HANNAFORD: Leave your keys where thieves can find them? Only in Canada you say...

The problem with sarcasm these days is that it’s tough to stay ahead of reality.As in Toronto’s problem with car thefts that lead to home invasions, for example. It’s a billion dollar a year industry in Canada. (These people aren’t just joyriders.) The Toronto Police Service also reports a 400% increase in home invasions.That makes it a big problem.So what’s the helpful suggestion from the local constabulary?'Just leave the keys at the front door and nobody gets hurt.’They really said that.“To prevent the possibility of being attacked in your home, leave your fobs at your front door,” offered Constable Marco Ricciardi. “They’re breaking into your home to steal your car. They don’t want anything else… A lot of them that they’re arresting have guns on them and they’re not toy guns, they’re real guns. They’re loaded.”Huh?You see, if a few years ago you had said something like that at the food fair in the mall where old men with nothing to do get together to damn modernity — “Jeez man, they’re stealing cars everywhere, you might as well just leave the bloody keys by the front door!” — the people with you would have just rolled their eyes. “There he goes again.”But, sarcasm doesn’t age well. Now you have that very suggestion from the Toronto Police Service.To be excruciatingly fair, let it be added that the following day a fellow member said that while Constable Ricciardi “meant well,” there were “better ways” of achieving the same thing.No doubt Ricciardi did mean well, although by then Fox News was going with another ‘retarded-Canadian-cousin’ story. All those locked-and-loaded Second Amendment types think we’re an awful pack of wussies.Which of course, we are. Not that we live or die on a thumbs up from Fox News. But actually, as Canadians we’d like to think we can do a little better than that.After all, Canada has the governments that are tough enough to arrest people exercising in the middle of a field during the COVID-19 lockdown, enforce curfews and put pastors in jail if they open their churches. (As John Carpay says, it’s been four years this month.)But in this case, my goodwill is with the police. It’s not their fault, is it?Let’s be honest. The police could take care of car theft, and a lot of other things. For that matter, when it comes to keeping public transit pleasant to use, that could also be done.But to do it, the police need the support of the people and the politicians. There needs to be more of them, they need to be funded, they need to be told that what they do matters — because it does — and when they do it, they need to receive the respect they deserve.As far as the people goes, it’s there. More than a dental plan or pharmacare, more than a carbon tax and a plan to fight climate change — dare I say it more even than the vote — people want justice.Remember what they used to say in the ’90s: A conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged.People are sick of rolling over for the bad people in a world where people on bail do heinous things and the consequences of crime are borne by the victims.This is not a call for a police state. But unless you’re bucking public health regulations, we’re a long way from that. If it’s not safe to park your car on your own driveway or ride the subway home, we’re close enough to anarchy that authoritarianism is a problem for another day.The people who are the real problem in this story are the politicians who think the only reason other people steal cars or force their way into other people’s houses is that they’re underprivileged, or part of an oppressed group and therefore not responsible for their own actions… and therefore, in the interests of diversity, equity and inclusion the rest of us not only need to suck it up but will clearly be oppressors if we resist the robber in our own home.No. We’ve had enough. Let’s fund the police, clean up the streets — and our driveways — and worry about the Gestapo after that. No sarcasm intended.

HANNAFORD: Leave your keys where thieves can find them? Only in Canada you say...

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