The Toronto Star reports that a special meeting of the TTC Board has been called for February 21 to consider the firing of Chief General Manager Gary Webster.
In a clear retaliation against the block of Council who endorsed an LRT plan for Toronto, the block of Commissioners dominated by Mayor Ford have called for this special meeting using a procedure similar to the one used by Karen Stintz and her allies to call a special Council meeting on the LRT plans.
If correct, this will be a clear retaliation against TTC’s Chief General Manager Gary Webster who has spoken against proposals for expansion of the subway network, and by extension against Stintz who has defended Webster from previous attacks by the Ford administration.
From the viewpoint of political strategy, now is the time for Council to hold yet another special meeting to seize control of the Transit Commission. This could be done either by prematurely ending the terms of sitting members, or by increasing the size of the Commission and diluting Ford’s influence with enough extra members to ensure a majority that represented the broader view of Council rather than of the Mayor.
Will Council make such a move, or will they sit on their hands? This is the first challenge, but certainly not the last, in taming Mayor Ford’s control of the City’s agencies.
Steve Munro 
Fire Norm Kelly, Denzil Minnan-Wong, Cesar Palacio, Vince Crisanti and Frank Di Giorgio. They don’t represent the transit users of Toronto, and just follow Supreme Leader’s Rob Ford anti-transit directions.
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Is there any way to undo the firing of Webster once it happens? I imagine that it’d be too late to change the TTC board in time.
Steve: The real question would be whether a new CGM would be appointed before a revised Commission was in place, and what it would cost to undo that. We will see whether there is some snake within the TTC organization willing to take on Webster’s role, or if some outsider like Gordon Chong fills the bill.
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Personally I like Webster. He has done more good than bad and his only crime was standing up for the good of Toronto and saving us a lot of money. If doing the right thing is a crime then the jails are about to fill up. Just goes to show how crooked Rob Ford is. The man is a dictator, not a politician.
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You’d have to be crazy or stupid to want to take this job…you’d be under fire from the mayor, the council, metrolinx, the province…and you’d probably be axed by council before you could get moved into your office…
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What pretext would the commissioners have to fire Mr. Webster before the end of his contract? Since I don’t believe they have one then he would have to receive some sort of buyout. That would have to come out of the TTC budget.
However there is no money for that unless there are more service cuts.
Thus members of city council would be justified in removing every councillor from the TTC who voted to remove Mr. Webster because of the financial costs they would have incurred.
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I would like to see Webster appointed as one of the upcoming citizen members of the commission. He certainly has relevant experience.
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The sane members of council, quite apart from their place on the political spectrum, need to do what you suggest and otherwise defang Ford’s nuthouse. Bullies understand nothing but a good beating: give it to them.
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If he signs a document accepting a severance, it will be very difficult to get him back in. It’s not unprecedented but it is very unusual.
I suspect an attempt to put in a temporary figurehead (Ootes comes to mind) will occur, only to have that rescinded soon. In which case, we will be paying severance upon severance for this hissy fit.
By the end of May, policy will be finalised and by October, we will likely have a new GM.
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Wow, even I’m surprised at just how unbelievably unintelligent Rob Ford actually is. You can’t play games like this if you have a majority of councillors against you.
Though I can’t fathom what Norm Kelly, Denzil Minnan-Wong, Cesar Palacio, Vince Crisanti, and Frank Di Giorgio are thinking. If this is nothing but revenge, don’t they open themselves up for being personally named on a wrongful dismissal lawsuit?
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The link to subscribe to the RSS feed for an entry’s comment seems to have disappeared again. 😦
Steve: Sorry about that. I updated the version this afternoon and forgot to retrofit the change. Saturday.
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Hi Steve:-
Just another example of immature bullying.
Grow up Rob.
Dennis Rankin
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W. K. just so you know I lived in Councillor Norm Kelly’s ward for 10+ years, “They don’t represent the transit users of Toronto” at least with Kelly, you are wrong. There are 2 pro-subway groups in Scarborough-Agincourt (one is in Cllr Del Grande’s side of Scarborough-Agincourt).
There are more pro-subway residents than pro-lrt, even east of Kelly’s ward, the Scarborough East Village BIA doesn’t want LRT.
There are Torontonians who want subway, There are people who want LRT, I even heard that there is one Gentleman in his 60s who wants swan boats.
No Mayor and No TTC Chair has ever represented ALL Torontonian views. Giambrone was pro-LRT, not everyone is pro-LRT. Same for Moscoe and all the chairs and Mayors before current ones.
For the record I have always been pro-swan boats.
Also for the record, I think this is a dick move to fire Gary Webster. We haven’t always agreed but we have awesome conversations.
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The worst thing about this is that things appear to be more about the politics of decision making, rather than leadership in the best interests of Toronto.
It kind of sells short the whole concept of having the TTC at arm’s length, doesn’t it, when senior employees can be treated like this because they wouldn’t do what the political leadership wanted.
It also doesn’t show much consideration for the employees of the TTC, who are already expressing the feeling that nobody cares about them. If I were an employee who felt that no one cared about me, and I watched my boss lose his job for doing his job, then I’d probably say “screw it” and stop caring.
If Gary Webster goes in this fashion, I’d expect to see TTC customer and employee relations go deeper down the toilet.
Regards, Moaz
Steve: Yes, isn’t it wonderful to think we might get independent citizens willing to put up with this shit.
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Moaz – If I were an employee (especially in management) I would resign en-masse…
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Hatred is a bad thing. I don’t hate anyone – not even Rob Ford. However, I do dislike the man and know that in my heart. Perhaps even despise is an appropriate word. However, being the bleeding heart that I am, I look for the good in everyone. Sometimes I persuade myself that Rob is at heart a good person. After all he returns constituents calls – however impractical that may be for a Mayor of 2.5 million people. However, in his own populist, ineffective, buffoonish way, he does seem to care about the sad cases where he takes an interest. Sometimes, I get all mellow and think happy thoughts about Rob. I still disagree. but maybe he is sincerely misinformed rather than evil.
And then…… Rob embarks on a vicious act of revenge against a civil servant who was only doing his job. This is a spiteful vindictive act that cannot be forgiven. My image of lovable Rob, who I would love to have as a neighbour, over for a barbecue, but sadly misinformed, is shattered. This act, more than any other, casts him as as a spiteful bully – a truly nasty person that I would never invite to my barbecue and I never did want for my Mayor.
We live in a City where the most memorable claim by any Mayor has been to be “Mayor of all the People”. In my opinion, unequivocally, Rob Ford is not able to make that claim.
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I feel bad because I feel like I’m the only one who uses it/cares when it disappears. No rush–just thought I’d mention it.
Steve: Fixed.
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Torontonians who “want subways” but supported elimination of the vehicle registration tax and expect these to happen without additional taxes and fees are living a fantasy and are irrelevant. That Ford, Kelly, and Del Grande are happy to tell them what they want to hear will handily ensure that Agincourt gets nothing. How hard is it really to drive to Fairview to park anyhow?
Would it be enough to threaten a special meeting of Council to
purgereconstitute the TTC board to get Mssrs Kelly, Cristanti, Palacio, Di Giorgio, and Minnan-Wong to back down? I think it would be reasonable remove every last one of them at this point.LikeLike
I know that the thing to say about Ford is that he’s a buffoon, but I really don’t get what he’s doing at all. It seems like he’s trying to sabotage his own term long before it’s over.
Here’s my question: Does he think that he won’t suffer blowback from sacking Webster? He rejected Stintz’ face-saving compromise, alienated an ally, and we saw the results of that last Wednesday. (Not that I’m suggesting what Stintz did was merely personal and not right for the city.) If he goes through with this, won’t this make him look even worse? The narrative last week was that an inflexible bully got his comeuppance.
Let’s say he got some toady to write reports filled with bogus information favouring subways. Is McGuinty’s just going to fund them then? And his cherished ‘private sector’–they wouldn’t be able to see through it either? They’ll throw billions at him just because the TTC says it would work?
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As a fiscal conservative, I can say that Ford is the proverbial ‘wolf in a fiscal conservative sheep’s clothing’.
A fiscal conservative does not piss away millions of dollars on major issues while cutting bits and pieces here and there and making a big deal of it. It wasn’t enough to cancel a fully funded LRT project that was underway that would involve millions in cancellation fees, and would be replaced with a far less efficient project, in terms of total man-hours of saved commuting time. He now wants to ‘seek revenge’ for the egg on his face and does not care that a severance package will cost the taxpayers plenty. I heard reports on Friday that the package could cost upwards of $500k.
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How out-FordKing-rage-us!
We lost Mr. Ducharme from politics, and now we’re about to have Mr. Webster be sacked ahead of these Ommissioners? with Stintz maybe still on vacation?
Of the five Minnan-Wong is likely the most malleable, and to start off the pushback, there’s a pejorative of Minion-Wrong that maybe needs more circulation, even though he showed some worthy interest in bike lane connectivity just on Thursday.
Steve: DMW has also said on more than one occasion that the will of Council is supreme. How he could bring himself to participate in a vote whose clear objective is to block the effect of Council’s pro-LRT stance is very hard to explain. Maybe Council is “supreme” except when it is “irrelevant”.
We should also be considering pressure on to the city’s credit rating as this transport file is too critical to be subjected to Mayor F*’s pettiness and basic stupidity.
The majority of the current Ommissioners are NOT representative of the core of the City as another reason for reformulating things, if people are pressing for a yanking of the current Board. Few of them take transit it would seem, and to avoid having any of the core councillors on Board means we are subsidizing suburbs without having a real say eg. taxation without representation.
The next step beyond packing the TTC meeting Tuesday perhaps, may well be a special Council meeting again to flush the rare word that Steve unusually used a bit earlier in a reply, and we should also be thinking of how to get some recall system in place as these four-year-terms are too dangerous given everything. Hmm; 2/3 of all votes cast in a ward/area?
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It was difficult enough to find a replacement after Rick Ducharme up and quit, remember Gary Webster was intially hired as “Interim” CGM until an external person could be found, but it seemed that no one from the industry wanted to touch this hot potato of a job. Mr. Webster has proven himself very capable in the role, even in the face of the recent avalanche of school-yard bullying by the Fords and their flunkeys. Even if a Ford flunkey (e.g. Gordon Chong or Case Ootes) is put into the job for the short-term, the effect of removing the CGM basically for revenge will make it extremely tough to attract a competent replacement from the industry to take a job in this “hornet’s nest” environment after that. The damage of such a move will continue for the long run.
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Although the circumstances are different, the previous CGM Ducharme was also forced out by Moscoe and Miller. It appears that the TTC, as the biggest and most noticeable City service, is so important to all Mayors that they all want their own guy in the top position.
My big beef was that there are a lot of options in between the Ford underground plan and the Transit City plan – there should have been room for compromise. Maybe this became such a polarizing issue because both sides held firm on their positions, instead of finding the middle ground.
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@Joey Connick
Don’t feel bad, you’re not the only one. I use it several times a day.
Steve: And now you can use it again!
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Still can’t fathom this.
If they go ahead with this, won’t council react and move to limit Ford’s influence over the TTC – and perhaps over committees?
The left must be laughing themselves silly … I don’t think they could have hoped for a better situation. All they have to do is smile, keep their mouths shut, and watch (though they might want to close their eyes, it might be too much to bare if they catch of glimpse of the emperor with no clothes).
Steve: It is my fervent hope that this whole debacle will force Council to strip the mayor of every power he might have that is granted by Council, not by the City of Toronto Act (most powers are in Bylaws, not in COTA). He can cut the occasional ribbon and spend a lot of time at the family cottage.
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I’d say this is the best chance for Stintz to reshape the TTC Board given the political momentum in City Council and the ingnorance to its decisions of Ford’s allies. I wonder though if a contract with the new GM (say, Gordon Chong) needs to be approved by the Chair of TTC, at least, in terms of salary etc.
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Steve:
Moaz: I think I know how and why you feel this way. The third mayor of Amalgamated Toronto has certainly done a lot to polarize the atmosphere and create a lot of frustration. I just wonder if council sidelining the mayor (whether this mayor or any mayor) is in the best interests of the city.
In 1995, many Torontonians viewed their city as a collection of neighbourhoods, and indeed, this was one of the reasons many people were opposed to amalgamation – fearing that they would lose access to their local government. On the other side there was resistance from the suburbans cities within Metropolitan Toronto, that they would lose their cherished city services and be forced to pay for Toronto’s social problems.
Throw in provincial downloading, no new financial resources for the amalgamated city, and a costly public transit project, and you have a great recipe for disaster.
But Toronto survived the 1990s and the 2000s … or should I say, Lastman and Miller. We’ll survive the Ford era too. And Toronto has slowly grown into its “big city” status, moved tens thousands of people back into the city, survived the great recession, and grown on a scale that suggests that, no matter how bad things may have been, Toronto must be doing some things right.
I’d rather see Toronto with a motivated council that cares about city-building and community-building, led by a “first among equals” mayor who acts like a leader rather than a dictator. I don’t want to see an uncaring, self-centred council that is more interested in their own local interests and projects (and politics) rather than building the city.
Sometimes I wonder if Toronto would have been better off if amalgamation had proceeded slowly, perhaps with Toronto, East York and York amalgamated at first, then the other suburbs added 10 or 15 years later … sort of how the Town of Mississauga was created in 1968, before the City of Mississauga in 1974.
Regards, Moaz
Steve: If I thought Ford was an “honourable man”, I too might urge caution in stripping powers that a reasonable Mayor working with the consent of Council might well have. However, Ford is far from “honourable”, but we are stuck with him in office for another two and a half years. Council cannot spend all of its time calling special meetings to undo his stupidity and obstruction, and really needs to box him in now. The huge irony in all of this is that if David Miller had done half of the things Ford has, the right would have been howling with outrage at his anti-democratic behaviour. The right has no shame, only a lust for power in its fading hours.
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How does this help their agenda.
Steve, are there any members of senior management of the TTC that you are aware who think building a Sheppard subway, and burying the east leg of the Eglinton Crosstown are cost effective transit strategies (without naming names of course). If they bring someone in, how are they going to move their agenda forward without staff support.
“I don’t see any method here at all”
Steve: There are some pro-subway folks lurking in TTC management who, frankly, should have been farmed out a long time ago. They would be more than happy to get their noses a dark shade of brown working for the Fords’ vision of a subway city.
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A point of order, here: Ducharme wasn’t exactly forced out. He quit, citing Moscoe’s interference in the contract negotiation process with ATU Local 113 as his breaking point. But you are right: Toronto does seem to go through its GMs pretty quickly. Ford’s moving to fire Webster; Ducharme quit citing Council interference, and Lastman and David Gunn did NOT get along, resulting in Gunn retiring from his position (and eventually going on to take up the helm of Amtrak in the States).
What’s the lesson we can learn here? If anything?
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I will be surprised if they actually move to fire Gary Webster’s. Technically they have the votes on the TTC board (5 or 6, dependent on John Parker’s position), but the Chair (Stintz) is obviously against such move, and the Vice-Chair (Milczyn) is probably against it, too.
Taking into account the position of the full Council expressed in a vote just a few days ago, the abrupt removal of Webster would be a sign of utter disrespect to fellow Councillors. The 5 Ford’s allies on the board certainly realize that Ford might not be around after 2014, whereas many Councillors will keep their positions for years beyond that date.
Steve: Never mind 2014. Council has the power to tear apart the committee and board memberships at City Hall certainly at midterm (when most of the appointments to various agencies and committees expire), if not before. What I cannot get over is that the Ford faction seems unable to count, or they assume that the loss of the “mushy middle” councillors was only a temporary event. The more they piss people off, the more they show that slavish support of the Mayor’s policies is the only acceptable behaviour, the more Council will harden against them.
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Not really surprising, unfortunately. I have to wonder about the timing though. Most likely they’ve just decided he has to go now, that would be in keeping with the vindictive nature of Rob Ford’s regime.
However, I wonder if they are hoping this will provoke a strong council response that they can use in an attempt to generate a public backlash? Probably too sophisticated for them, but I expect lots more cries of ‘coup’ in the coming weeks if council takes appropriate actions.
I did happen to go by the Toronto Sun’s webpage for their take (I’m having the computer destroyed after visiting it) on the issue and although newspaper comments usually represent the lowest of the Internet I was heartened by the number of comments defending Webster.
The Fords really have no idea how much they have lost the public’s support on this issue.
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As I said before Webster has done nothing wrong and the public knows that. It’s not like [he] ordered key by ops Dupont to St. Clair West only to have a train run a signal and straight into the back of another train.
Steve: The Russell Hill crash happened completely differently than this description and in the other direction.
My point is the public knows he did nothing wrong and if Ford forces him out he will look like a crook who cannot take criticism. If Rob Ford has any survival instincts regarding his job he will not give Webster the boot.
As I just said, if Webster caused another Russell hill incident I could see firing him but like any job you need just cause. You cannot fire a man for doing nothing wrong.
If Rob Ford thinks he is above the law then go ahead and try to fire him. We both know Rob Ford is not above Ontario’s labour laws.
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My understanding is that the TTC board can’t appoint a new GM right on the spot, can they? This is a senior position in public service; usually there are tons of rules that govern the candidate selection process for such positions, and the appointment process takes many weeks if not months.
If so, then the Council will have enough time to react, and the new GM will be appointed by the altered TTC board (perhaps they can even take Gary Webster back, if he is still interested).
Steve: Where there is a will to do things quickly there is a way. They can appoint an “interim” CGM, some Ford flunky who will try to boss the staff around while we go through the charade of a formal selection that’s fixed before it begins.
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Walter said:
Walter, the councillors had tried to get Ford to accept a compromise. He refused and I’m glad he did. The compromise would have meant sticking the people along Finch with overcrowded buses for the foreseeable future just to satisfy his unreasonable obsession with a Sheppard subway. Finch serves a priority district and as the Hulchansky report makes clear, such areas really do need good rapid transit to help them break free from the bonds of poverty and alienation.
I’m really not sure what options you had in mind, Walter. We can’t give anything extra to any of the lines without taking something away from one of the other lines and that isn’t fair. Unless of course a bully is calling the shots.
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The Sun and presumably most of its readership believe that Webster should have been canned long ago, so the rightwingers don’t see this as revenge–just a good time to go around the TTC chair when she’s on a cruise ship and can’t get back to the meeting in time to try and save Webster his job and taxpayers a severance payout.
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My point was he was not grossly negligent, he is not corrupt and he is not being indicted so why should he be fired.
Ironically enough it will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to axe him which is essentially a waste of taxpayers money, something Ford is publicly against.
Someone should call him on it. If he has to pay severance to Webster because of a vendetta then people need to say rise up and say look stop wasting my money on some idiotic, half baked scheme that will never work.
His twisted obsession is going to bankrupt this city.
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The Sun’s front page yesterday seemed to indicate this move is being done in order to get new blood in. Even if the Ford faction got there way, I would be very surprised if a long term TTC person was put in place. Most likely somebody compliant and subway leaning with GO/Metrolinx experience.
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Steve said …
I can’t believe you just said that. Just because they’re pro-subway doesn’t mean they should be “farmed out”.
Steve: There was a time when they were actively working against plans supported by the Commission and Council.
The current Commission is disgraceful and Webster should stay, but your comment is just as bad as what they’re doing. This is not about LRT or subway. Gary is the most qualified person for the job … period. If the situation were reversed and he refused to go along with an LRT plan, then I presume you’d agree that he should be sacked?
Steve: The point here is that Gary is providing advice, not attempting to overturn a decision of Council. If Gary were truly against an LRT network, then his position would have been untenable back when Transit City was announced. Moreover, Gary is telling the truth, or at least a defensible truth from his professional point of view. The Fords say whatever they think will get votes.
This “wait until the commissioner is on vacation” trick has been done before, but I won’t get into that. Having said all of this, Gary is guilty of insubordination, and Stintz threw him under the bus. How many times have our bosses told us to do something stupid, and we had to go along with it to save our jobs? This is no different. It’s unfair, but that’s life.
Steve: Gary is not guilty of insubordination, and I don’t know where you get that idea. He was asked questions at Council and he answered them honestly. Failing to support the Mayor’s fantasy world is not a crime.
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If you enjoy watching politics as a bloodsport (better than UFC by any measure), then I have to say that Coun. Mihevc has been masterful these past few weeks.
By announcing the probable reason for the meeting next week, Mihevc has gathered huge public support around Webster (even among people who may not be happy with the TTC but are more upset by the vindictiveness of the Ford regime), and he’s also backed Ford’s people into a corner.
If the Commission votes Webster out, they and the Ford regime appear petty and vindictive, the residents of Toronto are angered, and council is pushed into dismantling the Commission…partly to express anger at the Commissioners, partly to assert their relevance.
If the Commission doesn’t vote Webster out, the Ford Regime will appear weak in front of their “core constituency” … even if they compromise, which I doubt, they lose their “cut the waste” constituency that now knows Webster was 1-2 years from retirement and his severance package would normally be $400-500,000 (information helpfully provided by…you guessed it, Coun. Mihevc.
Oh, and David Gunn also helped a lot by saying that he refused to replace Webster when the job was offered to him … meaning, he supports Webster … and he wouldn’t touch the CGM job with a 10-foot pole. Since transit professionals in North America and around the world are probably paying close attention, I’d say the pool of candidates to replace Webster would be pretty shallow.
Oh, and there’s the other part as well … what if Council votes to send Gary Webster back to the commission as an independent commissioner…
Cheers, Moaz
Steve: There is part of me that relishes the thought of Commissioner Webster grilling a new CGM who may have had previous experience in, say, dentistry. However, Webster is far too decent a person to attempt to really embarrass some Ford toady in public.
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I see many comments about the “duty” of civil servants to follow the “commands” of politicians and many distortions of the true mandate that these city employees really have. When Council invites an expert to provide his/her opinion it is that person’s duty to answer truthfully based on their knowledge and analysis of the situation at hand. A person who is asked such questions has a duty to the Citizens to provide the best possible answers to the “Representatives” of those citizens so that the Representatives can make the best possible decisions in the interest of those same citizens. From that perspective, Mr. Webster’s answers to council were exemplary.
After a decision has been made by the Representatives, it is then the duty of staff to to implement the decision – even if they personally think it is wrong. If staff independently implements policy – or tries to – at odds with the decision made by the citizens’ Representatives, that is wrong. It is also wrong, by the way, for a rump group of political Representatives to try to subvert the process by going around the decision (to the Premier for example) and get their own way when things do not go in their favour. By this latter equation, Steve is completely correct in saying that the “fifth column” in the TTC that actively works against their mandate should be “farmed out”. It is equally correct to say that the Fords are vindictive bullies when they try and fire a person who answered honestly in the first phase before the decision was made.
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This talk about ‘insubordination’ is telling. As a P.Eng, Gary Webster is bound by Section 77 of the O. Reg. 941, the Professional Engineers Ontario Code of Ethics:
2. ii) A practitioner shall not express publicly … opinions on professional engineering matters that are not founded on adequate knowledge and honest conviction;
Backing a subway to avoid being “insubordinate” would be professional misconduct.
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