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Chris Selley on TCHC: Outrage comes too easily to Ford’s critics


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In the least shocking news of the week, Case Ootes was officially “revealed” on Thursday as the interim managing director of Toronto Community Housing — a one-man board of directors, essentially, to replace the seven members who resigned last week in the wake of the Auditor-General’s scathing report, and the four holdouts fired by city council on Wednesday. The long-time city councillor, who retired last year only to wind up as Rob Ford’s Mr. Fix-It — he also headed up the Mayor’s transition team — isn’t taking what you’d call a conciliatory line, exactly. But compared to some of the Mayor’s pronouncements, he sounds downright Solomonic.

The big question: Will CEO Keiko Nakamura be fired? Mr. Ford’s preference is clear: He already asked for her resignation, and was rebuffed. Mr. Ootes, however, says he hasn’t made up his mind.

“I have to have a full understanding of what exactly the issues are surrounding the CEO, and I can’t do that at this point,” he says. “I will get a better feeling for that once I meet with staff and meet with her” — a process he hopes will begin Monday.

His power to terminate employees will, he says, “be used as necessary and very judiciously and with a great deal of thought.”

In a statement, TCHC said “we look forward to working together with the city-appointed managing director to implement all of the recommendations made by the Auditor General and to serve tenants.”

As for the widespread assumption that Mr. Ford intends to dramatically alter the landscape of social housing in Toronto, Mr. Ootes urges calm. “We need to leverage the moneys we have to the maximum extent possible to provide [social] housing to the greatest number possible. And that might require different [service delivery] options,” he says. But, he insists, “there shouldn’t be any worry about my feelings as to the need for social housing and the need for the city to support social housing.”

Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday echoes that view. He says the much-discussed idea of “privatization” is something of a misnomer (though it must be said that Mr. Ford hardly eschews its use). “[Privatization in] its true form would be you’d sell off all the buildings, or you’d sell off the water system, and someone else would forever run that as their business and you’d take the money and go the opposite way,” he says. “That’s not what people are thinking here. We’re talking about perhaps outsourcing the property management. … If anything, we’d be attempting to have more resources available to make [tenants’] lives better.”

Some will cheer, others will scoff. That’s how it works nowadays in this ideologically riven town. Ultimately, the only way for Mr. Ford, Mr. Ootes and their allies to prove their intention not to “disrupt anybody’s life,” as Mr. Holyday puts it, is not to disrupt people’s lives. Whatever your political stripes, you might as well let them get on with it.

That’s what made the late night Kabuki city council meeting on Wednesday so bizarre.

At times, you’d have thought they were debating selling off every last TCHC building for pennies on the dollar, when in fact the outcome of the meeting was relatively banal, necessary and preordained: The board holdouts were going to be turfed. It could have happened Tuesday morning if progressive councillors had wanted it to, and we’d now be 36 hours closer to having a new board. (Council has until June 14 to install it.)

Indeed, much of the drama could have been avoided entirely if the four remaining board members — councillors Maria Augimeri and Raymond Cho, and two members elected by the tenants — had tendered their resignations like the others. They can all run again. The only thing they’ve really accomplished for their admittedly principled stand is to diminish their chances of winning.

That’s not to say they should have had to resign, or that they did anything wrong, or that Mr. Ford couldn’t have expressed his displeasure with the board and senior staff more tactfully. But the Mayor always had the votes to clear out the board.

The shouting, the grandstanding, the fist-pounding outrage, the catcalls from anti-Ford tenants in the gallery were all well and good. Democracy in action. Process is important, and this process was flawed. But people whose rhetorical volume dials bottom out at eight always have trouble being heard in times of genuine crisis.