Torontonians asked if they want metal detectors at city hall
Toronto residents are being asked for their feedback before city council debates proposed new security measures for city hall.

TheStar.com
March 26, 2018
David Rider

The City of Toronto wants to know how people feel about the prospect of having to walk through metal detectors to enter city hall.

The online questionnaire that closes April 10, however, is itself being questioned by some who say the wording appears aimed at eliciting support for the controversial security proposal.

“The specific questions are in my view heavily biased toward a particular outcome,” Councillor Gord Perks said in an interview Monday. “Saying ‘The police should do this, what do you think?’, without offering any other points of view or evidence, really does a disservice to providing council and the public with a good sense of where public opinion lies here.”

Perks also noted people can respond anonymously. In a multiple-question format, the survey asks how long respondents have lived in Toronto, their postal code and family income, without a request for proof or any apparent way to stop a person from registering the same opinion multiple times.

Last November city councillors received a city staff report endorsing new security provisions for city hall amid international terror attacks including the 2014 fatal attack on Parliament Hill.

Recommendations included metal detectors for visitors, bag searches and glass walls separating city councillors and staff from the public. They were made public only after the Star reported details in a confidential attachment to the politicians.

The report cites threat assessments from Toronto police and Public Safety Canada that the famed curved towers and Nathan Phillips Square are a “target for serious threats” from “lone wolf terrorists, organized terror groups, and other individuals with grievances.”

But councillors asked city staff to gather public opinions and report back with options after some Torontonians expressed concerns a security crackdown could restrict access to the landmark building that contains a daycare and wedding chapel as well as council chamber and city offices.

Among the online questions: “Recently, two independent security assessments, one completed by the Toronto Police Service and one completed by Public Safety Canada, recommended that the city install metal detectors to screen all visitors as they enter city hall at 100 Queen St. W. With the awareness that the recommendation to install metal detectors is supported by these law enforcement agencies, does this change your support or opposition to the installation of metal detectors?”

While some councillors including Perks say a clamped-down city hall would be less democratic, others said they feel like “sitting ducks” and that city staff and public visitors also need protection.

“We’re democracy, we’re the symbol of government, we’re a symbol of freedom, we’re a symbol of Canada . . . that people want to disrupt,” Councillor David Shiner told executive committee last fall. “They want to bring down a system that’s here that they don’t agree with.”