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Toronto mayoral front-runner Rob Ford works a crowd on Sunday, Sept. 19.

Emerging this week with a bump in his polling numbers, an emboldened Joe Pantalone continued to sharpen his attacks and shed his nice-guy image during Wednesday night's mayoral debate at York University.

After George Smitherman acknowledged he wasn't sure how many workers the City of Toronto had hired since amalgamation, Mr. Pantalone shot back, "Mr. Smitherman should get his facts straight, but I guess he's not very good at math."

He then took a swipe at front-runner Rob Ford for over-stating the city debt - which he pegged at $2.8-billion, not $3-billion as the Etobicoke councillor has often said. "I guess $200-million isn't important to Mr. Ford."

In fact, neither are correct: according to the 2010 capital budget, the net debt stands at $2.4-billion, but is likely to rise in the next few years as the city works through its backlog of capital maintenance projects.

Wednesday's debate covered transportation and financial issues.

Mr. Pantalone's defence of the city's financial "challenges" didn't impress Rocco Rossi, who has pledged to sell Toronto Hydro to help pay down the debt. "I'm sorry Mr. Pantalone, but 'don't worry be happy' is not an economic policy," Mr. Rossi said.

Mr. Rossi, who in recent days has been backing away from his widely-panned pitch to build a highway tunnel downtown, also took aim at the inconsistencies in Mr. Ford's pronouncements about spending cuts and his own subway plans. He said the savings from Mr. Ford's two favourite examples of ineffective spending - the single-source subway car purchase and the 21,000 free Metropasses distributed to city employees - would purchase less than a kilometre of new subway line.

Now the clear front-runner, Mr. Ford took fire on several other fronts, including his record as a lone wolf on council's hard right.

Positioning himself as a conciliatory problem solver, Mr. Pantalone pledged to include right-of-centre councillors like Michael Thompson, who is retiring, and Karen Stintz on his executive committee. Mr. Smitherman, meanwhile, threw a bone to North Yorkers by lauding former mayor Mel Lastman as a consensus seeker.

Curiously, Mr. Ford stated that councillors should be far more responsive to the advice of city bureaucrats, citing the example of speed bump requests, which, he said, tend to get a thumb's down from transportation staff but are nonetheless approved by the local councillor.

"It's very important that we listen to city staff," he added. "And if they recommend something, we should listen to them."

Mr. Ford's long record of opposition suggests otherwise. Indeed, the line brought a sharp rebuke from Mr. Smitherman, who pointed out that his opponent is almost never on the winning side of a council vote. "Mr. Ford's answer ought to be a wake-up call that he doesn't have a game plan about how to affect change at City Hall."

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