For a politician elected to stop the “gravy train,” Mayor Rob Ford’s sense of entitlement is a bit rich

No matter where you travel in Canada, there’s no getting away from Rob Ford. Mere mention of his name in Halifax is enough to bring a crowd of several hundred to laughter, even guffaws. In Calgary, people fret about how his buffoonery makes the country look ridiculous in the eyes of the world.

But just when you think Ford’s banality couldn’t get any worse, any more humiliating and disturbing, it does.

Indeed, the more we learn about the chief magistrate’s willingness to use his office — first as councillor and now as mayor — for his own purposes, the more we cringe.

Ford says city employees are the ‘gravy’

Jerry Agar, a NewsTalk 1010 radio host who supported Rob Ford’s bid for mayor, challenged Ford on Thursday to identify the wasteful “gravy” he had promised to find and eliminate if elected.

Ford’s response: “The gravy is the number of employees we have at City Hall.”

Ford refuses to use the word “cuts” when discussing the budget, habitually referring to “efficiencies.” Challenged by Agar to say whether the elimination of daycare subsidies for 2,000 people would be a cut, Ford said, “No, it's an efficiency.”

Ford usually conducts one-on-one radio interviews only with friendly hosts. In perhaps an indication of shifting political winds, Agar, a longtime booster, grilled him about his proposed cut to the police budget, his suggestion of a possible 2.5 per cent tax increase, his weakening grip on council and, twice, on his apparent inability to locate true waste.

‘Gravy train’ architect Kouvalis now trying to fight it

The architect of Rob Ford’s “gravy train” campaign and his first chief of staff at city hall is now helping Toronto firefighters battle the mayor’s proposed cuts, the Star has learned.

Faced with the threat of 300 layoffs, the firefighter’s union hired Nick Kouvalis’s marketing and polling firm, Campaign Research, earlier this summer to conduct research and provide advice in advance of their NotGravy.com offensive.

The site, which launched earlier this month, is coupled with an aggressive campaign to characterize the proposed cuts as “dangerous” and a serious threat to public safety.

The irony that Kouvalis is now fighting the gravy train is not lost upon opposition councillors.

“Nobody in Toronto believes in the gravy train anymore and now we’re finding out Nick Kouvalis never did,” said Gord Perks.

Shelley Carroll said it raises “credibility” issues for the mayor.

Hold the gravy, but keep the meat

Most of us are pretty sure that government suffers from inefficiency. However, contrary to Rob Ford's logic, eliminating these inefficiencies and cutting services outright are not the same thing.  

Earlier this month, the City of Toronto announced a cost-saving initiative. And for once, it was uncontroversial—a genuine good idea.

Toronto Employment and Social Services announced that it would phase out welfare cheques and replace them with debit cards. For the roughly one-third of social services recipients (about 35,000 people) who currently are still not on the direct-deposit system—in most cases because they do not have bank accounts—this means an end to waiting by the mailbox for the life-saving envelope to arrive and, perhaps more importantly, an end to punishingly high cheque-cashing fees. Moreover, the changeover is expected to save the city between $1 million and $2.5 million per year. It’s cheaper and it provides better service to citizens. How excellent is that?