Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story Read online

  The Marg Delahunty ambush is a well-known, some might say treasured, comedy sketch in Canada. Walsh’s long list of victims includes former Ontario premier Mike Harris, former prime minister Jean Chrétien, Prince Philip, and Governor Sarah Palin. Most have gritted their teeth and played along. Instead, Ford called the police. Later, the mayor claimed he had no idea who Walsh was and that his daughter was afraid, although there’s no indication the girl was outside at the time.

  The story took a sinister twist later in the week. The CBC reported that multiple sources had told them the mayor lost his temper on the phone to the 911 dispatcher when he felt they weren’t moving fast enough. According to the CBC, Ford said, “You … bitches! Don’t you fucking know? I’m Rob fucking Ford, the mayor of this city!” Ford categorically denied using the slur or leveraging his title, but he admitted to using “the F-word.” The fiasco inspired American TV host Keith Olbermann to feature Ford on the “Worst Persons” segment of his show. The police refused to release the tape, but both Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair and Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner Chris Lewis said they had listened to the recording and that the CBC report was inaccurate. (Adrienne Batra, the mayor’s press secretary at the time, told me after she’d left his office that “[Ford] absolutely doesn’t say [‘bitches’ or ‘Rob fucking Ford’]. I promise.”)

  I made some calls from Mexico. The source I finally got a hold of didn’t know anything about the tape, but he had another tip—one that would ultimately shape my reporting for the next two years. “From what I hear, that wasn’t the only time 911 got called from that address that day.” Rumour was, there had been a domestic dispute between Ford and Renata. And it wasn’t the first. Confirming something so sensitive from Mexico was going to be impossible. It would have to wait until I was back.

  Meanwhile, with controversy brewing in Toronto, Ford decided to make the trip south, and unusually he brought Renata with him, although she mostly stayed at the hotel. One night, Ford and I ended up at the same party. It wasn’t the right moment to ask about a domestic dispute. “Hi, Mayor Ford!” I said. “We should get a photo.” He looked over and smiled warmly. “Sure.” I realized he had no idea who I was. “Great! Just to confirm, it’s me, Robyn Doolittle, from the Star.” His eyes got wide and he shook his head. “Oh, nah, sorry.” I handed my camera to someone standing nearby. “No, no, no,” I said. “We’re doing this.” He relented, and we both flashed big grins. It’s a lovely photo. I sent both the mayor and Doug a copy. For the next year, Doug referred to me as Rob’s “girlfriend.”

  At the handover ceremony in Guadalajara, Ford conducted himself like the mayor of a major North American city. Organizers told me he was nervous about getting up in front of fifty thousand screaming people, but when the Canadian national anthem started to play, he sang along and smiled. In a sharp black suit and fresh haircut, he beamed as Guadalajara’s Mayor Jorge Aristóteles Sandoval Díaz handed him the Pan Am flag.

  As soon as my plane touched down in Toronto, I got to work on the domestic call story. I contacted sources in police and emergency services, as well as some folks in Ford’s neighbourhood. The trick would be catching the next incident shortly after it happened.

  I got my break at 8 P.M. on Christmas Day. I was at my parents’ place three hours outside of the city.

  “Robyn?” It was a police source I had gotten to know during my crime reporting days, and he was whispering.

  “Hey. What’s up?”

  “Look, I can’t talk. I just wanted to let you know there was another domestic dispute at Ford’s place this morning. Apparently, he was drunk and taking the kids to the airport to go to Florida or something. The wife’s parents phoned it in.”

  “Any idea what time?”

  “Sometime between 4 and 5 A.M. I gotta go.”

  There was no sense calling the police division for comment. All they’d do is tell headquarters that the media was asking questions. None of my people were going to talk over the phone. I’d head back to the city early the next day and start chasing it then.

  CANADIANS MIGHT NOT REALIZE IT, but they live in one of the more secretive countries in the developed world. In 2013, Canada ranked fifty-sixth out of ninety-five countries in an annual transparency report card produced by the Centre for Law and Democracy. The Halifax-based human rights organization helped develop an internationally respected method to assess countries with “right-to-information” laws. In the inaugural ranking, Canada came in at forty-second out of eighty-nine countries. We’re now in the bottom half, below Mongolia, Russia, and Romania. So what does that have to do with City Hall reporting? When it comes to Toronto’s mayor, rumours and gossip are as common as football references. The problem is, you can’t separate fact from fiction under our archaic access-to-information laws.

  “Canada is utterly behind. It’s not because of anything we’re doing, it’s because other countries are getting better,” said Toby Mendel, the centre’s executive director. And at this rate, he added, we will continue to slip.

  In 1983, Canada became one of the first countries in the world to adopt access-to-information legislation (the first being Sweden in 1766) under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. The provinces followed suit in subsequent years, and municipal freedom-of-information laws were crafted by the provinces. With a five-dollar cheque, Canadians were suddenly able to demand that public institutions release internal documents such as budgets, letters, memos, and staff reports. But over the years, we fell behind. There are huge gaps in the Canadian system. The requests take too long to process, and bureaucrats have too many excuses to deny access.

  This lack of transparency has made it extraordinarily difficult for journalists to confirm basic information about public figures like Rob Ford. Even the mayor’s schedule, something routinely released by previous mayors, must be obtained under a freedom-of-information request. And what does get released is largely incomplete. Huge chunks are marked “private.” Ford himself has conceded that these schedules are only “a tidbit of what’s really going on.”

  If that wasn’t bad enough, Canadian access laws don’t cover the judicial system. Most paperwork filed in Ontario’s court system, such as transcripts and case “information”— essentially a summary of the allegations, court appearances, and any outcomes—is supposed to be public. In reality, it’s not that simple.

  As the law stands, someone trying to access a public document in our publicly funded judicial system is at the mercy of whatever court clerk happens to be on duty. While records filed in court are supposed to be accessible, you can only get them if you have exact details about the case, such as the incident date, the charges, and the accused’s birthday. For a reporter following up on a lead, this is information you are likely hoping to learn from the document you’re requesting. To recap this absurd situation: to get the paperwork, you need to know information that can only be learned from the paperwork. It’s a Catch-22.

  When I explained this problem to Ontario’s information and privacy commissioner, Ann Cavoukian, she was aghast. “That offends me, because people hide behind privacy. That has nothing to do with privacy. Ultimately, the information is accessible, if you have the right key.”

  This isn’t the way it works in “best practices” countries. When news broke about Rob Ford’s 1999 drunk driving arrest in Florida, reporters immediately contacted the Miami-Dade courthouse. Within a few hours, a clerk emailed us a PDF of the police affidavit, along with details of the sentencing.

  As for police documents, every jurisdiction has restrictions on access because of the sensitive nature of the information, when no charges are laid. But few are as secretive as Canada. In the United States, for instance—which ranks forty-second out of ninety-five countries in the 2013 annual access rankings— even in sensitive cases journalists are usually able to obtain some information. In New York State, if police are called to someone’s home, it is a matter of public record. The address and the nature of the call must be disclosed, and if so
meone is charged, then the arrest report and the names of those involved become public. In Ontario, if police investigate an incident, it can be kept entirely secret, including whether the call occurred, whether officers were sent to investigate, and the names of any suspects.

  Months earlier, after I began hearing about a handful of incidents at the mayor’s home through various emergency services sources, I filed a freedom-of-information request for a summary of all the 911 calls made on the mayor’s street over a five-year period. The document I got back was twenty-nine pages of a heavily redacted list of calls. There were no addresses and no dates.

  Camille Jobin-Davis, the assistant director of New York State’s Committee on Open Government, was shocked when we spoke about the challenges of crime reporting in Canada. So police in Canada wouldn’t even confirm if they had gone to a house? Nope. Or why they were called? Nope. “That doesn’t quite make sense to me, because I can tell when there’s a police car driving through my neighbourhood. There’s nothing private about that.… Our logic is that by merely indicating the nature of the call, we’re not releasing anything about who was present or what the allegations are,” Jobin-Davis said. “I think the checks on use of public resources is a valuable one, and I think the checks on the behaviour of those officials who have police authority over our lives is also a valuable one.”

  I wish Canadian lawmakers felt the same way.

  On December 29, 2011, when I phoned Toronto police for details about the Christmas Day incident at Mayor Rob Ford’s home, I was told they could not confirm or deny anything, because that information was private. I contacted the ranking officer in the Fords’ Etobicoke North ward, who also happened to be a friend of the family.

  “Anyone, if it’s you or I, they have a right to privacy if someone calls the police and it’s a domestic related issue,” Superintendent Ron Taverner said. “We don’t go around talking about that. That’s their personal business. I don’t think anybody would want that.”

  I, of course, was expecting this. And by the time I phoned Taverner, I’d already confirmed that the service was investigating an incident at the mayor’s Etobicoke home that took place early Christmas morning. I had also confirmed that they were looking into a separate domestic complaint involving the mayor on October 25, the call I had heard about in Mexico. That was the one made hours after the mayor had phoned 911 on CBC comedian Mary Walsh. I learned that the investigating detective was Jacqueline Baus, who was with the Youth and Family Violence Unit. When I got her on the phone, all she would say was that the cases were open. She refused to give details. I would need to dig those up on my own.

  Over the next few days, I met a source in a coffee shop, then another in a downtown bar. They allowed me to read an official synopsis of the Christmas morning incident, and a high-ranking police source gave me an account of the October call.

  Two sources with knowledge of the October incident said it was Renata who called 911, at 10:17 P.M., after she and Ford got into a shouting match. On Christmas morning, it was Renata’s parents who had phoned. The Brejniaks said the mayor had been drinking, and he was heading to the airport with his children. He planned to take them to Florida against Renata’s wishes. My sources were clear that, as far as the police knew, Renata had not accused Ford of being violent.

  Nevertheless, the situation was troubling. Rob Ford was essentially Toronto’s CEO. The mayor—or a designate acting on his behalf—has a seat on the Toronto Police Service’s civilian oversight board. In fact, four of the seven board members are city appointees. By choosing the chair of his budget committee, and through appointments to the board, the mayor has a say in the police budget. In 2011, the service was on the verge of a massive 10 percent cut to its 2012 budget. After Chief Bill Blair paid a personal visit to Rob Ford’s office, the service ended up with a modest increase. Political and police sources said it was the mayor who made that happen.

  This dynamic leaves Toronto officers in a quandary when they are called to investigate the man who is, at least indirectly, their boss. According to the letter of the law, Toronto police are under no obligation to disclose any details about an ongoing investigation. But they can, and do, use their discretion. In my experience, in cases where there is heightened public interest, nine times out of ten they will release basic information about an incident. In my two years as a crime reporter, I would often call and ask about a stabbing or break-and-enter. I can’t recall a single time when a police spokesperson refused to provide me with a short synopsis and some vague details about the people involved, such as the age and sex of the victim, or a brief description of a suspect. But when it came to the mayor, it seemed as if he was being afforded more privacy than the average citizen.

  When I had the details of the latest 911 calls nailed down, I put in my official call to Toronto police. True to form, they refused to comment. I asked police spokesperson Mark Pugash whether the police investigating the mayor were placed in a conflict because of Ford’s position. “The procedures don’t take into account the social position or occupation of a person being investigated or charged,” he said.

  The story “Rob Ford 911 Calls Raise Questions” ran on the Star’s front page on December 30. Later that day, the Fords emailed the Toronto Sun a photo of the mayor playing with his children in a swimming pool. The caption read, “Mayor Rob Ford and his children Douglas and Stephanie having fun in Florida this week. (Courtesy the Ford family).” Sun columnist Joe Warmington, one of only a handful of writers the mayor will talk to, called Ford at the family’s condo in Hallandale.

  My first call was to a cellphone and the familiar voice on the other end answered on the second ring.

  “Happy New Year, Joe,” the mayor said jovially from Florida, with his kids laughing in the background.

  Turns out Ford had not heard of the media report but said everything was now fine.

  “We have had a great couple of days down here,” he said of he and his young children Stephanie and Douglas. “There’s no problem at all.”

  His brother Doug, who was with the mayor in Florida and like him returned home Friday, said “Rob was not drinking as reported. It’s just inaccurate.”

  In fact, a source close to the investigation told me that while alcohol was an issue none was consumed by the mayor.

  For a man who frequently accused the media of going after his family, it was surprising how often Ford seemed to use his wife and children as a political shield.

  SEVEN

  THE BIER

  MARKT

  Leo Navarro was wandering in a daze, not sure if he could trust his eyes. He needed air. A moment to think. Someone could handle his tables for a few minutes. He ducked out of the Bier Markt’s side door and bumped into a server named Jenna sitting by the door, smoking. He seemed rattled.

  “What’s up with you?” she asked.

  He looked at her.

  “I think I just saw the mayor do blow.”

  THE BIG RED QUEEN STREETCAR rolled up to City Hall a little after 8:30 A.M. I clambered out the rear doors, trying to keep my coffee in its cup rather than on the newspaper tucked under my arm. It was the second day of the March 2012 library strike. Hundreds of kind-looking women and pasty-looking men in Tilley hats were marching in a circle around Nathan Phillips Square, placards draped around their necks, some singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” to pass the time. The Ford administration was targeting the public sector, but the unions had an ally in Mother Nature. The forecast predicted sunny weather all week, which was pretty remarkable for Toronto in March.

  It was going to be a busy day. In addition to the library strike, top lawyer Clayton Ruby had just launched a lawsuit accusing the mayor of a conflict of interest, which the press was still trying to figure out. Most importantly, city council was about to debate a cornerstone of the Ford administration’s agenda—whether Toronto would build a subway or an above-ground light rail system in the northeast end of the city along Sheppard Avenue. The mayor wanted “subways, sub
ways, subways,” and getting that vote through council would either solidify his authority during a time of turmoil or expose his weakened leadership. It seemed as if everything was at stake. By the end of the day, none of it seemed important.

  I was sitting at my messy desk in the press gallery when my land line started to ring.

  It was my city editor, Graham Parley. Parley looked exactly how you would expect an old-school print guy to look. He was a gruff-talking Brit, with frizzy grey hair, a thick moustache, and zero tolerance for slackers.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “It’s sort of sensitive,” Parley said quietly, which was unusual. “We just got a tip that I want you to look into. Apparently, Ford was at the Bier Markt on St. Patrick’s Day this weekend. Showed up totally hammered. We heard that someone walked in on him snorting coke in some private room and then he got kicked out by security.”

  “Wow,” I said. I’d suspected Ford had a drinking problem, and there were always rumours about drugs. But cocaine? In a crowded bar?

  “Here’s the thing: the place is on lockdown. Staff aren’t supposed to talk about it. Can you call some police sources and check it out?”

  I knew the Bier Markt well. It was a five-minute walk from the Star along the Esplanade, a strip of bars and pubs just off Yonge Street. By day, it was one of the nicer and more expensive places to eat in the St. Lawrence Market district. After dark, it transitioned to a trendy nightclub that was popular with young professionals and university students.