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Within hours of Mayor Rob Ford’s judicially ordered ouster this week, the surprise that rippled through council was evolving into something more practical: a sense that city business must grind on.

Pending his appeal, Mr. Ford appeared to be a dead politician walking, but many of his colleagues were already shifting the conversation to issues such as tackling gridlock, balancing the budget and delivering city services more effectively. As rival councillor Adam Vaughan summarized: “It’s not a question of whether Ford’s finished or not. The question is, what’s Toronto’s next step?”

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All of which raises yet another question in a city where the mayor is merely one vote on council, and where Mr. Ford’s conservative agenda has been repeatedly hijacked by a powerful centre-left coalition: Does Toronto need a mayor at all?

“The mayor doesn’t have a lot of independent power apart from council, so in some respects, in a weak-mayor system, one could say the city doesn’t really need a mayor — though inevitably there will be some things where you will want at least symbolic leadership, if not actual leadership,” York University political scientist Robert Drummond said.