Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West) is reliably one of the more bombastic councillors in Toronto—this is the guy who started a Facebook group and promised to ferret out any Communists who showed up in the comments threads, after all. His latest outrage is a city proposal to increase the number of massage parlours licensed in the city. According to the Toronto Sun:

More than two dozen body and massage club owners met with committee members at City Hall to discuss the issue, which has to be voted upon by the municipal licensing and standards committee and then the full city council.

“I am very concerned because there are already 35 such clubs in my riding,” Mammoliti said. “These clubs are run and operated by organized crime no question.”

Mammoliti is calling for the dismissal of committee members who made the proposal.

Now, it's important to point out here that Mammoliti doesn't have a problem with city-licensed sex work in principle. He's long been a proponent of Toronto licensing and taxing brothels, and proposed creating a red light district on Toronto Island way back in ye olden tymes of... March 2011.

That means that Mammoliti's problem with the illicit sex work that goes on in these massage parlours isn't that the city would be "North America's biggest pimp" (that would be true if he got his way, too) but because it's happening in areas throughout the city, instead of in one concentrated place. There's actually public health reasons to suspect that Mammoliti's preferred approach would be better for the city and for women in these businesses, but it's going to take a Supreme Court decision before we know whether it's even possible.

Blog image via Newseum.