ABOVE: Mayor Rob Ford’s fiscal conservative agenda will continue. Mark McAllister reports.
TORONTO – Mayor Rob Ford and his councillor brother Doug have characterized council’s curtailing the mayor’s powers as a socialist “coup d’etat” engineered by left-wing councillors.
But even if Ford’s a mayor in name only, his fiscal conservative agenda will probably continue without him.
Ford rode to mayoral office in 2010 on a wave of professed fiscal conservatism. But he’s not the only conservative on city council.
“I will still be the voice of fiscal conservatives on this council,” said Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, who brought forward a motion urging the mayor to step aside. Minnan-Wong also voted against Ford’s push for a subway in Scarborough, which could cost the city upwards of a billion dollars.
WATCH: Mayor Rob Ford warns of “outright war” in coming election.
Council voted on Friday to remove some of the mayor’s powers to appoint committee chairs and designate emergencies. On Monday, councillors spent hours debating whether to reduce the mayor’s budget to that of a regular councillor and strip him of his non-statutory duties.
But council still has work to do: budget negotiations are in progress and the annual review of contracting out garbage pickup is coming up.
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Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, though sometimes an ally of the mayor, said the 43 other councillors will continue their work.
“We don’t want to stray from that,” he said. “We got elected to save money.”
Even with reduced powers, Ford remains a vote on council and executive committee. And with budget negotiations ongoing, says Ryerson University politics professor Myer Siemiatycki, the mayor still has a chance to craft a legacy budget.
“He will want it to be a signature piece, he will probably want it to be as bare-boned as possible,” he said in an interview Monday.
Siemiatycki also noted councillors have differentiated their views on the mayor remaining in office and their position on the political spectrum. And though there several councillors adhering to fiscal conservatism, council also has a strong contingent of left-leaning, anti-Ford members.
“They have shown themselves to be very independent, freethinking players,” Siemiatycki said. “They had defeated the mayor on a number of issues already from the casino to transit to the previous budgets.”
– With files from Mark McAllister
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