A couple hundred suits who’d gathered at the Hilton Toronto on Thursday afternoon grumbled quietly to each other about the mayor’s extreme tardiness.

Rob Ford’s speech to the Economic Club of Canada was supposed to start at noon, but when he was still a no-show 45 minutes later, an entire table got up to leave.

“I have to go to work, too,” said one attendee, Tony Chow.

Ford is often late to events, but this seemed extreme — especially given the fact he was coming off of another video scandal.

And then, suddenly, there was a commotion in a hallway just outside the ballroom. Ford and some staff burst through the doors.

The mayor was an hour late for his speech.

“We were stuck in an elevator,” his spokesperson Amin Massoudi insisted.

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Reporters were skeptical, given Ford’s track record. But the hotel brought out several staffers — including Beth Osborne, the Hilton’s director of operations — who confirmed the strange tale.

At about 12:15 p.m., Ford, a few aides, some staff from the Hilton and Rhiannon Traill, the Economic Club’s president, got on a freight elevator in the basement. It then became wedged halfway between that floor and the concourse level. There was no cellphone reception. They pressed the emergency button and maintenance crews were dispatched, but no one alerted the guests.

“It’s definitely not nice to be stuck in an elevator,” Traill said, adding that Ford was very “calm” and “gracious” throughout the ordeal.

When the mayor finally took the stage, he made a quick joke about getting stuck, then launched into a 15-minute campaign-style speech, trumpeting his record, debuting a few new slogans and laying down the battle lines on potential election issues.

Ford bragged that on his watch, about $750 million in efficiencies had been found — though at least $300 million of that is not genuinely efficiences — and taxes had been kept at all-time lows.

He talked about how he’d contracted-out garbage pick-up, signed “historic new collective agreements” with city unions, and how his administration was investing in infrastructure such as water systems, roads and filling “200,000 potholes” each year.

The mayor indicated he planned to make subways, the future of the Gardiner Expressway and island airport expansion his main election issues.

“I have been very clear in my position on building new subways since day one. I’m committing to moving forward on a vision of a fully integrated subway system for our great city,” Ford said.

When voters head to the ballot box this October, Ford said, they’ll need to ask themselves: “Do you want subways, or do you want streetcars? Or should I say, fancy streetcars, LRTs.”

He said these “fancy streetcars” are cheaper, but “more disruptive.” In a shot at TTC chair Karen Stintz, his future mayoral opponent, Ford said some of his critics have been “flip-flopping on the transit file.”

In a closing statement that is sure to become a staple of Ford stump speeches over the next 10 months, the mayor made the case that despite his personal issues, he was still the best man to watch tax dollars.

“Ninety percent of what I said I was going to do, I have done. We have rebuilt our fiscal foundation,” Ford said. “Ask yourself: Are we better now than we were three years ago? Absolutely.”

What Rob Ford said

The Gardiner Expressway will be an election issue.

He is committed to phasing out the land transfer tax.

Toronto will never face another garbage strike.

The city is better off today than three years ago.