On Tuesday, Rob Ford appeared before a throng of journalists, primed to answer The Question. Yes, the reports were true: He’d smoked crack cocaine. Reporters pounced. The Internet howled. Canadians hung their heads in shame. And now, as the week draws to a close, Torontonians are waking up to a bracing reality: Improbably, incredibly, Rob Ford is still their mayor.
“There used to be such a thing as resigning with some honor when caught egregiously lying or engaging in unethical activities, but apparently not anymore,” lamented Emmett Macfarlane, a political science professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, in an interview.
Even after a new video surfaced on Thursday showing Ford ranting about wanting to kill someone, the battered politician is still standing—he’s even vowed to stand for re-election in October 2014.
John Mascarin, a Toronto-based municipal law expert, tells me that’s because, under Ontario law, mayors in the province can only be removed from office for a specific set of reasons, including missing three consecutive months of city council meetings without authorization, failing to declare a conflict of interest (a stipulation that landed Ford in legal trouble last year), and being convicted of a crime and sentenced to jail (since prisoners can’t vote in city elections in Ontario, and only eligible voters can serve in city government). And while possessing crack cocaine is a criminal offense in Canada, lawyers have dismissed the notion that Ford’s announcement this week could serve as the foundation for a criminal charge. “It’s fanciful,” Julian Falconer, a Canadian lawyer, told The Globe and Mail. “Police prosecute based on actual possession.”