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Newsstand: March 1, 2011
Illustration by Jeremy Kai/Torontoist.
If it’s Tuesday, there’s news: Rob Ford wants almost everybody out at TCHC, Dalton McGuinty says no money and and no G20 inquiry for Toronto, a top city hall bureaucrat leaves her post, and some public school kids go to Africa on field trips.
Just as we predicted, Rob Ford is seizing his opportunity to drastically restructure the Toronto Community Housing Corporation. In case you missed it, here’s a highlight reel of the auditor general’s report that found multiple instances of spending public money on typically scandalous things like candy and boats, as well as shady procurement practices. The mayor is calling on every member on the board of directors that is not a tenant or a politician to resign, and he will meet with the CEO to “discuss her future.” Dun dun dun. The brothers Ford have long had it out for TCHC, so expect them to squeal with delight disgust for days to come as their (once considered mythical) gravy train rolls into the station.
The City’s ten-year affordable housing plan overseer, Deputy City Manager Sue Corke, is leaving the civil service after more than thirty years. The Globe has given her the honour of being the “first senior official to leave under Ford.” But City Manager Joe Pennachetti says Corke’s decision to leave was mutual and had nothing at all to do with the fact that the new mayor kind of hates all the things Corke spent the last six years so diligently working on (affordable housing, priority neighbourhoods strategies, the 311 information line, puppies, sunshine).
On Monday we told you our mayor, the great gravy grouser, had started moonlighting as the conductor of the gravy train when he went looking to the Province for some extra cash. But Dalton McGuinty turned him down. Citing Ontario’s record-setting $18.7-billion budget deficit, the premier told Ford “There’s just no money.” So for those of you keeping score at home, the City and the Province you live in are dead broke.
And in the spirit of Noing, McGuinty also said no to calls for a public inquiry into G20 policing. The premier reasoned that one coherent public inquiry is totally unnecessary when you have five different ones on the go. Amiright?
Despite an ethos of equality, unchecked private fundraising is deepening divides in the public school system. The Toronto Star has revealed that private fundraising efforts (including things like activity and athletic fees, cafeteria revenue, and exam fees) can garner public schools over a million extra dollars a year to spend as they please. Apparently some schools have digital score boards and offer field trips to Africa, instead of the slate scoreboards and trips to the box factory that we had. The Province is working on guidelines for how privately raised cash can be spent and insisting on more oversight. But advocacy groups and the provincial NDP say limits should be set and maybe leftover funds could be distributed amongst the system.