Canadian Lawyer InHouse

35 CANADIANLAWYERMAG.COM/INHOUSE JANUARY 2017 advice, but there hasn't been a lot of pressure on me to reduce the budget other than the fact TCHC has to reduce its expenditures overall," he says. Last year, the agency went to the legal market with a request for proposal and now has about 15 law fi rms on its roster including: Dentons LLP, Gowling WLG, Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP, Aird & Berlis LLP, DLA Piper (Canada) LLP, Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP, Hicks Morley Hamilton Stewart Storie LLP, WeirFoulds LLP, Sherrard Kuzz LLP, Mathews Dinsdale & Clark LLP and Moodie Mair Walker LLP, as well as Anita Fineberg, Devine Park LLP, Lise Patry and Procurement Law Offi ce. The range of issues Johnson and his team deal with on a daily basis can include corporate governance matters and tenant eviction issues, as well as implementing a new human rights policy for tenants if they feel they have been mistreated by staff or other tenants. The board of TCHC has a mandate from Toronto city council to facilitate the turn- around and improvement of the organization. "In many ways, I'm a conduit between the board and senior management as the corporate secretary and that's a fun and challenging part of the job," Johnson says. While Johnson is new to the challenges of TCHC, Ismail Ibrahim has seen the or- ganization through years of upheaval. He is perhaps the best possible ambassador for the organization — he grew up in community housing and, after initially working on Bay Street after law school, found his profes- sional home at TCHC. He arrived at the organization's department in 2009 after do- ing two secondments in 2007 and 2008 as a student. Born in Afghanistan, Ibrahim's family left that country when he was four years old. They lived in Pakistan for six months, then India for fi ve-and-a-half years before com- ing to Canada. They lived in community housing in Scarborough for 12 years until he graduated from university. "It's one of the reasons I ended up here," he says. He admits his path to the TCHC legal department is unusual, but it seems like a bit of destiny at work. He graduated with degrees in life sciences and engineering and worked as an engineer at the Darlington Nuclear power station for four years. After that, he decided to go to law school. He articled with Ogilvy Renault LLP (now Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP). "I was doing a lot of work with their energy group, but during the year some of the partners left to join another fi rm. That turned out to be a good thing because during that year they sent some students on secondment to Toronto Community Housing," he says. When he wasn't hired back to Norton Rose, TCHC called him and offered a six- month contract. In November, he celebrated his seventh year with the agency. "I was hired on a six-month contract to help on a $250-million bond deal and to help set up an ethics and compliance unit," he recalls. On day one, they asked him to be the liai- son with the City of Toronto's ombudsman's offi ce, which had recently taken jurisdiction over TCHC. He then became the Freedom of Information point person and started do- ing some corporate work. Then the auditor general's recommendations came down. "We had to implement changes to the expense policy and also help overhaul the procurement processes," he says. It was the 2011 auditor general report that revealed defi ciencies in the procurement process. "At the time, I didn't know a lot about procurement, but I knew a lot about the company. The general counsel at the time said hiring from outside would take six months for anyone external to learn it and it would be easier for me to learn procurement law than for someone else to learn TCHC," he says. L a w D e p a r t m e n t M a n a g e m e n t In many ways, I'm a conduit between the board and senior management as the corporate secretary and that's a fun and challenging part of the job. MARK JOHNSON, TCHC

• Cover