Toronto Rob Ford overspent on campaign by more than $40,000, an audit released Friday afternoon revealed. A panel is now looking at the results that could eventually see him removed from office. But any observer of the gladiatorial municipal sphere knows that it’s hard to get rid of a mayor: The magic ingredient is stick-to-it-iveness. Walking along the Annex, I came across a crumpled sheet of paper in a pile of slush outside Clayton Ruby’s law office. A few items were crossed out in evident frustration. Others were furiously underlined. The paper was titled “ORDER OF BUSINESS.”
- Sue him for conflict of interest.
- Sue him for general lack of interest.
- Sue him for constant conflict.
- Audit his campaign expenses.
- Audit his lunch expenses.
- Audit his mind.
- Audit his soul.
- Appeal!!
- Complain to the integrity commissioner.
- Change that law to let the integrity commissioner take other “other actions”: remedies; fines; exile.
- Give the ombudsman a Taser.
- Appeal his existence at OMB.
- Listen to his show on the radio. Complain to CRTC until black helicopters arrive.
- Complain to Supreme Court.
- Complain to Landlord-Tenant tribunal.
- Complain to PETA.
- Say that, because his election platform was nonsense, everything since then has been a nullity.
- Gerrymander his house out of Toronto.
- He was born in Kenya.
- He was born downtown.
- Hanging chads???
- Over-water the plants at City Hall; whisper the horticulturalists are moving against him.
- Tell Giorgio Mammoliti we know who tapped his phones, but can only tell him in secret code: Ob-ray Ord-fay.
- Invite him to “really good house party” in Sudbury but give him the wrong street address.
- Lose him in a cornrow maze.
- Insist he sign in every day.
- Create a Potemkin football league for him.
- Tell him council’s feeling tired, and will probably just stay in until 2014.
- Call every day for the next two years, asking him to inspect a pile of dirt in North York that somehow changes address every day.
- $5 cover charge on council meetings.
- Throw Pride parade every month. Hold council meetings exclusively on a float going up and down Church St.
- Gay premier. [triple underline; checkmark]
- Make him bet his job on the Leafs.
- Make him bet his job on the Raptors.
- Make him bet his job on the Jays.
- Make him bet his job that he can fund a $2 billion a year in transit funding through private-public partnerships.
- Rock-Paper-Scissors.
- Game of riddles; all answers drawn from the municipal code of conduct.
- Early retirement: Argos mascot.
- Engineer Senate appointment.
- Goodwill visit to Chris Hadfield.
- Form production company; stage “Mayor Swap” reality show with Calgary.
- Stage an intervention with 2.5 million people.
- Delay him with a pile of “Mayor Seed” at the foot of a cliff; drop an anvil from the top.
- Paint a black tunnel entrance onto a rock face with a sign saying “SUBWAY HERE”; hope he can’t magically go through it.
- Rocket-powered roller-skates.
- Make him a folk hero until he cracks under the weight of his Nation’s expectations.
- Let him render his title and office irrelevant to every significant policy decision until he vanishes from public view.
- Lie in wait for him to make a mistake and then scour the law to find some way, any way to remove him from office, dragging the city’s entire bureaucratic, legal, media and political apparatus along with it.
- Wait until the election and beat him.