessor. Maduro reached an agreement with Iran for the Middle Eastern nation to send fuel ships to Venezuela to mitigate a collapse of refinery operations caused by the tightening of punitive sanctions by the United States. In defiance of the Americans, five Iranian oil tankers carried 1.5 million barrels of fuel to Venezuelan ports. On June 22, the Iranian ambassador to Venezuela, Hojjatollah Soltani, confirmed the arrival of the "Golsan" ship in Venezuelan waters with a load of food destined for the first supermarket in the Islamic Republic opened in Venezuela.

Venezuela's diplomatic work is also remarkable. Skillfully combining the revolutionary defense of its sovereignty founded on the civic-military union backed by a vertiginous body of young diplomats who move from all four corners of the globe. They have developed a tradition of fighting in every forum that the international community offers and they stand firm against all odds.

Some additional internal truths came to light in a June 17 tweet from Carlos Ron, deputy minister of Venezuela for North America. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza retweeted the message:

                                                                                Powerful as God to Commit Crimes Against Humanity: The Regimes on Duty and Child Aid Socities

"Carlos Ron @ CarlosJRonVE. I am not surprised by the electoral results of today's United Nations Security Council. A servile foreign policy may deserve favors from Trump; however, the peoples of the world expect an independent voice that defends diplomacy, respect for self-determination and peace. ” 6:54 PM - June 17, 2020.

To achieve positive results from Trudeau's electoral defeat before the United Nations Security Council, Canadians must demand a public debate on foreign policy. The Canadian Foreign Policy Institute, which initiated the petition # NoUNSC4Canada, continues this discussion by publishing articles in the mainstream media and holding virtual seminars during the pandemic.

Although progressives may be satisfied with the result of the June 17 vote, it is necessary that this rejection of Trudeau's foreign policy translate into Canada's departure from the Lima Group, in the rescission of its sanctions against Venezuela and in lobbying Trump to do the same.