Norman "Norm" Gardner was born on February 13,1938 and is a politician and administrator in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
83 Facts About Norm Gardner
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Norm Gardner is a former North York and Toronto City Councillor, serving most recently as chair of the Toronto Police Services Board.
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Norm Gardner was chair of the board of the Mackenzie Institute for several years.
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Norm Gardner has been the regional manager for a pharmaceutical company.
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Norm Gardner owns Toronto's Steeles Bakery, and often brought doughnuts, bagels and other baked goods from his store to distribute at council meetings in the 1980s and 1990s.
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Norm Gardner was president of the provincial Armourdale Liberal Association in 1974, and served on the Labour Committee of the Ontario Liberal Party in the same period.
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Norm Gardner was first elected to the North York city council in 1976, following two unsuccessful attempts.
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Norm Gardner was re-elected as an alderman in 1978, and was selected as one of the city's representatives on the Metro Toronto council in December of the same year.
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Norm Gardner soon became a reliable ally of Metro Chair Paul Godfrey.
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Norm Gardner won the support of local Progressive Conservatives in his municipal campaigns, and left the Liberals to take out a Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario membership in 1980.
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Norm Gardner supported Canada's boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow as a protest against the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan.
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Norm Gardner recommended that Canada consider banning Soviet vessels from its trading ports.
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Norm Gardner was elected to the North York Board of Control in 1980, a position that gave him an automatic seat on the Metro Council.
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Norm Gardner supported grants to community groups in the 1980 campaign to alleviate social problems, and was described in a The Globe and Mail editorial as a possible voice of progressive reform.
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Norm Gardner was narrowly defeated in 1982, but returned to the Board of Control in 1985.
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An avid gun collector in private life, Norm Gardner served on the federal firearms advisory council after his defeat.
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Norm Gardner ran for the Metro Toronto Police Commission after his 1985 re-election, losing on his first bid to Toronto Mayor Art Eggleton in a Metro Council vote.
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Norm Gardner again contested the seat following Eggleton's resignation in 1986 and defeated Jack Layton, his only challenger, by a vote of thirty-two to six.
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Norm Gardner said he was misquoted, and that he had been talking about the response of store owners in Calgary and Montreal to recent shootings in those cities.
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Some councillors suggested that Norm Gardner be recalled from the commission, but no action was taken.
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Norm Gardner tried to discourage complaints against police officers for car chases in crowded urban areas.
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Norm Gardner warned that cars could become sanctuaries for criminals if the police discontinued such chases.
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Norm Gardner was generally on the right-wing of the North York council, although he took progressive positions on some issues.
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Norm Gardner endorsed a proposal to create co-operative housing for low-income families in the city, and later supported a five-year grant to a paper recycling firm.
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Norm Gardner opposed plans for Sunday shopping extensions in the late 1980s.
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Norm Gardner rejoined the Ontario Liberal Party in early 1987, and sought the party's nomination for Willowdale in the 1987 provincial election.
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Norm Gardner said that his previous membership in the Progressive Conservative Party was "a good vehicle to use in the interests of my constituents", but added that he did not renew his membership in 1986.
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Norm Gardner said that Liberal Premier David Peterson had "done a good job" in office.
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Norm Gardner was elected without opposition for the North York Centre ward.
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Norm Gardner supported Alan Tonks over Dennis Flynn for the position of Metro Chair, and was appointed to Metro's executive committee and re-appointed to the police commission.
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Norm Gardner frequently defended Metro police officers against accusations of racism, and was sometimes described as resisting efforts towards police reform.
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In early 1989, Norm Gardner controversially recommended that the maximum age covered by the Young Offenders Act be lowered from 17 to 12.
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In January 1991, Norm Gardner appeared before a House of Commons committee examining gun control legislation.
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Reformist police commissioner Susan Eng requested that Norm Gardner resign in light of these comments.
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Norm Gardner later opposed Eng's appointment as chair of the Police Services Board.
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In late 1991, Norm Gardner argued that attempts by the federal government to toughen gun controls would not make anyone in Metro Toronto safer.
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Norm Gardner was re-elected to council in 1991, was returned to the Police Services Board.
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In March 1992, Norm Gardner shot and wounded a man who was attempting to rob his bakery.
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Norm Gardner later said that he received this permit following a death threat, an assertion that commission chair Susan Eng questioned.
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Eng called for him to resign pending an investigation, and councillor Brian Ashton suggested that Norm Gardner should have been criminally charged to prevent Toronto shopkeepers from arming themselves and taking vigilante actions against criminals.
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Norm Gardner denied that his actions constituted vigilantism, saying that the robber ran toward him yelling "Go ahead and shoot".
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Norm Gardner was a staunch supporter of the police administration during his tenure as a commissioner.
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In May 1992, Norm Gardner was the only member of the Police Services Board to vote against restrictions on the use of firearms by police officers.
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Norm Gardner defended police use of pepper spray, stating that it prevented numerous injuries.
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Norm Gardner stepped down from the Police Service Board in November 1992, having reached the maximum of six years.
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Shortly after leaving the board, Norm Gardner called for the creation of a special hate crimes unit in Metro Toronto to target neo-Nazis and other racists.
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Norm Gardner was approached by the Reform Party of Canada to campaign in the 1993 federal election, but declined.
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Norm Gardner campaigned in favour of tax breaks for corporations, and his nomination was supported by Canadian Handgun magazine, which featured him on its front cover.
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Norm Gardner appears to have dropped out of the nomination contest before a vote was held.
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Norm Gardner was re-elected to the Police Services Board in November 1993, defeating fellow councillor Dennis Flynn by a vote of 17 to 16.
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Norm Gardner was re-elected to the Metro Council without opposition in 1994.
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Norm Gardner sought reappointment to the Police Services Board after the election, but unexpectedly lost to Brian Ashton.
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Norm Gardner left the Liberals to join the Progressive Conservatives a second time during the mid-1990s.
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Norm Gardner was the Progressive Conservative candidate in Willowdale for the 1997 federal election, and lost to Liberal incumbent Jim Peterson by 17,000 votes.
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Norm Gardner was elected to Toronto city council in 1997, the first election for the new amalgamated municipality under the City of Toronto Act.
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Each ward elected two councillors in that election, and Norm Gardner finished second, 2,000 votes behind John Filion, a former school trustee making his first bid for city council.
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In early 1998, Norm Gardner unseated Maureen Prinsloo as chair of the Toronto Police Services Board.
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In June 1998, Norm Gardner supported a comprehensive overhaul of the police service's administrative structure.
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Norm Gardner supported a plan by Police Chief David Boothby to replace the city's public complaints bureau with a more decentralized model.
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Norm Gardner later apologized for his comments, and offered an official apology to the unidentified woman.
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Norm Gardner supported the purchase of police helicopters in 1999 to provide the police additional tools to fight crime, an initiative that some other councillors criticized as both ineffective and too expensive.
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Norm Gardner recommended charging each business in Toronto a $15 fee to cover the costs of policing, an initiative that was quickly rejected by Mel Lastman.
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Norm Gardner was a frequent rival of fellow commissioner Judy Sgro.
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On one occasion, Norm Gardner was accused of allowing police union officials to harass and intimidate Sgro at an informal board meeting.
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The Toronto Star alleged that Norm Gardner had made a secret deal with police union leader Craig Bromell to permit similar fundraising efforts in the future.
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Norm Gardner denied that a deal had been struck, and maintained that he consistently opposed the True Blue campaign.
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Norm Gardner was reappointed by the province to serve a full three-year term in September 2001.
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In October 2001, Norm Gardner supported a decision by the Toronto police to compile a list of suspected terrorist sympathizers.
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Norm Gardner supported a race relations probe in late 2002, following media reports that the Toronto police engaged in systemic discrimination against blacks.
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Norm Gardner denied that racial profiling existed, but acknowledged that there was an understandable rationale behind the complaints.
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Norm Gardner later criticized the Toronto Star for running a series of articles on racial profiling, arguing that they hindered the ability of police officers to do their job.
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Norm Gardner stepped aside as Police Services Board chair in 2003 after it was discovered that he had accepted the gift of a handgun from the vice-president of Para-Ordinance Inc.
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Norm Gardner reimbursed the manufacturer $700 for the weapon, a restricted semi-automatic pistol, shortly before the controversy was made public.
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In 2004, it was revealed that Norm Gardner had approved his own expenses for conference travel.
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Norm Gardner was replaced as Police Services Board chair in January 2004 by Alan Heisey.
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Norm Gardner was suspended without pay from the board until the end of his term in December 2004.
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Norm Gardner argued that he did nothing wrong, and appealed the decision.
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Norm Gardner refused to resign his commission seat for several months, a decision that left the board deadlocked between conservatives and progressives.
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Norm Gardner publicly stated that the decision cleared his name, and announced his resignation from the Police Services Board on November 1,2004, one month before his term was complete, stating that his reputation was intact.
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Norm Gardner announced that he would seek the Progressive Conservative nomination in the Greater Toronto Area riding of Thornhill for the 2007 provincial election but, following pressure from the party leadership, agreed to withdraw in favour of CFRB talk show host Peter Shurman.
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On January 30,2014, Norm Gardner registered as a candidate in Toronto's fall 2014 mayoral election.
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On June 27,2018, at the age of 80, Norm Gardner filed to run in the 2018 municipal election for Toronto City Council in Ward 28, which covers the neighbourhood of Willowdale that he represented in the past.
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Norm Gardner was active opposing a proposal to restructure the stretch of Yonge Street between Finch and Sheppard Avenue by making it more pedestrian friendly by widening sidewalks and introducing bicycle lanes, arguing that the changes would cause traffic congestion.