Globe & Mail Article: Toronto Ombudsman Finds Mayor Rob Ford Is A Racist Tried To Rig Civic Appointments!!
The Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Sep. 27 2012, 12:57 PM EDT
Last updated Thursday, Sep. 27 2012, 3:43 PM EDT
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is disputing the findings of a new report from the city’s ombudsman that alleges his office interfered in the civic appointments process, including asking bureaucrats to remove a line from newspaper advertisements seeking “diverse” candidates.
The report describes how unnamed employees of the mayor’s office meddled in the way the municipal government selects ordinary citizens to sit on some 120 boards, including the boards of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, the Toronto Parking Authority, the Toronto Police Services Board and the Toronto Public Library Board.
The mayor’s office first asked for post-election recruitment to be postponed, then demanded it be condensed into such a short time-frame that candidates could not be screened properly, according to the report from Toronto ombudsman Fiona Crean.
“It will look to cynics as if the fix is already in for appointments and the process is just for show,” an unnamed bureaucrat wrote to the city manager in a June 9, 2011 e-mail, expressing concerns about the tight timeline.
“We now have a governance process that is no longer based on any recognizable principles.”
Mr. Ford said Thursday that he “didn’t interfere in any process.”
“I’ve actually cleaned up the process that we had before. It’s a very clean and above board transparent process and it went very well,” the mayor told reporters after a ground-breaking ceremony for a new aquatics centre in Scarborough.
The report also found that the mayor’s office directed that recruitment ads not be placed in the Toronto Star, a newspaper with which the mayor and his councillor brother Doug Ford have a long-running feud.
“The [City manager’s office] informed my investigator that when they raised this with the Mayor’s staff, they were told that ‘we do not like the Star,’” the report says.
The mayor’s office denies it asked that the ad be kept out of the Star, according to the report.
In the end, recruitment advertisements appeared only in the National Post, Toronto Sun and Metro.
One of the goals of the city’s appointments policy is to fill boards with qualified citizens of different genders and racial and ethnic backgrounds, a subject on which the municipal government keeps careful statistics.
The report suggests the mayor’s office tried to undermine that goal.
“[City Manager’s Office] staff informed my investigator that they were asked by the Mayor’s Office to remove the statement in the advertisement that encouraged applicants from the City’s diverse population to apply. Staff refused to do so,” according to the report.
Mr. Ford said that was not true. “No, that’s not what happened,” he said, adding it was city staff, not his political staff that did not “reach out in terms of diversity.”
Asked if he was against diversity, Mr. Ford laughed. “That’s a ridiculous question,” he said.
According to a “diversity summary” of public appointments, 70 per cent of the citizens selected for boards under the Ford administration were white — the same percentage as in the second term of his predecessor, David Miller.
More men were tapped under Mr. Ford (70 per cent) than during Mr. Miller’s second term (53 per cent).
However, more applications actually flooded in under Mr. Ford than under Mr. Miller. The city received 1,927 applications for 167 positions in 2011-2012, up from 1,316 applications for 125 posts in 2007-2010.
At least one candidate with a serious conflict-of-interest nearly slipped through the laxer-than-usual process, Ms. Crean wrote.
In that case, the report describes an acrimonious closed-door meeting of the civic appointments committee at which an unnamed councillor pointed at staff and said, “I’m going to get you,” and added that bureaucrats had other councillors fooled, but not him.
“Some staff described the panel chair’s manner as ‘threatening.’ One staff described the process as ‘gruelling’ and ‘humiliating,’” according to the report.
The trouble apparently began when someone pointed out at a Nov. 16, 2011 meeting that a candidate who had previously been marked as qualified actually had a conflict-of-interest – he was an agent who appeared frequently before the adjudicative committee on which he was seeking a seat.
When the issue was raised, the same unnamed male councillor who allegedly threatened staff asked for those concerns to be put in writing. But a letter never surfaced.
The alleged threats from the councillor – who was also the panel nominating chair – came at the next meeting of the civic appointments committee, which was Jan. 16, 2012, although that date is not specified in the report.
Only one board was dealt with at both the Nov. 16 and Jan. 16 meetings: The Sign Variance Committee, whose nominating panel was chaired by Ford ally Giorgio Mammoliti.
Mr. Mammoliti said Thursday that he asked for such a letter at the Nov. 16 meeting, but he said he did not know if he was the councillor identified in the report.
He “unequivocally” denied threatening staff at the meeting. “Never in my 23 years in politics have I used that kind of language,” Mr. Mammoliti said in an interview Thursday.
The chair of the civics appointment committee, Frances Nunziata, said she did not recall any member of the committee upbraiding staff as described in the report.
Ms. Nunziata, the council speaker and a Ford supporter, said the mayor’s office did not tamper with her committee’s choices.
“Every decision that was made was done at the committee … I’m not aware of any interference or direction from the mayor’s office,” she said.
The ombudsman’s finding prompted harsh criticism from the councillors who chaired the civic appointments committee in Mr. Miller’s second term.
Councillor Adam Vaughan, a staunch critic of the mayor, said members of the current committee should be fired at mid-term and replaced with a new slate of councillors.
“I just don’t think they’ve done their jobs,” said Mr. Vaughan, chair of the committee in the second half of Mr.Miller’s last term.
Councillor Janet Davis, who chaired the committee in the first half of the same term, said Mr. Miller and his staff stayed out of the process. She called the alleged meddling by Mr. Ford’s staff “unprecedented and inappropriate.”
“The interference from the mayor’s office so compromised this process that we need to make sure that there are new guidelines and practices to stop it in future,” she said.
Ms. Crean and two of the city’s four accountability officers — the integrity commissioner and the lobbyist registrar — are locked in a battle with budget chief Mike Del Grande, an ally of Mr. Ford.
Citing their need to remain independent from city council, they have refused to provide a line-by-line accounting of their budget requests for 2013, according to Mr. Del Grande.
“The three of them, led by the ombudsman, are very, very concerned about their independence. I pointed out to them that it really doesn’t have anything to do with their independence per se, it’s reviewing their numbers,”he said.
Ms. Crean was ill and not available for interviews Thursday.
With a report from Elizabeth Church.
Toronto Star Slams Arrogant Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Says He Is A Disgrace & Should Be Thrown Out Of Office!!!
Rob Ford has made a fool of his supporters
What is there left to say about Rob Ford, a man so befuddled be can make good deeds look bad?
The mayor’s performance in court this week was a personal humiliation for him, a disgrace for the city.
What emerged was a portrait of man whose only defence is his own self-professed ignorance.
Whether Ford is as profoundly unaware of the world as he lets on is something the judge will have to decide, but faced with potentially career-ending conflict-of-interest charges, the mayor either had nothing to say or couldn’t remember.
Indeed, it has become frighteningly clear that the man elected to run the largest city in Canada has the attention span of a gnat, and even less curiosity.
He has no apparent understanding of something as basic as the law, let alone conflict of interest. In his mind, good intentions, as long as they are his own, are enough.
That’s why Rob Ford must go. Even if Justice Charles Hackland of the Ontario Superior Court were to dismiss the charges, the mayor has squandered the moral authority needed to run and represent the city.
Ford, who has made no secret of his contempt for process, can no longer continue as mayor.
Though Hackland won’t have to worry about a pattern of behaviour that goes back to the beginning of Ford’s career, the public will be more nuanced in its conclusions.
Ford has made a fool of his supporters, as much as himself. His indifference to rules of conduct comes out of his indifference to the larger political system — democracy itself, which he seems to assume means being popular.
Some worry that the judge ought not to interfere in something as sacred as democratic values, but that’s precisely why he must.
Ignorance itself isn’t illegal, of course, but when it’s so willful and brazen, it cannot go unchallenged. We have no choice but to question the chief magistrate’s decision to remain in a state of intellectual darkness when it affects his ability to fulfill his duties.
On the other hand, this is no MFP scandal. This case isn’t about greed or corruption. In fact, no one has ever accused Ford of being corrupt: He isn’t and doesn’t need to be.
As laudable as his motives might have been, however, his methods were anything but. Hitting up city hall lobbyists for one’s personal charity is obviously unacceptable — not to mention stupid — even if the reason was to “save kids’ lives.”
Ford then ignored repeated requests from Toronto’s integrity commissioner to repay the money, and spoke and voted at the council meeting debating the issue
The mayor’s largely legalistic defence has skirted the real issue — Ford’s unwillingness and/or inability to play by the rules.
But that’s why his supporters love him; he’s the anti-politician come in from the cold to rewrite the game. Guilty or not, he can’t lose. In their eyes, he’s forever innocent.
Ford’s fans forget that he is a politician, and after 12 years on council, a veteran, a careerist, son of a politician and brother to another.
Hackland’s judgment won’t be handed down for weeks; in the meantime, Ford has been rendered impotent, his mayoralty irrelevant. City council long ago wrested control of the agenda from his office, so his absence, real or political, will have little impact.
On the other hand, Ford’s unprecedented crassness has left city hall in a place it’s never been before.
Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca
Shocking News: Parti Quebecois Leader Pauline Marois Escapes Violence After Winning Quebec Election One Person Is Dead!!!
Graeme Hamilton | Sep 5, 2012 12:15 AM ET | Last Updated: Sep 5, 2012 1:19 AM ETMore from Graeme Hamilton | @grayhamilton
Television reports showed the suspect being led to a cruiser and shouting in French, “The English are waking up” and in English, “payback.” He was wearing a balaclava and appeared unbalanced. Police investigators could be seen handling a rifle found on the scene.
“We don’t know the reasons behind this event,” Montreal police spokesman Danny Richer told reporters, saying investigators would meet with the suspect. He did not say who the shooting victims were.
PQ officials initially attributed the incident to a smoke bomb, and Ms. Maroiseventually returned to continue her speech.
The attack came shortly after Ms. Marois, who was elected Premier by a narrow margin, had stoked the crowd with talk of achieving sovereignty. “We want a country, and we will have it” she said to cheers.
With files from National Post staff
Gayblackcanada 