(Brian Iler, chair of CommunityAIR, delivered this statement today at a press conference dealing with the Toronto Star revelations about corporate malfeasance at the Toronto Port Authority.)

The Toronto Star ‘s series on TPA abuses this week has revealed a shocking level of disregard for the public interest and the normal rules of governance on the part of Stephen Harper’s appointees to the TPA board.

When given details of their malfeasance, Stephen Harper’s people shot the messengers by refusing to reappoint Reid and Henley, replacing them with more obsequious Conservatives - and ignored the whistleblowers.

The TPA has become a playpen for Stephen Harper’s political appointees with their own agenda and no accountability for their actions.

Why is this happening?

In our view, the Port Authority structure – imposed on Toronto ten years ago against its will - is a huge part of the answer. It's the wrong structure –  it places control of huge swaths of Toronto’s waterfront in the hands of a majority of federal government appointees.

That might be appropriate for a port of “strategic significance to Canada’s trade” – a precondition for port authority designation. Toronto’s port has never ever met that requirement. The governance structure established for Port Authorities reflects that national interest – of the nine directors, seven are appointed by the federal government, and one each from the City of Toronto, and the Ontario government. Until last December, of course, there were only seven directors – two more federal appointees were added to reduce the influence of the City and provincial appointees.

That degree of federal control makes sense from a governance perspective only where that strategic significance exists, and where that might justify a resultant disregard for more local concerns.

In the absence of that strategic significance, the overwhelming control of the TPA board by the federal appointees creates potential for serious accountability problems – if there is no national interest to respond to, and local interests are not incorporated effectively into the governance structure, the potential for an utter lack of accountability is created. That potential has been realized in spades, in Toronto.

Even then, if the federal appointees had been appointed in accordance with the requirements of the port authorities under the Canada Marine Act – so that a majority was representative of the various classes of port users set out in the TPA bylaws, there would at least have been a veneer of accountability – and these antics would not have been tolerated.

In fact, none of the current board members are representative of those user groups – we have distributed a bio of each of them, and the requirements for user group appointees, for your background. Most have, as a key qualification, some connection to the Conservative Party.

Our conclusion – the structure is wrong. It needs to be changed.

Transport Canada has had a program for devolution of port control to local communities, where local concerns, and accountability to the local community trumps a weaker national interest.

The TPA mess needs to be fixed. The structure it operates under – even if honoured – has created the problem. Toronto’s port need to be accountable to Torontonians. That can happen only if control is given back to the City. Toronto deserves no less.

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