You ask the city building department for a permit for a new front porch on the old house you’ve owned for 10 years. The permit is one of these no-brainers that gets issued on the spot, but you get hassled by city staff. They want proof you own the property. You show them that you’ve filled in that section of the application, but no, they say, we want proof. “You have to bring us a copy of the deed,” they say.

You ask them why, and they say, “Well, we don’t trust people of your colour, so we have different rules for you.”

You want to enrol your four-year-old daughter in a city daycare centre. Your eight-year-old son had gone there so you know what has to be done. You hand in the papers but then a supervisor comes out and says, “You’ll have to get a sponsor for your daughter. We have a policy that we don’t really trust people with dark coloured skin.”   

Those two stories aren’t true. But the city service that does discriminate against people with dark skin is the Toronto police. According to data from the last six years analyzed by the Toronto Star, a black person is three times more likely than a white person to be stopped by police, three times more likely to be charged with a driving offence, three times more likely to be held in jail rather than released. 

Bill Blair, chief of police, doesn’t dispute the figures about the racial profiling done by police, and implies it is normal and maybe a good thing. Since the Star published this information 10 days ago, not a single elected politician in Toronto or member of the Toronto Police Services Board has spoken out against this discrimination by our police force.

Sadly, racial discrimination is alive and well in Toronto. You can’t say it doesn’t happen here — it happens every day, by our police force. We’re no world class city.