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Toronto Mayor Rob Ford removed!

Dude I ride a bus every day for work, I would be LIVID if he took my bus off the road to pick up his football team like he did to two buses on the busiest bussing road (Finch) in the city (primed for an LRT soon due to its high demand) so that they could go pick up his football team.

Stuff like that is just so tone-deaf, there's some underlying sense of entitlement there you'd think would be more likely to be found in effete celebrity culture....
 
Brown said:
Well, Canadians, how do you all like "United States politics" on your soil? Pretty, isn't it?

He says he's going to continue to fight. But just remember: if he gets away with it, you'll see a lot more just like him.
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I wouldn't suggest he's emblematic of States' politicians so much as the politics of lack of responsibility which knows no bounds nor jurisdiction. Prior to the last election, much hoopla was made of him using personal money to pay for his office expenses. He came in on the promise of a crusade to eliminate the "gravy" in municipal spending, a promise he's failed miserably on. In the interim, it's been one embarrassment after another and he's still to face other, more expensive challenges to anything approaching a continued career in politics.

He won't get away with anything and even his supporters on council are distancing themselves from him.

Fitz
 
mikedenk said:
The will of the good people of Toronto will not be subverted by a handful of hardcore leftists having a tantrum over the prospect of responsible spending and governance.
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Unless one is asserting the judge who made the decision is a "leftist" the political leanings of everyone involved are irrelevant. What matters is whether the rules were broken or not. Ford had his day in court to argue his case, his defence was found insufficient, and a judge found him guilty of breaking the rules. That's the bottom line, and the only one that matters.
 
Corsair 115 said:
Unless one is asserting the judge who made the decision is a "leftist" the political leanings of everyone involved are irrelevant. What matters is whether the rules were broken or not. Ford had his day in court to argue his case, his defence was found insufficient, and a judge found him guilty of breaking the rules. That's the bottom line, and the only one that matters.
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Also bear in mind the punishment was prescribed according to the rules: judge's place was to find if the violation occurred, after which point his dismissal from office was codified as the next step.

Judge's hands were tied by the rules and by the actions of Ford, which ensured the Judge would have to rule that way due to his recalcitrance.
 
He (Ford) is an embarrassment to the city, really.
 
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Essentially he is somewhat the victim of an exercise in mudslinging. There are a tremendous amount of official complaints thrown his way by the political left and lo and behold some of it stuck.

Having said that, if you're going to paint a target on your arse then you have to make sure you pull your trousers up. He wants to run on an aggressive platform of attacking cronyism and abuse of function on the Left, he has to make sure his conduct is beyond reproach. As it happens he blundered around like an ineffable buffoon and it's neither surprising nor disappointing to see him ousted.

Plus he looks like an off-duty clown.
 
squealpiggy said:
... and it's neither surprising nor disappointing to see him ousted.
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He's not ousted yet, that'll depend on how the appeal goes which isn't going to be heard until January. So he'll be in office at least until then. Also, the judge clarified his ruling today in that if Ford loses his appeal and is forced out of office, he can run in a by-election for mayor should city council opt for that. (It could instead appoint someone else to serve out the rest of the current term.)
 
Corsair 115 said:
(It could instead appoint someone else to serve out the rest of the current term.)
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Given the change the Judge made to the ruling today conceivably Council could just appoint Ford back to Mayor if he loses the appeal. Although I doubt a majority of councillors would go along with that.

Regarding the appeal, I was wondering if someone could clear a few things up for me? I've read in a number of articles that one of the arguments that Ford's lawyer is likely to make is that the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act is too inflexible and harsh - a " very blunt instrument" as Justice Hackland called it in his ruling. If that's the case then would this argument have to be a Charter argument? If so, then would Ford's lawyer be barred from making that argument at appeal because he didn't make it at trial? In Hackland's ruling he points out (at Para. 23) that no Charter issues were raised by either party and I think I remember reading in another case that if a Charter argument could be made at trial and isn't then in most cases you are barred from making that same argument at appeal. Or did it only become a Charter issue once Ford was found to have breached the Act by the Judge and so couldn't have been raised at the trial?

Thanks.
 
Corsair 115 said:
He's not ousted yet, that'll depend on how the appeal goes which isn't going to be heard until January. So he'll be in office at least until then. Also, the judge clarified his ruling today in that if Ford loses his appeal and is forced out of office, he can run in a by-election for mayor should city council opt for that. (It could instead appoint someone else to serve out the rest of the current term.)
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Fourteen days unless he's granted a stay dependent on appeal. Enough time to pack up the massive scale he and his brother were using!
 
Ford was granted a stay of the decision in order to appeal, so he'll be mayor for a little while more. The appeal is scheduled to be heard on January 7th. That process, according to a municipal law expert interviewed on CBC Radio earlier today, could stretch up to a month in length. However, once the appeal is heard and ruled on, that's the end of the matter, one way or the other, due to the fact that the municipal law involved doesn't allow for it go any further up in the court appeals system.

So, if Ford's appeal is denied, he's out of office.
 
mikedenk said:
The will of the people has not yet been subverted by Canuck leftists.

Democracy FTW
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Ya I dunno, Rob Ford did this all by himself.

Hindsight being 20/20, with him removed back in the controversy over his campaign money, we would now be saying:

"Fewf! At least we have a new mayor! I hope he gets help.."

Instead we are treated to a spectacular crash of the longest Canadian political trainwreck in recent memory.

Sad to see our moral stigma with drugs - destructive in so many ways - unleashed like this (and in a way that will just entrench the stigma); that said there are serious concerns when a sitting Mayor can make himself (and our public policy) at risk of influence by those looking to blackmail/extort.

We should be in the single digits now, in terms of # of days left before Rob Ford is history.

And again, he did this all by himself. Even if the leftists are "incredibly biased" and "had an axe to grind", sometimes stopped clocks are right (twice a day I hear!), and it is entirely possible that the left has a bias and that Rob Ford deserves everything he's getting.

The ideas aren't mutually exclusive, but then I recognize the trotting out of "witchhunt" type complaints are the last refuge of those seeking to resolve the cognitive dissonance they are subject to when their partisan heroes are on the block.
 
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