Police Force has come under fire for alleged racial remarks to the legal community.

Controversial Toronto Metro Police Board member Mr. Arnold Minors reportedly said the Holocaust was not a racist act.

The Toronto Saturday Sun said Ontario Premier Mr. Bob Rae, whose family is Jewish, ordered an investigation into Minors' remark after reading about it one of the newspaper's columns.

And Tory MPP Mr. Charles Harnick called for the Bermudian to be removed from the Police board.

However, Mr. Minors yesterday denied making the remark saying the Holocaust was "clearly racist''.

"I've no idea how those words got attributed to me,'' he said from his home in Toronto.

The Sun said Mr. Minors made the remark while giving anti-racism lectures to Canadian Crown lawyers.

The newspaper quoted Premier Rae as saying: "My office has asked the solicitor general for a full report. Any objective observer would say the Holocaust was one of the great racist tragedies of the last two millenniums.'' Mr. Minors said he was giving the lecture as part of a programme called Competent Legal Practice; Anti-Racist Use of Discretion. He had been talking about acts flowing from the power to define and that race should not be looked at as a biological term.

The Sun said Mr. Rae did "not take kindly to anything that smacks of anti-Semitism.'' Mr. Minors' response to the Sun was that his pupils were not supposed to discuss his lectures outside the classroom.

The Sun went on to say it was not the first time Mr. Minors had "shown symptoms of foot-in-mouth disease'' since his appointment to the board last year.

The 48-year-old Berkeley Institute graduate has lived in Canada for 29 years.

Mr. Minors was nominated to the Police board post by Mr. Rae himself.

Observers had tipped him for the post of chairman.

As the only black member of the board, he was handed a $108,500 Government contract to teach classes for Crown lawyers in the aftermath of Toronto's Yonge Street riots two years ago.

Among the Sun's list of controversial things Mr. Minors has allegedly said was, "We have to make sure that if any officer commits any racial harassment, his ass is grass.''