Waterfront meeting braced for fireworks, but Minnan-Wong kept his cool: Keenan

Everyone in the room seemed braced for the explosion, but at the Waterfront Toronto meeting Wednesday, Denzil Minnan-Wong was the bomb that didn’t go off.

Council watchers had been expecting a confrontation from the time the new deputy mayor was named John Tory’s representative on the Waterfront Toronto board. Minnan-Wong is a longtime critic of the federal-provincial-municipal agency’s spending, who last year voted in favour of a (losing) motion to study taking responsibility for waterfront development away from it and returning it to City Hall.

In the lead-up to his first meeting on the board, Waterfront Toronto disclosed — 10 months after the decision was made — that its Queens Quay revitalization project had gone more than $35 million over its original $93.2 million budget. Deputy Minnan-Wong seemed to be on the warpath, asking if the timing was political, postponed beyond the election, “and if so, where do they get off making that decision?”

The stage was set for fireworks. Then … very little happened.

Minnan-Wong sat quietly through updates on the state of a long list of projects the agency has underway.

Then he listened politely to an hour-long presentation on the Queens Quay cost overrun that went into detail about the unanticipated — and, COO David Kusturin stressed, almost universally unavoidable — costs. After the board approved the confidential new budget in February, Kusturin said, the government partners (including the city) were informed in March and agreed to keep it quiet until delicate negotiations with contractors were done.

(After the meeting, the head of city hall’s Waterfront Secretariat, David Stonehouse, confirmed to me through a spokesperson that he had been informed in March and agreed to the confidentiality request because “Waterfront Toronto was concerned that it would influence the settlement of a number of contractor claims.” The spokesperson said city staff asked the agency to resolve the claims and disclose as soon as possible.)

The entire presentation — and the polite but elaborate explanatory interjections by the chair and other board members — seemed custom-tailored to anticipating and responding to potential criticisms by Minnan-Wong. Indeed, it was added to the agenda in response to his concerns.

Minnan-Wong asked a few quiet questions and got straightforward answers.

As if not sure they had gotten off that easy, several board members then made small speeches about what a bang-up job Waterfront Toronto had done managing the budget and its problems.

At the conclusion of the planned agenda, Minnan-Wong moved an innocuous motion asking that agendas and support materials be posted online — as is the practice at city standing committees — a week ahead of meetings.

Waterfront Toronto was prepared for this walk-on motion. CEO John Campbell had prepared a PowerPoint presentation to show that the agency was more open and transparent in its dealings than other arm’s-length city and government agencies. Which was overkill, but shows how prepared to defend against attacks they were. Minnan-Wong barely spoke to the item, and it was referred to the governance committee for discussion at the next board meeting.

In a scrum afterwards, chairman Mark Wilson said when it comes to transparency, “We’re the best.”

Minnan-Wong said he wished they had approved his motion on the spot — which I agree they should have — but declined various lines of attack offered by the members of the press, only offering that he wished they would “look for reasons to be more open, not for excuses why they don’t disclose things more regularly.”

And that was it. No showdown.

Why? It’s possible Minnan-Wong is keeping his powder dry for a fight to come. It’s possible that John Tory pulled on his leash for some reason (as John Lorinc of Spacing has suggested, Tory’s SmartTrack plan and the Unilever site development it hinges on needs Waterfront Toronto’s trilateral work on the Don River rehabilitation to go forward). It’s possible he was persuaded by the presentation. It’s possible better meeting notice is all he’s been after all along. (Well, OK, that last one not so much.)

A journalist in the scrum asked Minnan-Wong directly if Waterfront Toronto should be shut down.

“The future of Waterfront Toronto depends on the willingness of other levels of government to continue funding it,” he said.

And what about city funding?

“I’m not going to comment on that at this time.”

That gun may be fired yet. But in act one of the drama, Minnan-Wong simply placed it on the mantel.

Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca . Follow: @thekeenanwire