Toronto — The most troubled parts of Ontario cities are their historic downtowns, but Premier Dalton McGuinty has little interest in visiting their problems.
Cores in many have become half-empty, with stores moving to suburbs where parking is abundant and municipalities allowing and even promoting too many bars to take their place, so thousands of patrons spill on to streets weekend nights and create noise, vandalize and fight. Better-behaved people stay away, drug dealers have taken their place and the few business owners left despair of being able to continue.
But almost no-one in provincial government talks about the problem, let alone suggests a solution, and many of the municipal politicians are happy to go along with this, because they win most of their votes in the newer suburbs.
In Toronto’s entertainment district, where shootings are common, police say dealers are traveling from as far as Kitchener to sell drugs and one downtown condo was packed with such a variety it looked like a drug store.
Police in Guelph say criminals are coming from Toronto to sell to the 4,000 patrons who pour out of that city’s 33 downtown bars weekend nights since its university closed most bars on campus to reduce drinking there and dumped its drinking problem downtown.
Residents in downtown Windsor complain of brawls outside one club that caused two deaths, but it remains open. A spokesman for downtown businesses said “I watch men and women fight and see bullets on the ground - I see things I didn’t see when I lived in New York.”
This city is trying to lure back people back to live downtown, but advocates say the clubs deter them.
Residents in downtown Ottawa have held public meetings to protest at the increasing presence of drug addicts and brought buckets of discarded needles, and hotels and other businesses say they are tired of having clients trip over drug addicts on their way in and out of their buildings.
In St. Catharines, another university city, residents complain as many as 5,000 patrons pour out of downtown bars on weekend nights and cause noise and vandalism. Others sit in their cars and drink at less cost in free, multi-level parking designed ironically to coax downtown, then drive out tossing empty bottles on downtown streets or join those leaving the bars.
Kitchener is talking of a tougher “behaviour bylaw” that will deter young people leaving downtown bars from urinating and defecating on streets, knocking over garbage cans and smashing mailboxes.
The few stores that remain in downtown Oshawa say so many drug dealers and other unsavory characters hang around downtown they deter respectable customers and others worry whether they can hang on.
In Thunder Bay many downtown stores are boarded up and homelessness and drinking pose problems.
McGuinty has shown concern at the way suburbs are expanding. He has announced he will restrict much future residential development to current built-up areas and his concern should be heightened by the increased cost of driving that threatens to make suburbs less desirable and even turn some into slums.
But the premier has not taken measures to make downtowns more attractive that could include providing more funds to police to improve security and tougher laws to deter rowdyism and vandalism. He also should discourage proliferation of bars, leniency toward those breaking laws and concentration of social services on prime downtown streets, when some could serve as well a block or two away, and encourage upscale residential and commercial development — many would love to live and work in these historic centres.
Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the Queen’s Park press gallery.
