At the first council meeting held in Mayor Rob FordRob Ford’s absence, behind the scenes he was still the main topic of debate.

Where is he? How is he doing? Will his colleagues support an extended leave if he chooses not to return in three months?

Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong got some of those answers when the mayor himself phoned his brother, Councillor Doug Ford, during Tuesday’s meeting at city hall.

“Councillor Ford passed me the phone because Rob wanted to speak to me,” Minnan-Wong told reporters after his afternoon chat with the mayor. “He said that he was in rehab, he was working out. He asked how things were going at council.”

Minnan-Wong refused to say where Ford is, following reports the mayor did not enter the U.S. as planned last week, saying it is up to the mayor and his supporters to disclose those details.

Earlier at city hall, the mayor’s brother said Ford is doing well in a rehab program, but he would not say where his brother was being treated.

“Due to confidentiality to not only the mayor but to the people in the rehab program, I’m not at liberty to say. He’s in a rehab facility, 100 per cent, and he’s getting the support that he needs,” Doug Ford said.

“He’s doing great. Everybody’s concerned that he’s in rehab. He’s in rehab, he’s doing good, that’s all that matters.”

Ford appeared to be heading to Chicago for rehab after relinquishing his mayoral powers in the wake of a firestorm of new revelations about abusive and wild behaviour.

Ford’s lawyer, Dennis Morris, told the Star Tuesday the mayor is still attending in-patient treatment, where he is at a facility “24/7.”

Questions centred on the mayor’s location after the Globe and Mail reported Ford had boarded a plane for Chicago on May 1, only to turn back when the plane landed. U.S. officials indicated the mayor was not denied entry, the Globe reported.

“He voluntarily withdrew his application to enter the U.S.A.,” Roy Norton, the consul general of Canada in Chicago, told the newspaper.

Councillor Doug Ford would not comment on what happened to his brother at the border.

Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, a supporter of the mayor on council, said people deserve to know where Ford is receiving treatment so it can be verified.

“I think that, based on the mayor’s behaviour over the last number of years, because of the amount of opportunity he’s had to come forward and tell the truth and hasn’t on different issues. I would say to you right now that at the very least the city should know the city that he’s in for treatment, and with some verification that he is in fact being treated. And then I’d ask everybody to just leave him alone and let him be treated,” Mammoliti said at city hall during a break in Tuesday’s council meeting.

“Some of us are actually asking this because we care and want to know that he’s going to be OK. So there’s two reasons many of us are asking.”

Councillor Gord Perks said the mayor needs to be left alone.

“I don’t need to know. I don’t think anyone in Toronto needs to know. That’s a private health matter,” he said. “Government in the city of Toronto does not have the right and should not have the right to investigate private health matters.”

At council, as matters Ford has hotly debated continued without him — including ongoing transit projects and the ombudsman’s report on Toronto Community Housing mismanagement — his brother drew the attention of a handful of onlookers, media and other councillors as he occasionally sat in his brother’s otherwise empty chair.

Ford also missed a discussion on increasing councillor pay, something he has also fought to curb in the past. Council voted to raise salaries annually based on Statistics Canada’s consumer price index, after that option was recommended by executive committee over a large pay hike.

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Minnan-Wong said he told Ford about an emergency motion raised by Councillor Gord Perks related to the safety rating for a city garbage contractor. Minnan-Wong said he characterized it as an attempt to the “undermine” their work toward contracting out garbage collection.

The mayor, Minnan-Wong said, responded by saying he wanted to come back.

“I think Rob misses council and he would like to be here.”

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