One day after Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he won’t attend Toronto’s Pride parade until uniform officers can participate, Chief Mark Saunders said he is focusing on developing relationships with the LGBTQ community — not who gets to march. “I certainly won’t let the parade define what our relationship is going to be with the LGBTQ-plus community. It is their parade and who they invite and who they don’t invite — it really is up to them,” Saunders told reporters Tuesday morning, moments after raising the rainbow Pride flag at police headquarters.“My role, my responsibility, it’s number 1: Make sure we keep everybody safe, so at the parade, you will see our officers out there, doing what they do best, which is making sure that it is a fun event and that it is also a secure event.”For the first time since 2013, Ontario’s premier will not attend the June 23 parade, a symbolic and landmark event that draws tens of thousands of attendees every year. Ford — who previously derided the event as “middle-aged men in pot bellies, running down the street buck naked” — refuses to attend until front-line police officers can march in uniform. “He wishes all the organizers of Pride Toronto all the best for a successful month and festival weekend,” a Ford spokesperson said Monday. Toronto police participation in the parade has been a lightning rod issue since 2016, when members of Black Lives Matter Toronto demanded that police no longer participate due to ongoing concerns about anti-Black racism and the officers’ treatment of the LGBTQ community and people of colour. Tensions between police and members of the LGBTQ community have since increased in the wake of the arrest of serial killer Bruce McArthur, who murdered eight men with ties to the city’s Gay Village between 2010 and 2017. McArthur’s arrest came after long-held fears within the community that ...
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