A more stand-up civil servant than Gary Webster you’d be hard pressed to find.
So when the time came Tuesday afternoon, February 21, for the final chapter to be writ in the mayor’s plot to oust the now former TTC chief general manager, Webster did his best not to let on.
As flashbulbs popped and his supporters crowded City Hall’s Committee Room 2 to offer their best wishes, Webster replied to small talk, smiling occasionally.
Later, when the dirty deed was done and the board had confirmed his firing “without just cause” (how’s that for an Orwellian turn?), Webster emerged from TTC chair Karen Stintz’s office, where he’d been awaiting the board’s decision, to make a brief statement.
He said he was very proud of the work undertaken during his tenure at the TTC, before thanking his supporters, turning and walking into the history books to applause from the 50 or so people who’d come to witness Rob Ford’s latest power play.
The truth is, this is not how Webster expected to end up – the victim of a bloody coup, the fall guy for the mayor’s failed subway scheming. TTC commissioner Maria Augimeri called the behind-the-scenes manoeuvring to can Webster “an abuse of power.”
People may have forgotten what the TTC was like before Webster arrived. He brought a sense of calm to labour relations. He worked to raise the level of customer service. He helped fashion a working relationship with the provincial transit agency, Metrolinx, which once viewed Toronto transit as second to regional transit concerns.
Webster will be a hard man to replace. Last time the TTC went looking for a chief general manager, the search took a year and a half. The guy who’s been put in charge on an interim basis, CAO Andy Byford, is an import from Sydney, Australia, who has been with the TTC for four months.
Enter TTC chair Stintz, who, despite voting against axing Webster, stressed the need to “move forward” in her official remarks.
And then, in a comment that doesn’t bode well for the vote she steered through council earlier this month to shelve the mayor’s subway plan in favour of LRTs, she said the province would need clarity from the TTC on which way it wants to proceed in light of the Webster furor.
Council’s decision to go with LRTs is clear, but Webster’s firing has muddied the waters. Now there’s no general manager to work with Metrolinx, the provincial transit agency controlling the purse strings on Toronto transit projects. The firing also signals the TTC board’s preference for Ford’s subways over council’s vote for LRTs. There is a problem.
No doubt more uncertainty on the transit file is what the mayor is banking on to buy himself time with the province. His motivation may be a different endgame altogether: off-loading the TTC onto the province, which already pays two-thirds of the TTC’s subsidy.
Is Stintz planning her own exit strategy as TTC chair? It would be unlike her to back down now if she wants the light rail plan she helped engineer to survive.
For council and the city, more than provincial funding for light rail is at stake. A host of other transit issues are in play, including implementation of the Presto automated card system and the Union Station redo. To Adam Vaughan, the choice is clear: council can either decide to take control of the transit file or watch it blow up in their faces with each new move devised by the Mad Hatter in charge at 100 Queen West. Ford’s antics have already cost tens of millions in delays and added engineering costs.
And if council taking control means shuffling the deck on the TTC board, so be it. “Jugular time” is how another councillor put it to me.
Word is, those on council who joined Stintz to derail the subway scheme are preparing a coup of their own to replace the five councillors on the TTC board – Frank Di Giorgio, Denzil Minnan-Wong, Cesar Palacio, Vincent Crisanti and Norm Kelly – who signed the petition February 17 calling for the special meeting to discuss Webster’s firing.
That bomb could drop as soon as the next meeting of council on March 5.
That’s when a new governance structure for the TTC is scheduled to be debated. That plan, approved by the mayor’s executive, calls for the nine-member TTC board to be replaced by five politicians and four citizen representatives.
The executive’s move to reconstitute the TTC board was widely viewed by the mayor’s opponents as an attempt to get rid of Stintz.
Problem with the mayor’s calculus is that only council has the authority to remove the TTC chair under new rules adopted in April.
But somebody had to pay, so Webster’s firing was put in play.
Di Giorgio tried, after the TTC board came out of its in-camera session, to explain away Webster’s removal as no different from what past administrations have done to put their people in positions of power.
Only Di Giorgio is missing a very important point. It’s not the job of the civil service to do the bidding of its political masters, as he suggests. Their job is to speak truth to power, not get fired for their opinions. Council can reject or accept their expert advice. They do it all the time. It’s called making political decisions.
Where the mayor’s subway plan is concerned, Ford had his chance. His point guy on the file, Gordon Chong, couldn’t make the business case for a privately funded subway. He fell a billion short. The consultants hired to look at alternative funding, KPMG, concluded that tax increment financing, development charges and the sale of air rights would not be enough to fund Ford’s plans. Can you say “road tolls”?
Chong’s report also mentions the importance of transit weaving priority neighbourhoods into Toronto’s economic fabric. On that count, any number of studies have concluded that LRTs are the preferred option over subways, hands down.
It’s hard to imagine any serious candidate wanting to take Webster’s place in the current political climate. But word is the Ford admin has been looking for at least month. Whoever it is will no doubt suit Ford’s purposes, except those may not be easy to reconcile, given the many competing interests facing the TTC.
Don’t look now, but the Board of Trade has weighed in on the subway-vs-LRT issue. BoT president Carol Wilding says it’s time for Metrolinx to assert its authority on the transit file, and that can only mean building LRTs under its “5 in 10” plan (five lines in 10 years).
But Ford would rather rip his own nuts off when he’s cornered than take a political loss, learn from it and move on. The mayor is getting bad advice –including from Nick Kouvalis, the dirty trickster and push pollster responsible for his “gravy train” rhetoric – that is alienating Ford’s base on council. TTC vice-chair Peter Milcyzn, for example, joined Stintz, Augimeri and John Parker to vote against Webster’s firing.
That voting bloc lining up against Ford is reaching critical mass. On the second floor at City Hall, there’s talk of changing procedural bylaws to rob the mayor’s office of its power. Revenge is best served cold.
Original Article
Source: NOW
Author: Enzo Di Matteo
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