Shooting at Eaton Centre, Toronto: The Canadian example

One person dead and others injured as a bold targeted shooting shocked the city of Toronto on Saturday. Within hours the media were briefed by the city's chief of police Bill Blair, the popular mayor Rob Ford standing close enough but definitely in the background. In the discipline of governance and responsibility, bullets are not marked with political party symbols.

With the police and not the politics in charge, the CoP provided the communication, clarity and confidence lacking 4,000 kilometres away, Trinidad and Tobago regressing problem by problem. Civility has been lacking but a recent Express editorial used the word "crassness'', another step down.

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar

Numbed by relatively high homicide rates since 2001, in Trinidad and Tobago it is only the killing of children which still creates a stir. Even so reaction lasts a couple days because there is no shortage of headliners. But for Canada and its 34 million people, there are memories of once-rising gun violence and high homicide rates, so even the prime minister reacted to the shooting, saying that "Canadians should be assured that such depraved and monstrous acts will be met with the full force of the law".


It is not something our Prime Minister may say, the neutrality of emotion having set in and the pervasiveness of "spokespeople" increasing distance between the PM and issues.