Rob Ford's Toronto

[BurlOak]

Personally I'd rather they double the number of people on the transit file if it will get the DRL built twice as fast (huge boon to the city and easing congestion), whereas Ford and his ilk would sit around championing a subway in a part of town where even the buses aren't used that much.

The question is; what would you rather have, 10% less transit employees and a DRL by 2030 or double the number of transit employees and the DRL by 2030

The other question is, would you rather spend $50B for the the Big Move or $52B for the Big Move with some enhancements to satisfy the wants of a large segment of the public.

Btw, if the area barely supports buses, then the transit planners and leaders of the previous regime must have been pretty stupid to prioritize LRT over a DRL subway.

 

[Tulse]

Not sure if sarcastic or genuine... pretty sure sarcastic.

Nope, dead serious. While malvern2 may have blustered a lot earlier, the post at #16353 is actually pretty darned thoughtful, and at least talks about specific Ford policies. And for several posts after that there was a reasonable, civil discussion about transit and its funding, about how one builds infrastructure in general, and about the role of councillors in advocating for the city versus their ward. The thread wasn't just name-calling and tribal identity, but actually wrestled with substantive issues.

So no, actually serious about my comment.

 

[LowPolygon]

Rob Ford considers "downtown Toronto" elitists. Why would he want to listen to any elitists from Los Angeles?

i could care less what Rob Ford thinks, or (more likely) doesn't think.

i am talking about the absolute pummeling Toronto's reputation is taking--because we have a bigoted, homophobic, drug and alcohol-addled imbecile for a mayor.

 

[nfitz]

And you would convict on circumstantial evidence at best? Innocent until proven guilty.

Convict of what? He hasn't been charged with anything.

The charge then is being an idiot. Guilty.

 

[MetroMan]

A contact at The Star estimates that it could take several years for the evidence obtained in the raid to come to trial. Their legal team -- and just speculating but probably every media outlet's legal team -- is preparing to ask a judge to consider releasing pertinent information if Rob Ford is indeed involved in this criminal case. The argument is that not releasing this evidence will severely harm the city and negate justice.

The judge will be asked to look at the possibility that if Ford is somehow re-elected even though if upon reviewing the evidence the judge sees reason to believe that he could be convicted and barred from running, then not releasing this evidence in a timely manner will result in Ford being allowed to serve and retire after his second term as if he were never charged of anything -- hence the term negating justice, he'll never be punished.

My contact is convinced that if the evidence is what we think it is (the video), that the judge would likely make it public but that if ruled against, The Star is prepared to go all the way to the Superme Court in a rapid fire succession of hearings driven by the urgency and public interest of this case.

My thoughts on this:

1 - The media and public interest groups such as the Board of Trade need to coalesce around a single legal team rather than let The Star fight this alone. Otherwise, it'll reinforce the perception of persecution and empower Ford in the election to the detriment of pretty much everybody.

2 - If The Star pursues this and is successful, it could set a precedent that would drive new legislation to enable courts to pre-emptively evict or suspend Mayors before a trial if there is reasonable evidence to suggest that they will be found guilty. More importantly, since we'd be altering the City of Toronto Act, this case has demonstrated a dangerous lack of tools to protect the City from rogue Mayors that would be corrected in legislation to enable Premiers to either suspend a Mayor pending an inquiry if requested by City Council or write impeachment triggers that Council and/or citizens could use.

When this thread was started, we had no idea the ride we were about to go on. These past few years and the ones ahead are of major historical importance and we're living through it.

 

[LowPolygon]

2 - If The Star pursues this and is successful, it could set a precedent that would drive new legislation to enable courts to pre-emptively evict or suspend Mayors before a trial if there is reasonable evidence to suggest that they will be found guilty. More importantly, since we'd be altering the City of Toronto Act, this case has demonstrated a dangerous lack of tools to protect the City from rogue Mayors that would be corrected in legislation to enable Premiers to either suspend a Mayor pending an inquiry if requested by City Council or write impeachment triggers that Council and/or citizens could use.

this would be an absolutely fantastic outcome.

 

[tiffer24]

Other Canadian cities are having mayoralty issues similar to this as well. Places like Montreal, London and Laval are all facing the problem of having a sitting mayor continuing on in spite of major legal or ethical issues. I see changes coming to municipal acts across the country in the next few years.

 

[nfitz]

Places like Montreal, London and Laval are all facing the problem of having a sitting mayor continuing on in spite of major legal or ethical issues. I see changes coming to municipal acts across the country in the next few years.

The mayor of Montreal and Laval both quickly resigned. The new mayor of Montreal hasn't commented publicly yet and only just got released by the police ... I'd guess his resignation will be coming quickly.

There is the London situation, but council did vote against asking him to resign. And it seems to be a much simpler cut-and-dry issue there, and relate to an incident almost a decade ago, not related to the City.

 

[guitarchitect]

The question is; what would you rather have, 10% less transit employees and a DRL by 2030 or double the number of transit employees and the DRL by 2030

The other question is, would you rather spend $50B for the the Big Move or $52B for the Big Move with some enhancements to satisfy the wants of a large segment of the public.

Btw, if the area barely supports buses, then the transit planners and leaders of the previous regime must have been pretty stupid to prioritize LRT over a DRL subway.

Well if you want to create strawmen - yeah sure, if it could be proven that the same amount of work can be done for less, then fine (props to privatized Garbage Collection). The point I was illustrating is that city-building should really come before small increases in efficiency if it means the city is less productive or develops slower as a result of those perceived efficiencies.

I worked on a couple of KIP-funded projects, which was the Province's way of stimulating the economy in 2009. Basically, every project was fast-tracked and done as a design/build - it's inefficient in some way but projects are built twice as fast as they usually would because you throw everyone onto it at once. In general I'm not usually in favour of that model because it involves a lot of compromise, but in the end I was amazed at how fast things got built. I decided at that point that sometimes inefficiency is worth it when problems have to be solved immediately and you need things built quickly. If we lose $6b in productivity each year because of a traffic clusterfuck, then throwing $6b in capital at the problem (in the form of more labour on the policy side and fast-tracked construction) is money that is very well spent - despite the optics.

For your other strawman arguement, give me the details of your proposed $2b increase and I'll give you my opinion. I don't think it matters though, because that's not the point of this discussion. My point is that "cutting waste" has to be evaluated in a long-term cost/benefit respect not just a "it looks like we should do this so let's do it" way.

Regarding your last point, it was an exaggeration for the sake of point-making. I'll leave it to you to go look at the multitude of financial cases that have been made against building subways where there is no need, and how the Scarborough RT has been shown to lose millions every year because it is vastly underused. The ridership projected for it when it was built failed to materialize, and current ridership levels would need to more than triple in order to make the extension viable. Has Ford undertaken to do a cost/benefit analysis for his proposed lines? What about his policy - other than "people want subways" - has assured you that it would a wise way to spend taxpayers' money?

Once again - we all want subways. But unless a financial case can be made to build them, how can people who are so dead-set against "waste" at City Hall be so much in support of a subway plan that Ford has yet to show the feasibility of? Do you just ignore every report that says "Hey, actually we can't afford to keep that subway running so maybe we shouldn't build it" or "Yeah, um, subways are great and all but they just aren't financially sustainable in certain parts of town"? Do you see what I'm getting at? Again - what has Ford said or done that makes subways everywhere a sound financial decision?

 

[guitarchitect]

2 - If The Star pursues this and is successful, it could set a precedent that would drive new legislation to enable courts to pre-emptively evict or suspend Mayors before a trial if there is reasonable evidence to suggest that they will be found guilty. More importantly, since we'd be altering the City of Toronto Act, this case has demonstrated a dangerous lack of tools to protect the City from rogue Mayors that would be corrected in legislation to enable Premiers to either suspend a Mayor pending an inquiry if requested by City Council or write impeachment triggers that Council and/or citizens could use.

That sounds like it would set a precedent that no Court would want to set. Aside from the most smoking of guns, how could any court decide what is "reasonable evidence"? Just look at Ford's recent appeal and how the original decision against him was overturned. Judges do not always agree with each other, and I doubt a new precedent would be set that would allow one judge to assess guilt before a proper trial happens. Isn't that what the trial is supposed to decide?

 

[Tulse]

I'd be very uncomfortable with leaving the removal of a mayor to the courts. I think instead that either city council should have the power to do that (with a supermajority, and perhaps only after a mayor has been charged with a crime), or provide a public recall mechanism.

 

[jje1000]

A contact at The Star estimates that it could take several years for the evidence obtained in the raid to come to trial. Their legal team -- and just speculating but probably every media outlet's legal team -- is preparing to ask a judge to consider releasing pertinent information if Rob Ford is indeed involved in this criminal case. The argument is that not releasing this evidence will severely harm the city and negate justice.

The judge will be asked to look at the possibility that if Ford is somehow re-elected even though if upon reviewing the evidence the judge sees reason to believe that he could be convicted and barred from running, then not releasing this evidence in a timely manner will result in Ford being allowed to serve and retire after his second term as if he were never charged of anything -- hence the term negating justice, he'll never be punished.

My contact is convinced that if the evidence is what we think it is (the video), that the judge would likely make it public but that if ruled against, The Star is prepared to go all the way to the Superme Court in a rapid fire succession of hearings driven by the urgency and public interest of this case.

Some interesting tactics there, hope they'll work, but if the video was acquired much earlier, all this trouble and legal maneuvering could have been avoided. I bet it'll have cost less money overall as well.

My thoughts on this:

1 - The media and public interest groups such as the Board of Trade need to coalesce around a single legal team rather than let The Star fight this alone. Otherwise, it'll reinforce the perception of persecution and empower Ford in the election to the detriment of pretty much everybody.

2 - If The Star pursues this and is successful, it could set a precedent that would drive new legislation to enable courts to pre-emptively evict or suspend Mayors before a trial if there is reasonable evidence to suggest that they will be found guilty. More importantly, since we'd be altering the City of Toronto Act, this case has demonstrated a dangerous lack of tools to protect the City from rogue Mayors that would be corrected in legislation to enable Premiers to either suspend a Mayor pending an inquiry if requested by City Council or write impeachment triggers that Council and/or citizens could use.

When this thread was started, we had no idea the ride we were about to go on. These past few years and the ones ahead are of major historical importance and we're living through it.

1. Hopefully this will happen, but I see the Board of Trade as being too timid to hurt relationships and the Globe and Mail too indecisive to allow this to happen. I'd love to be proven wrong though.

2. A bit troubling, the second could allow Conservatives to attack using the 'pre-empting democracy' rule. It would be better served that the law be made more level in that any politician officially charged cannot occupy their political office for the time being, but that would be too harsh (but a good preventative tactic).

 

[adma]

Nope, dead serious. While malvern2 may have blustered a lot earlier, the post at #16353 is actually pretty darned thoughtful, and at least talks about specific Ford policies. And for several posts after that there was a reasonable, civil discussion about transit and its funding, about how one builds infrastructure in general, and about the role of councillors in advocating for the city versus their ward. The thread wasn't just name-calling and tribal identity, but actually wrestled with substantive issues.

So no, actually serious about my comment.

And yet--as I've suggested in the past--there's something about malvern2 that I'd almost deem "blinded by his bile" even re his own back yard; and maybe even frightened/suspicious of being "un-blinded". That is, a lot of us broadly-speakiing "urban geeks"--with a bow to matters of history, architecture, urbanism, etc--might even inherently "know" his part of Scarborough in an inherently "healthier" way than he does.

Maybe it's a little in his description of "an enjoyment of seeing my city grow, and hearing the opinions and views of like-minded development buffs"--like, something in the "development buffs" part bothers me. Almost like what already exists doesn't really matter, figure, register, etc. (And perhaps, such "what already exists" is too much a wimpy-NIMBY urban-lefty thing for comfort, just like rallying for patches of grass a la Adam Vaughan.)

Such unvarnished development-buff-ism epitomizes to me the same kind of obtuse naivete I identify with McMansion teardowns.

 

[bellwoodian]

Hi all... Been lurking here for weeks. So, first time poster here.. Feel free to ignore the interloper .

A contact at The Star estimates that it could take several years for the evidence obtained in the raid to come to trial. Their legal team -- and just speculating but probably every media outlet's legal team -- is preparing to ask a judge to consider releasing pertinent information if Rob Ford is indeed involved in this criminal case. The argument is that not releasing this evidence will severely harm the city and negate justice.

I think I'd want to hear from an actual criminal lawyer on the plausibility of a scenario like this.

Despite all the sordid details, and the dots the most ardent of Ford bashers seem to want to be connected (like guys getting tossed out of Fort McMurray apartment windows on Rob's orders), I find it difficult to believe there's much criminal involvement by Ford in Project Traveller. The most likely scenario just seems to be Rob and/or Rob's sketchy entourage liked to score drugs from guys who subsequently got busted.

If I'm wrong about that, Rob will do a perp walk, and be out on bail pending trial, and presumably still mayor.

If the cops have the video, the only way I can see it being materially relevant to the crown's case against the Dixon Road gang was if they had used it to attempt to extort the mayor. If it's not relevant to the case, what happens to it? Does ownership of it (say, the phone) just revert to the original owner, even if that dude is in jail? It seems to me that the Star or whomever else can't just ask a judge or the cops to hand it over because it happens to be a juicy story.

I'm not sure any judge is just going to let a media outlet go on a fishing expedition that opens the flood gates to them asking judges to force the crown to tip its evidentiary hand in whatever case they determine is in the public interest.

If the cops do have a video of Ford, I'm not sure it will matter what the Star or anyone else does. Pressure to leak the thing will be intense. And despite whatever protocol exists to keep digital evidence like this under wraps, leaks will probably start with officers who aren't supposed to see the thing getting private viewings, talking to wives and girlfriends, etc... And at some point, a thumb drive will get smuggled out and it will be impossible to contain.

The fact that this hasn't happened yet indicates to me that they don't have anything beyond wiretap conversations of guys talking about how Robbie likes to get wrecked.

 

[Peepers]

^Welcome to the forum Bellwoodian!

I agree completely with your analysis. I suspect that the police don't actually have the video only wiretap conversations where the video is discussed.

If they have the video the only way that I can see it being shown in a trial would be - as you suggested - there are charges of extortion (with Ford being the "victim") - otherwise the video is of no evidentiary value which means that the smart phone would be returned to the owner at the conclusion of legal proceedings.