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A long regular podcast is a rare insight into how a politician thinks. More politicians should do them. Mitic’s is an hour and a half or so of the councillor and a friend or two riffing about whatever. In Episode 7, Mitic and Luke Rowan (a fitness coach) and Véronique Bergeron (a lawyer and mom of nine) took up the protest by Black Lives Matter that halted Toronto’s gay-pride parade, after they praised that guy who punched a bear. The protest demanded more support and say for visible minority groups in Toronto’s Pride festival, and that a Toronto police float be barred from future parades.

That really got Mitic’s goat and it’s why he spent an hour talking about race and racism, sexuality and homophobia.

He has no opinion on the other Black Lives Matter demands, he said, many of which have to do with the internal politics of the Pride festival. But the one about the police, not suspecting that it’s also linked to things he’s not familiar with, he has a strong opinion on.

“Traditionally, back in the day, when the Pride parade did start it was a protest against laws that discriminated against gays and police action where they would go out and I guess they had a weekend where they went out and just went through all the known gay clubs and all that and arrested people and busted heads and burned s–t down,” he says. “I do not agree with that at all. But that was then. Pride has developed into one of the greatest and most fun parties of inclusion and diversity and everything, and to suddenly just say, you know what, we don’t want these people here, never mind they’re cops, because a lot of them are gay and a lot of them are black and a lot of them are great, 99.9 per cent of them are amazing Canadians, and now we’re going to say we don’t want them there?”