Crime and Punishment

"I recognize that the circumstances of this case demonstrate that there was absolutely no issue of corruption or pecuniary gain [on Ford's part].  
"[Ford's] contraventions of the municipal Code of Conduct involved a modest amount of money which he endeavoured to raise for a legitimate charity (his football foundation), which is administered at arm's length through the Community Foundation of Toronto."

"As learned commentators have noted there may be a procedural fairness deficiency if councillors are precluded, at council meetings, from discussing potential findings of pecuniary sanctions which may be levied against them."
Ontario Justice Charles Hackland: Toronto Mayor Rob Ford in violation of section5, Ontario's Municipal Conflict of Interest Act

Toronto is well accustomed to entitled Bozo nutbars like the much re-elected BadBoy Mel Lastman whose manner and pronouncements, behaviour and entitlements exemplified just how egregiously municipal mayors could use their elected office as a tool for embarrassing those who voted them into office.  Mayor Ford has done some pretty stupid things, like reading while driving, for example. 

Whereas Mayor Lastman's wife Marilyn vowed to take the Government of Ontario to court over its banning of her pet cause fuzzbusters, a bumper device that picked up the radar beam of speed traps on Ontario highways.  She boasted of having sold between eight to nine thousand of them at $149.95 a pop, and took exception that they were banned.

As though Mel Lastman needed any help in embarrassing himself and municipal politics by his own delusional self.  Mayor Ford had plenty of maligners, those who felt he should be removed from office.  And one of them succeeded in that mission.  Through the use of a one-size-fits-all conflict of interest violation that is itself a conundrum of vacuity.

Forbidden by this law to speak out in his own behalf, to explain an irregularity, he proceeded to do so regardless.  "And if it wasn't for this foundation, these kids would not have had a chance.  And then to ask that I pay it out of my own pocket personally, there is just, there is no sense to this.  The money is gone; the money has been spent on football equipment."

The money, every cent of that $3,150 which had been collected from donors responding to a request sent out under City of Toronto letterhead, signed by Mayor Ford in his capacity as passionate advocate for his own particular charity, to provide football equipment for underprivileged boys, was spent and well spent. 

But for his indiscretion mingling municipal affairs with a personal charity, he was ordered to personally return of his own money, the donations to their donors.  He balked at this, couldn't understand what all the fuss was about, and thought it so unreasonable given the circumstances and the fact that he did not personally gain anything by this act of charity.

He should, doubtless, have been aware that his actions contravened the city's Code of Conduct.  A text he claimed never to have read.  Just as many people, acquiring a new device of some kind, fail to "read instructions for best use".  Cavalier, to be sure, but he is a busy man and obviously considers he has better ways to waste his time than concern himself with such fiddling matters.

So the law set out to educate and humble the man with blunt force trauma.  Certainly he would never have believed that so insignificant a matter, a goodwill gesture, an effort to enhance opportunities and expand the quality of life for young people would come back to deliver a knockout punch of that nature.  Knocking him right out of the mayor's chair, as it happens.

Justice Hackland acknowledged the awkwardness and inappropriateness of the decision he was forced to comply with under the existing, inadequate law, in quoting a professor in administrative law, Toronto's first integrity commissioner who informed city council years earlier: 

"It is simply Byzantine to have a regime under which the only way of dealing legally with conflict of interest in a municipal setting is by way of an elector making an application to a judge and where the principal and mandatory penalty ... is the sledgehammer of an order that the member's office is vacated."

Justice Hackland took pains to point out that Mr. Ford did not set out to deceive anyone, let alone city council, nor was he out to profit personally by his initiative to bring a public good into being.  His passion for his cause, his impatience with seemingly unreasonable official distance unfavourable to furthering that cause in support of the public weal motivated him.

So a jackass law and a judge who could see no legal way that he could avoid the inevitable under that law was responsible for insulting the city's municipal vote, one where a clear majority of Torontonians decided they would prefer a candidate who promised them fiscal responsibility.  One indiscreet misdemeanor unravelled what $383,501 Torontonians voted for; Mayor Rob Ford.

Toronto's most populous city still needs to be governed.  Mayors of other cities legitimately and with reason stand accused of true malfeasance.  They have not been peremptorily and legally removed from office; there are legal procedures to be followed.  Some are guilty of massively appropriating public funds.  Shock and dismay, but not the media circus that resulted from this instance of a flea hit by a mallet.