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Crack

Friday May 2, 2014

May 1, 2014 by Graeme MacKay

Friday May 3, 2014By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday May 3, 2014

Rob Ford taking leave of absence, seeking help for substance abuse

Toronto Sun, Globe and Mail report details of new, separate alleged recordings of Toronto mayor

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is taking a leave of absence to seek help for substance abuse amid reports that two new recordings — one of unruly behaviour, the other of apparent drug use — have surfaced.

“I have decided to take a leave from campaigning and from my duties as mayor to seek immediate help,” Ford said in a statement released shortly before 11 p.m. ET Wednesday.

“I have a problem with alcohol and the choices I have made while under the influence. I have struggled with this for some time.”

Later in the statement, the mayor said, “I know that I need professional help.”

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Ford does not plan to drop out of the election, according to his lawyer, Dennis Morris, who spoke to CBC News earlier in the evening.

The news comes amid reports that two new recordings of Ford have surfaced. The Toronto Sun reported late Wednesday it had obtained a new and “raunchy” audio recording of Ford “ranting and swearing” in a Toronto-area bar on Monday night.

The Globe and Mail claims to have seen a second video, shot last weekend, of Ford smoking what the paper said “a self-professed drug dealer” described as crack cocaine.

The news comes amid a rocky re-election campaign in which Ford has repeatedly described himself as a changed man who has learned from the mistakes of his first term as mayor.

His leave of absence appears to leave Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly in charge, though city council already handed Kelly many of Ford’s mayoral powers last fall. (Source: CBC News)

SOCIAL MEDIA

#RobFord falling from grace; hitting rock bottom; Repeat #TOpoli http://t.co/2ykHSlUn7V pic.twitter.com/Evcr6sZaws

— mackaycartoons (@mackaycartoons) May 2, 2014


REPUBLISHED in iPolitics, The St. John’s Telegram, and the Brandon Sun.

 

Posted in: Canada, Ontario Tagged: Crack, Crack cocaine, Editorial Cartoon, mayor, Rob Ford, Toronto

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

November 20, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

Wednesday, November 20, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Ford brothers lurch from low to low

By Christie Blatchford – To the old saw about horseshoes and hand grenades, you may now add Meeting 44, the Nov. 18 special meeting of Toronto city council.
If that wasn’t a political castration a filled-to-the-brim council chamber witnessed, it’s close enough to count.

Now anyone who was there will have her favourite moment, by which I mean complete and utter nadir.

For some it will be when the Brothers Ford – Rob, the now-gelded mayor, and Doug, the councillor – turned on Coun. Paul Ainslie, who had invited the attack because he was provocatively, oh, breathing or something at the time.

“Councillor Ainslie,” Doug Ford sneered pointedly. “You got your own issues.”

At this point, the mayor went into a frantic cartoon pantomime of a man at the wheel, driving off the road.

Grinning like a man unhinged, the mayor hooted at Ainslie, “Or was it one wheel?” (Earlier this year, Ainslie received a warning from police after he was pulled over in a RIDE check. He wasn’t charged.)

For some, it may be the two occasions when Mayor Ford, sitting in the speaker’s chair, tried to get Coun. Ford’s attention by saying, “Jones!” and motioning for him to come up to the chair. (The Brothers Ford frequently call one another Jones.) Others may have embedded in their memories Mayor Ford’s closing address, when in his speech against the motion he invoked the memory of his dead father, self-identified with “the poor people (more) than the rich people,” plugged his new show airing that very evening on Sun News (he promised “my side of things, unfiltered,” to which in my head I cried, “But I want you filtered!”) and then compared the meeting to the Saddam Hussein-led invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Imbuing U.S. president George Bush with his own weird tic of repeating that which he means most sincerely, Mayor Ford quoted him telling the Iraqi leader, “I warn you, I warn you, I warn you” and thundered, “You guys have just attacked Kuwait! This is going to be outright war!”

But for me, the lowest point came much earlier, when Mayor Ford finished off his questioning of Coun. John Filion, who proposed the motion to strip the mayor’s office of cash and power, by noting that Filion had wracked up more office expenses for his one ward than the mayor had and saying, and this was meant ironically, “Don’t you think you have a spending problem?”

By this point, many in the packed public gallery were openly chortling derisively or heckling the mayor.

Then, with Doug Ford taking over the questioning, speaker Frances Nunziata trying to direct him and maintain order, Ford demanded that the “special interests and the CUPEs behind me (in the public gallery) … do me a favour” and be quiet.

The mayor from his chair immediately began chanting “NDP! NDP! NDP! NDP! NDP!,” and muttering about “socialism.”

Very red in the face now, the mayor got up and walked away a bit; he was rocking back and forth on his heels, clearly spoiling for a rumble in the jungle.

 

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He approached a strapping fellow who, it was said later, either worked in his office or was a security officer.

“Let’s go out in the crowd and talk to them,” he told the man. Mayor Ford was again grinning, but also unmistakably bellicose.

The staffer obediently lifted the rope which separates the floor of council from the public section, and out came the mayor, glaring, bouncing on his feet, all but kicking up dust in the bull ring.

At the mayor’s explicit instruction, the staffer began filming citizens in the crowd with his cellphone, the mayor occasionally saying, “Did ya get these guys in the back?” and “Get this guy, right here!”

All the while, he was smiling ferociously, but there was a profound air of menace emanating from him.

I was in the second row of the public gallery and he walked inches from me, shaking the occasional hand, including that of the man beside me, who said he was an old friend, and giving the odd thumbs-up.

But mostly, with that big, thin, dangerous smile plastered on his face, he prowled the alley in front of the public gallery, daring the hecklers to heckle him in the face, in person.

Finally, a couple of them did. From the speaker’s chair, Nunziata called a recess, but it was too late to quell either the mayor or the enraged citizens.

From the gallery, the crowd began to chant, “Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame!” – and quite correctly too.

Here was the chief magistrate of the city, prowling up and down the public gallery, trying to intimidate the very people for whom he works and who pay his salary, frightening at least one woman, probably in her 50s, into pulling her blue scarf over her face.

“How do you know Anthony Smith, you lying scumbag?” someone shouted, referring to the young man who is a homicide victim and who is one of the three who posed in that now notorious picture with the mayor, outside an alleged crack house. “How do you know Anthony Smith, you lying scumbag?” the man shouted again.

By this point, Doug Ford had joined his brother in the alley, the two of them, bristling with hostility, shouting up at citizens.

“Special interests!” Doug yelled. “Get the real taxpayers down here!” I think it was the woman with the scarf over her face, who sat as if stunned, but someone murmured wonderingly to someone else, or no one, “But I’m a real taxpayer.”

To my eyes, it was only the intervention of Coun. Mark Grimes, a big (but gentle) man himself who steered Doug Ford back through the velvet rope, that prevented actual fisticuffs.

Minutes later, back in his seat, the mayor apparently perceived that his brother was under attack and sprinted to his aid, running behind the councillors’ row to get there, and in the process, bowling over Coun. Pam McConnell, who went arse over teakettle. It was the mayor and his chief of staff who appear to have caught McConnell just in time, sparing her from cracking her head open.

Afterwards, nursing a swollen cheek and lip, she said with real dignity, “This is the seat of democracy, not a football field.”

Amen.

(Source: The Vancouver Sun)

Posted in: Ontario Tagged: Cocaine, Crack, Doug Ford, Dr. Evil, Editorial Cartoon, Mini Me, Rob Ford, Toronto

Saturday, November 16, 2013

November 16, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

Saturday, November 16, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, November 16, 2013

Kathleen Wynne urges Rob Ford to heed councillors urging him to step down

Premier Kathleen Wynne is urging embattled Mayor Rob Ford to “pay very close attention” to those city councillors urging him to step down.

In her most pointed comments yet on Ford, who has admitted to using crack cocaine and is under police investigation for his connections to an alleged drug dealer, Wynne hailed city council for taken action Friday morning.

“The concern for me is that city council can function and it seems today that that’s exactly what’s happening,” she said, referring to two overwhelming council votes to politically emasculate the mayor by stripping him of some powers.

“I see that city council is making decisions and they are determined . . . to find a way to make that work,” the premier said at a Council of the Federation meeting in Toronto.

On Thursday, she had warned she was open to giving the city “new tools” to deal with the rogue mayor — provided Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath agreed.

Horwath was noncommittal while Hudak, a close political ally of Ford, has refused to comment.

But a provincial intervention may not come to pass because councillors are flexing their muscles against Ford, who has also acknowledged drinking and driving and buying illegal drugs while in office.

“The actions this morning demonstrate that city council is determined to function,” said Wynne.

“What’s happening at city hall right now is very fluid and I think that the mayor needs to pay very close attention to the messages that he’s getting from his councillors and my hope is that he would take his lead from their advice.”

When reporters noted the advice includes some councillors urging Ford to resign, Wynne was pointed.

“He needs to pay close attention to what he’s being advised by the councillors and the people around him,” the premier said. (Source: Toronto Star)

Posted in: Ontario Tagged: Crack, Editorial Cartoon, Kathleen Wynne, mayor, Ontario, recall, Rob Ford, scandal, Toronto

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

November 6, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

Wednesday, November 6, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Toronto Mayor Ford to Stay in Job After Using Crack

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford vowed to continue as head of Canada’s biggest city and said he will run in the next election after admitting he used crack cocaine.

“I want the people of this great city to decide whether they want Rob Ford to be their mayor,” he said today at a media conference at city hall that was broadcast by CP24 television.

Ford, 44, said he has “nothing left to hide” and these “mistakes” would never happen again.

“I love this city, I love saving taxpayers money and I love being your mayor,” he said at the conference.

Ford’s vow to press on followed his admission today at an earlier media conference that he smoked crack cocaine, likely in one of his “drunken stupors.”

Pressure is mounting for Ford to resign after Toronto police said last week they had found a video that showed him appearing to inhale from a glass pipe. The Toronto Star and U.S. website Gawker were the first to report on the video in May, sparking a five-month police investigation that included airplane surveillance and cameras mounted on poles tracking Ford’s movements.

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Ford, who apologized on Nov. 3 for being “hammered” at a street party in August and for being in his office at 2 a.m. on St. Patrick’s Day with a half-empty bottle of brandy, vowed to curb his drinking and get a driver. He has repeatedly said he wouldn’t resign.

“I feel like a thousand pounds have been lifted off my shoulders,” Ford said at the second media conference today. “I can’t explain how difficult this was to do.”

Several city councilors and at least three Toronto newspapers had urged the mayor to step aside before today. (Source: Bloomberg)

Posted in: Ontario Tagged: Biggest Loser, Crack, Crack cocaine, drugs, Editorial Cartoon, mayor, Ontario, Rob Ford, scandal, Toronto

Friday, November 1, 2013

November 1, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

Friday, November 1, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday, November 1, 2013

Rob Ford: ‘I have no reason to resign’

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford says he has no reason to resign even as Toronto police Chief Bill Blair revealed his force is in possession of a video that allegedly shows Ford smoking crack cocaine.

“I wish I could come out and defend myself,” Ford said outside his city hall office on Thursday afternoon. “Unfortunately I can’t because it’s before the courts. That’s all I can say.”

Ford appears in a video recovered by police during the Project Traveller investigation, Blair said today after Ford’s friend and occasional driver Alexander Lisi was arrested on an extortion charge. Lisi is also facing drug charges laid previously.

Blair said a video seized during an investigation contains images of Ford that have been described by media outlets, an apparent reference to an alleged video that shows Ford smoking crack cocaine.

“We have recovered a digital video file, which is consistent with that which had previously been described in various media reports, and that file forms part of the evidence of the charge that we have laid today,” Blair said.

“I think it’s fair to say that the mayor does appear in that video, but I’m not going to get into the detail of what activity is depicted on that video,” said Blair, who added that he was disappointed at the contents of the video.

Blair made the shocking revelation Thursday, the same day court documents were released detailing some of the evidence police used to obtain search warrants for Lisi on drug charges.

A Toronto police news release issued shortly after’s Blair news conference alleges Lisi made “extortive efforts to retrieve a recording.”

Blair also said the video does not contain enough evidence to lay charges against Ford.

The documents released Thursday detail evidence police gathered in order to get a search warrant for Lisi, who is also known as Alessandro or Sandro, on drug charges. (Source: CBC News) http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/rob-ford-i-have-no-reason-to-resign-1.2303146

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Posted in: Ontario Tagged: Crack, Editorial Cartoon, Humpty Dumpty, mayor, Ontario, police, Rob Ford, Toronto
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