“I’m just going to give the integrity commissioner 10 sheets that say, ‘I, Doug Ford, apologize to — a blank name — for anything that I’ve said in the past and anything I’m going to say in the future.’ ”
The councillor’s dismissive attitude, along with international amazement that Toronto is powerless to fire his notorious mayor brother, suggest the system to promote and police ethics at city hall is crushed like a pop can.
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Why, some demand, has Leiper not dropped the hammer on a mayor who smoked illegal drugs, repeatedly lied about it, appeared impaired in public, denigrated ethnic minorities, gays and women, and mixed city business with his own family firm?
But the integrity commissioner cannot directly discipline anyone. The code states she can recommend that council impose punishments limited to a public reprimand or suspension of pay for up to 90 days.
In conflict of interest cases, voters can turn to the courts, as happened when a judge ordered Ford out of office in 2012, and an appeal court rescued him by ruling that council exceed its authority in following Leiper’s advice to force Ford to repay lobbyists’ donations to his football foundation
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“I was called a watchdog but I don’t see that as my role — I’m a guide, a teacher, a way to reflect back to council what their collective goal is,” Leiper says.
“I’ve watched city council become more comfortable and as a group more sophisticated in their application in their own Code of Conduct and also their appreciation of it as a protection for them,” against getting in trouble.
Duff Conacher, of Ottawa-based Democracy Watch, argues Leiper should have been more tenacious in probing Ford’s misbehaviour. The new Liberal government must create a provincial integrity watchdog with power to discipline civic officials using a “sliding scale” of punishments that corresponds to their misdeed, he says.
