Will Mayor Rob Ford’s crack cocaine admission remove him from office? Probably not

Video: Rob Ford admits smoking crack cocaine

On Tuesday Toronto mayor Rob Ford admitted to smoking crack cocaine after months of allegations. But is admitting to drug use enough to get him kicked out of office?

Probably not, unless he’s criminally charged and incarcerated for several months.

But despite calls from his council colleagues to resign – or at least take temporary leave – he said later that day he’s sticking around.

“We must try to move forward,” he said. “I was elected to do a job. And that’s exactly what I’m going to continue doing.”

He said that citizens would decide on election day in 2014 whether they wanted him as mayor.

If Ford doesn’t leave voluntarily, it would be hard to make him go.

Read more: Complete coverage of the Rob Ford story

“There’s certainly no mechanism in law that would require the mayor to stand aside,” Toronto-based municipal law expert Stephen D’Agostino said in an interview last week.

However, D’Agostino noted: “If the mayor were to become incarcerated, if he were charged and convicted of a crime that required incarceration, then he would no longer be eligible to be an elected official.”

The City of Toronto act states that the office of a member of city council becomes vacant if the member, “is absent from the meetings of council for three successive months without being authorized to do so by a member of council.”

So if the mayor, as a member of city council, were incarcerated for three months, he would forfeit his seat, as they would if the office was declared vacant in any judicial proceeding.

Police have not commented on whether they would lay charges in relation to Ford’s admission of crack use. Police Chief Bill Blair said last week the alleged crack video itself didn’t provide reasonable grounds to lay charges.

With files from James Armstrong, Global Toronto.