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Toronto police chief Bill Blair has taken his share of abuse from the city’s mayoral family, the Fords. Rob Ford is every policeman’s nightmare, almost certainly criminal but impossibly popular. Doug Ford seems to blame Blair for everything, from Rob Ford’s criminal activity to his own mistakes. After years of public abuse, Bill Blair bites back.

The police chief is taking Doug Ford to court for defamation, based on something he said a few weeks ago. When it was reported that Mayor Rob Ford was being called as a witness in the extortion case against Sandro Lisi, Doug lashed out and blamed Blair for the leak. Other than that claim apparently not being true, Blair found it pretty rude to call out the police chief for leaking the details of an investigation to the media. After some positioning and threatening, Blair has actually filed a defamation suit against big scary Doug Ford.

 

This is the faceDarren Calabrese

This is not the face Doug is making
Darren Calabrese

 

Bill Blair is in an absolutely perfect position to go after the Ford family. His contract as chief of police is not being renewed, so he has a job that he knows in advance he’s getting fired from. Anyone in their right mind would use this opportunity to spice things up. For Blair, that means finally taking Doug Ford to task for blurting out mean things to the media. Maybe the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario will go after Doug next, if they ever recover from the enema he threatened to give them.

While it’s easy to focus on the obvious good guy of this story, what does this all mean for big bully Doug? Well he isn’t running in the upcoming Toronto municipal elections, but a bunch of people with the same last name are. It’s probably hard for the brand name of the Fords to get any more tainted, but they sure are trying. This could be the end of Doug’s career trying to enter provincial politics. His enema comment was almost certainly a signal that he cared deeply about the PC Party (you don’t give an enema to someone you don’t care about, right?), but any municipal career he dreamed of may be over. Or he may be able to somehow recover from impossible odds and still poll with over 24%. We call that pulling a Ford.

Either way, few people are complaining that someone with a platform is standing up to the Fords, who are known for bullying their way through Toronto’s political scene, which must be because they’re so scary. Bill Blair is using his understanding of criminal prosecution and his likely deep hatred for anything called Ford (here’s to betting he doesn’t drive a Fusion), to make an impact and drag that family into what is certainly not going to be the only court battle they see this year. More court means more fun, right?