This term, each meeting of City Council has been more intense, more absurd, and more emotional than the last. They've been getting funnier, scarier, and sadder.  Council has long been the best show in town, but rarely has it been more scrutinized and more worthy of scrutiny.  A sense of dread often hangs over the proceedings, and while it's outrageous that the Toronto Sun would run a cover with the headline "GREEDY, PETULANT, SELF-RIGHTEOUS JERKS" (in reference to the left-leaning members of City Council), it is somehow less surprising than it used to be.

The battle for the Toronto Community Housing Corporation that occurred this past Tuesday and Wednesday was just the beginning.

DAY ONE
TUESDAY, MARCH 8
Morning session

10:29 a.m.: Mary-Margaret McMahon (Ward 32, Beaches–East York) rises on a point of personal privilege. It will either be something pedantic or something whimsical. It is whimsical. She tells councillors she has home-made lemon poppyseed muffins with "secret getting-along ingredients." They're in the back.

10:30 a.m.: Generally, new items introduced at council require notice. And generally, all items are supposed to go to a standing committee for consideration before they come before the whole council. So to walk on an item for which you haven't given notice, you need a two-thirds vote of council to waive the notice. And even if you've given notice, you also need a two-thirds vote of council to waive referral to committee—that is, to skip the committee step. (Pay attention. This will be important later.) By a vote of 26–16, council votes not to waive notice on Doug Holyday's (Ward 3, Etobicoke Centre) motion to replace the remaining four directors on the Toronto Community Housing Corporation board with former city councillor Case Ootes. The tenants in the gallery applaud. (Because there were forty-two councillors present, twenty-eight votes in favour were necessary.)

10:40 a.m.: On item AU1.3, "The Audit Committee - Roles and Responsibilities," councillor Janet Davis (Ward 31, Beaches–East York) questions auditor general Jeffrey Griffiths about the leaks of two recent reports: the one about the TCHC (which is actually two reports) and the one about paid-duty police service. In the case of the former, the Toronto Star learned of its contents three days prior to its official release. In the case of the latter, what is apparently an entire draft report was leaked to the Star about a month prior to it being delivered to the Toronto Police Services Board. Davis wants to know what security measures are in place. Griffiths says this is the first time in his twenty years that the contents of his reports have been leaked. And "certainly the leaks don't come out of my office." He was "shocked and appalled" to see his police report on the front page of the Star.

10:53 a.m.: Adam Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity–Spadina) has left his laptop open on his desk. The background image is "We are NOT for sale," the rallying cry of TCHC residents who fear imminent privatization.

11:01 a.m.: In the media area at the top of the public gallery, Doug Ford (Ward 2, Etobicoke North) is giving a scrum about the failed motion to introduce the TCHC item. From his seat on the council floor, mayor Rob Ford looks up at his brother's scrum, grins and nods.

11:26 a.m.: Grade Five students from Summit Heights Public School in North York file into the gallery. The mayor showers them with gifts. Last time it was business cards. The time before that, it was magnets. Today it appears to be pins of some kind.

12:17 p.m.: A motion from Joe Mihevc (Ward 21, St. Paul's) that would see the attorney general "review reporting practices related to the Fraud and Waste Hotline to ensure to the best of his ability that proper process is being followed, that leaks to media do not occur that may jeopardize due process, and that the reporting process is not impacted by undue political pressures" is adopted 22 to 16.

12:27 or 12:29 p.m.: Councillors argue about what time it actually is. They have to break at 12:30 for lunch, and Davis doesn't know how much time she has left to speak.

12:30 p.m.: A special meeting of the Executive Committee is called for 12:30 the following afternoon. The TCHC item that council bunted this morning will, in theory, be on its agenda.

Lunch

12:45 p.m.: A friend purchases a BUST Magazine from the City Hall cafeteria. Much like the bottles of Mike's Hard Lemonade, it is surely a product that no one has ever purchased from them before. The next person in line orders a glass of red wine with her meal.

Afternoon session

2:26 p.m.: McConnell notes that when the MFP scandal came down, City Council's leaders from that period—including then–Deputy Mayor Case Ootes—didn't have to resign. Hint, hint.

3:18 p.m.: Watching David Shiner (Ward 24, Willowdale) and Josh Matlow (Ward 22, St. Paul's) converse with each other, I'm reminded of the exchanges between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. Or maybe Darth Sidious and Anakin Skywalker.

4:12 p.m.: I like how Doug Ford and Gord Perks (Ward 14, Parkdale–High Park) go on smoke breaks together. This is likely where Council's most constructive discussions occur.

4:17 p.m.: Shiner keeps pronouncing Ana Bailão's (Ward 18, Davenport) last name as "Biallo" (said like "giallo"). After this is pointed out to him, he quips, "I get called Schneider, and I don't have any packaged meats."

4:34 p.m.: Council is deciding on the fate of a handful of trees on the Canadian Film Centre property. It's apparently believed that "E.P. Taylor himself planted these trees."

4:52 p.m.: So much council business is so mundane that it occurs to very few people that there is actually a filibuster going on. The intention is to have this council meeting rub up against the following day's noon-hour Executive Committee meeting so that the Executive Committee can't complete its agenda before council resumes in the afternoon.

5:00 p.m.: Anthony Perruzza (Ward 8, York West), not hip to the strategy, cries out, "This is like watching paint dry! Come on."

5:35 p.m.: The clerks distribute two pink sheets of paper to each city councillor. One advises that the next day's special meeting of the Executive Committee (which had been announced just five hours earlier) has been cancelled. The second declares that a special meeting of City Council has been called for 5:30 the following day (or for immediately after the current council meeting ends, whichever is later). The purpose of the special meeting is to hear new business from the mayor. This "new business" unsurprisingly ends up being identical to the Holyday/McMahon motion that council had opted not to consider.

5:37 p.m.: Perks rises on a point of personal privilege and says that everyone who signed up on short notice to depute at the now-cancelled executive meeting has been betrayed. "This is the worst kind of abuse of process I have ever seen in this chamber... It is foul!" He storms out in a spectacular huff.

5:41 p.m.: The clerks clarify that it was not the TCHC item's referral that council had failed to waive that morning but rather its notice. That is, the motion wasn't bounced to the next meeting of the Executive Committee but rather to the next meeting of City Council. In the kerfuffle following the morning's vote, no one (on the left or on the right) had realized that that's what had happened. The clerks also explain that because the item will be introduced at the special meeting as new business from the mayor, a two-thirds vote is not required. (This is likely how the mayor's staff should have gone about it in the first place.)

6:07 p.m.: I ask Denzil Minnan-Wong (Ward 34, Don Valley East) whether his rolled-up rim yielded a win. He says it did not. This constitutes another minor, symbolic victory for the left.

7:40 p.m.: Mammoliti is suggesting that they reconvene this (regular) council meeting at 2:00 the next day (rather than at 9:30 a.m.). This leads to a procedural mess that is impossible to untangle for anyone who is not actually present in the chamber. But his motion eventually succeeds.

7:57 p.m.: Adam Vaughan sends out an open (email) letter on the TCHC to his constituents [PDF, from the Globe]. It closes: "The fight to stop the privatization is on. The selloff of public housing must be stopped. As your City Councillor, I will be leading this fight at Council."

DAY TWO
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9
Afternoon session

2:00 p.m.: Council resumes and is frighteningly collegial. It as if all the councillors know how ugly it is going to become later and so are taking their opportunity to be cordial for now.

2:50 p.m.: McConnell moves that the special council meeting be opened to deputations from the public. (Normally, deputations are restricted to standing committees, but Article XIII of the procedural bylaw allows this to happen at council if someone makes a motion to that effect at the previous meeting.) Nunziata rules this motion out of order, as it is not "urgent." McConnell strongly disagrees, noting that such a motion can only be introduced at the time she has introduced it. She challenges the chair, who is upheld 20–16.

3:05 p.m.: After the regular meeting wraps up, McConnell privately tells deputy speaker John Parker (Ward 26, Don Valley West) of her concerns with Nunziata's "despotism": "People don't give a shit about the democracy of it!"

Special meeting

5:27 p.m.: Adam Vaughan enters the chambers to a roar of adulation from the capacity audience, which largely consists of social housing tenants. The same happens when Gord Perks enters. We are now sufficiently through the looking glass.

5:42 p.m.: Mayor Ford says the board members who were appointed by his council three months earlier must leave because the board now needs "a fresh start."

5:51 p.m.: Shelley Carroll (Ward 33, Don Valley East) begins asking questions about the auditor's report that prompted Ford's call for the heads of the TCHC board. Nunziata interrupts her: "Excuse me, we don't have the auditor's report before us." Carroll snaps back: "That's my point." Although the AG's report has been delivered to the TCHC Board, it has yet to come to City Council via the Audit or Executive Committees. Carroll, like many councillors, is of the opinion that the mayor has severely jumped the gun and that this is an execution without a trial.

5:56 p.m.: Nunziata rules discussion of the auditor's report out of order because it is not yet before council. Her ruling is challenged, but she is upheld 22–18.

6:26 p.m.: As an alternative to cheers and boos, which the speaker has forbidden, Paula Fletcher (Ward 30, Toronto Danforth) suggests the audience engage in jazz hands (actually American Sign Language for applause). While embarrassing at first, it ends up being a terrific innovation and the only thing that keeps the speaker from booting the public out of the chamber en masse.

6:52 p.m.: Ford tells Chin Lee (Ward 41, Scarborough–Rouge River) that he wants the new board installed by May. Or maybe by June at the latest. Either way, it's still longer than the one month he'd stated previously.

7:03 p.m.: We learn that the auditor general has left the meeting because "he has a plane to catch."

7:19 p.m.: Kristyn Wong-Tam (Ward 27, Toronto Centre-Rosedale) moves a compromise motion that would have council appoint Ootes as the chair of the board but allow the remaining four members (councillors Maria Augimeri [Ward 9, York Centre] and Raymond Cho [Ward 42, Scarborough–Rouge River] and tenant representatives Dan King and Catherine Wilkinson) to stay. "Tenants are taxpayers, tenants are voters, tenants are here tonight," Wong-Tam says.

7:48 p.m.: Matlow, having come over to the Light Side of the Force, says it's "not intellectually honest" to fire people without discussing the reason.

8:01 p.m.: Carroll points out that half the TCHC budget comes from the rent people pay.

8:37 p.m.: Mary Fragedakis (Ward 29, Toronto Danforth) moves to defer the item until it can be heard by committee. A member of the Audit Committee, she reveals she unsuccessfully tried to call an emergency meeting of the committee for this past Monday but was unable to obtain signatures from a majority of the committee's members. Only she and Carroll signed on. (The other members of the committee are Holyday, McMahon, Matlow, and Vincent Crisanti [Ward 1, Etobicoke North].)

9:06 p.m.: Councillor Jaye Robinson (Ward 25, Don Valley West) is on her laptop, reading the day's"Extra, Extra" post on Torontoist.

9:10 p.m.: Robinson is carefully examining Matt Elliot's "Ford Nation" spreadsheet, and possibly having an epiphany.

9:15 p.m.: Now councillor Gary Crawford (Ward 36, Scarborough Southwest) is reading the "Ford Nation" post.

9:20 p.m.: Fragedakis's deferral fails on a vote of 17–25.

9:21 p.m.: Nunziata mistakenly calls Cho "Lee." In response, councillor Lee mutters, "We all look alike."

9:40 p.m.: Davis rises on a "point of personal request." She has lost her glasses; they are "red on the inside, brown on the outside," if anyone has seen them. Nunziata crackles, "That's not a point of order, just find your glasses." The speaker is apparently cool with the audience laughing, so long as it is at her own jokes.

10:02 p.m.: Mike Layton (Ward 19, Trinity–Spadina) delivers a line that sums up the entire evening's debate: "There is no defense for some of the allegations in the report we are not speaking about today."

10:06 p.m.: James Pasternak (Ward 10, York Centre) says, "The funds that should be going to tenants are actually going to perks." From his seat, Councillor Perks waves, mischievously.

10:14 p.m.: Glenn De Baeremaeker (Ward 38, Scarborough Centre) is going around the council floor sharing a bag of small Mrs. Fields chocolate chip cookies.

10:20 p.m.: Doug Ford manages to insult all of the other members of council by saying his brother cares more about, and has given more time to, community housing tenants than any other elected representative has.

10:42 p.m.: A letter from the two tenant representatives on the TCHC board is floating around the public gallery. It says they've obtained a legal opinion that council can't unilaterally change the board's composition. And that even if it could, council would still be violating a provision of its shareholder agreement that says council would have to give six weeks' notice to amend said agreement.

10:56 p.m.: Carroll has a box of Timbits. She offers one to Ford press secretary Adrienne Batra, who declines. The same happens with Ford chief of staff Amir Remtulla. Adam Vaughan, however, accepts.

11:02 p.m.: Councillors Doug Ford and Paul Ainslie (Ward 43, Scarborough East), as well as members of the mayor's staff, wander around the council floor, delivering folded-up pieces of paper to their allies on council. They are instructions on how to vote on each motion:

11:30 p.m.: Augimeri, who grew up in public housing and for whom this is an especially emotional issue, is the last to speak. She objects that there's been no formal request for her to step down, other than broad threats made by the mayor through the media. "It's important to realize that I have not been asked to resign [from the Board], either verbally or in writing....I can't think of any reason in heaven or hell why I should resign."

11:38 p.m.: Voting on various motions begins. None of the ones that would substantially alter Ford's proposal are adopted.

11:57 p.m.: Ford's proposal to sack the remaining board members and install Case Ootes as interim managing director of the TCHC is adopted 25–18, with minor amendments.

11:59 p.m.: As the tenants remaining in the audience realize what has happened, the cries of "Shame!" begin.

12:09 a.m.: The mayor holds a press conference in the members' lounge above and behind the council chamber. He speaks for two minutes and nineteen seconds, according to the Globe, and takes no questions. Security bars the TCHC tenants from entering to hear the mayor speak, and they literally wail at the barricades. I am reminded of Les Miserables.

Photos, from council's special meeting, by Andrew Louis/OpenFile.