Article content continued

For four hours, the room seethed with frustration born of years of saying the same thing over and over and too much staying the same. Much of the antipathy was directed at Tory and his handling of police investigations and Black Lives Matter demands.

But the meeting wasn’t the city’s show.

It was a provincial consultation to help shape that anti-racism office, which will have a mandate to tackle everything from anti-black racism to Islamophobia to indigenous stereotypes.

The lone nugget of news — that the province has committed $5 million this year for that office and 32 staff — was met with jeers from attendees.

Five-million is peanuts… we need a serious budget… to make serious changes

“Five-million is peanuts… we need a serious budget… to make serious changes,” shouted a woman from the crowd. She identified herself as a researcher and said the province (and country) need to collect specific race-based data. Many people called for the increased collections of statistics on racialized minorities success in education, their experiences with the social welfare system and their health care outcomes with an eye to drafting government policies to tackle the linger inequities in the system.

Wynne was met her own dose of skepticism — cries of “lies” and “shame” echoed through the room, and her opening remarks were interrupted. But the premier is also a trained mediator, and helped to set the tone for a meeting that would be heated but productive.

“I think there are people who would like to see even this meeting dissolve into anger and dissolve into a chaotic encounter, and I want you to know that I hope that doesn’t happen. If it does we’ll try again… I believe that we can do better, otherwise, I wouldn’t be here,” Wynne said.