Rob Ford has acknowledged for the first time that he skips the Pride parade out of personal preference, not strictly because of his schedule.

At the first candidates’ forum of the 2014 mayoral election, Toronto’s mayor was asked Wednesday whether he will be attending the World Pride festival being held in the city in late June.

“I’m not going to go to the Pride parade,” Ford responded. “I’ve never gone to a Pride parade. So I’m not going to change the way I am.”

He ignored a reporter’s post-debate request to explain his opposition to the landmark gay event. He flatly repeated his debate answer, saying he has not attended before and is “not going to attend it now.”

Ford is a social conservative who opposes same-sex marriage and who has made several controversial comments about gay and transgender people. But he said every previous year of his mayoralty that he was only missing the popular parade because it conflicts with his tradition of visiting a family cottage over Canada Day weekend.

“Like I’ve always said, if it lands on the same weekend when I take my family up north, unfortunately, my family comes first,” he said in explaining his absence in 2013.

“Since I was a little boy, we always used to go up north to our cottage, and I’m carrying on the tradition that my father had,” he said in 2011. Under heavy private and public pressure, some from his own brother and deputy mayor, Ford did attend the Pride flag-raising event at city hall last year.

World Pride, an international 10-day festival Toronto had to bid to host, will have its parade on June 29, the Sunday before Canada Day, which falls on a Tuesday.

World Pride replaces Toronto’s usual Pride Week. The event, which begins June 20, is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of tourists from out of town and hundreds of thousands more participants than the regular festivities. Toronto is the first North American city to host World Pride.

Ford spoke Wednesday at a forum held by the student union at the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus. He was joined by David Soknacki, a businessman and former councillor, and three fringe candidates.

Soknacki said he would be happy to attend Pride if he gets a Super Soaker water gun, adding in a post-debate scrum that the parade “has the support of not only millions of residents but also brings in such a large draw.”

“The mayor has to represent all Torontonians,” he said.

Ford outlined his policy platform in more detail than he had previously. He said he would seek “Ford more years” to continue fighting for new subway lines (Sheppard, Finch, and the so-called downtown relief line), to preserve the Gardiner expressway, to advocate Porter’s proposal for jets at the island airport, to outsource garbage collection east of Yonge St. as he did west, to reduce the land transfer tax, and secure a major outdoor music festival like the one he observed on an official trip to Austin, Texas last year.

He also made an appeal to the suburban alienation that helped propel his rise to power.

“Scarborough has been neglected for years and years and years and years,” he said to loud cheers.

Soknacki, who has already made formal policy announcements on ethics, transit and business licensing, pledged to run an “issues, issues, issues” campaign. He said he decided to run because the city government is ignoring important matters, and needs a mayor who can work well with others.

Ford and Soknacki did not directly criticize each other, but they differed on policy matters such as rapid transit and bike lanes.

Soknacki again pledged to cancel Ford’s planned subway extension to the Scarborough RT and revert to the original plan for a light rail line.

Ford said he supports separated bike lanes downtown to cut animosity between cyclists and drivers, but he noted that he removed bike lanes from Jarvis St., and he pointedly said that he sees fewer cyclists in the suburbs. Soknacki, who is from Scarborough, said he believes bike lanes are part of the city’s “overall infrastructure” and could be “everywhere.”

Ford declined to express a position when asked by a student what he would do to address the police practice of disproportionately stopping black and brown young people.

“If there is a problem with the racial profiling,” he said, “it’s not up to city council” or the mayor. He said he is confident in Police Chief Bill Blair to handle policing issues, though he has criticized Blair and referred to him profanely in recent months.

Soknacki has called for a review of police operations and spending. He said the police should be given a “clearer direction” on such matters of race, but he did not say what direction he would offer.

Asked what he would do to address the “unique needs” of gay and transgender homeless youth, Ford said the government should treat all people equally and not divide the population into sub-groups.

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Ford and Soknacki are the only two major candidates formally registered.

They were joined Wednesday by a man named Al Gore, who offered a series of bizarre answers, one involving NASA and astronauts, and said the city should not be “crack nation.” Ford, who has acknowledged having used crack cocaine, did not respond; he looked away when another fringe candidate, musician Richard Underhill, suggested he was a “man in a clown suit.”

The third fringe candidate, Robb Johannes, offered polished responses to policy questions. He drew applause after he discussed a graffiti art program he said he developed in Vancouver, and for his story about growing up brown and being stopped by police.