Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story (21 page)

Ford brushed off the Foulidises’ demand for an apology. George Foulidis, on behalf of his family, filed a six-million-dollar defamation suit against Ford just before the election. Representing Foulidis was Brian Shiller, a litigator with the boutique law firm Ruby Shiller Chan Hasan.

Yes, that Ruby.

(And for the real conspiracy theorists, Shiller was the lawyer who negotiated Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler’s twentythousand-dollar settlement with Toronto police after his wrongful detention.)

NINE DAYS AFTER CLAYTON RUBY
announced that “sorry” wasn’t an adequate response to breaking municipal conflict-of-interest laws, news got around that Rob Ford had hired one of Canada’s most skilled and expensive lawyers to defend him. Alan Lenczner was a sixty-nine-year-old living legend known for his
ego, creativity in the courtroom, and ability to win when a loss seems unavoidable. As retired Supreme Court of Canada judge Ian Binnie explained the night Lenczner was named Ontario’s civil litigator of the year, “He is the lawyer you go to when your goose is just about cooked.” Lenczner’s former clients included Conrad Black and one half of the feuding McCain brothers of french-fry fame. When the Fords recruited Lenczner, it was the first indication that the conflict-of-interest business might be more than a media stunt.

The morning of the trial, September 5, 2012, saw reporters lined up outside the court building at 361 University Avenue long before the doors opened at 8
A.M.
Courtroom 6-1 is supposedly the largest in Ontario, and every seat was occupied, as journalists, Ford-watchers, university kids, and city staff crammed inside. Chaleff-Freudenthaler was there too, off and on.

Ruby’s team arrived first. Then Lenczner’s. They unpacked their legal boxes with gusto, smiling and relaxed, obviously anxious to get in the ring. The mayor looked less enthused. He wore a dark suit, geometric-patterned tie, and blue shirt. He seemed anxious. He sat at one of the front tables and immediately pulled out a pen with which to fidget. His newly minted chief of staff, Mark Towhey, press secretary, George Christopoulos, and brother Doug sat with him. Hearing the case would be Ontario Superior Court Justice Charles Hackland, who was brought in from Ottawa to avoid any perception of bias. At sixty-one, Hackland was the senior regional judge in his area—one of eight in the province—and the go-to choice for politically sensitive cases. “In most disputes both sides are happy to get him because they know they’re going to get a good hearing,” Ottawa defence lawyer Mark Ertel told the
Star
.

Hackland won over the media when he announced that “Twittering” would be allowed. Audio recording was also approved for the purposes of accuracy in reporting, not broadcast, but there would be no photography, which is standard, or phone calls, obviously.

Ruby was up first. He set the stage with a quick rehash of the MFP scandal—“Toronto has suffered from the activities of lobbyists”—then cast Rob Ford as a character who delighted in flouting the rules. The mayor, Ruby said, would argue that he’d made an honest mistake and that he hadn’t realized he was in a conflict-of-interest situation. But how could someone with twelve years of experience on city council argue he didn’t know the rules? “Mayor Ford wants this hearing to be about the kids and the good work he does by directing donations to the high school football teams that work with them. That is not what this hearing is about.… The only person hurt in all of this was Rob Ford. He had to pay back the money to publicly correct his breach of city integrity and he just did not want to do that.”

Lenczner’s turn. “My submissions to you at the end of the case will be more about the law.” His defence strategy hinged on a complicated legal dance around jurisdiction. Lenczner explored how the three sets of rules in the case—the City of Toronto Act, the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, and council’s Code of Conduct—worked together and how they didn’t. Two gave council authority to punish rule breakers, but the penalties outlined in each of those were different. One said council could only hand down a reprimand or suspend pay, the other gave five additional options, including “repayment or reimbursement of moneys received.” Lenczner argued that council referred to the wrong set of rules. And so, if council
didn’t have the authority to make Ford repay $3,150, it didn’t matter what he did later on. And just in case Hackland didn’t buy that argument, Lenczner fell back on an “error in judgment.” Ford would testify that he didn’t realize he was in a conflict of interest. (If Judge Hackland believed there was an honest mistake, or that the amount of money was too small to influence him, he could let Ford off.)

At 10:51
A.M
., Robert Bruce Ford put his hand on a Bible and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Things got tense in a hurry. As Ruby grilled him, Ford kept coming back to the same rehearsed statement: “How I define a conflict of interest is if it’s both financially beneficial to the city and financially beneficial to myself or there’s a financial interest with the city and a financial interest with myself.”

Ruby challenged him on this, noting that in Ford’s twelve years on council he had a duty to be well aware of the rules. Ford had been elected four times—in 2000, 2003, 2006, and 2010— therefore, he’d sworn a declaration four times to “disclose any pecuniary interest direct or indirect in accordance with the MCIA.”

Ford testified that he had never read the councillor handbook and didn’t even remember getting one. And he had never attended orientation as a councillor, because “some councillors like myself … the son of an MPP, knows how the provincial government works and knows how City Hall works and knows how the federal government works, so I didn’t think I needed to attend.”

RUBY:
“What steps if any [did you take] to find out what the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act required of you?”

FORD:
“None.”

RUBY:
“None, that’s your answer?”

FORD:
“Yes.”

At one point, Ruby read Ford a passage from the Conflict of Interest Act. When a member of council had a “pecuniary interest direct or indirect in any matter,” read Ruby, they should “disclose the interest” and “not take part” in the “discussion” or “vote.”

RUBY:
“You’re familiar with that?”

FORD:
“I’ve never read that before.”

RUBY:
“You had to have read that before. That’s the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act.”

FORD:
“I’ve never read this before.”

The courtroom erupted in giggles.

Judge Hackland: “Excuse me, we don’t need any outbursts. Thank you.”

Ford changed his shirt during the lunch break. But things didn’t get any better for the mayor. By the time the trial ended, most legal experts were predicting that Judge Hackland was not going to buy the “honest mistake” argument. The “insignificant amount” exception was also dead in the water, because other Ontario politicians had been kicked out for far less and Ford himself had testified that he thought $3,150 was a significant amount of money. As for Lenczner’s assertion that the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act somehow didn’t apply to all code of conduct violations, well, “that’s ridiculous,” said one prominent lawyer I was consulting at the time. Lenczner’s final gambit,
that Ford’s vote in his own favour on February 7 didn’t matter because council should never have imposed the fine in the first place, was interesting but still a long shot.

Hackland promised a quick decision and was true to his word. On November 22, 2012—less than three months after the hearing—an email went out to reporters: Hackland had reached a decision. It would be released Monday morning.

On November 26, dozens of journalists lined up outside the clerk’s office at 361 University. We killed time rehashing the case and speculating on the ruling. “Do you think he’ll actually be removed?” we asked each other, over and over again. Most, myself included, were skeptical.

Shortly after 10
A.M.
, a court staffer—with an excellent poker face—emerged carrying a stack of papers that came up to her chin. We pounced like jackals. The
Star
was second in line. I grabbed mine and flipped to the back.

Page 23: “I declare the seat of respondent, Robert Ford, on Toronto City Council, vacant.”

“Whoa. He’s gone,” I said.

The mandatory removal provision was “a very blunt instrument,” the judge wrote, but there was no wiggle room. He did not buy Lenczner’s argument that the act didn’t apply; he believed council had broad authority to impose a financial penalty; and he rejected the “error in judgment” claim.

“There must be some diligence on the respondent’s part; that is, some effort to understand and appreciate his obligations. Outright ignorance of the law will not suffice, nor will wilful blindness as to one’s obligations,” he wrote.

Everyone—journalists, councillors, the Twittersphere, even Ford himself, according to sources—was shocked. It wasn’t that
people thought it was the wrong decision; it was that few thought a judge would take the political risk. Reaction was mixed, but most seemed to think Ford had brought it on himself.

Wrote Marcus Gee from
The Globe and Mail
, “Rob Ford says ‘left-wing politics’ are to blame for his ouster as mayor of Toronto. Nonsense. This wound was entirely self-inflicted. If he had paid even the slightest attention to the rules—if he had even bothered to learn them—he would not be in the fix he is today.”

Others were uncomfortable with the fact that an elected mayor had been removed by a judge because of a few thousand dollars. Said Simon Kent of the
Toronto Sun
, “The judiciary being asked to decide a matter involving an amount of petty cash going to charity is taking an elephant gun to hunt a field mouse.… This matter should have been decided at City Hall. It was not a serious or systemic case of corruption under investigation, just one man’s vote.”

The next day, the
Toronto Star
ran a profile of Chaleff-Freudenthaler. “History will write him up as a hero,” said left-wing city councillor Joe Mihevc, who had known him since he was a kid.

Shaken, Ford spoke to a horde of reporters camped outside his office. “It’s more disappointing than surprising.… I’m going to appeal it and carry on with my job. I’m a fighter.” Ontario Superior Court Justice Gladys Pardu agreed to let him keep his job until that appeal was settled. Those close to Ford, including staff, confidants, and allies on council, say he was devastated and convinced he would never win his appeal. “I know the stress affected him,” said Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday.

BACK IN MID-NOVEMBER
, when Ford was waiting for Judge Hackland to render his decision, the mayor was dealing with a different matter at another University Avenue courthouse. The libel suit launched by restaurateur George Foulidis had made it to trial. This time, Ford was being represented by Toronto lawyer Gavin Tighe.

Tighe’s battle plan was to argue that the law gave politicians considerable leeway to speak freely on controversial issues with significant public interest. In his opening arguments, Tighe said, “It is critical, in my submission, to a free and democratic society that people know frankly where candidates stand on issues.” This time, Ford’s team would use the MFP case to its advantage. “We can’t divorce ourselves from the historical perspective,” Tighe said. “All of this comes in light of the Bellamy report and the MFP scandal, where sole-source contracts and non-competitive bid processes dealing with the City of Toronto were the subject of substantial political and public issue.”

Taking him on was Clayton Ruby’s colleague Brian Shiller, a highly regarded constitutional lawyer in his own right, with a hefty résumé of libel and defamation experience.

Shiller painted his client, George Foulidis, as a hard-working entrepreneur who became a political football during a divisive election campaign. His business had suffered. His family was being harassed. Strangers would show up at the restaurant wearing T-shirts that said “Bribe.” All so Rob Ford could score political points. “Mr. Foulidis was left with no choice but to go public” following the “blatant attacks on his integrity,” Shiller said. The plaintiff gave emotional testimony. In tears, Foulidis said, “My wife was distraught over it … my daughter was ten at the time. She asked me if I had done anything wrong.”
Referring to the
Sun
’s article in which Ford was quoted as saying the Tuggs deal “stinks to high heaven,” Foulidis said he felt “humiliated. I felt like a criminal.”

Shiller’s main hurdle was convincing Judge John Macdonald that Ford had in fact accused George Foulidis of corruption. The most damaging sentence in the
Sun
article, the one with the
c
word, was paraphrased by the reporter. Tighe argued that “we don’t really know” what was said, since there was no tape of the interview. With the evidence as it was, the dots weren’t quite connected.

And then, on the second day of the trial, Foulidis caught a huge break. A former editor at the
Sun
had located a tape of the interview, and it was clear that Ford had in fact suggested the deal was corrupt. It was a “curveball,” Tighe admitted at the time.

The mayor stuck to his guns. He testified that he had never specifically accused Foulidis—a man he had never met—of corruption. Just the deal itself. He’d received some anonymous phone calls that “money was being exchanged.” For two merciless hours, Shiller poked, provoked, and attempted to unnerve the mayor.

Was he accusing Tuggs Inc. of corruption?

Ford: “The deal in general.”

By “corruption,” did he mean something that could attract jail time?

Ford: “Not following the process, to me, is corrupt. However you want to define that, that’s how I’m defining that.”

Shiller pressed harder, and the mayor started to crack.

Ford: “They [councillors] don’t follow the process. So staff said, ‘You should go out on the Tuggs deal for competitive bids.’
They said no. I saw the local councillors work the room to try to get the votes to give the sole-source contract to Tuggs.… At council there was a lot of rumours going around that this deal does not smell right. Other councillors were saying it. The public was— I was getting called. I heard it over and over again, numerous times.”