Toronto’s city council has begun to take power away from scandal-plagued Mayor Rob Ford, voting near-unanimously on Friday to strip him of his authority to fire committee leaders and to govern the city during emergencies.

Ford could be rendered virtually powerless, a mayor in title only, in a third council vote on Monday. He said Friday that he will challenge the first two decisions in court — even though he also said he would have voted for the sanctions himself if another mayor had behaved the way he has.

“I completely understand where my colleagues are coming from, and I would have supported what they’re doing,” he said in a speech. “Obviously, in my situation, I have to support myself, and I think anybody in my position would’ve done the same. But I want to move on.”

Friday might have been Ford’s last business day with any semblance of control over the workings of the municipal government. At a special meeting on Monday, councillors will debate proposals to give most of his “powers and duties” to Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly, slash his office operations budget, allow his aides to jump to Kelly’s office, and remove him as the chair of his own executive committee.

More:

A Q&A on what it all means

Memorable moments from Friday’s meetings

Decision to defund mayor’s office could present legal issues

Rosie DiManno on stripping Ford’s power, piece by piece

Premier Kathleen Wynne hailed the two Friday votes. Wynne, who said Thursday that she would consider giving the city “new tools” to deal with Ford, signalled Friday that she might be content to allow council to deal with the unprecedented crisis on its own.

“The concern for me is that city council can function, and it seems today that that’s exactly what’s happening,” Wynne said.

Council voted 39-3 to prevent Ford from firing councillors as the chairs of committees such as licensing and public works; Ford, his brother Councillor Doug Ford, and Councillor David Shiner were the only members of council to vote against. The two Fords were the only dissenters in a 41-2 vote to take away his power to make decisions without council’s consent during emergencies.

Doug Ford, possibly the mayor’s only remaining defender on a council in open rebellion, said “a lot of people out there” are using the words “coup d’etat” to describe the sanctions. He noted that 383,000 Torontonians voted for Rob Ford in the 2010 election, and he said his colleagues lacked both the moral and legal standing to seize powers.

“They didn’t vote for you councillors to take the powers off someone that was democratically elected,” Doug Ford said. “You don’t have that authority. I know you believe you do, and maybe you do, but we’ll see when we move forward here.”

The city’s legal chief, solicitor Anna Kinastowski, said she is confident the decisions could be successfully defended in court. Councillor John Filion said Ford’s colleagues had acted “reluctantly” and “sadly” but “with the belief that we have reached the point where it is both warranted and necessary.”

“We’ve been, frankly, fortunate that no emergencies have landed on the same dates on which we know the mayor’s judgment may have been impaired,” Filion said, “and the members of council that I’ve spoken to do not wish to push our luck on that point.”

Ford’s flailing mayoralty plunged into crisis when Police Chief Bill Blair confirmed on Oct. 31 that there is a video that appears to show Ford smoking crack cocaine. Ford, who had flatly denied the video’s existence, subsequently admitted that he has smoked crack and purchased illegal dugs while in office, fallen into “drunken stupors,” and driven his car after drinking alcohol.

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Following his crack admission, most councillors urged him simply to take a leave of absence and get medical help. They introduced Friday’s sanctions after he refused to step aside even temporarily, then introduced the harsher sanctions to be debated Monday after police documents revealed more troubling allegations about his apparent substance abuse.

The allegations in the documents have not been proven in court.

Even if the additional measures are defeated, Ford will have little more legislative influence than a ward councillor. Major policies must be passed by a committee before they become law; now freed from the mayor’s whip, committee chairs can say and do as they please without regard for his political agenda.

The enfeebled mayor still has the power to declare an emergency and end the emergency. But he no longer has council’s permission to make decisions on his own during the emergency. Kelly, a veteran Scarborough councillor and former Liberal MP, will be in charge instead.

Council passed the two sanction measures at consecutive special meetings on Friday morning. This week’s regular council meeting resumed in the afternoon. As it ended, the Ford brothers shared a laugh about going out for drinks, said former ally Councillor Peter Milczyn, chair of the planning committee.

“Doug Ford was joking about, ‘Let’s head out for drinks with Rob.’ And Rob was laughing and pointed towards whomever and said, ‘Well, they don’t drink, I’m the only one who drinks,’” Milczyn said.

“They’re making a joke out of it. It’s disgraceful. Obviously he and his brother thought it was funny to joke about. I just think it’s a disgrace.”

During the regular meeting, the mayor engaged in some of the quixotic spending battles he relished as the much-mocked representative for Etobicoke’s Ward 2. Impassioned, he rose to oppose a series of minor proposals he called wasteful, like one for a Sheppard Ave. traffic light that city officials do not believe is necessary; vowed to place a procedural “hold” on “every” item that comes before council until his “dying day”; and lost votes 30-2, 31-3, 36-1, and 34-1.

He then told reporters that he still plans to run in the next election.

“Councillors had their say today; the taxpayers are going to have their say on October 27th,” he said. “That’s all I can say.”