The Mayor of Toronto (Image: Christopher Drost)
The verdict came as a bit of a shock. This morning, the Ontario Divisional Court delivered a unanimous decision supporting Rob Ford’s appeal in the conflict of interest case that could’ve permanently terminated his tenure as Toronto’s mayor. Now he gets one full weekend of rest before he grapples with his next potentially career-ending legal problem: the audit into his 201o mayoral campaign financing. Really, it’s pure Rob Ford—brutishly blundering from one near-death political experience to the next. This is the guy, after all, whose election campaign had to deal with a taped offer to get oxycontin for a provocateur and revelations of a DUI and pot possession in the space of just a few weeks. Through it all, though, Ford keeps winning. What’s next for Toronto and its teflon mayor? Here, three scenarios that could play out at city hall in the wake of Ford’s rebirth.
Read the rest of this entry »
A raft of new polls on the provincial election race is showing the same thing over and over: where once it looked like Tim Hudak could win the election in a cakewalk, it now appears there is a genuine race to form government in Ontario (in one poll, by polling firm Forum Research, only five points separated Hudak from Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty, with NDP leader Andrea Horwath running a strong third). But there is one player who’s noticeable because of the surprisingly weak effect he’s having on the race—Toronto’s mayor, Rob Ford. 
It looks as though Mayor Rob Ford’s Sheppard subway extension plan might be getting some more love from the people who want to be the next premier than from the guy who currently holds the job. Ford met with NDP leader Andrea Horwath yesterday, and while they came out of the meeting without any firm commitment from the NDP to fund Toronto’s transit system, they did make some pretty positive noises. 
