Quotulatiousness

June 20, 2013

Supreme Court refuses to hear appeal of Rob Ford’s conflict-of-interest case

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:07

The Toronto Star must be feeling devastated by this:

The Supreme Court of Canada says it will not hear an appeal in a conflict-of-interest case against Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.

The court dismissed it with costs, but did not give reasons for the ruling.

Lawyer Clayton Ruby was trying to restore a lower court decision from November 2012, in which Superior Court Justice Charles Hackland ruled Ford be removed from office.

However, as part of Ford’s appeal, the decision was overturned by an Ontario Divisional Court panel in January 2013.

Deputy mayor Doug Holyday said this was all about antagonizing the mayor.

“There was no reason to take this to the Supreme Court; there was very little likelihood of it every getting put before the Supreme Court,” Holyday said.

Update: The CBC reports that Ford feels vindicated by the decision:

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford expressed relief Thursday that a conflict challenge that previously threatened to oust him from office won’t be revived in the country’s top court.

“I’m so happy this is finally over. I’ve been vindicated and we can move on,” Ford told reporters in Toronto, about two hours after the Supreme Court of Canada rejected an application to hear a final appeal in the much-publicized conflict case that began last year.

As is customary, the Supreme Court gave no reasons for dismissing the appeal, but legal experts — including the lawyer who filed the application himself — had acknowledged the odds of reviving the conflict of interest case were a long shot.

The court only accepted 12 per cent of appeal requests made last year.

Toronto resident Paul Magder filed an application in an Ontario court last year, alleging that Ford had violated conflict of interest legislation when he participated in a council vote that absolved his need to pay back funds donated to his private football foundation.

June 11, 2013

Remember the Canadian political scandals?

Filed under: Cancon, Humour, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:49

Andrew Coyne got the secret decoder ring from one of his readers:

June 5, 2013

Latest Rob Ford video rumour

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:59

In the Toronto Sun, Jenny Yuen says the quest to track down the video that allegedly shows Toronto mayor Rob Ford smoking crack may be fruitless:

John Cook, the editor of New York-based gossip website Gawker, said Tuesday the alleged Rob Ford crack video might be “gone.”

Cook said the news came from the intermediary he had been dealing with to obtain the video.

“The intermediary called to tell me (Friday) that he had finally heard from the owner. And his message was: ‘It’s gone. Leave me alone,’” Cook said on the website. “It was, the intermediary told me, a short conversation.”

This comes just after a week Gawker, which broke the story of the alleged video, reached its $200,000 Crackstarter goal. The website has been holding on to the money in hopes of the seller will come forward.

The footage allegedly shows Mayor Rob Ford smoking what appears to be crack. Ford has denied the existence of the video and insisted he does not smoke crack.

May 29, 2013

QotD: It’s time to go, Rob

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 15:37

Yes, the media is out to get Rob Ford. It’s politics. Most hacks are not militantly left-wing, though their political assumptions are broadly statist. What almost all successful reporters have, no matter what their political inclinations, is a sixth sense about good copy. They can smell blood from miles away. Even the most right-leaning member of Ford Nation, who has a slight tinge of journalistic ability, can sense Rob Ford is a headline generating machine. More than that he generates the right kind of headlines: Cheap, simple and easy to understand.

He’s a big fat white guy who keeps getting himself into trouble. The man is an elected Fox sitcom.

That’s why he has to go. Hopefully to be replaced by someone with his values but also with a modicum of common sense. When faced with allegations, whether absurd or serious, the instinctive reaction of the Mayor has been to whine like a petulant child and to blame a vast-left-wing conspiracy. It never seems to have occurred to the Mayor, who has a penchant for self-pity, that this same media complex is also besieging Tim Hudak, Stephen Harper, Jason Kenney, John Baird and Danielle Smith. Whatever you think of those politicians, each is enough of a professional to deal with the media they’re stuck with, rather than wish for a media that has never existed.

For the good of Toronto, Rob Ford needs to go.

Richard Anderson, “He Needs To Go”, The Gods of the Copybook Headings, 2013-05-29

May 28, 2013

Toronto and class snobbery

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:47

Eric Andrew-Gee explains just why the “great and good” of Toronto’s self-consciously progressive “elite” are appalled over Rob Ford — it’s class snobbery colouring everything:

It isn’t Doug Ford’s drug vending that has the city gasping and reaching for the smelling salts. The thing that really shocks the haute bourgeoisie of downtown Toronto is how tacky the Fords seem. I mean, gold chains?

Don’t get me wrong: you can fault the Fords for plenty on the merits alone. But it’s their style that really rankles. For many, it feels like The Beverly Hillbillies have taken over at City Hall.

At first, this seems incongruous with the Fords’ enormous wealth. The family label business is worth millions. Rob and Randy Ford drive Cadillac Escalades. How could such rich people be the subject of classist snobbery?

Because class isn’t really about wealth. George Orwell knew as much in 1945, when he wrote, “Anyone who pays attention to class differences at all would regard an army officer with £1000 a year as socially superior to a shopkeeper with £2000 a year.” This holds more or less true in Canada today. The Fords are the shopkeepers with £2000 a year. For all their wealth and power, they remain members of the petit bourgeois, the lower middle class. Their status is inscribed into everything they do, not least their drug scandals.

[. . .]

The fact is, Rob and Doug Ford are hosers. They say “eh?” They say, “Hooooly Christ!” when they walk into cameras. It’s not hard to imagine them saying “friggin.’” They are “branded on the tongue,” as Orwell put it — their accents are just indelibly hoserish. It’s hard to describe, but imagine the middle of their sentences reaching a high, squeaky pitch of incredulity, then descending to a thudding, exhaling indignation: “You hit me with a camera.” “Jeeez, eh?”

Even removing the filter of their Doug-and-Bob-MacKenzie accents, the Ford diction often conveys the family’s class origin in a way that makes left-wing elites either giggle or retch. Take one representative example from Doug Ford’s Global News interview, transcribed verbatim. The whole thing needs a big, meta, square-bracketed sic: “Their allegations were unfounded, unnamed sources, and, is that the best the Globe and Mail has? Is that the best, thirty years ago? They wanna go back when I was in high school? Come on Jackson: gimme a break.”

H/T to Colby Cosh for the link.

May 26, 2013

Toughest job in Toronto is being on Rob Ford’s staff … says former staffer

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:35

In the Toronto Sun, Adrienne Batra explains why being a staff member for Toronto mayor Rob Ford is the toughest job in town:

Those who aren’t familiar with the political staff in Mayor Rob Ford’s office always ask the same question: “Who’s advising him?”

Those who are at City Hall, embroiled in the daily circus which has engulfed the mayor since Don Cherry called left-wing councillors “Pinkos” at his inauguration, know them to be a hard-working and exhausted group of young professionals.

Many work longer hours than a typical ER doctor and some are paid less than a bus boy.

Of course, they all serve in the Office of the Mayor voluntarily and are hired to do a job.

But they are far too often unfairly criticized for the actions of the one man in that office who is not doing his job.

That would be their boss, Rob Ford.

In the latest scandal about the so-called crack video, the mayor would have been wisely (and repeatedly) advised by his staff on a number of potential courses of action.

They would have included, depending on what Ford himself knows to be true, everything from completely rejecting the allegations, to stepping aside and dealing with whatever issues he may have.

Each option would have been presented to him with a well-planned course of action.

Instead, the mayor has balked at much of the advice he has been given and, up until Friday, remained silent despite one of the most serious allegations his mayoralty has faced.

Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday put it best when he was asked if the mayor listens to anyone.

Holyday said that while Ford does listen, he rarely sees any evidence the mayor heeds the advice he has been given.

If nothing else, Rob Ford has managed to put Toronto on the map with all the late-night talk show comedians: you just can’t avert your eyes from a trainwreck like this.

May 24, 2013

“Ford Nation” was a reaction to the elites of Toronto

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:05

In the Toronto Star, Rick Salutin writes a column that might get him drummed out of the corps d’elite of Toronto society:

If there’s any truism I cling to, it’s that: people don’t get the leaders they deserve. Why not? Because of all the haughty intervenors between the citizens and those who govern — they generally get the leaders they select, either sooner or later. Here I come to urban guru and U of T prof Richard Florida, who I do find embarrassing in this context, but also instructive. He wrote this week in the Globe and Mail: “It is time to convene a blue-ribbon commission on Toronto’s future … the top leaders of all of our key institutions must step up — our banks and corporations, schools and universities, labour unions, the city, the province, and more. No one can stand on the sidelines if we are going to forge the model of private-public partnership that is needed … ”

Does he really not get it — that this is exactly the mentality that led to the Ford mayoralty, out of widespread popular disgust for an unelected elect who think they have the right to gather in blue ribbon bodies and decide on behalf of everyone else? The goal, Florida says, is that Toronto’s “future mayors will look less like Rob Ford and more like New York’s Mike Bloomberg, Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel” — leaders who’ve aimed to decimate the core of their communities: their public school systems; and have met huge popular resistance. Besides, the sole concrete thing Mayor Ford has done is to public-privatize garbage collection here, if that’s your cuppa. Talk about confusing the problem with the solution.

So, at the moment, the city is divided between anti-Forders who often view Ford Nation as irredeemably “stupid” (and I quote), versus stubborn Forders who resent that contempt and are desperately hoping Rob finds a way not to be starring in that crack video. But it’s been ever thus, if in less stark terms: Mel Lastman followed by David Miller. Rob Ford against Olivia Chow or John Tory.

H/T to the Phantom Observer for the link.

May 17, 2013

Rob Ford already immortalized in Taiwanese news animation

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Humour, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:04

Toronto mayor denies crack cocaine allegations

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:47

I woke up to some fascinating news … Toronto’s Mayor Rob Ford is alleged to have been videotaped while smoking crack cocaine:

The U.S. website gawker.com published an article late Thursday alleged it had been offered a video of Ford “smoking crack cocaine” — and the Toronto sellers were hoping to get six-figures for the video.

“First of all, I’ve spoken to the mayor yesterday and secondly, he denies any such allegation,” Ford’s lawyer Dennis Morris told the Toronto Sun Friday.

Morris wasn’t sure if Ford would address the allegations Friday.

“We’ll just have to see how that unfolds,” he said.

Asked if the mayor plans any legal action, Morris said they’re at the “bottom rung of the ladder of anything of that nature now.”

[. . .]

In the wake of the gawker.com story, the Toronto Star published a story Friday morning by two reporters who state they were shown the alleged video earlier this month and alleging Somali drug dealers are shopping the video around.

While I’m far from a Rob Ford fan, I do find this story to be hard to believe. Ford has managed some awesome face-palm moments during his term in office but I can’t credit that any politician would put himself into this kind of situation. Either way, Toronto politics have been much more interesting since Ford was elected.

Update: Here’s the Toronto Star story:

The footage begins with the mayor mumbling. His eyes are half-closed. He waves his arms around erratically. A man’s voice tells him he should be coaching football because that’s what he’s good at.

Ford agrees and nods his head, bobbing on his chair.

He says something like “Yeah, I take these kids . . . minorities” but soon he rambles off again.

Ford says something like: “Everyone expects me to be right-wing, I’m . . .” and again he trails off.

At one point he raises the lighter and moves it in a circle motion beneath the pipe, inhaling deeply.

Next, the voice raises the name of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. The man says he can’t stand him and that he wants to shove his foot up the young leader’s “ass so far it comes out the other end.”

Ford nods and bobs on his chair and appears to say, “Justin Trudeau’s a fag.”

The man taping the mayor keeps the video trained on him. Then the phone rings. Ford looks at the camera and says something like “that better not be on.”

The phone shuts off.

Update the second: Popehat calls it the “most wonderful legal threat ever”:

Various journalists are claiming they have seen a video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack.

This led to the most darling legal threat ever from a lawyer named Dennis Morris — who has represented Ford for some time — to Gawker

[. . .]

This is delightful, like that video of the kitten freaking out when it sees a lizard.

First, nobody ever governed themselves accordingly based on a threat from a hotmail account. Second, are you using some sort of comma-based operating system? Third, what the fuck are you talking about?

This sets a high bar.

November 27, 2012

Toronto’s once (and future?) mayor

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:01

In Maclean’s, Ivor Tossell recounts the story of Rob Ford’s brief tenure as mayor of Toronto:

At Toronto’s City Hall, surely the most ambiently lunatic building in Canada, a stage was set up to launch the Mayor’s Christmas Toy Drive. Eight small children had been procured to act as “honourary elves,” sitting cross-legged on a carpet at the foot of a Christmas tree, flanked by boxes of mini-trikes and construction cranes. A boxed CFL football sat ominously to one side. The mayor was scheduled to launch the drive at 1 p.m. An enormous crowd of reporters buzzed about. Interest in the mayor’s event had amplified to unusual levels by news that the mayor had just gotten himself fired.

For everyone who’s ever bemoaned the fact that our democracy doesn’t offer a way to recall politicians, witness Rob Ford: the man who couldn’t stay mayor. In a ruling released this morning, a Superior Court justice declared Ford’s seat vacant — a weirdly existential way of putting it — after finding the mayor violated the municipal conflict-of-interest act in a small-stakes, but entirely willful, transgression.

Ford has been in office for two tumultuous years, in which his cost-cutting mandate quickly gave way to a scorched-earth war on the media, a succession of botched policies and a never-ending series of altercations, each more bizarre than the last. Giving the finger to a six-year old; chasing a reporter around a park near his home; helping eject a bus of TTC riders into the rain to get his football team a ride home. Finally, today, the mayor of Toronto was sent back to the voters to ask for his job back. In the end, Rob Ford recalled himself.

Update: Speaking for the defence, here’s Ezra Levant in his trademarked over-the-top style, comparing the Ford case to some other recent political scandals in Canada.

November 6, 2010

The people in the bubble

Filed under: Cancon, Economics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:28

Margaret Wente has a little test for you to determine if you’re in the “elite”:

Before we venture further into this battle zone, you can calculate your elite status by taking this patented Elite-O-Meter test. See how you rate!

Your degree is from:

An American Ivy League university or Stanford (Score: +40)
Queen’s, McGill, the University of Toronto, Western or UBC (+20)
The University of Ottawa or other (-20)

Your children’s degrees are from:

An American Ivy League university, etc. (+30)
Queen’s, etc. (+10)
The University of Ottawa or other (-20)

What do these initials stand for?

NPR (+10 if you know)
MMA (-20 if you know)

(For Torontonians)

None of your friends voted for Rob Ford (+20)
One of your friends voted for Rob Ford (0)
You voted for Rob Ford (-20)

For a good time, you prefer

Luminato (+20)
A tailgate party in Buffalo (-20)

Who is Carol Off? (+20)

Who is Jimmie Johnson (not the football coach)? (-40)

To get some exercise, you prefer

Yoga and Pilates (+10)
Hunting and fishing (-20)

Have you ever had a housekeeper or nanny? (+10)

Have you ever been a housekeeper or nanny? (-20)

Have you ever had a job that made your feet tired by the end of the day? (Teaching, or jobs during high school and university, don’t count.) (-40)

As an adult, have you ever lived in a small town for at least a year? (University towns don’t count.) (-20)

Have you ever read a book by Michael Ignatieff? (+50)

Have you ever read a book by Tim LaHaye? (-20)

Your idea of good TV is

The Sopranos or Mad Men (+20)
Oprah or The Price is Right (-20)

Needless to say, the higher you scored, the more Elite you are. If you are on the plus side of the Elite-O-Meter, there’s a good chance you belong to Richard Florida’s Creative Class. You are probably (or soon will be) in the top 10 per cent of income earners, and you are probably married to someone a great deal like yourself. Congratulations! You are the product of the modern meritocracy. Although your family may have come from humble origins, you have joined the ruling class — the one that runs our major institutions, including governments, the law and the media.

For the record, I scored -70. That confirms what I suspected: I’m not “elite” by downtown Toronto standards.

October 27, 2010

The new broom in Toronto

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:25

After a particularly hard-fought election campaign, Chris Selley looks at the opening moves Toronto mayor Rob Ford will be making:

It’s kind of funny to see people who’ve spent the past 10 months trashing Rob Ford now insist he needs to extend olive branches to the progressive community. If I were Rob Ford, and I had an olive branch, I might be tempted to extend it rather violently towards my harshest critics. (Then, in accordance with my new and improved image, I’d take two deep breaths and calm down.)

Clearly Mr. Ford is sticking with his gravy train priorities off the top: departmental efficiencies, contracting out services, cutting councillor budgets and staff. At a media scrum on Tuesday afternoon, his message hadn’t changed, that I could discern, from what it was during the campaign. Basically: Trust me. The money’s there to be saved, and it won’t hurt a bit.

Still, Mayor Ford will have a city to keep happy. And while they received very little notice during the campaign, his platform included several populist, pro-democratic and dirt-cheap measures I’d defy anyone to oppose and that could earn him some grudging praise from disaffected Pantaloons and Smithermanians.

The large turnout and the not-quite-majority of votes cast for Ford should at least quiet the claims that he “doesn’t have a mandate” for a little while. If he can actually deliver on some of his campaign promises to reduce spending and eliminate some of the least useful municipal programs/initiatives, he’ll be a vast improvement over the last mayor. Even if he doesn’t — he only has a single vote on council, so it’s not automatic that he’ll be able to implement his agenda — it should be an interesting term in office.

Kathy Shaidle shows why Rob Ford had “hidden” strength in the campaign that the media couldn’t account for:

What is Rob Ford most famous for?

No, not that he looks exactly like everybody’s drunk, abusive stepfather. No, not the “gravy train” line.

Rob Ford is “the guy who returns every call.”

That was always Ford’s claim to fame: that even if you didn’t [live] in his ward, he returned your call. If you were wrapped up in red tape and called Rob Ford, an hour or maybe a day later, the tape got snipped. The Wheeltrans showed up at your elderly mother’s door. That stupid problem you’d been screaming at bureaucrats about got taken care of.

Everyone in Toronto knows a Rob Ford story like that.

October 26, 2010

Did we just witness the start of “Tea Party Ontario”?

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:53

Steve Paikin looks at the unexpected toppling of incumbent mayors across Ontario yesterday:

Did we just have our own “tea party” Ontario?

All over the province, incumbents were feeling the wrath of the electorate.

In the capital city, Rob Ford cruised to victory, besting George Smitherman by more than 90,000 votes. His margin of victory was bigger than David Miller’s when he “swept” into office with his broom seven years ago.

But it wasn’t only Toronto. Incumbent mayors lost in Hamilton, Ottawa, Burlington, Vaughan, London, Thunder Bay, and Sudbury.

In Mississauga, where Hazel McCallion is accustomed to winning with more than 90% of the vote, she only won re-election with 76%.

[. . .]

A few weeks ago, none of these results was seen as obvious.

[. . .]

The conventional wisdom in local politics is that name recognition counts for so much. The power of incumbency is fantastic.

Not last night. If anything, the opposite was true. If you were in, you had a target on you. And precious few escaped it, including many incumbent city councillors in Toronto.

A stunning night for upsets. A big night for turnout (more than 50% in Toronto…twice the normal turnout rate).

An Ontario Tea Party would be a good idea . . .

Toronto’s elite appalled: the barbarians have stormed City Hall

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:24

I guess a lot of people were misleading the pollsters, as what looked like a dead heat only a few days before the election turned into a 12 point lead, just missing an actual majority for Rob Ford:

Right-wing juggernaut Rob Ford will take the top job in Canada’s most populous city, defeating former deputy premier George Smitherman in a bitter, 10-month race to become Toronto’s next mayor.

With 99 per cent of Toronto polls reporting Monday night, Ford took 47 per cent of the vote, compared to Smitherman’s 35 per cent and deputy mayor Joe Pantalone’s 12 per cent.

Smitherman was considered an early favourite to win, but couldn’t compete against Ford, a scrappy city councillor who tapped into a potent well of voter fury with his promises to cut taxes and kill big spending at city hall.

“This victory is a clear call from the taxpayers, enough is enough,” Ford told cheering supporters.

“The party with taxpayers’ money is over. We will respect the taxpayers again, and yes ladies and gentlemen we will stop the gravy train once and for all.”

The polarizing Toronto race was marred by ugly incidents, including homophobic ads targeting the openly gay Smitherman, and a newspaper article — later pulled from the Globe and Mail website — that took a shot at Ford’s weight.

His win is likely to send shockwaves all the way to Premier Dalton McGuinty’s office. Many experts have predicted that a Ford victory could herald a Conservative sweep in next fall’s Ontario election.

Ford is perhaps the least likely candidate to win in Toronto for decades, and is most certainly not the kind of mayor most progressives expected to see. He’s not particularly polished or smooth-talking or dignified, and has had a series of mis-steps that the media (and Toronto’s Liberal elite) expected to keep him from being more than a slight bump in the smooth road to Smitherman’s coronation. I expect this election result will be portrayed in the media, at least in the short term, as the suburbs “sticking it” to downtown (even though some polls showed Ford’s support to be nearly as strong in downtown wards as in the benighted suburbs).

Update: Chris Selley thinks that this is a wake-up call for politicians across the province:

One can only imagine the horror in certain quarters. Uncouth, uncultured, suburban, journalist-chasing, drunk driving, marijuana-possessing Air Canada Centre ejectee and lone wolf former city councillor Rob Ford is mayor-elect of Toronto — and not just by a little. Mayor David Miller congratulated him last night and so should everyone else. It sure won’t help not to.

Whatever happens over the next four years, this election sent a hugely important message to Canadian politicians: Ignore voter anger at your peril. If you think voters shouldn’t be angry, make your case early and sincerely. Don’t just blame a senior level of government for your problems.

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