Can you imagine if Toronto Police decided to hold a public event, say a vigil, and ban black people from attending? Oh, the howls we’d hear — and justifiably so.

Since Black Lives Matter Toronto held up the 2016 Pride parade for half an hour, demanding the cops be excluded from the event, it has been crusading relentlessly to ban them outright. And they succeeded in getting rid of them.

Apparently BLM’s motivation is that the police are not supportive of the community at large and people still don’t view police as allies. That’s a pretty lame excuse.

But Toronto Police decided to not force the issue and to voluntarily withdraw from 2017 Pride. A good de-escalation move that was probably inevitable.

From time to time, BLM’s voice has been an important one to be heard. A few years back, I appeared on CBC Radio with Sandra Hudson, one of the founders, talking about the Special Investigations Unit. I thought she demonstrated a strong understanding of what was ailing the SIU.

Last summer, BLM daringly protested at Premier Kathleen Wynne’s home, asking for a meeting after the fatal shooting of Andrew Loku by Toronto Police. They got their meeting and Wynne announced a review of the SIU’s mandate. It also caused former attorney general Madeleine Meilleur to finally get around to reading the SIU’s Loku report, which had been sitting on her desk for a month. A redacted copy of the report was made public.

BLM also asked for Meilleur’s head on a platter. She was rumoured to be dropped from cabinet at a pending shuffle for her lacklustre performance on the SIU file. She abruptly quit politics citing personal reasons.

Now that’s what I call results. All precipitated by BLM.

Where BLM loses credibility, and fast, is by the growing number of ignorant comments by its leaders that, simply put, are a demonstration of hate. Last week, BLM Toronto co-founder Yusra Khogali appears to have said white people suffer from “recessive genetic defects” and mused about how the race could be “wiped out.” She accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of being a “white supremacist terrorist.” It wasn’t the first time Khogali’s put her foot in her mouth. Last April, she tweeted: “Plz Allah give me strength to not cuss/kill these white men and white folks out here today. Plz plz plz.” Critics who accused BLM of being discriminatory and racist may have a point.

Former South African president Nelson Mandela achieved gargantuan results in reversing apartheid not by demonizing and excluding any group, but by stressing inclusion. Mandela said about apartheid rule: “We are extricating ourselves from a system that insulted our common humanity by dividing us from one another on the basis of race and setting us against each other as oppressed and oppressor. That system committed a crime against humanity.”

In contrast, Khogali’s statements drip of vile and anger. And the forced withdrawal by Toronto Police of the 2017 Pride parade will achieve nothing but singling out the police community further as the oppressor, creating more division.

BLM Toronto should reject its spokesman’s bilious outbursts. BLM Toronto may have good points to make when it injects itself in public debates, like the one regarding the SIU, but who’ll listen to them if they continue to spew hatred and nonsense?

— Andre Marin is the former ombudsman of Ontario. He was also a Progressive Conservative candidate in the riding of Ottawa-Vanier.

twitter.com/ont_andremarin