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Chow tried to payback TTC unions by firing their boss but her team failed to get the job done.
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On Friday afternoon, a hastily called meeting of the TTC Board heard arguments to fire CEO Rick Leary.
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It was an attempted power move by Mayor Olivia Chow, and it failed miserably.
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“According to multiple sources, it was just two councillors on the board, Chair Jamaal Meyers and Josh Matlow, who voted to remove Leary from his job.”
After sitting quietly and patiently for the past few months, this move to oust Leary was an attempt by Chow and her team to flex their muscle using the new board chair, lobbyists turned Chow advisors and to offer payback to the unions who backed Chow’s bid for mayor.
The Amalgamated Transit Union and CUPE, which both endorsed Chow and are both about to start contract negotiations with the city, have made it clear they want Leary gone and a friendlier face for the unions put in charge.
That friendly face, perhaps just in the short term, would be Adam Giambrone. The former city councillor and TTC Chair posted to X, formerly Twitter, that he was headed back to Canada and listening to the song “Coming Home” and that the lyrics “seem very appropriate.”
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“Tell the world I’m coming home. Let the rain wash away all the pain of yesterday. I know my kingdom awaits and they’ve forgiven my mistakes. I’m coming home,” the lyrics read.
Giambrone, long affiliated with the NDP, served on City Council from 2003-10 and as TTC chair from 2007-10. He was slated to run for mayor in 2010 but had to depart due to a scandal involving having sex in his City Hall office with a woman who was not his live-in partner, now wife.
Since then, he has consulted across the country and in international cities on transit projects and made no secret that he wants to come back to Toronto to work in transit. He’s met with several past TTC chairs and has met several times with Jamaal Meyers, the councillor for Scarborough North and current TTC chair.
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Meyers was formerly linked to the lobby group TTC Riders, which is funded by the transit unions who want Leary gone. The group endorsed Meyers in his run for council and some of the activists from the group now work in his office.
It was Meyers who called the hastily arranged meeting about Leary for 1:30 Friday afternoon, even though it was known that two citizen members of the board, members chosen to give public oversight, could not attend.
The notice for the meeting said the board would “receive advice from external counsel on a confidential matter that is subject to solicitor-client privilege.”
Rumours swirled all day that Leary would face claims of berating staff or harassment of some kind, real or imagined, all in attempt to drum him out of office. Leary definitely has his enemies and many of them have emailed over the past several years to try and paint a picture of a man out of control.
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That said, everyone deserves a fair process and what Mayor Chow’s allies tried to pull off Friday was anything but fair.
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Mayor Chow needs to remember that regardless of who put her in office, her job is to serve all citizens of Toronto, not just the activists around her like Brendan Agnew-Iler. Until recently, Agnew-Iler was the main lobbyist for ATU Local 113 and the taxi lobby, now he’s Chow’s top policy advisor.
Two weeks ago at council, Chow pushed through Agnew-Iler’s policy to cap the number of Uber drivers at a time when he is her policy chief and still registered with the city as a lobbyist for RideFairTO. Now, the mayor, through her allies at City Hall, attempted and failed to remove the head of the TTC to please the former client of her policy chief and install Giambrone.
Just for the record, Agnew-Iler worked for Giambrone 20 years ago when he was a councillor.
Leary remains the head of TTC for now but this whole thing stinks to high heaven and Chow should be deeply embarrassed.
blilley@postmedia.com
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