By Hamutal Dotan

In a special meeting held this evening—called just yesterday by Rob Ford—city council decided, by a vote of 25–18, to immediately remove all remaining members of the Toronto Community Housing Corporation board of directors.
The vote came after several hours of impassioned debate, in a meeting that many found infuriating and which could reasonably be described as Kafkaesque. Perhaps the most bizarre twist: council was there to debate whether to dismiss the board of the TCHC in the wake of a damning auditor general’s report about spending and procurement improprieties at the agency, but was forbidden by speaker Frances Nunziata from discussing that very report (which, in fact, has not even been formally presented to council yet).

Through most of the meeting the council chamber was packed with TCHC tenants, many of whom were there to show support for the tenant representatives on the board, who had been refusing the mayor’s demand that they resign. Many councillors showed support for those tenant representatives as well, and called strongly for a more measured process that would have council carefully examine the auditor’s report before making any decisions about whether and whom to dismiss.
The net effect of today’s vote is to replace what was once a thirteen-member board with just a single person—expected to be former councillor Case Ootes—creating worries among some councillors that there is now no satisfactory system of checks and balances for decision-making at the TCHC. Ootes will serve until council appoints a new full board, which it must do by the June 14–15 council meeting. Midway through today’s debate, some councillors began openly speculating that one of Ootes’ first moves would be to fire CEO Keiko Nakamura.
The refrain from the mayor and the councillors who voted with him was that today’s rapidly issued decision was necessary in order to restore public confidence in the TCHC. The degree to which the procedural contortions involved in making that decision might affect the public’s level of confidence was conspicuously absent from their remarks. So too was any recognition that confidence might perhaps be better earned by following established, transparent procedures rather than by a brute show of force.
Photos by Christopher Drost/Torontoist.