In Washington, lawmakers can impeach a U.S. president at any time. In Ottawa, MPs can defeat a prime minister with a vote of non-confidence. At Queen’s Park, MPPs can topple a premier over a budget or throne speech.

Not so at city hall: There is no provision to unseat a wayward mayor without a criminal conviction. Unless he is led away in chains, you can’t yank his chain of office.

Do we need a workaround to get Rob Ford out of the workplace? Can Queen’s Park come to the rescue of city council?

On paper, anything is possible: Legally, every municipality is a creature of the province. The laws giving status to Toronto, like the 444 other municipalities across Ontario, emanate from the legislature and can be amended by it.

In reality, any top-down intervention is a non-starter for now. It would be politically unfathomable for the senior level of government to meddle in municipal democracy uninvited.

There is an instinctive aversion to big-footing any lower level of government, for the simple reason that many of the 107 MPPs who sit in the legislature are themselves graduates of municipal councils or school boards: Premier Kathleen Wynne is a former school trustee; Municipal Affairs Minister Linda Jeffrey was a Brampton councillor; NDP Leader Andrea Horwath sat on Hamilton council; Tory MPP Doug Holyday was Toronto’s deputy mayor.

But what if Toronto city council were to take the initiative, inviting the province to step in and kick Ford out? This week, city council is scheduled to look at a proposal that would pass the buck back to Queen’s Park. Denzil Minnan-Wong, a longtime Ford ally who has turned on the mayor, now wants the provincial government to turn him out of office.

The right-wing councillor wants to unite his colleagues behind a formal request for the legislature to enact a legal fix forcing out Ford. It would be an unprecedented one-off, but Minnan-Wong argues that extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.

To be taken seriously by the province, any proposed mayoral ouster would require virtually unanimous support from Minnan-Wong’s colleagues. But even if a fractious city hall miraculously united behind such a historic act of political regicide, Wynne couldn’t pull the trigger without overcoming major obstacles and winning unprecedented all-party co-operation.

The first conflict is over consistency: While Ford has been discredited for consorting with criminals and smoking crack, what about the disgraced mayor of London, Joe Fontana, who faces criminal charges for fraud and breach of trust? (After all, Ford faces no criminal charges so far.)

The second challenge is legitimacy: If the province overturned the verdict of voters, Wynne could face a counterattack from critics claiming she has never won an election as premier. In fact, her party commands the confidence of the legislature, but it’s not always a fair fight when politicians play the populist card to distort the niceties of our parliamentary system.

Finally, any attempt to unseat Ford wouldn’t be Wynne’s decision alone. She heads a minority government that depends on opposition support. She would almost certainly need the backing of both New Democrats and Tories.

Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak has been a close political ally of Ford until now, suggesting only that the mayor take some time to “seek help” — not quit. Hudak remains torn because he still dreams of tapping into Ford Nation to make gains in Toronto.

Without all-party support to provide political cover and democratic legitimacy, Wynne would have a hard time unseating a once-popular mayor. In which case, Ford’s fate could hinge on Hudak’s calculus as much as Wynne’s reticence.

A POSTSCRIPT: For all the criticism of Ford’s personal enablers, the voters of Toronto have also been his political enablers.

A plurality of Toronto voters looked the other way when they elected a demonstrably unqualified and untruthful outlier to lead city council in 2010. It was Toronto Sun journalist Jonathan Jenkins who, prior to the last election, exposed the mayoral candidate baldly lying in an interview about his prior DUI conviction and drug arrest in Florida. We were warned.

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The Greek tragedy unfolding in Toronto is a reminder that Athenian democracy must be taken seriously, lest we all become a laughingstock. For it is not just Rob Ford who is being ridiculed around the world. All Torontonians are becoming a collective joke.

Listen closely to the nightly comedy routines on U.S. television: Every incredulous comic stresses that Ford’s popularity barely budged during his meltdown of recent months, and that his ratings rose even as the crack cocaine video was corroborated.

Never mind the mockery of Ford. The world isn’t so much laughing with us as at us.

Martin Regg Cohn’s provincial affairs column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. mcohn@thestar.ca , Twitter: @reggcohn

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