It was over a year ago that Sarah and I first heard about Rob Ford’s cocaine habit, and there have been a series of very strong hints since that we were onto something.

But yesterday evening, John Cook of the unabashed website Gawker posted probably the best evidence yet of Ford’s drug abuse. And what’s more, he’s standing behind everything he claims.

If you haven’t read the story yet, I’ll save you the trouble: some time within the last 6 months, Ford was caught on someone’s cell phone smoking crack with a group of people, chuckling at off-colour comments, and just generally being unmayorly.

The tale behind the video is a bit twisted, but basically the guy who shot it and showed it to John Cook wants to sell it for “six figures”, which makes me think it may never see the light of day (see additional comments below). But efforts are afoot nonetheless.

The Taiwanese animated news agency NMA took a few liberties with the story (plus a few other choice Ford incidents), but they’re not far off the mark:

Of course, Ford denied the whole thing right away, taking the opportunity to flaunt his ignorance and demonize the Toronto Star while simultaneously ignoring reporters’ comments that the story actually came via Gawker. But that’s par for the course for Robbie.

A little birdie told me that behind the scenes, Ford has issued a hefty bounty on whoever’s in possession of the video. Considering that one of the people in the recording, Anthony Smith (the guy on the left in the photo above), was gunned down outside a Toronto nightclub earlier this year, that bounty probably has an “alive or dead” rider.

Rumours are also flying that Ford is proving to be too much of an embarrassment to Harper’s Criminal, erm, Conservative dynasty, so Fordo is now feeling the squeeze from both ends. I’m sure Harper isn’t upset that Ford is a law-breaking, rude, incompetent scumbag, it’s that he’s making the Conservative tyranny look bad before it can accomplish its mission.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I don’t really give much of a toss whether or not Rob snorts coke or civet droppings, it’s the fact that he’s a mayor who is openly breaking the law left right and center (not to mention admitting to not knowing how to do his job), that’s the clincher.

It’s time for Ford to go (jail would be a good start), and to take the rest of his Conservative cronies with him.

Well, today’s his birthday, so that’s a good place to start. He turns 59 today, something to genuinely celebrate given the history of one of Toronto’s perennially peripheral figures.

Originally from England, in the early 80s Clarke suddenly found himself unemployed and decided to found the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, a group both vilified and praised for standing up for, or claiming to stand up for, the city’s poor.

Clarke doesn’t mince words or shy away from controversy, often staging demonstrations, sit-ins, and occupations to drive his message. He’s had run-ins with cops, politicians, and even the media aren’t particularly fond of him. Basically, he’s not in it for the popularity.

Although he’s not homeless, Clarke somehow manages to raise a family of two kids and a wife on a budget that verges on poverty. Prior to 1986, Clarke’s biggest investment was a vehicle — a 1980 Lada.

Clarke doesn’t like the word Marxist and instead prefers to call himself a socialist. Personally, I think the title of bellicose advocate for the poor is probably more appropriate– it’s certainly been his raison d’être.

And at the end of the day, even if you disagree with Clarke or his methods, you have to admire the man’s tenacity and willingness to stand up for justice. If the world only had more men like that in it, we’d all be leading much better lives.

Happy birthday, John.

You might be tempted to think that Ford is all about the populism (and being re-elected), what with his sticking fridge magnets on cars outside of an Etobicoke meeting and all. Or maybe he’s about SUBWAYS SUBWAYS SUBWAYS! Maybe it’s still about cutting the gravy at city hall?

Well, you’d be right to think that, but what our illustrious mayor is gunning for now is conservation of the beloved strip malls of his beloved Etobicoke; maybe even elsewhere.

To quote:

You can’t be tearing down this stuff, this is not downtown. This is Etobicoke … Personally speaking, I don’t support changing anything.

Ah yes, only Toronto is for tearing down. It’s not for such vast, beautiful, sweeping vistas as the Humbertown Shopping Centre.

No wonder Robbie doesn’t want such a marvel to be tossed aside like so much outsourced garbage:

But obviously, nothing is going to fly. So, if they want to propose something, an alternative, I’ll support the community. I support the taxpayers. What the taxpayers want, I’ll support.

Interestingly, the same meeting that Rob ran out of in order to put magnets on cars was the same one at which he made these statements.

David Price, Ford’s former high school football coach and his recently named director of operations and logistics, stood between Rob and reporters after the mayor said he would take no more questions, chuckling at the thought of Ford attending the taxpayers’ meeting:

I think if you’re going to watch the Hindenburg that is our country go up in a blazing ball of glory, it should at least be against a backdrop.

Maybe on a base of that special ruddy blush of our country’s French province, Quebec. Oh, they’re probably not implicated, but whoever it is thought it was clever to use the name Pierre Poutine. And Quebec doesn’t much care for Conservatives.

Nevertheless, it’s a pretty massive breach of electoral rules, and it basically makes the Harper government illegitimate. Little wonder they’re in no hurry to get to the bottom of things.

Oh, they’ll go after Joe Everydude before you can bat an eyelash, but then they turn around and “misplace” $3 billion dollars, and it’s basically just “oops!”

Harper had this to say:

The auditor general himself said today this has nothing to do with improper use of government money . . . There is some lack of clarity. The auditor general has made some suggestions on how we can be more clear in our tracking in the future.

So, basically, nothing’s wrong here, we just need to tweak a few (billion) things.

The audit people were in lock-step with the Prime Minister:

… audit officials chalk up the discrepancy to lax bookkeeping. The audit suggests several scenarios for what may have happened: the funding may have lapsed and never been spent; or it may have been spent on anti-terror efforts but reported as other program spending; or it may have been spent on program unrelated to security.

Basically, the money could have gone anywhere and been spent on literally anything.

The (Harper-appointed) auditor concluded:

We didn’t find anything that gave us cause for concern that the money was used in any way that it should not have been,

Nothing to see here!

That massive pile of cash that could’ve helped to pay for things like Toronto transit … better that that money just disappear and no, you aren’t allowed to ask any questions. Heil Harper!

Doug Ford didn’t like that TTC Chair Karen Stintz had some things to say about streetcars while visiting Cincinnati:

“She’s making it sound like everyone in Toronto loves streetcars. That’s how she’s making it sound, that everyone is Gung ho and it is the total opposite. The mayor won with a clear mandate from the people of Toronto to build subways and she’s gone, in my opinion, and sold a bill of goods that is inaccurate in my opinion.”

Of course, Dougie is fully entitled to his opinion, but based on the abject failures that comprise his own brother’s travels  (still waiting on all those Chicago jobs!), you’d think he might temper his criticism a bit.

But then again, these are the Fords we’re talking about and they aren’t really about “subways, subways, subways!”, or “casino, casino, casino!”, they’re about getting and retaining flunkies who will toe their line on any old issue they pull out of their ass. And, being the Fords, the naturally believe that women make the most natural and passive of subservient flunkies.

That’s not just the vitriol they hurl at Karen Stintz that tells me that; Lauren Strapagiel of Canada.com recently took up Robbie’s offer to teach her (and all women), about politics, as did Lisa Kirbie who not only received a response, but was kind enough to record it for posterity.

The über-brief, late-evening, and mostly one-sided conversation comprised of Ford advising Kirbie to get her name on the ballot, and at that time he’d give her more advice. In other words, make sure you’re running against Ford — become his opponent — and he will advise you on how best to defeat him.

Maybe I’m reading a bit between the lines here, but I’m getting the nagging feeling that the Ford brothers think that we’re all complete idiots (and extra on you ladies!)

Specifically, Stintz says that Ford is “abdicating his responsibility” (to Ford Nation: that means failing to do his job), by continually putting off on hearing about various transit funding options for the city (expected to need about $2 billion over 25 years).

The options, put forward by Metrolinx, include:

• Parking fees levy: An extra $1 a day, for a total of $1.4 billion a year.
• Sales tax: An extra 1 per cent added to the HST, for an estimated income of $1.4 billion a year.
• Fuel tax: An extra five cents per liter of gas, estimated to bring in $330 million a year.
• Payroll tax: With a hike of 0.5 per cent, this would be expected to generate $700 million a year.
• Property tax: Estimated to bring in an additional $670 million a year.
• Vehicle travel fee: Drivers would be charged 3 cents per kilometer traveled. Expected to raise $1.6 billion per year, but the setup and administrative costs would probably be massive (if this was even doable).
• Highway tolls: Same as above, but only on highways and at 10 cents a kilometre. Expected to pull in $1.4 billion a year.
• Development charges: Developers would be dinged with a 15 per cent increase, amounting to about $100 million a year.
• Transit fare increases: Guaranteed increases each and every year (in place now — thanks, Rob!), are apparently not nearly enough. An additional 15 cent per ride is expected to generate $50 million a year.
• Land value capture: This weird one has private land owners forking over cash to the government when their property values increase as a result of adjacent government projects (they build a park next door, claim that it makes your property more expensive, and skim the difference). No figures provided.

I’m not going to sit here and claim that any of these are giving me a boner, but with these few, short paragraphs, I’ve managed to do infinitely more research into the topic than Ford.

Maybe none of these ideas have any merit at all. Maybe some of them are quietly and not obviously brilliant. Rob Ford will never know as his only response is to obstinately stick his fingers in his ears, scream “I can’t hear you!”, and blame everyone and their dog for lack of planning, poor leadership, and a lack of momentum.

In the meantime, you can actually hear the paint dry as Robbie mulls over his own, intricate and vast transit plans, which comprise of:

• Casino: expected by Ford to pull in hundreds of millions, along with pixie dust and unicorns, and by those with any actual influence over it about $50 million.
• Casino: At woodbine!
• Casino: Downtown!
• Casino: At Cherry Beach!
• Casino: At the CNE!

Conservative minions, like the recently exposed scumbaggery of Harper’s appointment to the Human Rights Tribunal, Shirish Chotslis, are all pretty much cut from the same despicable, criminal, sociopathic cloth.

I have no doubt (see below), that the vast majority of Harper’s hand-picked cabinet would gleefully engage in exactly the same things as she did:

Chotalia treated staff and appointed members disgracefully: harassing, screaming, spying on staff; speaking to them and about them in derogatory terms; impugning their credibility in front of colleagues; and contaminating the workplace by sowing misinformation about them. She belittled and humiliated, frequently reducing employees to tears.

“The result was a poisoned atmosphere at the tribunal, a place that, ironically, is supposed to place respect of individuals at the very highest level,” Dion told reporters.

But it went even beyond that, to outright lunacy, the madness of entitlement.

On the day of her swearing-in-ceremony — which also happened to be the day that a magnitude-five earthquake struck Ottawa — Chotalia would not allow staff to leave their 11th-floor office, compelling everyone to stay where they were so that the ceremony could proceed as scheduled.

She ordered one employee to carry a set of keys to the office around her neck — like a latchkey — “despite the fact that this person complained that this caused discomfort and pain,” the report discloses. She indulged in petty retaliation. She ordered staff to spy on an employee while at work and to report that person’s movements and actions to her.

She repeatedly attempted to terminate a staff without justifiable cause and tried to pursue disciplinary action against another even after they left the CHRT.

She maintained a secret file on an employee, entitled “Insubordination,” even though that individual had never been advised of any problems. She demanded that staff be available around the clock, to corral her non-essential BlackBerry communications.

She accused staff of stealing items from her when unable to locate them, many witnesses stating Chotalia regularly lost these items.

She ordered staff not to cancel a trip to Vancouver for a mediation session, even though the parties involved had come to an agreement. She flew to the West Coast and then transferred to a San Diego-bound flight for a previously planned personal trip.

The list of insupportable conduct goes on and on.

When Ford was ousted for breaching the law for the umpteenth time in his Conflict of Interest trial, he responded with:

I was elected two years ago by the people of Toronto to do a job … This comes down to left-wing politics. The left wing wants me out of here, and they’ll do anything in their power to (do that).

In the fucked up world of the Harper conservative, it should be noted, unions are the same thing as the “lefties”, and that goes for anyone not supporting the tyrannical government or their agenda to sell out Canada and separate Canadians from not only their basic rights but from the very necessities of life.

But, of course, Harper can speak for himself:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says unions are behind a misinformation campaign about changes to the employment insurance program.

His comments came as Human Resources Minister Diane Finley admitted Thursday that the government hadn’t conducted studies on the potential impact of the reforms.

As protesters were kept away from the Premier Tech plant where Harper was announcing a $9.2 million loan, the prime minister pointed a finger at unions for creating some of the turmoil around changes to the program.

“I read that some unions were saying we’re cutting seasonal workers. That is completely false.”

And just so you know how Harper justifies his crackdowns:

… Harper said the [anti-terrorism] measures are supported by “law enforcement people” across the country, and the Tories have been promising the changes for a long time.

“We were elected specifically to move forward on them, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

There are also brown-nose trolls like Harper’s Goebbels-in-waiting, Vic Toews:

Toews’s department [while Minister of Labour], proposed the privatization of home-care delivery services in 1996, drawing opposition from many in the field and triggering an extended strike. He was also forced to deal with strikes at Boeing, Inco, and the Manitoba Lotteries Corporation, leading one journalist to describe 1996 as “the busiest year for picketing since the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike”. Toews blamed unions for provoking the strikes, saying they were conducted “for political, not economic, reasons.”

In explaining why Toews is vigorously backing the creation of a horrific police/Gulag state in Canada:

“We were elected to bring change.”

Seeing a running theme there? Same shit, same mentality, same results. It’s not in any way a stretch to think that Harper, Toews, Ford, or any other Conservative wraith aren’t treating their staff in exactly the same way, using the same excuses, refusing to find anything wrong with any of it, etc.

And just like all good corrupt Harperites, Chotslis was rewarded for her exemplary service to the government with a cushy new position in the private sector and a commitment by her Conservative buddies to refuse to discuss the matter or do anything about it.

The mainstream media are barely naming Bill S-7 (to be debated by MPPs today), and good luck finding anyone in the industry who will provide an accurate list of all the draconian, tyrannical measures that Harper is trying to institute in his “but it’s for terrorism!” bill.

Apparently, the fact that Canadians are to be subjected to the following measures doesn’t warrant so much as a passing comment from most in the news industry (though you can find an occasional aside):

• People may be put under “preventive arrest” for up to three days.
• The “preventive arrest” may be due to an alleged association with a “terrorist” (which may include everything from environmentalists to anyone critical of the government), alleged knowledge of a “terrorist” or their dealings, or — my favourite — being suspected of future involvement with terrorists.
• As with all good Kafkaesque schemes, those arrested are not allowed to know the details of their arrest or know any of the evidence against them.
• Those arrested must stand before an “investigative hearing”.
• A judge can jail those arrested for up to year if they don’t enter into recognizance, which is a fancy term for a conditional release — you have to appear regularly before a court, may have to wear a tracking device, etc.
• Such arrests can occur without any charges being laid. In other words, they don’t really even need a good reason, just that something didn’t seem right about the person.
• Any evidence that is used against the arrested person (which, of course, they are not allowed to know anything about), can be obtained from foreign sources or through torture.
• These changes would become part of the Criminal Code of Canada — everyone would be subject to them.

Instead of fully laying out all of these incredibly corrupting and corruptible powers for all Canadians to judge, we have moist bags of flesh like CP24’s former cop-turned-TV-schill Cam Wooley and other “specialists” (most of whom were weather or traffic “specialists” this time last year), leaving out crucial information and instead saying simply that S-7 provides needed new police powers and creates …

“… new offenses for Canadians who become radicalized … with the permission of the Attorney General, [police] can bring a person before a judge and have hearings. They’ll be able to have a lawyer, that sort of thing, but a judge can compel someone to give information on terrorism. Police can, apparently through a well safeguarded process book recognizance and conditions through the courts on someone to prevent terrorism.”

And in 30 seconds, the piddling report is over, followed shortly afterwards by an in-depth, five-minute-long interview with “cultural icon” Kat Con D about her new book. The same reporter who found S-7 “fascinating” now gushingly describes the book as a veritable “work of art”; clearly, this is what really matters!

Sarah and I were invited to sip and discuss the somewhat misnomer-ed Canadian Club Whisky (it’s American-owned although it has deep roots here), at a promotional event hosted at her old alma mater.

There was the traditional tasting of some of CC’s star products, straight up…

…and mixed…

I find the CC version of a 12-year-old to be less smooth than a comparable Macallan, but comparing pricey Scotch and North American whisky probably isn’t fair.

Not that it really matters much; I wouldn’t classify myself as a CC drinker (or whisky, for that matter), but I could definitely see myself ordering a few of the tasty drinks we sampled. The food, consisting of nibbles supplied by Tundra, was also great.

But probably the best part of the event was the fact that the Canadian Club Chairman was walking around, mingling, and generally making himself available to the guests.

If you don’t recognize him, maybe this will help:

He’s not shy to rub shoulders with the hoi polloi…

…or to bring his son to events…

Sarah and I caught up in person with Toronto’s social media scenesters, drank till we were glowing, and made friends with the caterers (you never know!)

We were also pleased to see a number local businesses being supported as part of Canadian Club’s campaign. Both inside and outside the great hall, these locals rounded off the manly inspiration behind the CC campaign with things like men’s cuts, personal grooming products, and suits.

Many thanks to Canadian Club and Praxis PR for having us and for the generous swag bags we lugged home.

Cheers!

Hey, the government’s just protecting everyone’s health, right? The shot (sure to become standard across Canada), is just the epitome of safety and efficacy after all…

…the federal government has recommended the HPV vaccination for girls and boys as young as 11. But it has caused thousands of adverse reactions, including seizures, paralysis, blindness, pancreatitis, speech problems, short-term memory loss, Guillain-Barré syndrome and even death.

“At present there are no significant data showing that either Gardasil or Cervarix (GlaxoSmithKline) can prevent any type of cervical cancer since the testing period employed was too short to evaluate long-term benefits of HPV vaccination,” according to the Annals of Medicine.

Referring to the information on the damage claims, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said, “This new information from the government shows that the serious safety concerns about the use of Gardasil have been well-founded.”

He added, “Public health officials should stop pushing Gardasil on children.”