TORONTO – Mayor Rob Ford’s sister and mother admit the mayor has a problem – but not a drug problem.
And not really a drinking problem, unless “you consider binge drinking once every three months” a problem,” says his sister Kathy Ford.
She and her mother Diane Ford spoke with CP24 Thursday evening, hours after the mayor faced reporters once again outside the glass doors of his office, this time to explain a 77-second video in which he yelled, gesticulated and said he was “going to kill that f-cking guy.”
“I was very, very inebriated,” Ford told reporters.
The mayor admitted Tuesday that he smoked crack cocaine approximately a year ago but won’t resign.
“Robbie is not a drug addict. I know because I’m a former addict,” Kathy Ford said on CP24.
For extensive Mayor Rob Ford coverage, click here.
The mayor does “have a problem,” his mother said. “A weight problem.”
“He’s got a huge weight problem and I think that is the first thing he has to attack because that will change your whole demeanor,” she said, adding that is stressful job forces him to eat on the run.
- Toronto’s offices are emptying out. The city wants to know what to do with them
- Capital gains changes could have ‘irreversible’ effects, business groups warn
- Could notwithstanding clause be used on abortion? Poilievre’s office says ‘never’
- U.K. takes aim at allies like Canada, wants higher NATO targets
She said tackling his weight was one of four things she made him promise to do during a family meeting at her house last week. “It was a real outpouring of feelings,” Diane said. She added later that her son “really feels dreadful. He feels very ashamed about what he’s done to the family.”
The other conditions were getting a driver – something deputy mayor Norm Kelly insisted upon in a meeting with the mayor on Saturday – having an alcohol detector installed in his car, and seeing a counsellor. Not for an addiction problem, of course, but “for anything,” Diane Ford said. “They will help you through any problem that you’ve got.”
But both Rob Ford’s mother and sister insisted he can easily deal with whatever unspecified problem he has while remaining mayor of Toronto.
“He won’t resign, and I don’t want him to,” Diane Ford said.
“If he was really, really in dire straits, he needed help, I would be the first one – I’d put him in my car.”
Allegations of drug use have dogged the mayor since May, when Gawker and the Toronto Star reported on a video showing the mayor smoking what may be crack cocaine and making racist and homophobic remarks.
Last week, Police Chief Bill Blair said he’d seen the video and it’s consistent with media reports. He also alluded to a second video, and said he was “disappointed” as a Torontonian.
The same day, reams of court documents revealed Rob Ford had been the target of a police investigation along with his friend Sandro Lisi, who’s now charged with extortion in connection with the video.
Doug Ford has said repeatedly he’s never met or spoken to Lisi. But Kathy Ford said she has.
“I don’t think this guy is as they’re making him out to be. I’ve met him a couple of times,” she said. “Rob was over one night with him and he didn’t do anything.”
Both Kathy and Diane Ford agreed the mayor’s main problem is the media.
“My heart breaks for my son. … He’s being attacked,” the mayor’s mother said. “All the good that he has done, that’s all been overlooked. And it’s so hurtful to the family and to me as a mother.”
“Unfortunately, Rob is the mayor. But you know, he’s not without fault. And the pressure that’s been put on him is not fair. It’s not right,” his mother said.
Everyone’s human, she added. It’s just that her son has “been a little too human.”
Comments