QUOTED: Doug Ford sizes up Olivia Chow as a mayoral candidate

Olivia Chow would make David Miller look like a fiscal conservative … Olivia Chow is no Jack Layton, and if they want tax-and-spend government, they’re going to elect Olivia Chow.

—Councillor and confirmed loudmouth Doug Ford, unleashing his best right-wing campaign rhetoric in response to the growing calls for NDP MP Olivia Chow to run for mayor against his brother Rob Ford. The fact that the election isn’t for two years—and that Chow has never explicitly said she intends to run—didn’t stop Ford from characterizing her as a spendthrift, which suggests that the Ford camp will stick with some version of its gravy train message in 2014. Then again, Ford also compared political life to a toilet seat (“You’re up one day, you’re down the next”), so perhaps we ought not take his words too seriously. [Toronto Sun]