Canada: Is Toronto’s mayor a crackhead?

We have seen a cellphone video of what looks very much like Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack, said Robyn Doolittle and Kevin Donovan in the Toronto Star. After a source tipped us off last month, we met a Somali drug dealer who played us the video three times. While we have no way to authenticate the video, here’s what it appears to show: Ford sitting in a chair, “speaking in an incoherent and rambling manner, smoking what looks exactly like a crack pipe.” It was a “crystal clear” image, shot in bright afternoon light. Ford and a voice offscreen are talking about football and politics, and at one point Ford calls Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau “a fag.” The video ends when Ford glances over and says, “That phone better not be on.” The dealer wants $200,000 for the video, and the Toronto Star won’t pay. But an editor from the U.S. website Gawker.com, who also saw the video, is trying to raise the sum online.

“It is a staggering, astonishing story,” said Christie Blatchford in the National Post. Ford has presented himself as a gruff, authentic, regular guy—he still coaches high school football, even while holding the office of mayor. He was elected largely by Toronto’s outer suburbs to represent the interests of car-owning, conservative suburbanites who resented all their tax money going to urban improvements they never use. Heck, I voted for him. We thought we knew what we were getting, and we weren’t too upset over his previous gaffes, such as when he told bikers that “it’s their own fault” if they get killed cycling in a bike lane; said that only gays and intravenous drug users can get AIDS; and marveled at those “Orientals” who “work like dogs” and are “taking over.” We forgave him those rough edges. “But crack was never part of the deal.”

The Rob Ford story gets “more lurid by the day,” said Marcus Gee in The Globe and Mail. Ford has been accused of being drunk at public events and of groping a female politician—he denied both. In a 2010 conflict-of-interest trial, Ford was found to have misused city resources to raise money for his high school football charity. Last fall, he was removed from office for two months after a judge ruled that Ford had illegally voted to override the order that he pay the money back. Yet the crack story is the most serious—and Ford has said nothing except to call the allegation “ridiculous.” That’s not enough, said Chris Selley in the National Post, particularly since there’s also a photo circulating of Ford posing with “a since-murdered drug dealer.” He owes us an explanation.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Even aside from all his personal failings, Ford is just a rotten mayor, said the Toronto Star in an editorial. He has “bungled the big public issues, from waterfront development to transit.” He can’t push through his own agenda, such as it is—even his pet project of putting a casino downtown looks doomed to failure. Toronto needs leadership, and Ford is not providing it. His unwillingness—or inability—to provide answers to allegations about crack use is just further evidence of incompetence. “For the sake of the city, and for his own personal well-being, the mayor needs to step down.”