Footage of late Toronto mayor Rob Ford smoking crack released

Court lifted publication ban on cellphone video showing embattled
former mayor inhaling from crack pipe, which Ford denied in 2013
but later admitted

Ashifa Kassam in Toronto
Thursday 11 August 2016 18.10 BST

A video showing Rob Ford, the late former mayor of Toronto, smoking crack has been made public for the first time, some three years after it engulfed the city in scandal and earned Ford international notoriety.

The video was published by numerous media sites in Canada shortly after a court lifted the publication ban. The short clip shows the former mayor holding a crack pipe and a lighter, inhaling as he speaks to his friend Elena Basso, who was previously convicted of drug trafficking.

Throughout their expletive-laced conversation, Ford appears red-faced and his speech is slurred. Much of what he says is inaudible, but he appears to bristle at being called right-wing and engages with Basso as she launches into a scathing attack on Justin Trudeau, Canada’s current prime minister. “I don’t know if that camera’s not on,” Ford says near the end of the short video.

Reports of the video first emerged in 2013, sparking one of the city’s biggest scandals in recent history. Ford, who had been mayor of the city since 2010, responded by saying he did not use crack cocaine and he wasn’t an addict of crack cocaine. “As for a video, I cannot comment on a video that I have never seen or does not exist,” he said.

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