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March 28, 2006
The crippling need to regulate
A 12-year-old girl is stabbed at 2:20am on Saturday night outside a nightclub in downtown Toronto that was holding some kind of all-ages event. According to at least one Toronto city councillor, it was illegal for her to have been there:
Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti… told CTV yesterday the parents of the stabbing victim should be charged under the provincial Child and Family Services Act, which requires children under 16 to be supervised by a parent when out between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m.
And yet Mammoliti and other councillors nevertheless want to address this massive city-wide problem, as represented by this one isolated incident, by instituting a curfew. In other words, they want to turn back time and make it super-duper illegal for the 12-year-old victim to have been at the club. If I know them, they'll probably arrive at a final proposal that all children under 13 be off the streets by 2:19am.
"I'm from the old school," said councillor Frances Nunziata. "A 12- and 13-year-old should be home in bed sleeping at that hour." Blech — go ahead and try to argue with that! I take some comfort in the idea that municipal politics is sort of a coarse filter that stops people of limited to non-existent intellect from gaining control of more important elected positions. But accepting that City Hall wishes to reach back into the mists of time and pluck one person from the unfortunate Saturday night situation, why on Earth are these councillors zeroing in on the 12-year-old girl who was stabbed? The 12-year-old girl who stabbed her seems like a much more logical target, and no one has to invent some jackass new law to deal with her.
(Cross-posted to the Shotgun.)
Posted by Chris Selley at March 28, 2006 08:00 PM
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Comments
You're going to take all the fun out of politics if you won't let them invent jackass new laws. I mean, what else do poiticians do with their time?
Posted by: DCardno at March 29, 2006 03:43 PM
Looking on the bright side of things, the jackass new laws will be a perfect compliment to the 12 year old's jackass parents.
Posted by: Sean at March 29, 2006 04:08 PM