Underdog (11 page)

But what really incensed me was what happened with the intended residents. It became evident, the more I peeled away the layers of that onion, that the very real losers were the long-time inhabitants of Regent Park. This mixed-use development wasn't so mixed after all. Contrary to the spin from
Daniels Corp., TCHC, and the tight little circle of poverty pimps and activists who are quick to jump on the bandwagon whenever they smell opportunities to improve their own circumstances or their influence, the poor would not be living in the same buildings as the rich. Not at all. While Mr. Cohen and his top brass were busily snapping up their eighteen prime condos, knowing full well they were buying into an investment that would only go up in value, only twelve Regent Park tenants at the time of my investigation could even remotely afford to purchase into the market-value buildings – the TCHC and the developer having made them jump through hoops to do so. To this day, that has not changed. To make matters worse, City of Toronto housing officials were happily handing out second-mortgage money for first-time buyers making up to $81,000 per year, likely far beyond what any long-time Regent Park resident could ever hope to earn. The thirty-year loans from that publicly funded $6.5-million slush fund – ironically called the Toronto Affordable Housing Fund (no one knew about it until I found it quite by chance) – do not need to be repaid until the home is sold, and are forgivable if the owner stays in his or her condo for twenty years. No such fund was being offered to the poor at the time of my investigation. I discovered, after considerable digging, that 175 market-value condo buyers had been handed these second mortgages. Even Mr. Cohen's niece, Anna, had gotten herself a $25,340 second mortgage for her unit from the fund. When it comes to his own family, Mitch Cohen lives up to his own slogan about being the developer with a heart!

It seems the poor would not be living side by side in the very same buildings with the new inhabitants of the market-value buildings either. The affordable housing buildings were
located on the periphery of Regent Park. But I realized it was far worse than that. Many of the residents were shipped like cattle out of Regent Park into new buildings as far as 1.5 kilometres away from the neighbourhood they'd called home for decades. Not particularly sophisticated about their legal rights, they were seduced by TCHC officials into believing they'd be returned to one of the very first units in the revitalized Regent Park. But unknown to them at the time, they signed away their right to return when they decided to move to the off-site units. The displaced residents, who were all subject to a lottery, were informed by letter that a new unit was available to them in the off-site buildings. The letter stated that if they refused to move they'd go to the bottom of the waiting list for a new unit. The very fine print revealed that if they opted for the new unit, then no other unit would be made available to them. But TCHC officials told them quite the opposite. They were damned if they did and damned if they didn't. Sadly, these long-time residents only discovered this once it was too late. Even worse, the displacement of the original inhabitants to buildings far, far away from the Regent Park footprint continues to this day, and only a select number of residents are being permitted to move back into the new units. So many residents of Muslim extraction are being permitted to jump the queue, over others who lived there before the redevelopment, that people have come to whisper – for fear of being labelled politically incorrect, or worse, racist – that there is such a large Muslim community living there that free public space has been set aside for their prayers and there's talk of creating a mosque on-site.

Like with most other stories I have chosen to pursue, the Regent Park investigation ended up being not just a matter of
ruffling feathers and calling to account those in charge of a heavily subsidized housing project. I was absolutely incensed that the poor would be duped as they'd been and I wanted to help them. As a result of pressure from my articles, some of the women I featured living in what they called the “501 Adelaide Penitentiary” were moved to more suitable TCHC buildings at least closer to Regent Park. The series earned me a Sun Media investigative reporting award for my efforts, and former TCHC CEO Gene Jones would confide to me more than once – before he was ousted from the organization after twenty-two months for daring to clean house – that I'd shaken things up within the organization and ensured there was far more oversight on the project. (Sadly, once Mr. Jones left, TCHC, under his successor, Greg Spearn, quickly reverted to the troubled, secretive organization it had been – an organization that seemed to put the brass first and tenants last.)

Nevertheless, on the Regent Park file, I also exposed the so-called compassionate Lib-left for what they were: motivated by opportunism, not by a genuine desire to help the poor. I don't for one minute believe that all the players who bought into the new condos were showing good faith in the project, or confidence in the community, or as Pam McConnell claimed, a desire to live among the poor. They saw an investment opportunity and bought in while the getting was good. My findings did exact a personal price, however. With the apparent ties between the
Toronto Star
and Mr. Ballantyne extremely tight, especially given his relationship with Ms. Gillespie, most of the media coverage up until my series was effusive, over-the-top, and ridiculously
one-sided. As seasoned as I am, I didn't realize until my findings were published the lengths the left in Toronto and their media apologists would go to attack my credibility and to protect the status quo and the old guard at TCHC. Daniels Corp. – used to a free pass from the media and to throwing their weight around – issued a press release two days after the initial stories appeared, attacking my professionalism. Their intent was also to downplay calls for an inquiry into the condo purchases. They accused the
Toronto Sun
(me) of “attempting to discredit” a public–private partnership “celebrated around the world” and of undermining the “incredible accomplishments” of local residents “who have worked tirelessly since 1995 to transform their community.” It was truly a first to have virtually an entire press release written about my findings.

On it went throughout the week after my series appeared. I was vilified on blogs, targeted in columns, on radio shows, and on Twitter. The attacks on Twitter were very personal, so much so that my editor, Lorrie Goldstein, told me to stay off social media for the good of my health. Under some pressure, the TCHC board decided to call in former Ontario Superior Court chief justice Patrick LeSage to look at whether the condo purchases by the Daniels team and the TCHC execs were a conflict. In August, Mr. Justice LeSage ruled there was no conflict after TCHC spent $125,000 to have him arrive at that conclusion. He did point out that the optics of the purchases weren't good and that greater transparency was indeed required, but it didn't much matter by that point. I was glad to have helped bring the plight of the poor to light, despite the pushback I received from all the usual suspects.
It certainly wasn't the first or the last time the media and the Lib-left would gang up on me for having the audacity to suggest their record of advocating for the downtrodden, or students, or seniors, or the mentally challenged was less than stellar, and more often than not, non-existent.

Sadly, those same clucking apologists – led by the
Toronto Star –
managed to help run Gene Jones out of town after only twenty-two months at the helm of TCHC. The MBA grad had been brought in from Detroit with a solid background in social housing in a variety of major U.S. cities to clean house – to attack the waste and mismanagement, and to put together a plan to tackle the long-ignored over nine-hundred-million-dollar backlog in repairs. He took his job seriously, and unlike his pompous predecessors, treated the tenants as first-class citizens, addressing their concerns on their own turf. No other CEO had visited TCHC buildings regularly, as he did, and Jones's successor, Greg Spearn, is as arrogant as, and even more inexperienced in social housing than, those who ran the show in the past. Mr. Jones got the job done, but when he got too close to the underlying issues for comfort, his detractors conspired to push him out. I do not say this lightly. Mr. Jones was not at all familiar with the highly charged political landscape of TCHC and how far the politicians who had let TCHC become a cesspool under their watch would go to protect the status quo. He took the board seriously – most particularly board chairman Bud Purves – when they promised they'd have his back when he did what he needed to clean up the rot. But they didn't. It didn't matter that those before him had used precious money needed for repairs to hold pricey company bonding sessions, or that sole-sourced contracts were rampant, or that the same repairs were being
done two and three times (with the full approval of TCHC managers), or that Mr. Jones had found money for repairs and was investigating six companies allegedly engaged in a kickback scheme. When leftist and highly political former Toronto ombudsman Fiona Crean – who seems to be forever preoccupied with protecting her job and promoting herself – put together a one-sided report about his dismissal of incompetent employees, that was all the detractors needed to show Mr. Jones the door. Mayor Rob Ford, under siege for his own addiction issues at the time, did nothing to stand up for Mr. Jones, who was brought in under his watch (but not hired by Mr. Ford as his detractors claimed). The
Toronto Star,
eager to erase the ties they wrongly suggested Mr. Jones had to Mayor Ford, and having their own connections to Mr. Ballantyne, created a maelstrom over Ms. Crean's report, and the lazy, left-wing media were only too happy to join in and gang up on Mr. Jones. It was a disgraceful way to treat a man with integrity. But exactly who did the TCHC board and their media apologists end up hurting? Why, the very vulnerable tenants for whom they purport to advocate. Within mere months, TCHC had reverted to the pre–Gene Jones days of treating tenants with disdain, little accountability, and an entrenched bureaucracy. Resident Bonnie Booth puts it this way: “A pall of silence fell over TCHC with the resignation of Gene Jones, the CEO I called ‘the man of steel with a heart of gold.' Immediately the housing authority's headquarters became a fortress with the installation of a barrier at board meetings to separate residents from staff. The staff directory Mr. Jones had put online, disappeared from the TCHC website. Residents became dismayed again when no one listened to their concerns. Those who challenged the status quo, like
me, had their e-mails blocked and privacy violated. A ‘culture of fear' became palpable amongst those who feared for their jobs while daring to follow Mr. Jones' vision. Entitlement and a lack of integrity now permeate the top brass, who are desperately trying to undo everything positive Mr. Jones did.”

Mr. Jones and I have kept in touch since he was driven out of Toronto. I very much enjoyed the day in early June 2015 when I turned up at a TCHC board meeting, just hours after my exclusive story had been published that he'd been hired as CEO of the Chicago Housing Authority, working under Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Tongues were indeed wagging at TCHC. The sore losers at the
Toronto Star,
seemingly incredulous that he'd landed on his feet in such a short time, refused to give him his due. In their follow-up on my story, they whined that a statement from Mr. Emanuel's office made no mention of the turmoil that surrounded Mr. Jones when he left Toronto, and claimed he'd be in charge of only half the number of units he'd overseen at TCHC. Mr. Jones was always classy after he left, and he often told me he really missed the tenants. But one thing he did wonder, being a black man, was whether there was an element of racism in the way he was treated by the left-wing media and his other detractors. I can't say for sure whether that was true, but wouldn't that just fit with what I've said about the Lib-left: they're inclusive and tolerant only when it is politically expedient for them to be so.

WHILE I CONSIDER MYSELF POLITICAL
and reasonably politically astute, in my twenty-six years as a journalist at the
Toronto Sun,
I have never much liked covering the political sideshow,
the “he said, she said” that comes with the day-to-day blood sport we mistake for debate in political arenas like the Toronto school board, City Hall, and Queen's Park. I feel a far greater sense of personal and professional satisfaction when I've been able to dig into the story behind the story, hold the feet of politicians or bureaucrats to the fire, and pursue fairness and social justice.

It didn't take long in my journalism career to figure out that a major stone needing to be overturned was at the Toronto school boards – both Catholic and public – where in the early 1990s board bureaucrats were spending money on their own perks while the boards struggled with tremendous deficits. There was the Catholic board's education director driving around in a Toyota Camry leased for him using board money that included a thousand-dollar buyback when the lease expired. There was the Scarborough board's education director who spent eleven thousand dollars to be part of then prime minister Jean Chretien's two-week mission to Asia. There was the director of the Toronto school board, who spent more than twelve thousand dollars on lunches, travel, and car expenses in 1992 – regularly frequenting the pricey Prince Arthur Garden in the former Park Plaza Hotel. I sought out anyone who was prepared to rock the education boat, and that is how I met Mike Del Grande in 1995. He was part of the group Sunshine Trustees, who tried, with considerable pushback, to shine a light on the highly secretive and unaccountable bureaucrats running the Catholic school board. Nothing was sacred to me while on the education beat. When the teachers' unions were poised to take the entire province out on an illegal strike in 1997 – over attempts by the Mike Harris government to rein in teacher pay and perks
and bloated school boards (sound familiar?) – I did a piece outlining who the five union bosses were and what kind of pay and perks they earned. The
Toronto Sun
ran their pictures on its front page. The more militant teachers, a thin-skinned, whiny bunch even twenty years ago, never forgave me for that. When they struck illegally for two weeks in late October 1997 (a strike in which they failed to win any concessions from the government), I was criticized and attacked for daring to remind the public how self-serving the teachers' union leaders really are. Fast forward twenty years and it has gotten far worse, courtesy of more than a decade of Liberal premiers and education ministers pandering to the unions' every whim – in exchange, of course, for their support at election time. I found it absolutely disgraceful to hear Sam Hammond, the Grand Poobah of the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario (ETFO), pounding his chest at the union's annual meeting in August 2013 and declaring that if they were treated with “fairness and respect” there wouldn't be a repeat of the previous year – what they proudly called in their manifesto their year of “fighting for democratic rights.” That year, not to be confused with 2015, was the year when they spent as much time as they could protesting and withdrawing any services they were supposed to provide (coaching or administering extracurricular activities, organizing school trips and holding parent-teacher interviews) as they did offering their barebones classroom instruction time, to let the public know how they felt about Dalton McGuinty's highly controversial Bill 115, passed in September 2012. That long-overdue legislation froze wages for some teachers, cut sick days, and finally put to rest the generous payouts for unused sick leave that were helping to bankrupt the province.
Although Bill 115 was repealed in January 2013, the imposed union contracts stood until Kathleen Wynne got into the act.