Something interesting and rather encouraging just happened at Toronto City Hall. (You can’t say that every day.) A leading official pushed back just a little against the reigning orthodoxies of our time and said: Hey, wait a minute. For that, he deserves not just our thanks but our cheers. We should be carrying him through the streets on our shoulders.
The official is Paul Johnson. He is city manager, the highest unelected official in Toronto’s government. He was reacting to a report from Ombudsman Kwame Addo, who plays a watchdog role down at City Hall. The report looked at a brief period in 2022 and 2023, when the city was turning refugee claimants away from its main system of homeless shelters.
