For one pregnant moment, it looked as if authorities had finally grasped that tough talk and tough laws and tough sentences are no match for the gun violence spreading to once-safe parts of Toronto.

Police Chief Bill Blair stood amid the carnage of Monday’s fatal shooting in Scarborough visibly shaken.

“Tonight’s event is shocking to every Torontonian,” he said. “It will be shocking to all of Canada because of the number of people injured. This is an area of the city that has never experienced this level of violence before.”

But by morning, he had reverted to his usual rhetoric, vowing to pursue the perpetrators relentlessly, appealing to witnesses to come forward and assuring Torontonians he had deployed the homicide squad, the guns and gangs unit, the urban intelligence gang unit and neighbourhood police to get to the bottom of the crime. It all sounded wearily familiar.

Mayor Rob Ford said the shooting spree — which left two dead and 23 people, including a 22-month-old toddler injured — was an “unfortunate isolated incident” and insisted “Toronto is the safest city in North America.” He sounded boosterish to the point of absurdity.

Premier Dalton McGuinty, musing about more stringent measures, told reporters: “It (the rise in gun violence) is something we cannot and will not stand for.” He merely sounded ineffectual.

Not one of them mentioned that governments at all levels are cutting programs that steer kids away from violence. Not one mentioned that handguns, strictly regulated in Canada, are being smuggled into the country in massive numbers. Not one mentioned that, even if the police apprehend the shooters and they get tough jail sentences, there are dozens more like them.

Monday night’s tragedy — a meet-your-neighbours barbecue gone awry — could have been the tipping point. It could have convinced lawmakers and police they can’t crack down hard enough or fast enough to eradicate the culture of street crime that has taken root in Toronto. They can’t even contain it to “at-risk neighbourhoods” where kids grow up poor, without positive role models, without an incentive to stay in school and without much hope.

The alternative is time-consuming, expensive, and much more demanding than foisting the whole ugly mess on the police.

Taxpayers have to invest in reducing the inequities that are turning Toronto into a city of wary “haves” and increasingly brazen “have-nots.” For too long, governments have deluded themselves and the public into thinking this is simply the way the market operates. For too long, Canadians have dismissed warnings that polarized societies are a fertile environment for social unrest, crime and rising levels of violence.

Torontonians have to make more of an effort to understand and get to know people in parts of the city to which they’d rather turn a blind eye. Most citizens can’t comprehend why kids can shoot each other — and any bystander in the crossfire — with no concern for the consequences. They just want them off the streets. As long as that attitude persists, shootings like Monday night’s will keep happening.

Policy-makers have to listen to community groups, grassroots activists, church leaders and social agencies that know these kids and have programs that work. Treating them like pesky supplicants, who fail to understand the need to balance the budget, will produce a much bigger deficit — one that goes far beyond dollars — down the road.

They also need to heed the criminologists who have been telling them for years that remedies such as harsher laws, mandatory minimum sentences, more police officers, more jails (or jamming more young offenders into existing ones) seldom increase public safety or deter teens with guns.

The federal government, which has poured billions of dollars into border security, needs to figure out why handguns are still flooding into the country and why border guards are missing them. If they’re being smuggled into Canada through aboriginal reserves, it will have to work with the First Nations to stop the influx.

It is reassuring that the police chief and the citizens of Toronto still have a capacity for shock when a multiple shooting occurs in a public place.

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But it would be more reassuring if everybody looked deeper and admitted the same old answers will produce the same dismal results.

Carol Goar’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

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