[URBAN NOTE] On Rob Ford's willful ignorance

[rfmcdonald]

Ford's testimony last week in his conflict of interest trial was profoundly depressing. By all appearances, Ford's defense against the conflict of interest charges lies in a wholehearted embrace of his own ignorance. Edward Keenan's "The people vs. Robert Bruce Ford" in The Grid, writing from the left, sets the stage.

Ford had outlined, and would repeatedly outline, his own understanding of the conflict of interest act—”How I define a conflict of interest is if it’s financially beneficial to the city and financial beneficial to me personally.” Therefore, since the actions he is here to defend or explain—speaking and voting on a motion pertaining to whether he should be forced to pay a $3,150 penalty imposed on him by the integrity commissioner—had no financial implication for the city, they were not a conflict. “Because it doesn’t benefit the city. It has nothing to do with the city. This is my issue personally.” This was, it is fair to say, a definition of conflict of interest that was new to almost everyone familiar with the term.

Yet Ford insisted he had held this interpretation for 12 years, and moreover he insisted that this was the correct definition. It was, he said, how he interpreted the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act.

Ruby had Ford read the relevant passage of the Act aloud in court. “It says nothing whatsoever about the city having a financial interest,” Ruby suggested, and Ford appeared to acknowledge that this was the case.

“I’ve never read it before.” Ford said.

“You have to have read it before! It’s the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act!”

“I’ve never read it.”

“I read it to you at the deposition,” Ruby reminded him, as he started to leaf through his paperwork to find the relevant page of the transcript of that conversation from earlier this summer.

“You read it to me. I’ve never read it,” Ford said.

A minute later, Ford repeated his understanding of the Act’s contents. “I always thought, for 12 years, and I still believe, that a conflict is when the city has a benefit and when I have a benefit. This is a personal issue and had nothing to do with the city.”

“You had no doubt that your interpretation of the Act,” Ruby said—an interpretation the mayor had just admitted was based on total ignorance of the Act’s contents complemented by an absence of any conversation he could recall with anyone about it—”was the correct one?”

“No,” Ford said. And after a pause, “I have said…” and then he repeated again his own interpretation.

Matt Gurney, writing in the right-wing, National Post, has an article simply titled "Rob Ford pleads incompetence" that completes the frame.

Ford’s situation isn’t complicated. He screwed up but can escape serious consequences by convincing the judge that it was a mistake made in good faith. He doesn’t even need to prove that it was — just convince the judge. And you’ve got to believe that the judge is extremely eager to be convinced of that, given that his alternative is to remove an elected mayor from office over a dispute involving a few thousand dollars of charity. No one, not even Ford’s critics, seems keen to see that happen.

Except Ford himself, apparently. On the stand on Wednesday, he repeatedly refused to agree that he’d made a mistake. Instead, he insisted over and over that he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong, that he intended to vote the way he did, and that he doesn’t agree that what he did was a conflict of interest. Ford maintains that it’s only a conflict of interest if he personally benefits in some way.

That makes a certain amount of sense on a superficial level, but even if we wanted to debate the merit of that argument, there’s one problem. Ford and the MCIA disagree, and the MCIA wins. Ford’s opinion of what a conflict of interest should be doesn’t matter given what a conflict of interest is.

[. . .]

The entire affair is taking on shades of those hotel commercials that suggest booking at their chain shows you’re an individual of unusual intelligence: “Do you know your responsibilities as a member of Toronto City Council?” “No, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.” “Oh, OK. Case dismissed.”

Ford was freely elected in a fair election. He should not be removed from office because of a dispute over a few thousand bucks in charitable donations that went to a good cause. But his astonishingly cavalier attitude concerning his responsibilities as a public officer holder go directly to his credibility, and worthiness of winning office again. In short, when on the stand, Toronto’s mayor has pleaded incompetence.

Shameful.