LILLEY: Council passes watered-down bubble-zone bylaw amid fierce opposition

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The City of Toronto now has a bubble-zone bylaw to protect schools, daycares and places of worship from hate-filled mobs looking to harass and intimidate. The bylaw, which should have been put in place months ago, passed by a vote of 16-9 late Thursday afternoon.

It’s a different bylaw than what was proposed by staff, but at least it finally passed.

Yet not without the concerted opposition of people who really hate that the main beneficiaries of this bylaw will be Toronto’s Jewish community. There were dozens of people in the council chamber to show their opposition to the bylaw, all wearing red, some wearing keffiyehs, several making hand gestures of inverted triangles, a symbol used by Hamas to target people for assassination.

When people feel emboldened to show up to oppose a bylaw to help the Jewish community protect itself from aggressive harassment and make a Hamas hand gesture, we clearly have an antisemitism problem.

The opponents in the gallery and on city council tried to make this seem like their opposition was all about free speech, keeping down costs for police or whatever lame excuse they could come up with. We already have bubble-zone laws in this province for abortion clinics and I doubt the strong opponents on council like Gord Perks, Alejandra Bravo, Paula Fletcher and Jamaal Myers would agree that we get rid of those bubble zones in the name of protecting free speech.

Yet there was Perks giving an impassioned speech about how the only reason any of us have any rights is due to protests and he won’t support attempts to limit protests. Funny, I haven’t heard him speak against the fact that you can be arrested for staging a silent protest within 50 metres of an abortion clinic.

But Perks seems to believe that the anti-Israel mobs that have roamed the streets of Toronto since Oct. 7, 2023, should be able to harass Jewish schools, daycare centres and synagogues – all of which has happened.

Fletcher, meanwhile, tried to make the argument that the city couldn’t afford to protect 3,000 locations. That’s the total number of schools, daycare centres, churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, etc., that exist in Toronto.

Not all of those 3,000 locations will need or want protection, but to ensure the bylaw was neutral they made it about all places of worship. Mainly, the people taking advantage of this will be Jewish, but Toronto’s Muslim community has supported this kind of effort in the past and will likely welcome it.

Many people don’t realize the security concerns that Jews in Toronto have to deal with. As someone who has been going to Catholic mass and community events my whole life, I can tell you that you only see cops there if Officer O’Malley is attending mass; we don’t need to hire cops to protect Catholic institutions.

By contrast, go to any Jewish event in Toronto — be it as a synagogue, community centre or elsewhere — and there will be a strong security presence. Paid duty police officers are a common sight alongside private security guards, which is rather disturbing to my eye, but just the way it is for the Jewish community in Toronto.

The bylaw that passed was amended several times from the version that staff initially proposed and while there have been some improvements, this is still not a great bylaw.

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The bubble zone will now be 50 metres instead of the 20 metres suggested by staff, though an attempt to extend it to 100 metres was voted down. Originally, groups would have had to show they had been victimized in some way to ask for protection under the bylaw, but that has been eliminated. And rather than protection lapsing after 180 days, it runs for a full year.

Interestingly, Mayor Olivia Chow didn’t rise to speak to the bylaw and while she voted against most, if not all, amendments, she voted in favour of the bylaw in the end.

It’s a shame that we need such a bylaw, it’s a shame that it took so long to pass it, it’s a shame so many councilors would oppose the measure. Thankfully, though, it passed and while it won’t fix all of the problems, it is another tool for bylaw and police officers and it sends a message.