Mike Del Grande was on the radio the other morning, playing three-card monte.

Three-card monte?

The hustler has two black cards, and one red card; he tosses them on a table, face down, and the bet is that the mark can’t find the red card thanks to speed, misdirection and sleight of hand.

That’s what Mike was doing when he observed, glibly, that the current mayor is enjoying labour peace while the former mayor, who was pro-labour, endured a nasty, smelly strike.

Del Grande hid the red card of the full truth when he neglected to mention that current labour peace rests on past labour strife.

The truth?

Former mayor David Miller did what no other Toronto mayor had the nerve to do — he snatched away the provision that allowed city workers to bank, and get paid for, unused sick days.

For your information, the banking of sick leave was the way some cities suppressed the wages of its union workers; it had additional virtue as a carrot, in that it tended to prevent the flu that approaches a worker on Friday and is mysteriously gone by Monday.

Miller snatched that provision back the only way it has ever been done by any municipality in this province: older workers were grandfathered, younger workers were denied, and workers in mid-career were offered a middle-ground option.

I say he screwed the workers.

I also say that Miller did not cause the strike. You can argue from here until the next election that he mishandled it. Me? I don’t think he did. As for the next election, it cannot come too soon.

But if the current mayor gets a pass on the labour front, it is because of the heavy lifting of his predecessor.

So, nice try.

But no credit is due Ford.

Councillor Del Grande — he is the former budget chief, and he quit that job in frustration — went on to fret that the mayor’s antics are obscuring his agenda. I snorted coffee through my nose. The mayor’s agenda seems to consist of boorish behaviour.

Here is what we will remember of Rob Ford when he is turfed from office:

Public intoxication and insults to strangers at a hockey game; domestic disputes; reading while driving; running from the CBC’s Marg Delahunty; killing the vehicle registration tax and then crying poor; running at Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale; reportedly flipping the bird while talking on his cellphone; promising to cut taxes without slashing services, and then breaking that promise; turning a diet stunt into a humiliating public failure; using official city letterhead to beg for money from city lobbyists in order to support a private charity; abusing campaign finance rules, according to an audit; and being accused of grabbing Sarah Thomson’s hindquarters.

Miller’s legacy?

I restrict myself to two small, shining examples: he instituted a lobbyist registry and he installed an integrity commissioner.

Allow me some speculation.

The Ford brothers are the inheritors of a fortune in business and a fortune in political capital, built by the hard work of their father, a one-term yes-man for Mike Harris; I despise Mike Harris, the worst premier we have ever had, but I admire anyone who succeeds in the world of business.

The elder Ford was, by all accounts, a straight arrow and a stern parent; here, I note that Rob gets all misty when he talks about his daddy.

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That’s fine.

But Rob Ford’s father was not associated with any scandal that I know of, and he surely would not have been pleased by the distractions that surround his son.

For which, I might add, no misdirection or sleight of hand can conceal.