Blair re-elected

Former top cop holds on to Scarborough Southwest amid gun debate,

After gun control and border issues became flashpoints in this election, senior Trudeau minister Bill Blair may face his most difficult term yet after securing the Scarborough Southwest riding Monday night.

Blair will return to his old seat in the eastern suburb of Toronto, winning nearly 60 per cent of the vote with 17 of 112 polls reporting at deadline.

The win — one of many ridings expected to remain in Liberal hands this election — lands Blair at the centre of the debate over how to keep the city safe at a time when gun violence and immigration continue to lead national conversation.

He bested Mohsin Bhuiyan, a business owner and mortgage agent, who was running for the Conservatives and Guled Arale, who works for the Ontario NDP.

Blair, born in 1954, retired as Toronto Police chief in 2015 after a decade on the job overseeing a violent G20 Summit, Rob Ford’s crack scandal and more — a cop’s cop, the son of a police officer, he spent nearly 40 years in all with Toronto Police.

He stepped into the role of federal minister of border security and organized crime in 2018 and then was shifted to a rebranded position of minister of public safety and emergency preparedness following the 2019 election, a role he held when the election was called.

Blair was tasked with, in addition to retorts from Trudeau, responding to the Conservative party’s flip-flopping on gun control laws during the campaign. Though the party platform promised to scrap a Liberal ban on assault-style weapons, leader Erin O’Toole then said the ban would remain in place until a review was concluded.

Liberals, including Blair, attacked O’Toole for, they claimed, being in the pocket of the gun lobby in Canada, invoking memories of Harper-era policies.

“I think overwhelmingly Canadians recognize that there is no place for these guns in our country,” The Canadian Press reported Blair saying earlier this month. “Mr. O’Toole is having difficulty admitting to Canadians that he’s made that unholy pact with the gun lobby. He needs to be held to account.’’

Should he return to his former responsibilities as a minister, Blair would face a challenge of increasingly worsening gun crime in Canada with the rate of use increasing 81 per cent between 2009 and 2019, according to Statistics Canada.

In Toronto, gun crime has resulted in a climbing number of victims — from 193 victims in 2016 to 284 in 2019. Though Mayor John Tory and others have called for a national handgun ban, the Liberals promised to fund $1 billion for provinces and territories to implement their own bans.

Toronto officials and community members were mourning the loss of a city parks and recreation employee Thane Murray after a shooting in Regent Park over the weekend. Toronto Police reported Thane Murray, 27, was killed in the shooting. Two others were injured. Murray was the city’s 61st homicide this year.

In addition to gun legislation, advocates in Toronto and beyond say more funding for community services is needed from all levels of government for youth programs, job training and more — to prevent further shootings and other violence.

Border issues — previously under Blair’s purview — also remain a pressing problem, with Canadians still bared for overland travel to the U.S. until at least Tuesday despite Trudeau’s Liberals opening those entry points to Americans in August.

And after more than a year of closure, what rules might be in place for tourists, business travellers and more are yet to be divulged.

The Liberals previously faced blowback for what the Conservatives say has been a lack of action on securing international borders to prevent COVID-19 variants of concern from spreading in the country. The Delta variant, which was first detected in India, remains of primary concern.

The riding has gone to the Liberals since its boundaries were redrawn in 2012. The area had seen two Conservative wins under the old boundaries in 1979 and 1984, and one NDP win in the mid-1970s.

Blair was tasked with responding to the Tories’ flip-flopping on gun control laws during the campaign.