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Rob Ford's Toronto

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malvern2 said:
Pretty much sums up why Rob Ford should win this election...as someone who works on Bay street i can tell you those in my firm are firmly behind RF's direction.
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Why would a Bay Street firm want Toronto to go belly up? That doesn't mean you'll automatically be a part of Wall Street, you know.
 
^Ditto for me and I can't think of anyone I work with who has admitted to voting for Ford. The only supporter of Ford's I can think of (among the several hundred people in my office) is a suburbanite who hates Toronto, and even that guy doesn't actually try to defend Ford's actions. Nowadays this colleague just laughs at the city for hating the guy it elected.
 
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There's a movement brewing to make a major demonstration around the time that Ford's conflict of interest case goes to trial. I think that a Nathan Phillips Square full of Torontonians who demand accountability and demand a Mayor that represents all of Toronto can be pretty persuasive to the judge hearing the case.

I'll notify Urban Toronto should this movement pass the embryonic stage.
 
Riverdale Rink Rat said:
Funny, I worked on Bay Street as well, and we pretty much all thought he was an embarassment. I guess it takes all kinds.
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I work on Bay street and, while a few people around me are still pro-Ford, they are mainly the younger guys who still have very little perspective on how the world works.
 
bobbob911 said:
I work on Bay street and, while a few people around me are still pro-Ford, they are mainly the younger guys who still have very little perspective on how the world works.
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I know a few of these guys too. They commute from the 'burbs and have openly stated that they don't care what happens to downtown because they are only there when they work.
 
Rob Ford has his Coleman A. Young moment:

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/cit...-ford-says-gang-members-should-leave-the-city

Scarborough shooting: Mayor Rob Ford says gang members should leave the city
Published on Wednesday July 18, 2012

Mayor Rob Ford visits the scene of Monday night's shooting on Danzig St. in Toronto on Tuesday. He says now the solution is to get gangsters out of the city permanently.

Daniel Dale
Urban Affairs Reporter

Responding to the shooting Monday night that killed two people and wounded 23, Mayor Rob Ford called Wednesday for Toronto’s gang members to leave the city.

“It just tore my heart apart. And I just thought, this is not the city that we live in, this is — I was mad. More than upset, I was mad. I said, ‘Enough’s enough.’ I’m lookin’ around, and I said, ‘I’m not gonna sit here, I’m gonna be proactive.’ I talked to the premier, got a hold of the premier, called the prime minister’s office, I said, ‘I want meetings. I want something to be done.’ I want these people out of the city. And I’m not going to stop. Not put ’em in jail, then come back and you can live in the city. No. I want ’em out of the city. Go somewhere else. I don’t want ’em living in the city anymore,” Ford said.
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"I issue a warning to all those pushers, to all rip-off artists, to all muggers: It’s time to leave Detroit; hit Eight Mile Road! And I don’t give a damn if they are black or white, or if they wear Superfly suits or blue uniforms with silver badges. Hit the road." - Coleman A. Young
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Great, there's a solution. Let them go shoot up some other place. Brilliant and forward-thinking.:rolleyes:
 
Great, so the village idiot thinks we can deport all the gang members. I guess no one who was born and raised in Canada would ever join a gang. And oops, big surprise, he gets something wrong ...
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/cit...ttawa-s-help-to-deport-convicted-gang-members
Mayor Rob Ford says he will ask the prime minister to look at using “immigration laws” to banish convicted gang members from Toronto.

Ford first made the unusual banishment proposal in a CP24 interview on Wednesday afternoon. In that interview, he did not make it clear whether he was seeking legislative reform or merely asking convicts to voluntarily leave town.

In a second interview on Wednesday evening, he indicated that he wants changes in federal law. Asked by AM640’s Arlene Bynon how convicts could be kept from living here, he said: "I don't know, and that's what I'm going to sit down with the prime minister and find out, how our immigration laws work."

The police have not publicly said that the shooting Monday in Scarborough was perpetrated by immigrants. Ford did not elaborate on the connection he sees between gang violence and immigration, and he did not explain how he believes immigration laws might factor into his proposal.

Ford appeared in Scarborough on Thursday to meet with residents whose basements were flooded this weekend. He ignored a reporter who twice asked him to clarify whether he wants gang members deported or sent to other Canadian municipalities.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government proposed legislation aimed at “foreign criminals” in June. The “Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act” would prevent non-citizen permanent residents who have served jail sentences of six months or more from appealing deportation orders. At present, they can appeal if they have served sentences of less than two years.

The suggestion of exiling Toronto gang members to other municipalities is nearly certain to be a non-starter.

“We don’t generally restrict people’s physical liberty once they’ve served their sentence. And restrictions on their freedom of movement have to be closely tailored to the objective of the law,” said Bruce Ryder, a constitutional law expert who teaches at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School.

Ryder twice broke into laughter when discussing Ford’s proposal. He said its objective is hard to ascertain — and that the proposal raises a “whole series of cascading questions” about who would be banished, for how long, for what offences, what cities they would be prohibited from, and what would be accomplished by sending them elsewhere.

“If there is a significant risk, aren’t we just shifting it to other places? Will gangs just decide to no longer engage in criminal activity if they can’t be in certain places, or will they just shift to smaller centres? I mean, is this a kind of urban NIMBYism on a grand scale?”

Ford was the lone member of council to vote against $16 million in community grants last week. He told Bynon that such social spending is not effective as a solution to youth violence.

“It’s a proven fact that when we had the most murders in the city, it was the same time that we had the most grants. I think we handed out over $50 million that year in grants. Throwing money at the problem, and having these, I call ‘hug-a-thug programs,’ they just do not work,” he said.

Ford’s stated “fact” is incorrect. Homicides peaked in 2007, with 86. The Community Partnership and Investment Program, which handles grants, had a budget of about $42 million that year. CPIP’s budget rose in future years as homicides dropped steadily; it gave out a high of $47 million in grants in 2011, when the city recorded 48 homicides, the fewest since amalgamation.
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