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The mayor asked for one, members of council of Asian descent thought one might be appropriate, and many others on council did too.

Councillor Ford, while apologizing to some media for his choice of words in suggesting that "Orientals" worked like dogs and were going to "take over," took the scandal as a launching pad with some other media for his bid for the mayoralty of Toronto in 2010.

Now, maybe this is the kind of audacious move that it will take to become the third mayor of Toronto: twisting a near-racist gaffe into a political booster rocket.

I suspect that it won't. But in the interests of making sure that the last word on the "Orientals" kerfuffel is not Rob Ford proclaiming his ascendency to the mayoralty, may I present Xiang Liu.

Liu is a 26-year-old North Yorker for the past 10 years - prior to that, a child of Guan Zhou, China. His family came to Canada as refugees, and over the past decade, Liu has been building a career in the health care industry and doing grass-roots youth work in North York and Scarborough.

Ford's comments struck a chord with Liu. Ironically, he agreed with Ford's assertion that stores ought to be able to stay open when they wanted - even on Christmas. But when it came to the choice of words: it stung.

"Calling us dogs - if it's on a personal level that's one thing. But not on an official level� that's not appropriate. And I think it's disgusting saying that we're 'taking over.' English is not my first language, but I checked, and 'taking over' means seizing or appropriating. There's nothing that means advancing in business."

Liu spent an hour last Sunday going up and down his local street - Tuscarora Drive, in the Finch Avenue East-Highway 404 area - collecting a petition, asking for a proper and public apology. He contacted 30 residents in 22 households and 26 in 15 households signed up.

Now, some perspective: 30 people is a drop in the bucket in a city the size of Toronto, and we are talking about an off-the-cuff remark from a city councillor not known for his verbal finesse.

But Liu and his neighbours - neighbours, he said, who are of various ethnic and racial origins - are listening. When Rob Ford speaks, it is they - not only the mayor and his colleagues on council, and those like me who get paid to watch and listen and write about it all - who hear the words and feel them. As Liu puts it in his letter:

"I believe you set a wrong example for everyone in the city, that it is okay to call an ethnic group a stereoptyicpal name and (make) an unwarranted claim. If it were made during a personal conversation, I would not take it seriously. But you made such comments during a debate in the city council. A leader should not make comments that disrupt social harmony and perpetuate stereotypes."

Better advice to a prospective mayoralty candidate - or simply someone who wants to continue to represent constituents in a city with as diverse a population as Toronto's - I could not imagine.