Toronto has to learn from the past or risk another Rob Ford

I’m going to make a gigantic understatement. Last week was not a good week for Mayor Rob Ford.

He copped to smoking crack cocaine — in a drunken stupor, he says, as if that’s better. By admitting as much, he also confirmed that he’s been lying to us for months. Add that to the massive police investigation, some unflattering video footage, the mayor’s stubborn refusal to step aside and worldwide media attention, and it starts to feel surreal. Is this real life?

So it makes sense that there are people like Coun. Denzil Minnan-Wong who want to hit the reset button and usher a bit of calm and sanity back into Toronto City Hall.

But there isn’t a good and fair way to do it.

Minnan-Wong — probably the most right-wing member on city council, by the way — has said that he’s prepared to ask the provincial government to step in and remove Ford. The province could do it, of course. Under our laws, Toronto and its government are always just a piece of legislation away from being forever altered.

But giving Queen’s Park a green light to step in has some pretty serious implications. Ford, even though his mayoralty now resembles a flaming car veering erratically through a crowded city square while the radio blasts Chumbawamba tunes, is still the duly elected leader of this city. And he hasn’t been convicted of anything — he hasn’t even been arrested.

It all comes down to precedent. And removing a democratically elected leader wouldn’t be a good one.

Besides, I resent Minnan-Wong’s call for a provincial intervention because it feels like the easy way out. Like council would just be entering the political equivalent of a video game cheat code because they can’t figure out how to defeat King Bowser.

Toronto can’t just shrug its collective shoulders and act like Ford was simply a weird thing that happened for a few years — an anomaly. This mayor did not come to power in a vacuum. He was propelled to office by people, ideas and ideology.

And don’t kid yourself. No political insider can really pretend to be surprised that the guy who pledged to stop the gravy train ended up presiding over a train wreck. It’s just that a lot of people were willing to overlook Ford’s many red flags because they liked the easy answers, the low tax stuff, and — later, as the bandwagon swelled — his rising poll numbers.

If no one is prepared to address and improve that kind of political climate, Toronto is bound to end up running into the arms of the next tough-talking populist who comes along. This whole twisted Rob Ford saga will have taught us nothing.