Premier Kathleen Wynne has not spoken to Toronto Mayor Rob Ford since his crack video scandal erupted last month and she is worried about strained relations between the province and the city.

In an interview with the Star in her Queen’s Park office on Tuesday, Wynne expressed concern over the tensions with Ford.

“I feel so strongly that we need a good working relationship, so it does distress me if the relationship can be described as fraught,” she said.

“I am not happy that there isn’t a good — at least good public — working relationship. I would say that officials still work together very well. Still business gets done.”

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It’s been more than a month since the Star and the U.S. website Gawker first reported on a video that appears to show Ford smoking crack cocaine.

In the aftermath, Wynne said on May 30 “the mayor needs to deal with his personal issues” — comments that sparked anger at city hall.

“I think the premier should take care of the problems that she has at Queen’s Park right now,” Ford said the same day.

His brother, Councillor Doug Ford, then blasted Wynne — who won the Liberal leadership almost five months ago, but has yet to face voters in an election — as “an unelected premier.”

She suggested Tuesday that the Fords and some overzealous headline writers misconstrued her words.

“I had never intended to suggest that I was on the brink of taking some action. First of all, there’s no action for me to take. There’s no brink for me to be on. So that was taken somewhat out of context.”

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Asked to describe their relationship, Ford said Tuesday that he and Wynne have “always had a cordial relationship.”

“We might disagree on obviously the revenue new tools, the new taxes — that’s something that we disagree on — but as a person she’s very friendly,” Ford said after helping to unveil a temporary display of statues by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in Nathan Phillips Square.

The mayor has denied smoking crack and questioned the existence of a video that two Star reporters and one Gawker editor have viewed and that, sources told the Star, he discussed with senior aides at a meeting on May 17 in his office.

Wynne, the first premier from Toronto in a generation, said Tuesday she has pointedly not reached out to Ford since the controversy began raging.

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“I guess my fear is it may be taken as interference at some level — I may be wrong.”

Despite their “ideological” differences, the Liberal premier said she has to work with the Progressive Conservative mayor.

“There are major challenges that the city is facing itself. In terms of the relationship there are a lot of things that we need to work on together — transit being the biggest one, but I would say affordable housing is another huge one,” she said.

Asked about the Toronto Police raids last week that left Chief Bill Blair dodging questions about Ford’s possible link to alleged drug dealers, Wynne was circumspect.

“I’m not going to comment on the police action. Chief Blair will do what he needs to do,” she said, adding Ontario Provincial Police have not briefed her or anyone in her cabinet about the raids and she does not know of any conversations between the OPP and Blair.

“I’m not aware of that, but I wouldn’t be aware of that. It’s up to the police to take whatever action they deem appropriate.”

The Ford debacle is following her everywhere.

Three weeks ago, Quebec Sustainable Development Minister Yves-François Blanchet asked Wynne if she would do to Ford what Quebec Premier Pauline Marois did to former Montreal mayor Gérald Tremblay and effectively shame him into resigning.

“What he said to me was that the premier had called to make a suggestion . . . that was the intervention — and he was asking me if that was something that I would do,” said Wynne.

“I said that that’s not something that I would do, and that’s not something that’s appropriate in the position I was in,” she said of their chat at the Council of Great Lakes Governors’ meeting in Mackinac Island, Mich.

Wynne said U.S. governors at that meeting were also asking her about Ford.

“He’s in the news so people were aware, so that’s why the conversation with the Quebec minister came up,” the premier said.

“They asked what was going in Toronto and I said, ‘Pretty much what you’re reading in the newspaper.’ It was sort of jocular with an edge of, kind of, disbelief — what’s actually happening? And I said: ‘You know what, it is what it is.’”

With a file from David Rider

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