Ottawa

Crack cocaine is a bad thing

Tease the day: Everyone can agree that winners don’t do drugs, right?

Chris Young/CP

No matter what comes of the scandal suffocating Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s office, and whether or not he actually has substance abuse issues, and no matter how effectively or poorly he governs the city between now and the next election, everyone watching the saga unfold—friend or foe to the mayor, interested citizen or disinterested observer—would probably support Gawker editor John Cook’s final words in a post he published yesterday.

“Don’t do crack,” wrote Cook. That proclamation, the final sentence in a post announcing the apparent disappearance of a video that apparently shows Ford smoking crack cocaine, doesn’t represent some paradigm shift in how anyone thinks about drugs. Crack cocaine isn’t celebrated very widely as a pinnacle of human achievement. But if the video really has gone underground, and if it really never does see the light of day, and if Ford’s ongoing denials carry the day, then a public-service message is all that’s left.

Certainly, that won’t be good enough for the mayor’s legions of critics, and they might just have to wait until 2014 for their revenge.


What’s above the fold this morning?

The Globe and Mail leads with Ontario’s plan to cut the number of graduating teachers and double the length of their teaching degrees. The National Post fronts the iconic “woman in red” who has galvanized Turkish protesters in recent days. The Toronto Star goes above the fold with Ontario teachers taking sick days they can no longer bank, leaving large gaps for schools to fill. The Ottawa Citizen leads with more Canadian Forces National Investigation Service probes into military leaks to journalists. iPolitics fronts gun lobbyists’ support for the federal government’s reluctance to sign a global arms trade treaty. CBC.ca leads with Senator Mike Duffy’s absence at nearly half the committee meetings he was scheduled to attend since his appointment. CTV News leads with the Syrian government’s claim to have “cleansed” the rebel-held town of Qusair. National Newswatch showcases Tim Harper’s column in the Toronto Star that muses about the leadership ambitions of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, who’s stayed out of the fray during the Duffy-Wright affair.


Stories that will be (mostly) missed

1. Veterans. The father of an Afghan war veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder says the military chain of command gets in the way of an open dialogue about vets’ mental health. 2. Ashley Smith. Heather Magee, a middle manager at the Kitchener, Ont., institution where Ashley Smith died of suicide in 2007, apologized—in tears—to Smith’s family for their loss.
3. RMC. The feds are taking a more active role in appointing the next principal of the Royal Military College, a departure from past tradition that saw academic faculty contribute to the process. 4. Alberta MPs. When Alberta’s federal ridings are redrawn, incumbent MPs could face off for nominations—including three who could run in the same Edmonton-area constituency.

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