Everyone needs a new mayor

Rob Ford, without crack pipe. Photo via Flickr To exactly no one’s surprise, MP Denis Coderre yesterday announced that, yes, he will run for mayor of Montreal, saying the city’s in need of a “conductor,” presumably because it’s running off the rails and losing control and going to the dogs and any number of other […]


Rob Ford, without crack pipe. Photo via Flickr

To exactly no one’s surprise, MP Denis Coderre yesterday announced that, yes, he will run for mayor of Montreal, saying the city’s in need of a “conductor,” presumably because it’s running off the rails and losing control and going to the dogs and any number of other clichés. Startlingly enough, Coderre wants to cut the number of elected officials, encourage transparency and emphasize Montreal’s strengths. He chose former Laval mayor Gilles Vaillancourt’s one-time spokesman, Jean Lapierre, as his own — a strange move for a guy who wants to clean things up. But he justified the choice by saying that Lapierre wasn’t involved in any kind of criminal activity. So there’s that.

Speaking of Vaillancourt, the Charbonneau Commission has heard from a former Laval civil servant that the guy who served as mayor for decades was known as “the boss” among contracting firms bidding for contracts. Which meant that he and his party were collecting a lot of money from a lot of companies — like one firm that donated $20,000 illegally. Nice work if you can get it, we suppose.

But whatever. As compelling as the Charbonneau show is, there’s more interesting stuff unfolding in Toronto. Rob Ford (known by many in the city as “that fat fuck”) has followed in the grand tradition former D.C. mayor Marion Barry and picked up the crack pipe. Now, there’s apparently a video of this for sale, the asking price for which is somewhere in the six-figure range. Ford, naturally, denies that this video exists, saying “It’s another Toronto Star…” before, you know, trailing off. But he meant fabrication. And by Toronto Star, he meant Gawker, which posted the story last night.

In non-mayoral news, the Parti Québécois’s Jean-François Lisée and Diane De Courcy published an open letter to anglos today. What could said letter be about? Bill 14, of course. The pair made a less-than-convincing case for the contentious bit of legislation, rebuffing the critics — and explaining that much had been made of nothing, like the whole ethnic minorities vs. communities controversy — at each turn. For the record, apparently, they say the phrase “‘cultural communities,’ currently used in Quebec’s laws on immigration, was more respectful, open and modern than the previously used ‘ethnic minorities’ designation” — which actually may have carried some legal clout.

Finally, if you live near Ottawa and felt the ground shake this morning, yeah, that was an earthquake, Earthquakes Canada confirmed. Or maybe not. ■

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