I am sympathetic to the comments regarding racism, but honestly, any homeowner freaks when anything happens. There are stories of people in my neighbourhood building a deck without a permit and having complaints to the city - I even saw an article about it.
I am not from Toronto originally so I can't speak to the level of racism in general, but when a visible minority comes in and becomes almost 40% of the population with very little, if any, violence and great economic success, there frankly can't be much that is of any dire consequence. Compared to France where les banlieus are full of disenfranchised people, or the US with its massive ghettors, we know that - regardless of some underlying unease - we are at the forefront of modern ethnic integration.
If some people want to go further from the main suburbs, did you ever consider that when they grew up Italians and Portuguese were the Indians and many were racist against them? Was Brampton ever "white" European? Brampton now has over 400,000 people, maybe many people just want some more space and a more rural setting when they say they want to move further from the city, going away from a region that has exploded in the past 30 years - it doesn't have to be racism. Though it could be, I don't know.
Certainly in Vancouver where I am from there are always rumblings about the Chinese taking over - and the Punjabis - but it is mostly just, "can you believe I can't afford a house ..." and then the blaming of immigrants. Hell even CBCs (Canadian Born Chinese) complain about the same thing, or the Hongers who often denigrate the mainlanders who arrived a decade or more after them. Plus in Toronto I worked with many new immigrants in a very diverse work setting and I can say that unfortunately they were often racist against our Caribbean and African immigrants, often quite openly. So it isn't just the Euro crowd. At the end of the day, racism in many forms always exists, but most immigrants are flourishing in the GTA in a way that is quite unique, and I don't think we should get too ahead of ourselves by saying it is so terrible. I was just in India and Indonesia and I can tell you that ethnic conflict there is more about virtual war and occupation (ie east India/Papua, Muslim/Christian infighting, etc.) than the enforcing of a zoning issue when the person has quite obviously not followed the law (as I assume is the case here).
We really do have it quite good - and if this is about race at all and not NIMBYism as we see it all over Toronto, then shame. We can always do better. And when it comes to the regulations regarding living arrangements, it is certainly incumbent upon Canada to adapt to immigrant lifestyles where appropriate: if families want to live together in a safe environment and pool their resources, that is fantastic. Maybe we could learn a bit from that, too.
