Ordered booted from office by a judge.

Charged with fraud and breach of trust.

Forced to resign after being implicated in an alleged kickback scheme.

This year was a bad one for mayors in Canada.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford was ordered out of office for conflict of interest over an improperly solicited donation to his football charity. He's still mayor pending his appeal of the decision, but is also facing a $6-million libel case.

Three mayors in Quebec - Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay, Laval Mayor Gilles Vaillancourt and Mascouche Mayor Richard Marcotte - resigned after they were implicated in the Quebec corruption scandal that allegedly saw construction contracts awarded to companies that offered kickback.

London Mayor Joe Fontana was charged with breach of trust, fraud and uttering forged documents after cheques to pay for his son's 2005 wedding appeared to come from federal funds, and Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz faces a court case over a party he held for city staff at a restaurant he owns.

The transgressions, alleged or otherwise, of these big-city mayors vary, and they happened at different points in time. But they have one thing in common, political scientists say - they were likely possible because of the way Canadians think about municipal politics. In short, we don't.

"It's sort of a heritage of the early 20th century, and the very strong discourse about municipal politics, that it was just administrative choices," says Caroline Andrew, director of the University of Ottawa's Centre on Governance.

Prizing conversations about city taxes over conversations about public policy has led to different levels of oversight -- and at times "a total lack of oversight" -- of how cities work, which has contributed to the headlines of 2012, Andrew says.

But there is a silver lining to the year of bad mayors.

"What's good about this year is the sort of expose that is, indeed and should be, shocking people," Andrew says. "That this is not what should be happening."

And although only time will tell how each city responds, at the polls and in policy debates, it's possible that the year of misbehaving mayors will lead to greater citizen engagement from the grassroots up.

"It'll be interesting to see how it plays out," Andrew says, "whether the story that gets told is, 'Oh, it's a mess and don't go there,' or whether the story that comes out is, 'This is something that citizens should take a greater interest in.'"