Toronto mayor readies for ‘rumble’ at council meeting

OTTAWA, Canada – Toronto Mayor Rob Ford readied for a “rumble” Wednesday, November 13, over a motion asking him to step aside at his first council meeting since admitting he once smoked crack.

The motion by Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, which was moved to the top of the agenda by the mayor, asks him to take a leave.

It is largely symbolic as the city council does not have the power to oust the democratically-elected mayor.

But Minnan-Wong has signalled he would amend it to ask a reluctant province of Ontario to step in and remove Ford if he still refused to leave.

“We need to do the right thing. We need to pass this motion encouraging the mayor to take a leave of absence…,” Minnan-Wong said Wednesday.

Ford has vowed to stay on, telling reporters on Wednesday that the fight over Minnan-Wong’s motion would be “a rumble in the jungle.”

A new survey, meanwhile, showed 76 percent of Toronto residents want the mayor to resign or take a temporary leave of absence.

More than 40 percent of them said he should quit and never return to politics, while 35 percent of the 600 Toronto residents surveyed from November 7 to November 11 by Ipsos Reid for local media said he should step aside temporarily and seek treatment for drug and alcohol abuse.

The remaining 24 percent said Ford should keep his job and let voters decide his fate in the next municipal election in October 2014.

The poll, with a 4.6 percent margin of error, marks a major shift in public opinion which had been strongly behind the mayor and his tax-cutting agenda. — Rappler.com