When telling the story of the Holocaust, one effective way to overcome our sheer inability to comprehend the scope and scale of such atrocities is to zoom in on one or two stories: share one particular experience, in all its brutal specificity, and we have at least a small way into the event—the small details illuminate the larger whole.

One theatre company from the Netherlands, Hotel Modern, takes a related approach in KAMP (CAMP). The production depicts a typical day at the Auschwitz concentration camp, but instead of zooming in into a closeup, it shrinks everything down, literally, into miniature. It’s the accumulation of thousands of small details that has the impact in this case.

Eleanor McMahon thinks it’s time to change the conversation around cycling in Ontario.

McMahon is the founder of the Share the Road Cycling Coalition, who will be hosting the fifth annual Ontario Bike Summit this week in Toronto. She says that we need to stop talking about things like bike lanes and other bicycle infrastructure as a zero sum game between cars and bikes.

“We do polling, and our polling tells us that 89 per cent of Ontarians are both drivers and cyclists,” she says. “The notion that it’s cars versus bikes is overblown, and it’s really not working anymore. Deciding to change the conversation means going out of our way to poke holes in that idea and say from the get go ‘We don’t buy into that philosophy, and just because you say it, doesn’t make it true.’ ”

Even with the success of acts like Lonely Island and Flight of the Conchords, people still tend to view musical comedy with some suspicion, and not without reason. Those high-profile success stories aside, at the club level, musical comedy is too often the province of people who aren’t quite good enough to make it as musicians, but not quite funny enough to make it as comedians.

Two local comics, Robert Keller and Rush Zilla, are out to change that perception with their show, Off Key Comedy, which features a wide variety of acts whose only commonality is that they combine music and comedy in one form or another. The third edition of the monthly show will take place on May 23, at Comedy Bar.

Giorgio Mammoliti and Rob Ford during a council meeting in September 2011.

The CBC has conducted an investigation into councillor Giorgio Mammoliti’s (Ward 7, York West) financial situation, and is reporting that he received a total of $275,000 in mortgage loans from two real estate investors, two years after backing their controversial applications to install lucrative billboards by the 401. Mammoliti’s support for some of those billboard applications raised eyebrows when they were originally debated: councillor Doug Holyday (Ward 3, Etobicoke Centre) suggested the integrity commissioner look into it, but no evidence of wrongdoing was uncovered. (The loans would not yet have made at that time.)

The loans, in and of themselves, wouldn’t have been illegal, nor are there currently any requirements for councillors to disclose them. The optics are certainly bad—the worst-case conclusion being that the developers gave those loans in exchange for Mammoliti’s support of the billboards—but no evidence for that kind of quid pro quo has been presented. Those optics aside, nothing in law prevents a member of council from taking out a loan with a private lender who at some other point may have dealt with the municipal government.

The first set of billboard applications were considered in 2004 and 2006; Mammoliti received a $200,000 loan from the developer involved two years later, in 2008. Another batch of applications came to council in 2009; the developer in that second round had taken over the property involved in the first batch of requests, and also was applying to have billboards at two other locations. That developer issued Mammoliti a $75,000 loan in 2011. All billboard applications in both cases were approved.

Doug Holyday still has concerns about those billboards and the subsequent loans, and told the CBC that council’s code of conduct should be reviewed in light of this case, perhaps to require disclosure of loans like this in future.

We asked municipal law expert John Mascarin about the situation. He, like the legal experts the CBC consulted, says that right now there is no evidence of illegal activity.

Concerns about the risks of loans like this are based on the potential conflicts involved, between a councillor’s duty to do the best for the City and pressure to show preferential treatment to someone who is helping them out. “The Toronto Code of Conduct prohibits a member of council from receiving gifts or benefits connected directly or indirectly with the performance of the member’s duties as a councillor,” Mascarin explained by email.

It’s not accepting the loans itself that would be a problem, in other words. What would be a problem is if the terms of the loan were favourable because of Mammoliti’s decisions as a councillor—if he got a loan someone else in a similar financial situation would not have been able to obtain, in virtue of actions he took at City Hall. Mascarin went on: “The loans do not appear to be interest free,” which would be one kind of gift or benefit, “however, if any part of the loans are forgiven, that forgiveness could possibly constitute a gift or benefit under [city council's] Code of Conduct. There is also a provision that indicates that a member shall not use the influence of his or her office to secure any advantage or personal gain.”

Right now we have no evidence of that—the billboard applications and the loan may be entirely unconnected, a case where optics create a false impression of wrong-doing. Mammoliti has so far declined to respond to today’s report.

UPDATE 12:27 PM: Giorgio Mammoliti has now responded to the CBC’s investigation with a written statement. The full text:

I have supported hundreds of first and third party signs throughout my career both in my community and throughout the City of Toronto and will continue to do so. The sign applications the CBC and Toronto Star refer to were for upgrading already existing signs, which were in need of repair and would contribute to the revitalization of my community of which I remain greatly focused on. The CBC and Toronto Star have reported that there were clearly no conflict in my dealings on this matter as a Councillor. The loans issued were of a personal business matter involving a company owned and operated by my now ex-wife and the repayment of such loans have been dealt with as part of our divorce, which is still ongoing. To the best of my knowledge the Tradesa International loan has been paid out in full with interest. While I accept challenges about my decision making as a Councillor, to blatantly issue a story that has no relevance to my job and involves my family and personal relationships I find to be in very poor taste. I respectfully request to leave my personal dealings and my family out of the media.

Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti

EDITOR’S NOTE: We reached John Mascarin after publishing our initial story on this situation; the paragraphs including his remarks were added a few minutes after first posting the article.

The audit, released last month, says Mammoliti exceeded his legally mandated $27,464.65 campaign spending limit by $12,065. It also points out a number of other possible accounting-related violations of the Municipal Elections Act (MEA).

The compliance audit committee is a panel of three citizen experts. The decision to press charges against Mammoliti means a prosecutor will decide whether to take the councillor to court. If Mammoliti is ultimately found to have breached the MEA, he could face penalties ranging from fines, to loss of office, to jail time. (It’s almost unheard of for a court to punish an MEA violator with anything stiffer than a fine in cases like this, though.)

This is the exact same process Mayor Rob Ford—whose own compliance audit was released on Friday—will face when the compliance audit committee meets again, on February 25.

Mammoliti—a sometime Ford ally who has lately been distancing himself from the mayor—is currently best known for publicly maintaining, implausibly, that he’s the target of a conspiracy whose organizers have even gone so far as to tap his phones. We suspect this won’t help with that.

Mammoliti’s compliance audit was brought about by a complaint from David DePoe. DePoe is a member of an organization called Fair Elections Toronto, which is headed by Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler, an activist and former library board member who has also had a hand in the Mayor’s compliance audit, as well as the conflict of interest lawsuit that almost saw Ford booted from office.

[Disclosure: Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler is Torontoist editor-in-chief Hamutal Dotan's partner; she was not involved in the writing or editing of this article.]

Amsterdam’s red light district. Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/sevennine/538849680/"}sevennine{/a} from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

In 2010, an Ontario Superior Court judge struck down laws forbidding people to run bawdy houses, live off the avails of prostitution, and communicate for the purposes of prostitution. The key elements of the ruling were upheld by an appeals court in March of last year, and are now awaiting a Supreme Court review.

Until the appeal process is complete, brothels remain technically illegal. However, if the Supreme Court sides with the lower court decisions, your house will be able to be as bawdy as you like.

Cities around the world boast officially sanctioned red light districts, and still more have unofficial ones. If we want to understand what a legal sex trade might look like, and how it might be regulated in Toronto, we should consider experiences elsewhere.

Amsterdam’s red light district has long been the destination of choice for gap-year slackers looking to pay for sex without going to jail. Prostitution has been tolerated there for decades, and in 2000 the sex trade was legalized and brothels placed under formal government regulation.

That said, neither legality nor location makes all the problems go away, as the Dutch have learned. Even regulated, the sex trade can draw a dark element.

Beginning around 2004, it became evident that Amsterdam’s red light district was rife with exploitation of sex workers, money laundering, drug trafficking, and other crime, often the work of international syndicates. As a result, over the last few years the authorities have tightened enforcement of regulations, resulting in the closure so far of about half of the 482 “windows” (these are literal windows, with half-clad women beckoning passersby from behind plexiglass—a marketing technique that also feels like an ironic commentary on consumer culture and the objectification of women).

Also, as of this year, new rules are being introduced which, among other things, will require brothel operators to submit a business plan, and will raise the legal age for sex workers from 18 to 21.

Despite the issues they’ve faced, the Netherlands still deems legalized prostitution, and restricting brothels to designated areas, preferable to the dangerous mess that develops in the absence of oversight.

The basic case for legalization: bringing sex workers under protection of the law would provide them with safer working conditions and access to standard employment protections that ensure they are treated fairly. More cynically, it would also allow the Canada Revenue Agency to tax the industry.

If the Supreme Court accepts the arguments made by the lower courts and the prostitution laws are struck down, the next question will be how to regulate the business.

Traditionally Toronto has tolerated Prostitution Lite™, in the form of “holistic spas” and the like, flashing neon signs from second-storey windows all around the city. Periodically the police raid one, to reinforce the understanding that while a certain amount of rubbing and tugging is acceptable, thrusting and grunting may be prosecuted.

The City has the authority to zone these premises, including limiting them to specific areas, and it can be presumed that this power would extend to newly legitimized brothels. There are a couple of broad possibilities here.

One option would be simply to license establishments and let them apply to set up shop throughout the City. This is the model used by the Australian state of Queensland, which allows applications for brothels anywhere, subject to approval by local authorities and rules regarding proximity to schools and residences.

Administratively this is relatively simple, but could lead to numerous legal battles. Torontonians have been known to fly to arms at the first whiff of a roti shop; imagine the reaction when someone tries to open an honest-to-God brothel down the street.

With that in mind, should “erotic massage” and related practices become fully legal, there’s also a case to be made for the red light district approach.

Assuming the area or areas chosen are reasonably distant from residences, the red light district could allay citizen mistrust, or at least reduce conflicts around managing newly legalized sex work. Moreover, centralizing brothels in one area would make them easier to inspect, regulate, and police. Of course, this area could also become a focal point for crime and disruptive behaviour.

Given the hand-wringing over the prospect of a casino, many Torontonians may not be ready for Patpong by the lake. But if the sex trade gets pushed out of the alley and onto Main Street, Toronto will need to make some decisions.

Not everybody makes Rob Ford happy. Not everybody follows through on their great ideas. Not everybody votes for the income tax increase included in their own budget. Nobody is perfect and Rob Ford is no nobody. (He’s a body?) Yesterday, as city council discussed this year’s property tax increase, Mayor Ford made the interesting choice of voting against part of the budget he has been talking quite proudly about. When councillor Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West) brought forward a motion to hold the municipal property tax level, rather than give it the 2 per cent increase the Ford budget includes, the mayor himself voted to try to stop the increase. The motion was handily defeated 40-4 and the budget debate continues today.

Tensions continue between Ontario’s teacher’s unions and the province, but at least one unhappy labor organization is considering softening up their stance. ETFO, the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, will apparently be taking another look at the lack of extracurricular activities in their schools sometime before March. This follows comments by high-profile, former union boss Buzz Hargrove, who said that teachers would need to reinstate extracurriculars to regain a more favourable public appearance for their fight. Otherwise, everything continues as normal: many teachers, parents, and politicians across the province are upset with the situation.

Yet again, councillor Ana Bailão’s (Ward 18, Davenport) legal case has been put over another two weeks. Bailão’s court date has been reset for January 29, 2013. She is charged with impaired driving and driving with a blood alcohol percentage over the legal limit.

The Metrolinx proposal that would see one entrance to Allen Road closed to make room for a Crosstown LRT construction staging area is getting some sober second thought. The plan, which would have closed the area to the public for all of 2014, was set to go to Toronto’s public works and infrastructure committee in a few weeks. However, city staff and Metrolinx now feel that closing an entrance to the highly used roadway probably isn’t a great idea because of the havoc it will wreak on congestion. The provincial body is looking into the possibility of using narrower tunnels in the construction, which will allow Black Creek Drive to remain the artery for soil removal trucks. The city should hear back about the feasibility of the new plan by the end of the month.

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains: the very best and very worst people, places, things, and ideas that have had an influence on the city over the past 12 months. From December 10 to 19, we’ll unveil the nominees, grouped by category. Vote for your favourites from each batch, every single day! On December 19 and 20 the winners from each category go head-to-head in the final round of voting, and on December 21, we will reveal your choices for Toronto’s Superhero and Supervillain of the year.

People often compare the political arena to a boxing ring, describe those who run our governments as fighters, sparring round after round. If that’s the analogy—and it certainly seems to apply in Rob Ford’s City Hall—then Toronto Ombudsman Fiona Crean can take a hell of a punch.

Crean is not a politician but an independent official. She is one of Toronto’s accountability officers, who collectively serve as the municipal government’s conscience: their mandate is to ensure that policies are fair, made transparently, implemented equitably, and financed properly. Crean’s role is to investigate complaints made by residents “as they relate to administrative fairness.” If you think the TTC failed to consult your community about infrastructure changes or that you’ve been unreasonably denied a daycare subsidy, and nobody at the TTC or in daycare services will address your concerns, Crean is who you turn to.

This year among her investigations Crean looked into complaints about the public appointments process. Her findings were scathing: she concluded that the mayor’s office interfered with the administration of established protocols regarding due process, influence, and diversity, and further, that given the environment surrounding the process it would have been “futile” for City staff to raise their concerns about that interference. After she issued her report, councillors asked Crean to present her findings in person at their council meeting.

Crean, if you’ve never met her, is a small, silver-haired woman with a firm voice, not showy in any way. She is the City Hall equivalent of your badass great aunt, the one who can wilt a punky 12-year-old with a withering glance and a patient recitation of facts.

For reporting on the problems she had discovered Crean was personally condemned by several members of Ford’s administration at that meeting, who said she was politicizing her job and who questioned her motivation and competence on the floor of council. To return to the boxing analogy: it was more or less like hitting the ref when you don’t like one of their calls. It was an attack on an accountability officer launched by politicians who found her investigation politically inconvenient, and which those attackers themselves knew was baseless.

Evidence: at the end of that very ugly debate, council endorsed her report’s findings unanimously.

Speaking to reporters after the vote, Crean was characteristically calm. She stuck to the scope of her report and refused to comment on politicians’ actions, saying only that some council debates were more emotional than others.

Fiona Crean was exactly what we need our accountability officers to be: thorough, careful, and impartial. She neither overreached nor downplayed the significance of what she had found. And she persisted in the face of ugly, disingenuous rants that called her integrity into question.

The findings in Crean’s report showed politicians how they can make some procedural, administrative improvements. Her conduct in presenting them showed them how they could choose to act in general, if they wanted to act much better.

The Globe and Mail‘s Paywall Reminding us that journalism costs money to make.

Daniel Dale   Staying professional, even when the mayor couldn’t.

Alice Moran   Speaking up when she didn’t need to.

Captain John   Keeping the waterfront interesting, and keeping his dream alive.

Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West) was on the Dean Blundell show this morning. Over the course of a 10-minute interview, he managed to both threaten fellow councillor Gord Perks (Ward 14, Parkdale-High Park) with hypothetical (not to mention physically improbable) violence and (jokingly?) imply that he’d like to sleep with the City’s integrity commissioner. Our attempted transcript is below.

But first, some context.

Mammoliti was one of several guests on Blundell’s show (on 102.1 The Edge) this morning. The full audio of the interview is available as part of Blundell’s podcast. It starts around the 51-minute mark.

The occasion for the interview was a confrontation in council chambers yesterday between Mammoliti, a close Ford ally, and Perks, a left-leaning councillor. (We posted a video of it yesterday. It’s also embedded, above.) Mammoliti was giving an interview to some media about a recent City ombudsman’s report, which is under discussion at this week’s council meeting. The report details how Mayor Rob Ford’s office, for political reasons, did things that ended up harming the City’s efforts to recruit new citizen members for the boards of its agencies.

Mammoliti was telling reporters that he believed the report to have been “politically driven.” He was implying, basically, that the ombudsman (who is actually a woman, named Fiona Crean) had compromised professional ethics in order to cause problems for Ford.

Perks took exception to this, and decided to express his displeasure loudly and colourfully, and in front of the cameras.

Blundell started his interview with Mammoliti by playing recorded audio of the encounter. Then, this happened:

Blundell: So anyway, this guy comes up. Giorgio Mammoliti, city councillor, almost gets into a dust-up with this dude Gord Perks, [who] just went nuts. So he comes over, he does this and then he leaves. Why was he telling you to leave the chamber? What was his big boner?

Mammoliti: They—”they,” meaning the left. When I say “they,” I mean the left.

Blundell: Okay, so it’s the right versus the left.

Mammoliti: They’re angry. They’re angry at what I was saying and what I was asking questions of. And they actually believe they have the right to just kick anybody out of the chamber whenever they don’t want to hear whatever they don’t want to hear. That’s what it’s about. There’s nothing more to it. Trust me. And I didn’t pick this fight. I didn’t say anything.

Blundell: You were very calm!

Mammoliti: I was up with the media. I hate being lumped into that, because I didn’t do anything.

Blundell: And you called Perks on it for how it was, that he was accusing you of being a bully, and yeah, he’s there right in your face, putting his back to the cameras.

Mammoliti: That’s the part of this whole equation that none of us can understand. They’re continually calling us, and I say…

Blundell: The right, the bullies. The left. The left calls the right the bullies.

Mammoliti: They say, “you’re the bullies.” But now people are starting to actually see what they’re all about, and what we see on a regular basis. Only this was caught on camera, which I love. And there was a part of me, quite frankly, as professional as I try to be, there’s a part of me that just said, “Why don’t you try it?”

Blundell: Let’s go there. Let’s hypothetically go there. So, Gord Perks comes over with his crazy, gay-wavy hair. And he comes over and he gets in front of you and he spits in your face and he’s, “Get out of here!” Bad breath and everything. What happens if he actually took a swing or grabbed you? What would your—like, were you planning something? Were you making kind of a backup plan to defend yourself? Because you were being assaulted.

Mammoliti: He would have been down in two seconds.

Blundell: What would you have done?

Mammoliti: I would have kicked him in the nuts and in the face at the same time.

(Huge laughs.)

Mammoliti: It was done. It was done. That’s exactly what I would have done.

Blundell: I wish he had touched you. That would have been the best political video of all time. That would have been awesome.

…

Blundell: He apologized, though. He apologized.

Mammoliti: Because he had to. Remember I said there’s watchdogs?

Blundell: Yeah.

Mammoliti: Well, one of the watchdogs was in the chamber. The integrity commissioner. [Her name is Janet Leiper.] And so, she saw it, or heard it, for sure. And if I would have lodged a complaint, he would have had to apologize anyway. You know, it would have looked ridiculous.

Blundell: How’s the watchdog? Is the watchdog lady good-looking?

Mammoliti: Uh, actually, she’s pretty good-looking, yeah.

Blundell: You should call her a watchcat, then.

Mammoliti: She rides a bike, as well.

(Huge laughter.)

Blundell: That’s hot.

Voice, away from the mic: She rides a bike!

Mammoliti: She does. She rides a motorbike. I ride a motorbike. She rides a motorbike.

Voice, away from the mic: Oh, a motorbike!

Mammoliti: Yeah. You know, I ride a motorbike. She rides a motorbike.

Blundell: You know what that is? Giorgio, that’s a watchfox.

Mammoliti: We all want to ride the hog.

(Huge laughs.)

Blundell: Girogio Mammoliti, everybody.

Toronto’s ombudsman, Fiona Crean, was scheduled to discuss her latest report with councillors today, in which she found that the mayor and his office compromised the public-appointments process in several ways. But as councillors were discussing the exact timing of that presentation, Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West) rose to ask whether that report should even be discussed by council since it seemed to him that it was “politically driven.”

The ombudsman’s mandate, according to the City, is to address “concerns about the service you receive from the City of Toronto, and investigate complaints of administrative unfairness. The Office is independent from the city, impartial, and its services are both confidential and free of charge.” Any suggestion that the ombudsman’s work is compromised by political motivations, therefore, goes directly to the question of her integrity.

Fiona Crean was appointed in 2008 after a national search. The selection panel consisted of then-mayor David Miller, four councillors (Frank Di Giorgio, Shelley Carroll, Adam Vaughan, and Gloria Lindsay Luby), and Montreal’s ombudsman at the time, with the assistance of executive-search firm Kinley & Connelly. The selection panel’s decision was unanimous [PDF].

Several councillors rose immediately after Mammoliti challenged Crean’s report, calling on him to apologize. Gord Perks (Ward 14, Parkdale-High Park) read from the councillors’ code of conduct [PDF], which states that “All members of council have a duty to treat members of the public, one another, and staff appropriately and without abuse, bullying or intimidation, and to ensure that their work environment is free from discrimination and harrassment.” Ford-friendly councillor Frances Nunziata (Ward 11, York South-Weston) runs council meetings, and she repeatedly asked Mammoliti to apologize. He refused, and wound up leaving the floor of council in disgust.

He re-emerged upstairs in short order, in the press gallery, where the exchange with Perks shown in the video above took place. Shortly after, Perks returned to add this:

For the last year and a half there has been a constant and unyielding attack on the professional public service in this city. People like Gary Webster who have dedicated their adult lives to making Toronto a better place to live in have been driven out of their jobs. That pattern is continuing now as some councillors attempt to bully members of the public service for bringing their reports forward to us. We can’t stand for it. Torontonians have to make it clear to everyone that’s elected that we need to protect our professional public servants if we’re going to have the excellent services that make Toronto work.

Council will discuss other matters this afternoon. Crean will present her report on the public appointments process tomorrow at 9:30 a.m.

UPDATE 2:33 PM: Council resumed meeting a few minutes ago after a break for lunch. Giorgio Mammoliti, back in the council chamber, clarified his earlier remarks to say that he meant not that the Ombudsman herself was biased, but that the people she interviewed in the course of her investigation were. Gord Perks apologized for his behaviour.

—Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West), during a Sunday appearance on the talk-radio show Mayor Rob Ford hosts with his brother, Councillor Doug Ford (Ward 2, Etobicoke North). Mammoliti’s argument was that by allowing the province to build a casino in the Greater Toronto Area—which the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation has said it intends to do—Toronto would be creating jobs for those who need them most. The economic effects of casinos are notoriously difficult to quantify (many researchers have tried and failed), but maybe an all-single-mother dealer staff would simplify the analysis. Thanks, Mammoliti.

Mayor Rob Ford at a press conference following his transit defeat last Wednesday.

“At the beginning of negotiations, people said, ‘This can’t be done. It won’t be done,’” Mayor Ford said to reporters at a press conference following this morning’s ratification of a new collective agreement between the City and CUPE Local 416, the outdoor workers’ union. “Well, folks, we did it.”

In contrast to the throngs of media that attended the humiliating defeat of Ford’s Sheppard-subway proposal last week, the crowd of reporters in the members’ lounge today was small. The press gallery regulars were there, but the TV cameras were in noticeably short supply. Ford answered about two minutes’ worth of questions during a group interview carefully stage-managed by his new press secretary, George Christopoulos. The mayor made his retreat as soon as a Star reporter asked him about a leaked TTC memo that indicates Ford has known for about a year that the City’s transit planners think his designs on Sheppard are, essentially, total bunk.

It’s not surprising that Ford’s victory drew so much less attention than his defeat. In comparison to the all-day drama of last week’s special transit meeting—where a packed gallery cheered on their favourite councillors in an atmosphere that one Twitter user described as being like “game seven of municipal politics”—the ratification took just three hours, two of them spent in a private session to prevent the confidential details of the negotiations from leaving the room.

The vote, in the end, was unanimous: 35 in favour, ten absent. Those who voted in favour of the new collective agreement included some of Ford’s harshest critics on council, like Adam Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina) and Joe Mihevc (Ward 21, St. Paul’s). The meeting was, in other words, at best a fait accompli—at worst, a bore.

Imagine you were Mayor Ford in this situation. Due in some part to your well-known obstinacy on spending issues, the City’s negotiating team (which you weren’t directly involved with, but still) has just delivered significant benefits to the public by making changes that really don’t adversely affect anyone who isn’t either a paramedic or a permanent outdoor employee of the City with fewer than 15 years of seniority. After a year on a fruitless search for “gravy,” you’ve finally located some—maybe as much as $100 million worth, if what your staffers are telling you is true. On this, a key campaign promise, you manage to attract broad support from your worst enemies—and yet the whole thing plays to an empty house. In a way, the relative ease of the negotiations around this collective agreement (no strike, no lockout!) is a net loss for Ford, because he comes out looking like an ordinary, maybe-competent administrator who knew when to call it quits, rather than some kind of super-impressive juggernaut who fought to the hilt. He’ll get, like, one Sun cover out of this, and it won’t even be a particularly flattering one.

After most of the journalists in attendance had left the chamber, a lone TV reporter cornered Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West) in search of some kind of scandal to sweeten the day’s broadcast. This reporter’s main interest was in finding out what Mammoliti thought of the revelation that CUPE Local 416 President Mark Ferguson had, in a private email to a union member, referred to Rob Ford’s administration, collectively, as “motherfuckers.”

“That word clearly degrades not only women, but mothers,” said Mammoliti.

It was kind of a pathetic display.

Let’s take this story for what it is.