While Rob Ford’s election exposed a deep divide in the way Torontonians vote, the embattled mayor may be overestimating the ability of his Ford Nation to get him re-elected.

“We have seen public attitudes about scandal change over the past 10-15 years, and we have seen a number of candidates who have been involved with a number of person foillibles pick themselves up and manage to get back in the game,” said Dennis Pilon, a York University political science professor.

Pilon says a lot of public perception around scandal depends on what the scandal is about, and how the candidate deals with the scandal.

“If it’s not clear that the politician is contrite, or they have a plan for dealing with their problem, then I think the public is willing to be an enabler,” Pilon said. “And there I think Rob Ford has not handled this as well as some other politicians.”

But Ford has always been a less-than politically correct character. He was frequently in the news as a bumbling mayoral candidate, making controversial statements and finally winning in an election that saw a giant split in the way Toronto’s downtown and inner suburbs voted.

Observers at the time said that Ford’s election victory showed how divided Toronto was. Several towns around the downtown core were amalgamated in 1998 to form the modern day City of Toronto.

However, the new amalgamated city does not seem to think as one. Here’s a map that shows how Toronto voted for Rob Ford in the last election. The boundaries of the former cities that made up the Toronto area are shown, and the darker the shade, the stronger the support Ford had in that area:

It’s clear that Ford received most of his support from the inner suburbs, while the downtown or ‘Old Toronto’ seemed to be opposed to him.

Pilon says that demographics in the inner suburbs may hold some clues as to why they voted differently from the downtown core.

“What we might be seeing in the suburbs is an older group of more entrenched citizens who feel very threatened by the rate of change in their communities,” Pilon said.

“So they’re seeing wave upon wave of immigrants moving into their neighbourhood and part of what’s happening with Ford Nation is a reaction to that.”

Pilon thinks that there may not be a significant entrenched divide between the inner suburbs and the downtown, as the elections may suggest. He pointed to the previous mayor, David Miller, who received more widespread support, and said that various factors like voter turnout and specific issues could affect election outcomes.

“We could speculate that things like the garbage strike, that had happened in the year before the election, that made a lot of people angry, and it probably motivated a lot of people to vote who wouldn’t normally vote in a municipal election,” Pilon said.

“Municipal elections, hard to get people’s attention. But hey, there’s garbage rotting at their doorsteps, so they were motivated.”

Pilon said he doubts those same people will be motivated in the next election – and here he draws a line between the “Ford Nation” and other voters who might have supported Ford, but did not necessarily constitute his dedicated Nation.

“It’s very important to distinguish between the Ford Nation supporters, who are a very particular populist demographic, and the kind of run-of-the-mill right-wing supporters,” he said.

Pilon said that while a lot of people voted for him simply because he was the right-wing candidates, and while they may have supported his policies and approved his budget cuts, they may not be as forgiving of his scandals.

“Even if he keeps his Ford Nation behind him, it won’t be enough for him to win,” Pilon said.

It’s a thought echoed by Nelson Wiseman, a political science expert at the University of Toronto. He says that a large part of Ford’s support was probably because he was the only major candidate from the inner suburbs, while the downtown had several candidates from there.

“If only 750,000 people live downtown and two million people live in the suburbs, and only one guy is running from the suburbs, and his house looks more like their own house, a lot of those people will identify with him,” Wiseman said.

He drew comparisons with similar situations in other Canadian cities, like Winnipeg and Ottawa.

“I don’t think the people who live in, say, Kanata vote the same way as people in Bytown,” Wiseman said, talking about suburban and downtown Ottawa.

“People like to focus on Rob Ford as a kind of lightning bolt that attracts all this energy, when I think what we see here is a series of unfortunate events, or fortunate, depending on your point of view, that then ultimately result in him becoming the mayor,” Pilon said.

Asia will continue to be the driving force for Canadian wine exports despite the upcoming Canada-EU free trade deal opening up European markets for Canadian wine producers, according to industry experts.

While the United States remains the largest market for Canadian wine exports, China is now in second place and imports almost as much. The Chinese more than tripled their imports of Canadian wine between 2009 and 2012, and the demand continues to grow.

“Just because of this agreement, there’s not a great benefit to export to Europe. If you go to France, you’ll see 95 per cent of the wine in France is French wine,” said Duncan Gibson, director of finance at the Wine Council of Ontario.

“[Asia] is where a lot of our people concentrate… those exports will increase.”

China imported about $16.7 million worth of wine from Canada in 2012, and $9.5 million of that came from Ontario. The Chinese have also started buying vineyards in Canada. The Ottawa Business Journal reported in March that a wealthy Chinese investor has dropped $20 million on a mansion and vineyard in the Thousand Islands area. 

After China, South Korea was the third largest market for Canadian wines. Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan all made an appearance in the top 10.

You can compare the 2012 Canadian wine export market with the market in 1990 with the maps below. The darker shade a country is, the more Canadian wine it buys. While the United States has remained a large importer of our wine, there is a clear shift from Europe to Asian markets, especially China.

Wine Exports in 1990

Wine Exports in 2012

The total export market, for Canadian wine, however, remains small. As Gibson explains, it’s a matter of quality over quantity.

“The world is full of inexpensive wine that other countries can make less costly than we do… because they’re warm climates, their grapes grow a lot, there’s a higher yield. They can make a lot of cheap wine,” Gibson said.

“So it’s hard for us to compete on price when we export. We compete on quality and a style of wine. We sell smaller quantities of better product.”

“We will never a player in the cheap, bulk wine market, just because we can’t produce it that way,” he said.

Premium product, especially wine that’s been certified as being authentically Canadian, is building a following outside Canada, according Laurie Macdonald, executive president of the Vintners Quality Alliance in Ontario

“Particularly, icewine has been quite successful in Asia,” Macdonald said, that certifies wines made with 100 per cent local grapes.

Read: The Canadian Vintners Association talks about Icewine taking off in Asia

“In Ontario, VQA is the wine of origin here, as opposed to wine that contains imported products. So I think worldwide, consumers are more interested in wines that are, you know, authentic wines of origin. They’re not just commodities bundled from all over the place, they come from a specific place based on the origin of the grape.”

 Read: The VQA’s guidelines on certifying Ontario wines.

The EU free trade deal does help the Canadian wine industry in one aspect, though, as Gibson explains.

“Before the agreement, there were duties and taxes on certain equipment that was brought in from Europe,” he said.

“Grape presses, other machinery like tanks, oak barrels… so that when Ontario wine producers import that equipment from Europe, it will now be less expensive because there won’t be duties and taxes. So that will be a positive for domestic producers.”

Hintonburg residents may want to start checking if their doors are locked before hitting the pubs and restaurants in their up-and-coming neighbourhood, since they live in a ward with the highest rate per capita of break-and-enters in Ottawa.

Kitchissippi ward, which includes Hintonburg, has Ottawa’s highest rate of break-ins per capita according to crime data from 2012

The data shows that Kitchissippi had 248 reported break-and-enters, which works out to 60 break-ins per 10,000 residents, which is the highest rate in Ottawa. The ward with the second-highest rate was Rideau-Vanier, which saw 55 break-ins per capita.

Break-and-enters per capita (by city ward) in 2012:

Overall, the number of break-and-enters throughout the city has not changed much from 2011 to 2012. In Kitchissippi ward, however the number of break-and-enters is up from 152 in 2011, or an increase of about 63 per cent.

“Break and enters happen in every community… we try to make sure our community police constable is aware of what’s going on and we try to follow up with them on any issues that can make our community safer,” said Matt Whitehead, president of the Hintonburg Community Association.

Where the break-ins are happening: Map of wards, with darker wards having a higher rate of break-ins per capita in 2012

Hintonburg is seeing a resurgence in recent years. The neighbourhood had a reputation for prostitution and drugs in 1990s, when the community association began to target drug houses along with law enforcement agencies and start to clean up the neighbourhood.

Today, the community association is facing instead an invasion of condominium developers. New restaurants and galleries open on a regular basis in this neighbourhood. In 2007, Air Canada’s inflight magazine enRoute included Hintonburg in its list of the top 10 emerging neighbourhoods in Canada.

“Security issues with the community have largely decreased over the past 20 years dramatically and over the past five years even more so,” Whitehead said, adding the association’s zoning committee was busier than the security committee nowadays.

Kitchissippi saw a string of break-ins around the Civic Hospital area in January 2012, and then again in September that year.

The average rate for break-ins in Ottawa was about 29 per 10,000 residents.