A judge decided Mayor Rob Ford will testify in open court about a conflict-of-interest allegation after lawyer Clayton Ruby cast doubt on the mayor’s truthfulness and “credibility.”

Ruby, acting for citizen Paul Magder, who made the complaint that could see Ford turfed from office, announced Friday that Justice Charles Hackland had decided the mayor should take the stand.

Ruby didn’t speculate why the judge, who was not present at the closed-door meeting, is not content to rely on the lengthy transcript from Ford’s June 28 deposition, in which he defended speaking and voting in February on the issue of whether he should have to pay back a total of $3,150 donated to his football foundation.

But in a factum filed Aug. 16, Ford’s lawyer Alan Lenczner said Ruby “seeks to have the respondent cross-examined viva voce (in person) at the hearing,” over “claims that ‘credibility’ is an issue.”

At the deposition, Ruby asked Ford: “Would you agree with me that you tell lies from time to time, especially when you’re caught acting wrongly?”

Lenczner added in the factum: “The applicant seeks to ask the respondent whether he lied about being drunk at the hockey game and later had to apologize. Whether he lied to a reporter about a marijuana charge in Florida.”

In 2006, Ford lied about, and then admitted to, drunken insults he made to a Durham Region couple during a hockey game at the Air Canada Centre.

During the 2010 civic election campaign he denied being arrested for pot possession in Florida in 1999. A day later he said he had forgotten about that charge because it was dropped in exchange for admitting to “failing to give a breath sample.” Ford in fact pleaded no contest to drunk driving.

Such questions, Lenczner added, “are irrelevant and designed to embarrass.”

“Credibility is not an issue,” the lawyer wrote, adding Ford has been “categorical” in statements on when he believes he is required to declare a conflict of interest at city council and committees.

Sources say the judge didn’t link the credibility question with a need to hear from Ford in person, concluding a teleconference with a statement along the lines of, “Well, let’s hear what the mayor has to say.”

Lenczner’s factum lays out Ford’s triple-barreled defence for urging council to let him off the hook, and then voting with them to do just that.

(They overturned a 2010 decision to force Ford to repay donations he had solicited using his councillor letterhead, from lobbyists, their clients and a firm that did business with the city.)

• Lenczner will argue the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act — the basis of Magder’s complaint — doesn’t apply because Ford’s actions were governed by a council Code of Conduct that falls under another provincial law, the City of Toronto Act.

• Further, the Conflict of Interest Act doesn’t apply to a breach that doesn’t affect the politician’s “pecuniary interest,” he wrote, noting the money went to football equipment for schools, not to Ford himself.

At the February meeting, Ford told colleagues: “To ask for me to pay it out of my own pocket, personally — there’s just no sense to this. The money’s gone. The money’s been spent on football equipment.”

If Ford did breach the Act, Lenczner argues in an “alternate submission,” the judge should deem it an “error of judgment or inadvertence.” Otherwise, the law states, the judge must remove him from office and has discretion on whether to ban him from seeking re-election for up to seven years.

• Finally, the sum involved is “insignificant.”

If Ford is ousted from office, council can either trigger a mayoral byelection or choose a representative to fulfill Ford’s term.

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