Mayor Rob Ford and Councillor Doug Ford violated council’s code of conduct when they disparaged the city’s chief medical officer on their radio show in April, the integrity commissioner has found.

The brothers made their comments on NewsTalk 1010 in discussing Dr. David McKeown’s recommendation to lower speed limits. Rob Ford called McKeown’s $294,302 salary an “embarrassment”; Doug Ford referred to him as “this guy” and twice asked, “Why does he still have a job?”

The integrity commissioner, Janet Leiper, found that Rob Ford breached a provision of the code of conduct by unfairly “demeaning” McKeown’s professional reputation. She found that Doug Ford breached the same provision.

“Public name-calling and/or personal attacks on staff can have a chilling effect on the public service to make good faith recommendations in accordance with their individual mandates,” she wrote in her report on Doug Ford. “A non-partisan, professional public service deserves respectful treatment.”

Rob Ford initially stood by his words when Leiper asked him about them, and he accused the left-leaning councillor who made the complaint, health board chair Councillor John Filion, of doing so for political reasons. The day Leiper filed her report, Ford sent her a letter retracting his comment, as she had recommended.

Doug Ford has not retracted his own words. Leiper recommended that council formally reprimand him.

Contacted Thursday, Doug Ford said he had no comment. But he then added: “I’m just going to give the integrity commissioner 10 sheets that say, ‘I, Doug Ford, apologize to — a blank name — for anything that I’ve said in the past and anything I’m going to say in the future.’ I’ll just sign it, and she can just fill in the name.”

Doug Ford apologized at council in February after Leiper found he had bullied an activist in a City Hall hallway. Rob Ford has been the subject of numerous integrity complaints.

The administration’s treatment of city officials has been criticized repeatedly. The mayor orchestrated the firing of TTC chief Gary Webster after he refused to make the case for a Sheppard subway; the city’s ombudsman found in September that his office improperly interfered in the process of making appointments to city boards.

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