Toronto police Supt. Ron Taverner was offered the top position at the Ontario Cannabis Store and considered for a deputy minister post in the months leading up to his appointment to the job of Ontario Provincial Police commissioner, sources have told the Star.

Taverner, a close friend of Premier Doug Ford, rejected the idea of running the government cannabis store, and longtime bureaucrats at Queen’s Park made it clear the veteran Toronto police divisional officer did not have the normal qualifications to oversee the massive Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services.

“Doug wanted to do something for Taverner. That is what we were hearing,” said one source.

On Wednesday, the Star sent detailed questions about this to numerous top government officials, including the premier; his chief of staff, Dean French; cabinet secretary Steve Orsini; the deputy minister of community safety, Mario Di Tommaso; and Taverner. None of them has responded, even to acknowledge receipt of the Star’s request for an interview.

Taverner is to start the job of OPP commissioner on Monday. Two reviews of his appointment have been requested, following separate political interference allegations from both opposition MPPs and the current acting commissioner of the OPP.

Ford and Community Safety Minister Sylvia Jones have said the selection process was independent and there was no political interference in the appointment of Taverner, 72, as Ontario’s top cop. The government has said it will have Taverner sworn in as planned.

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Taverner and the Ford family go back many years. Taverner is the senior officer in the Etobicoke divisions where the premier and other family members live and where the Ford family company, Deco Labels, is located. It has not been unusual for Taverner to be at a backyard barbecue hosted by the Ford family, and he is a frequent attendee of the annual Ford Fest community event.

“There’s no denying the friendship,” said former Etobicoke councillor Suzan Hall, who served with the late Rob Ford when he was a councillor. Hall speaks highly of Taverner, saying the affable cop has been very helpful to community groups in Etobicoke. She said that if ever a group needs equipment or help from officers, “he makes sure” whatever is needed is sent over from 23 Division.

Taverner’s road to the $275,000 OPP job, commanding one of the largest forces in North America, began around the time of the spring election with a decision that created a job opening at the cannabis store.

Under the previous Liberal government, career civil servant Nancy Kennedy was the president of the Ontario Cannabis Store (OCS), which was preparing to retail pot through government-owned stores. Doug Ford’s new Progressive Conservative government decided to confine the OCS to online sales, and instead allow privately owned bricks-and-mortar outlets. With the role of the OCS diminished, sources close to Kennedy say she did not want to stay. With a strong financial background from previous jobs, she was asked by the Ford government to return to the public service and was made deputy minister of the Treasury Board secretariat, effective June 29.

That opened up the post of president of the Ontario Cannabis Store. A source close to the discussions said it was offered by government officials to Taverner during the summer, but he declined. The Star does not know why. Taverner, in his 50-year career with the Toronto Police Service, has dealt with and made arrests in many drug cases, often posing as a senior officer in media photo opportunities with bags of illicit drugs. In the 1970s he was part of a joint Toronto-OPP task force investigating biker groups, and police officers have suggested to the Star that Taverner may not have felt it was a good fit for him to be retailing marijuana.

Next up was a suggestion to make Taverner a deputy minister in the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services, which presides over police, jails, forensic and fire marshal services across the province.

The Star has no direct verbal or documentary evidence that Ford ordered his staff to find a job for Taverner. However, the Star has information from two sources who say senior bureaucrats close to Ford made it clear to them that Ford wanted to give Taverner a job of some sort. They were never told why. Opposition critics and the acting head of the OPP have suggested there was “political interference” in the selection process.

The Star’s sources spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to speak about these matters and that they feared repercussions in their employment if they spoke on the record. The sources said that in policing and government circles, it was an open secret that a post was being sought for Taverner.

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Over the summer, when the idea of appointing Taverner as deputy minister of community safety was being floated, the position was held by Matt Torigian, a former Waterloo Region police chief. Torigian had been deputy for four years and was highly thought of by the civil service, including cabinet secretary Steve Orsini, the province’s top bureaucrat, who had served under Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne and been asked to stay on by the Ford government.

Sources have told the Star that by August, Torigian had the feeling that he was no longer wanted in the Ford government. The career police officer had spent four years at Community Safety and seven years as Waterloo police chief. He is a graduate of courses at the FBI National Academy. Torigian was offered and accepted an appointment at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy to lead an international initiative on global policing.

During August, sources say, there were discussions at Queen’s Park among Ford staffers that Taverner should become deputy minister. According to sources, Orsini said that would not be a good job for someone with front-line policing but little administrative experience of the type needed to run a ministry with a $2.6-billion budget.

Orsini announced Torigian’s departure from the ministry on Sept. 24, saying on Twitter he wanted to offer Torigian “a big shoutout and congratulations.”

One week later, on Oct. 1, Orsini tweeted out a welcome to the new deputy minister of community safety, Mario Di Tommaso, a career Toronto police officer who at the time was staff superintendent of communities and neighbourhood commands. While some deputy minister openings are posted publicly, others are not, and there appears to have been no job posting for this one. The executive search company the Ford government has been using for other deputy ministers told the Star on Thursday it was not involved in Di Tommaso’s posting.

Di Tommaso began work as deputy minister of community safety on Oct. 22. That same day, the provincial government, through executive search company Odgers Berndtson, released a posting for the job of OPP commissioner. When first released, the posting called for applicants to have a rank that would have excluded an officer at the level of superintendent, such as Taverner.

Two days later, on Oct. 24, that posting was revised, removing the line that stipulated the candidates had to have a minimum rank of deputy police chief or assistant commissioner.

Taverner was appointed OPP commissioner on Nov. 29, prompting an immediate storm of controversy. The NDP’s community safety and correctional services critic, Kevin Yarde, and Leader Andrea Horwath have asked the province’s integrity commissioner to examine the appointment.

“If Taverner’s swearing-in goes ahead on Monday, what will Ford be demanding of him?” Yarde said in a statement from his office Thursday. “It’s critical that police forces operate without political interference and without conflicts of interest — real or perceived.”

Horwath has also asked Taverner to delay assuming the position and is calling for an all-party committee to review the entire appointments process related to the OPP commissioner’s job.

A Star story following the appointment showed that a former Deco Labels employee, who is now a top political aide to Ford, had sold her Weston house privately to Taverner last year, something opposition MPPs suggested was a sign of a close connection, but which minister Sylvia Jones dismissed as “willing seller, willing buyer.”

On Tuesday, the interim commissioner of the OPP, Brad Blair, who had himself applied for the top job, released a scathing letter to the provincial ombudsman complaining about the selection process. In one instance, he notes that in the first round of interviews, conducted Nov. 12, the three men on the interview panel were Di Tommaso (who he notes was Taverner’s direct supervisor at the Toronto police force), executive search company official Sal Badali, and deputy attorney general Paul Boniferro.

In the next round of interviews with a smaller pool of candidates, on Nov. 20, Ford’s chief of staff, Dean French, was present in place of the deputy attorney general.

Blair, in his letter of complaint to the provincial ombudsman, said that with no explanation, French abruptly left the interview area and he was later told that French would no longer be involved. A source told the Star that French left because Toronto Star reporter Rob Ferguson had just sent questions regarding a story he was working on. The story, published the next day, revealed that French had ordered senior political aides to direct police to raid outlaw cannabis stores the day recreational marijuana became legal, and to show “people in handcuffs.”

The remainder of the interviews were done with a two-person panel. In his letter, Blair said it appears a decision was made later that day on who the next OPP boss would be. The official announcement came out on Nov. 29.

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