“They say he’s doing a lot for the Black community.”

That’s what Canadian musician Snow had to say about Rob Ford in a 2014 video from CityNews, reiterating a common belief that the late mayor expertly manufactured.

In the video, Snow had just met with Ford. The Informer singer, who is back on the Billboard charts with Daddy Yankee’s Con Calma, enthusiastically expresses his support for Ford’s re-election because he heard how much his people loved Ford and how much the mayor supports those living in Toronto Community Housing (TCH).

Snow grew up in Allenbury Gardens, a TCH complex near Don Mills and Sheppard. That’s where he learned to love and sing reggae. And he constantly shows his affection for that community by giving away televisions or bringing along ice cream trucks and bouncy castles for the kids. Back in the day, Ford reached out to Snow so that he could donate 150 backpacks to the singer’s cause.

So what does Snow think about the late Ford’s legacy today?

“I don’t see no one else phoning me and donating thing to the housing projects,” says Snow, during a recent interview with NOW. “If you’re helping me and my kids in Allenbury, I got your back.”

But, I argue, Ford’s generosity, as well as his brother Doug’s, was all cartel boss tactics, like handing out dollar bills to win support from the very community you hurt. Rob would offer personalized assistance to individuals, but the repair backlog and wait list for shelter at TCH ballooned under his watch. He also attempted to scrap breakfast programs and libraries accessed by the kids in those under-privileged communities.

As Edward Keenan eulogized, Rob “was outright hostile to any institutional or systemic fix that would help people so that they no longer needed the personal intervention of the mayor.”

“I should have looked deeper,” says Snow, after considering that information. “If I knew he was cutting stuff for the housing people, I would have went in there and I wouldn’t have talked to him about anything else but that.”

Snow then asks about Rob’s brother Doug, before accurately guessing that “he’s probably much worse.”

As just one example, I refer Snow to a CEE Centre program designed specifically to uplift Black youth from TCH, especially if they have a criminal background. That program was counting on funding that may never come thanks to Doug’s cuts to the anti-racism directorate.

There is, of course, so much havoc the Ford government is wreaking elsewhere.

“Is that recorder on?” Snow asks. Then he gets into it.

“Doug Ford, stop bullshitting. I don’t like that. I don’t like nothing about it. See they bullshit. If they’re cutting bullshit like that, we gotta go straighten ’em out.”

@nowtoronto | @JustSayRad