The Toronto Community Housing Corporation board says it will need "more time" to study a report released Tuesday by the city's ombudsman about the organization’s hiring and firing practices.
"We accept the ombudsman's report and we will move forward to complete the task of modernizing the corporation's human resource function guided by her advice and recommendation," TCHC Chair Bud Purves said Tuesday following a board meeting.
Purves said the board had a very productive assessment but they agreed that more time is needed to further study and consider the report.
The report had labelled the man hired to fix the TCHC, Eugene (Gene) Jones, as one of its biggest problems.
“This is the story about the failure of leadership from the top,” Toronto ombudsman Fiona Crean said at a press conference Tuesday.
Jones was hired as chief executive officer at the TCHC in June, 2012. Since then, the TCHC has blatantly ignored its own human resources policies, the ombudsman said.
In the 18 months after Jones took over, 45 people were fired and 32 resigned, according to the 111-page report. Forty-one of those firings were without cause. Most external hires were done without proper job postings, employees were promoted to positions for which no job descriptions existed and raises were given without performance reviews, Crean said.
The ombudsman said of the 233 staffing changes at the TCHC, only 119 were properly documented. In a random audit of 30 hiring files, only two contained proper reference checks.
According to Crean, Jones and his staff ran the TCHC as “their own personal fiefdom,” ignoring their own HR policies and instead making their hiring decisions unilaterally.
“TCHC has good human resources policies. They’re just not being followed,” Crean said. “And somehow, some of the senior executives came to believe those policies didn’t apply to them.”
Crean said it was the worst case of disregard for an organization’s HR policies she’s seen in her five years as ombudsman.
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford once again expressed his support for Jones on Tuesday.
"I've seen a huge change in TCHC. I don't see anything scathing in there… I think we've been pretty hard on him for unnecessary reasons," Ford told reporters outside his office at city hall.
"There are minor mistakes that happen in every office," Ford said.
In February, Ford supported Jones when the TCHC board ordered him to take leadership courses to address the volume of HR complaints. "None of us are perfect. We all make mistakes," Ford said at the time.
Mayoral candidates Karen Stintz and Olivia Chow slammed Ford in separate press releases issued Tuesday for supporting Jones. “He has failed to provide the necessary political leadership for one of Toronto’s most crucial agencies,” said Stintz in her press release.
Chow said Jones’ conduct reflects the mayor’s approach to management. “There are obvious problems with oversight and structure,” she said in a statement. “These mirror many of the problems our city has seen under Rob Ford, who also sees these rules as annoyances.”
The ombudsman does not have the power to remove Jones or any of his staff from their positions.
Instead, Crean will forward her recommendations to the TCHC board.
“My first recommendation is, follow your own policies,” Crean later said in an interview with CP24.
The board will resume their discussion of the report on Friday morning.
