Mayor Ford not at Police Chief gala

The guest list at any formal event is always fraught with protocol and peril. Who to invite, who to ignore, and who to carefully dissuade, from attending. That calculation played out in Toronto Wednesday night as Bill Blair had to paper over the glaring absence of Mayor Rob Ford at a signature police event, his Chief’s gala, for Toronto Victims’ Services. We sent Scot Urquhart to crash the party and find out how things went, without the Mayor.

The head table at this $250-a-plate fundraiser, and everything looked perfectly normal. But in fact, Chief Bill Blair’s gala, to raise money for victims of crime was missing a prominent guest.

Apparently, there is no love lost between mayor Rob Ford, and the police chief, at the moment. Blair enraged the Mayor by commenting on the controversial video that police obtained which apparently shows the Mayor smoking crack. Things then went from bad to worse when Ford claimed that he was abruptly “un-invited” from the Chief’s party, after a conversation between the Mayor’s Chief of Staff Earl Provost and gala co-chair Brian Moniz. Something Moniz flatly denied: The conversation was in terms of the optics, and at no time did we un-invite the Mayor.”

But if the Chief was feeling the heat from the fall-out, he wasn’t showing it. Declining our request for comment, and instead, tending to the substantial throng of guests who seemed happy to demonstrate their support for the Chief. So what about Ford? And his somewhat awkward absence from this high-profile event? Well, Premier Kathleen Wynne was of two-minds on the issue: “As a person, as a hiuman being, when I look at the situation, I have a lot of empathy for a person who is going through a very difficult time.”

But Wynne made it clear that she expected City officials to take the necessary steps to put Toronto back on the rails, quickly: “As the Premier, it’s my responsibility to make sure that I pay attention, that the city of Toronto can function. As I say, the city council has tools at it’s disposal and I think they are, it looks like they’re getting ready to use some of those, and I will continue to pay close attention.”

Premier Wynne did not say that the province would get directly involved in the continuing drama of Toronto City Hall; preferring to reiterate that she had faith in the city council, the police department, and the judicial system.
However, she did not say that she had faith in Mayor Rob Ford and she did conclude her remarks by repeating that she will be watching the situation closely, over the next few weeks.