Ottawa LRT Public Inquiry

[Richard Eade]

Given that tunneling in Ontario seems to be costing about $750M per kilometre, I'd say about 20 metres - assuming that you already had a waiting TBM. Heck, $14.5M wouldn't even cover 1/10th of the cost of the first half of the Baseline BRT.

It might come as a shock to some, but $1M is no longer a lot of money. It is almost what the average person pays for a house. There are many new 'Millionaires' every week, just from lotteries in Ontario.

Some of you might remember a scene from Austen Powers, Man of Mystery. In it, the 'evil' villain wants to hold the world ransom for "ONE MILLION DOLLARS". That got great laughs from the audience, for good reason.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Richard Eade

Given that tunneling in Ontario seems to be costing about $750M per kilometre, I'd say about 20 metres - assuming that you already had a waiting TBM. Heck, $14.5M wouldn't even cover 1/10th of the cost of the first half of the Baseline BRT.

It might come as a shock to some, but $1M is no longer a lot of money. It is almost what the average person pays for a house. There are many new 'Millionaires' every week, just from lotteries in Ontario.

Some of you might remember a scene from Austen Powers, Man of Mystery. In it, the 'evil' villain wants to hold the world ransom for "ONE MILLION DOLLARS". That got great laughs from the audience, for good reason.

Thank you for helping us understand that.
So, this is more of a rounding error?

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Thank you for helping us understand that.
So, this is more of a rounding error?

It's not a huge amount at all. Despite the media's attempt to sensationalize the number. And the lessons learned should be very valuable given the cluster that the procurement was.

[Stacmon]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

It's not a huge amount at all. Despite the media's attempt to sensationalize the number. And the lessons learned should be very valuable given the cluster that the procurement was.

The lessons learned are definitely the key and would presumably dwarf the cost of the inquiry. If Ottawa can avoid costly mistakes for a future extension (e.g., Stage 3) or another Ontario/Canadian municipality can run a much better procurement process for a massive transit system like this, presumably the inquiry will have more than paid for itself.

Of course it would have been ideal if Ottawa wasn't the cautionary tale for everyone else to learn from!

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Richard Eade

Some of you might remember a scene from Austen Powers, Man of Mystery. In it, the 'evil' villain wants to hold the world ransom for "ONE MILLION DOLLARS". That got great laughs from the audience, for good reason.

And that was 25 years ago when $1 Million was still a decent amount that could buy you a large mansion or 5 normal sized houses in Ontario (10 in Quebec).

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

It's not a huge amount at all. Despite the media's attempt to sensationalize the number. And the lessons learned should be very valuable given the cluster that the procurement was.

Yup. People still don't seem to understand the value of a dollar, or I guess a million, despite inflation and the crazy housing market of the last 2 years.

It's like McKenney's $250 million bike plan that was criticized by the media and Sutcliffe despite the fact that it would have been fairly cheap and a good bang for our buck compared to road widenings we approve without batting an eye, or literally useless random mini-highways (Alta Vista Expressway anyone?)

[rocketphish]

Former citizen transit commissioner hopes LRT inquiry report will be 'cathartic'
"I am hopeful that the people of Ottawa and those councillors who were kept out of the loop and the people who use the system will get some sense of vindication with this report."

Blair Crawford, Ottawa Citizen
Nov 28, 2022 • 27 minutes ago • 4 minute read

Untested trains. Unreasonable expectations. Malleable approval criteria. Back channel WhatsApp chats. Political pressure.

All those problems and more were laid bare during 18 days of public testimony at the Ottawa Light-Rail Transit Inquiry. Making sense of it all — including the claims and counter-claims by the city and its consultants, and the troubled train’s builders and maintainers — has been the job of Justice William Hourigan, who presided over the inquiry.

Few can expect to come out unscathed when Hourigan releases his final report Wednesday morning.

“I’m hoping it will be cathartic,” said Sarah Wright-Gilbert, a former citizen transit commissioner who testified at the inquiry.

“I don’t want to get my hopes too high … but I am hopeful that the people of Ottawa and those councillors who were kept out of the loop and the people who use the system will get some sense of vindication with this report,” said Wright-Gilbert, whose term on the transit watchdog ended last month with the municipal election.

“What I’m most hoping to hear is an acknowledgment of what we all long suspected, that information was being withheld from the transit commission and council and the public, particularly about the testing period.”

Among the documents entered into evidence during the inquiry were more than 600 pages of WhatsApp messages between former mayor Jim Watson, city manager Steve Kanellakos, former OC Transpo general manager John Manconi and Transit Commission chair Coun. Alan Hubley.

Revealing (“Our reputation is in tatters,” Watson wrote in one message) and at times embarrassing (there’s blood all over the boardroom floor,” Manconi reported after a meeting with Rideau Transit Group), the messages gave the public a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes decision-making process among senior city officials.

“It just demonstrated for me what I’ve been saying for a very long time: That there’s no transparency, no accountability,” Wright-Gilbert said.

Of the four, only Hubley remains. He was re-elected to a fourth term on council in the municipal election last month. Watson chose not to run again and Manconi retired in 2021 and is now a senior vice-president in Austin, Texas, with the transportation infrastructure company STV (a company that was involved in Ottawa’s LRT construction). Kanellakos resigned Monday, two days before the inquiry’s report is to be released, noting he expected it to be critical of the City of Ottawa and city staff.

But the inquiry probed far more than just the unfiltered thoughts of the city’s top brass. It also looked at the structure of the public-private partnership (P3) agreement to build the system, the decision to change the criteria the builder needed to meet before the city took possession, the technical challenges a new and untested train faced in a harsh climate like Ottawa’s and even the difficulty the train builder, Alstom, faced with the “limited qualified local (workforce) for industrial manufacturing” in Ottawa.

Hourigan heard how the relationship between the city and Rideau Transit Group soured after a section of Rideau Street collapsed into an enormous sinkhole in 2016. Antonio Estrada, the CEO of RTG during most of the LRT’s construction, testified that the city became “less co-operative and more contractual” after the sinkhole debacle.

Matthew Slade, director of the LRT construction team, described the intense pressure the consortium felt while building the Confederation Line.

“The level of attention from the media and politicians was quite intense and not something I’d experienced before,” testified Slade, who came to Ottawa from England after working on a new line for the London Underground.

Slade said the city’s push for a fall 2018 launch date would require “the stars to align” and would only be possible “in a Utopian world.”

His suggestion of a soft launch for the train was dismissed out of hand by the city, he testified.

In its closing statement, the city argued that the inquiry had spent too much time looking at the city’s failings and not enough at the shortcomings of the LRT’s designers and builders. It’s things like cracked wheels, malfunctioning signals and poor maintenance that have made the system unreliable, not anything the city has done, its lawyers argued.

“It appeared at times that the public sector was on trial. The city was criticized both for being too hard on RTG and too soft,” the closing statement said.

“(Rideau Transit Group) let the City down and it is RTG that should be called to account in respect of the issues affecting reliability of the system so that transit riders in the city can rely on this new system that they bought and paid for. Taxpayers should not bear the burden of private sector failures.”

In its closing statement, RTG countered that the city brought problems on itself with its “unrealistic expectations” for light-rail transit.

“The problems with the project had an outsized impact on Ottawa’s residents because their municipal government set unrealistic expectations,” RTG’s lawyers wrote. “Elected officials promised the public a turnkey system and campaigned on delivering it with no delays. When their own advisers warned them that no complex transit system, newly-built and operated, would launch problem–free, the political die was already cast.”

“I don’t think RTG will come out unscathed,” Wright-Gilbert said. “It’s clear that there are problems with the system.

“One thing the the inquiry is asking is, ‘How did we get here?’ ” she said. “But it’s also asking, ‘How are we never going to let this happen again?’ ”

Hourigan will release his final report on Wednesday at 11 a.m. in a briefing that will be streamed live to the web on the inquiry’s site OttawaLRTPublicInquiry.ca.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...l-be-cathartic

[rocketphish]

Residents want accountability from the LRT inquiry, but who will face the music?
LRT inquiry final report to be released Wednesday morning with findings and recommendations

Joanne Chianello · CBC News
Posted: Nov 29, 2022 11:15 AM ET | Last Updated: 5 hours ago

Who's to blame?

That is what so many of us want to know when it comes to the troubled $2.1-billion Confederation Line.

Sure, we are interested in the details of how we ended up with an LRT that suffered from faulty doors and brakes, flat wheels, cracked wheels, and a broken-off wheel, kinked rails and collapsed cables, glitchy switches and stinky stations, multiple shutdowns and two derailments that — along with city council's refusal to call its own inquiry — ultimately led Ontario Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney to order up a provincial one.

We do want to know more about the contractual specifics, unusual debt financing, and technical troubles that all contributed to the problems, or whether the private-public partnership (P3) model, which was used for the first time ever for an Ontario transit project, led to cutting corners and rushing an unreliable system to service.

And we are certainly keen to learn the commission's view of the involvement of LRT super-consultant Brian Guest, whose private email indicated a public inquiry could "screw" him, and who's been instrumental in copying Ottawa's P3 model in transit projects in the Toronto area long before it was proven to work — or not work, as the case may be.

But when the final report into Ottawa's LRT inquiry lands Wednesday morning, we want inquiry commissioner Justice William Hourigan to hone in on who should answer for this mess.

In truth, there's plenty of blame to go around.

The system builder Rideau Transit Group (RTG) — the consortium made up of SNC-Lavalin, Ellis Don and ACS Infrastructure — has been taking it on the chin in public for years, as has France-based train maker Alstom.

There is merit to the criticism, though, as these are all multinational corporations that have worked on billion-dollar transportation projects the world over. Ultimately, they should be counted on to deliver the system they said they could build, on time, for the price they promised — all spelled out in the contract.

But that doesn't often happen. Or possibly ever, as even internationally savvy executives apparently continually succumb to "optimism bias", as the inquiry heard.

So perhaps the more pertinent issue is who let this happen.

As the city manager's sudden resignation on Monday so clearly telegraphs, city officials believe the report will point the finger at city hall.

None of the parties involved in the inquiry gets an advance copy of the report, but in his farewell note to city staff, Kanellakos wrote that "based on the line of questioning and approach taken by the commission, that the report will be critical of the city of Ottawa and city staff."

He is probably right.

From the very first day of the public hearings, commission lawyers grilled city officials about whether political pressure, particularly from then-mayor Jim Watson, kept the budget too tight and the timeline too short.

Over four weeks of public testimony from more than 40 witnesses, we learned it was the city that wanted Alstom trains — light rail vehicles that, according to one of the company's executives, did not yet exist and that were "pushing the limits" of what a light rail vehicle can do.

On one particularly damning day for the city, rail manager Richard Holder testified the city willingly accepted a light rail system it knew was likely unreliable, and changed criteria to make it easier for RTG to pass the final testing of the Confederation Line.

From Holder, we also learned the city agreed in July 2019 to accept that the LRT was basically finished — and paid RTG $59 million — even though there was a long list of outstanding problems, including with each of the 34 light rail vehicles.

Another outstanding problem the city allowed to pass? A system-wide "failure to meet fleet requirements due to ongoing defects/deficiencies."

We found out the contract was changed to accept a rail system with just 13 double-car trains on the track instead of 15, which was not reported to city council. We also heard that Ottawa's own head of transportation John Manconi — who likely suggested that the trial running criteria be changed to make it easier — urged the city's representative on the trial team to use "discretion" to pass the Confederation Line on a day it should have failed.

We watched commission co-lead counsel John Adair accuse the then-mayor of lying under oath. Watson had previously testified that he didn't get daily updates on the trial testing when WhatsApp messages — ordered by the commission from the city midway through the public hearings — showed Watson was indeed being briefed

The information, or lack thereof, shared with city council members on the Confederation Line just before the city took control became a central theme of the inquiry.

In fact, during Kanellakos' four hours of testimony in the final week of the hearings, he was grilled about, among other things, why council wasn't told about changing the criteria midway through the trial running of the LRT. He was also pushed on why he stopped a memo Manconi had written to councillors telling them the testing had been put on hold for a couple of days.

Perhaps most damaging was the evidence surrounding the role of the independent certifier. Kanellakos had said repeatedly, including during his testimony, that the city could feel confident in the fact the Confederation Line had been signed off by the independent certifier.

What we learned, though, was that the independent certifier is an official box-checker — making sure that documentation is completed — and mediator. The independent certifier, Altus Group's Monica Sechiari, was not consulted on the changes to the contract to deem the LRT substantially complete, nor did she have any input into the trial testing criteria.

In fact, she was not even in the city during the key 12-day testing period, leaving a very junior colleague in her place.

Given the evidence, it perhaps becomes less surprising that Kanellakos didn't want to be the one left holding the bag for the city on this giant, complex mess. After all, the LRT wasn't his baby — it was a project he inherited in 2016 when he became city manager.

Of the city's senior leadership team that oversaw the procurement and construction and launch of the LRT, not one will be present to answer to the final report on Wednesday. Former city manager Kent Kirkpatrick, his deputy Nancy Schepers, now-former mayor Jim Watson, and transit boss John Manconi have all packed up and left city hall.

We may find out Wednesday who should shoulder the blame, but it will be somewhat difficult to find anyone willing to carry that burden.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottaw...sday-1.6667711

[waterloowarrior]

Final report

https://www.ottawalrtpublicinquiry.c.../final-report/

News release

https://www.ottawalrtpublicinquiry.c...ublic-inquiry/

November 30, 2022

Final report of OLRT Public Inquiry
The Commissioner, the Honourable Justice William Hourigan, released the final report of the OLRT Public Inquiry in Ottawa on November 30, 2022.

For Immediate Release

Ottawa – The Ottawa LRT Public Inquiry has found there were persistent failures in leadership, partnership and communications in the construction and maintenance of the Ottawa LRT.

Commissioner the Honourable Justice William Hourigan released the Inquiry’s final report today in Ottawa. “Our mandate,” he said, “was to find out for the residents of Ottawa what happened and why, and how to avoid similar problems in the future.”

In releasing the report, Commissioner Hourigan said both the City of Ottawa and the private consortium, Rideau Transit Group (RTG), lost sight of the public interest during the project. “It was unconscionable that RTG and its main sub-contractor knowingly gave the City inaccurate information about when they would finish building the LRT.” He also found that City Council was not told that the testing criteria for the LRT was lowered to allow it to pass its final testing phase. “This conduct irreparably compromised the legal oversight ability of Council and raises serious concerns about whether the City of Ottawa can properly complete significant infrastructure projects.”

The Commissioner found there were many reasons Ottawa residents did not get the reliable transit system they deserved, including that:

1. The City chose unproven technology for the trains that strained the limits of what an LRT system could do.
2. RTG did not coordinate the work of its sub-contractors and failed to ensure the integration of the various systems and components.
3. An adversarial relationship developed between the City and RTG.
4. The City rushed the LRT system into service before it was ready.
5. RTG and its subcontractors did not provide adequate maintenance.

The Public Inquiry made 103 recommendations to fix the problems with the Ottawa LRT and ensure they don’t reoccur on other major infrastructure projects. Commissioner Hourigan recommended that an independent monitor keep Ottawa City Council or the Transit Commission informed about on-going corrective measures. And he said governments and public procurement agencies should examine whether to use a public-private partnership (P3) or another model when building complex infrastructure projects.

Other recommendations include:

• Collaboration and the public interest should be at the heart of the relationship between the public entity and private-sector partners.
• Systems integration must be prioritized from the design phase through to construction and manufacturing.
• Safety requirements should be designed and built in from the outset, to avoid expensive, retroactive changes. An independent safety auditor should be engaged early in the construction of complex infrastructure projects.
• Reliability and safety issues must be honestly identified and communicated to project partners and the public. The province should give legal protection to whistleblowers who bring forward concerns about major infrastructure projects.
• Trial testing requirements should be detailed in the relevant contracts and used as the basis for any performance scoring.
• There should be timely and proper responses to problems related to maintenance and operations by all parties once they arise. The safety and needs of the public should be prioritized.
• Prior to public opening, there should be an extensive running of the entire system under conditions designed to mirror those of public service.

“More than three years after opening,” said Commissioner Hourigan, “some of the LRT’s problems still have not been fixed. While relations between the City and RTG have improved, both need to do more work to ensure the public interest is at the core of everything they do.”

The full report of the Ottawa LRT Public Inquiry, along with additional information, can be found at OttawaLRTPublicInquiry.ca.

[acottawa]

Seems to be out.

https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/unconscion...-rtg-1.6173542

The construction and maintenance of the Ottawa LRT project was plagued by persistent failures in leadership and saw "egregious violations of the public trust," a scathing new report has found.

The sweeping 637-page final report of the Ottawa LRT public inquiry, released Wednesday, found that both the city of Ottawa and Rideau Transit Group lost sight of the public interest during the project.

[Uhuniau]

Anyway, it's really great that all the people and corporate culture that Watson brought to City Hall are gone now.

[rocketphish]

Report blames failures in leadership, 'deliberate malfeasance' for LRT troubles

Blair Crawford, Ottawa Citizen
Nov 30, 2022 • 22 minutes ago • 4 minute read

A scathing report on Ottawa’s troubled LRT says councillors were deliberately misled by the city’s most senior manager during construction and questions whether the city is capable of managing large infrastructure projects.

The report by Justice William Hourigan found “persistent failures in leadership, partnership and communications” during construction and maintenance of the system that caused Ottawa residents to “not get the reliable transit system they deserved.”

While Hourigan said it was “unconscionable” that the builder, Rideau Transit Group, knowingly gave the city inaccurate information about when the system would be finished, he laid particular blame on Steve Kanellakos, the city’s top bureaucrat, for misleading council about the train’s poor performance during its testing period.

In an Aug. 23, 2019 memo to council, Kanellakos wrote that he was “pleased to inform the Mayor and Members of Council that the objectives of Trial Running and the requirements of the Project Agreement have been satisfied.” But he didn’t tell them that the testing standards had been eased to give the trains a passing grade.

“There can be no doubt that Kanellakos knew the memo was misleading,” the report says. “Kanellakos himself conceded during his testimony that in certain respects the memo was ‘inconsistent with the reality.’ This is shocking conduct, which constitutes deliberate wrongdoing, by the most senior public servant employed by the City.”

He also blames Kanellakos for suppressing a memo to council from OC Transpo General Manager John Manconi that “if sent, would have informed Council of the disastrous start to trial running.”

Kanellakos abruptly resigned his job as city manager on Monday, two days before the report’s release.

“This conduct irreparably compromised the legal oversight ability of Council and raises serious concerns about whether the City of Ottawa can properly complete significant infrastructure projects,” Hourigan writes.

Hourigan also singles out the use of a private WhatsApp channel by Kanellakos, former Mayor Jim Watson, former OC Transpo General Manager John Manconi and other senior city officials to share inside information about the LRT project.

“The WhatsApp Group was an end run around proper governance,” Hourigan writes.

Political pressure, he wrote, made the city compromise with the builder by agreeing to to “defer work, waive requirements, and delay addressing known problems with the OLRT1.”

“The Commission does not fault the City for trying to work co-operatively with RTG. However, it is evident that the decision to compromise was based on political pressure and not on the best interests of the people of Ottawa.”

The report also blames the city for failing to follow best practices for launching such a complex system by ignoring advice to have a “soft start” for the Confederation Line and instead insisting on full service from Day 1.

Ottawa commuters know too well about the breakdowns, delays and glitches that followed.

“The City’s insistence on full service from the public launch and forward was misguided and unrealistic,” Hourigan writes.

In a statement, Ontario Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney thanked Hourigan for his work and said her team would review the report.

“This public inquiry was called to address three fundamental concerns about the Ottawa LRT: safety, accountability, and value for tax dollars,” she said.

“Moving forward, we will continue making sure that Ontario taxpayers and transit riders get the best value for their money possible.”

The report also finds fault with RTG. While some of the problems that plagued construction were out of its control, such as the massive sinkhole on Rideau Street in 2016 and onerous requirements by the province for Canadian content in its construction, “it was unconscionable that RTG and OLRT-C would knowingly provide inaccurate information to the City about when the OLRT1 system would be ready for operation, which resulted in the City communicating unachievable dates to the public.”

“RTG and its subcontractors provided inadequate maintenance resources. Consequently, there were ongoing problems with the system that caused service delays and general system unreliability. The City contributed to this problem by filing hundreds of work orders in the first weeks of operation, many of which were categorized as urgent, to respond to minor issues that would have been largely resolved through regular maintenance.”

The report also blames the city for choosing “unproven technology for the trains that strained the limits of what an LRT system could do,” says RTG failed to co-ordinate the work of its sub–contractors and failed to ensure the various systems involve would integrate properly.

The report lists 103 recommendations to fix the problems with the LRT and to avoid issues during similar large infrastructure projects.

In a damning conclusion, Hourigan singles out the city for “deliberate malfeasance.”

“While human errors are understandable and expected, deliberate malfeasance is unacceptable in a public project. When participants deliberately mislead the public regarding the status of a public undertaking, they violate a fundamental obligation that underlies all public endeavours,” he writes.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...r-lrt-troubles

[Truenorth00]

I wish there were consequences for their lying and cover-ups. Including directly to the inquiry itself.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

I wish there were consequences for their lying and cover-ups. Including directly to the inquiry itself.

Well, I hope Hubley is shunned out of any committee. Maybe we can dock his salary through the auditor general.

This is Sutcliffe's chance to show this sort of behaviour won't be accepted under his leadership.

[rocketphish]

'Egregious violations of public trust': LRT rushed into service, commission finds
'Deliberate malfeasance is unacceptable in a public project,' Justice William Hourigan writes in final report

Joanne Chianello, Trevor Pritchard · CBC News
Posted: Nov 30, 2022 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: 1 minute ago

Both city officials and the companies that built Ottawa's troubled Confederation Line made "egregious" errors during the construction and testing of the $2.1-billion LRT — errors that raise questions about whether the city is fit to oversee such massive infrastructure projects, according to the final report from the Ottawa Light Rail Transit Public Inquiry.

The city and Rideau Transit Group (RTG), which includes SNC-Lavalin, ACS Infrastructure and Ellis Don, lost sight of the public interest in their race to finish the LRT, which was late by more than 15 months, according to the report.

It's clear the Confederation Line "was rushed into service" by RTG, which was under financial pressure due to construction delays and political pressure from the city, says the report.

Justice William Hourigan, the inquiry's commissioner, released his 664-page report, complete with 103 recommendations for how to prevent similar issues in the future, on Wednesday morning.

It's the culmination of almost a year's work by the commission, which received a million documents, interviewed more than 90 witnesses and heard from more than 40 of them during 19 days of public hearings this past summer.

In his conclusion, Hourigan wrote: "While human errors are understandable and expected, deliberate malfeasance is unacceptable in a public project. When participants deliberately mislead the public regarding the status of a public undertaking, they violate a fundamental obligation that underlies all public endeavours."

Since its September 2019 launch, the Confederation Line has been hampered by a litany of problems: malfunctioning doors, flattened and cracked wheels, faulty overhead power lines and broken axles, to name just a few.

Hourigan said there were many issues that led to the wide array of problems, including a pair of derailments last year — one near Tremblay station shut down LRT for nearly two months.

However, he singled out two instances in the project "that stand out as egregious violations of public trust."

He blasted RTG and its construction arm, OLRT-C, for repeatedly giving the city completion dates that it knew were "entirely unrealistic."

"It was unconscionable that RTG and its main sub-contractor knowingly gave the City inaccurate information about when they would finish building the LRT," Hourigan wrote in his report, adding that the gambit failed on a commercial level and further strained RTG's already tense relationship with the city.

Worse, said Hourigan, is that the public suffered from the repeated misinformation.

"The leadership at RTG and OLRT-C seemed to have given no thought to the fact that the provision of this misinformation adversely impacted the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of people. The people of Ottawa trusted RTG and OLRT-C to be straight with the City and tell them honestly when the system would be ready.

"The Commission finds that RTG and OLRT-C betrayed that trust," he wrote.

In a statement sent Wednesday night, RTG acknowledged the group and its subcontractors "have work to do to restore the public's confidence" in the LRT.

RTG said it's committed to working together with new Mayor Mark Sutcliffe, council and staff to address the issues raised.

"We have listened, engaged in, and taken this process very seriously," reads the RTG statement.

Hourigan also had harsh words for both former city manager Steve Kanellakos, who resigned Monday, and former mayor Jim Watson for withholding information from the rest of council about the final testing phase of the Confederation Line, known as the trial running.

Council wasn't told that the testing criteria for the LRT had been lowered to allow it to pass its final testing phase.

"This conduct irreparably compromised the legal oversight ability of Council and raises serious concerns about whether the City of Ottawa can properly complete significant infrastructure projects," Hourigan wrote.

It also "prevented councillors from fulfilling their statutory duties to the people of Ottawa. Moreover, it is part of a concerning approach taken by senior City officials to control the narrative by the nondisclosure of vital information or outright misrepresentation," he found.

"Worse, because the conduct was wilful and deliberate, it leads to serious concerns about the good faith of senior City staff and raises questions about where their loyalties lie.

"It is difficult to imagine the successful completion of any significant project while these attitudes prevail within the municipal government."

He added there is no reason to believe the conduct during the trial running was an "aberration or that transparency has improved within the city."

Hourigan found that the Confederation Line' problems were a consequence of myriad factors. Those include:

• The city chose an Alstom train with unproven technology that strained the limits of what an LRT system could do.
• RTG did not coordinate the work of its subcontractors and failed to ensure the integration of the various systems and components.
• The relationship between the city and RTG became too adversarial, and Ottawa residents "face the spectre of a largely dysfunctional partnership operating and maintaining its light rail system for decades."
• The City rushed the LRT system into service before it was ready, largely due to political and public pressure.
• RTG and its subcontractors did not provide adequate maintenance.

The recommendations also include that an independent monitor keep city council and the transit commission informed about ongoing changes and issues.

Hourigan also recommends that all levels of government examine whether a public-private-partnership (P3) contract model, used here for the first time ever in a transit project in Ontario, is appropriate.

At a news conference Wednesday morning, Hourigan and the inquiry's lawyers hammered home a key theme: that the city and RTG failed to work collaboratively, to the detriment of both the project and the residents of Ottawa.

"The people who live in this city, who visit it, deserve to have confidence that the LRT system is safe and that it will get them to where they need to go, on time, reliably, every time they get on the train," said co-lead counsel Kate McGrann.

"People and entities engaged in public infrastructure projects like this must always, always always keep that public interest at the forefront of everything they do," she said. "And that, as a guiding principle, was lacking at times — very key times — in this project."

McGrann said it was the commission's hope that the 103 recommendations would not just ensure the existing LRT network runs smoothly, but also guide the line's Stage 2 expansions.

The commission's lawyers also criticized the city's daily recaps, which were sent out during the 19 days of testimony, saying it was something they'd never seen before at a public inquiry.

"We need to return to accountability and transparency with the City of Ottawa, rather than information control and spin," said co-lead counsel John Adair.

Ontario's Progressive Conservative government called the public inquiry in November 2021, after Ottawa city council voted against a judicial inquiry and settled on an investigation by the city's auditor general.

In a statement, Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney said the province would review the findings closely over the next few days.

"As a funding partner, provincial taxpayers deserve accountability for their money," wrote Mulroney. "We will continue making sure that Ontario taxpayers and transit riders get the best value for their money possible."

Both the PCs and the previous Liberal government invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the design and construction of both stages of the LRT network, as did the federal government.

Watson, who oversaw the line's September 2019 opening and was accused of lying under oath and hiding information when he testified at the inquiry this summer, is currently on a "long-planned personal holiday" and will read the report when he returns, a former staffer told CBC.

Following the first meeting of the new city council term Wednesday morning, newly elected Mayor Sutcliffe said he also had not yet seen the report.

He later addressed the media Wednesday afternoon, saying he'd directed city staff to come up with a plan to implement some of the report's "key" recommendations.

Sutcliffe also vowed to improve transparency with city council and the finance and economic development committee when it came to providing updates on the Confederation Line's performance.

"I came into this job with fresh eyes and an open mind on how best to get the LRT system back on track," said Sutcliffe, who was elected mayor in October after Watson chose not to run.

Final report from the Ottawa Light Rail Transit Public Inquiry

With files from Giacomo Panico and Dan Taekema

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottaw...ions-1.6668152

[rocketphish]

LRT inquiry report finds fault with Kanellakos, Watson, Manconi conduct
Decisions and conduct by now-former city manager Steve Kanellakos and mayor Jim Watson were part of the problems with the first phase of LRT in Ottawa.

Taylor Blewett, Ottawa Citizen
Nov 30, 2022 • 2 hours ago • 7 minute read

Decisions and conduct by now-former city manager Steve Kanellakos and mayor Jim Watson were part of the problems with the first phase of LRT in Ottawa, the commission conducting a public inquiry into the troubled project concluded in its final report.

It paints a picture of a mayor and senior city staff who made decisions, at some critical junctures, which failed to prioritize the public interest over their own, contributing to the delivery of a flawed LRT system that didn’t meet the needs of Ottawa residents.

Kanellakos, who abruptly resigned from the post he’s held since 2016 on Monday, made a “deliberate effort” to mislead council on the decision to lower testing criteria for the LRT system prior to its launch, and on the results of that testing, the report concludes.

Watson, meanwhile, “had accurate information about trial running and the decision to change the testing criteria, but failed to provide that information to Council” — which could have acted on it.

“Thus, the conduct of senior city staff and the mayor irreparably compromised the statutory oversight function of Council,” the report states, in a section detailing a long list of reasons for the problems with the Confederation Line project.

The commission assigns blame for the troubled project in multiple directions, from city hall to the private-sector consortium hired to construct and maintain the light-rail system.

But the condemnation of Kanellakos, the city’s then-top bureaucrat, lands with a particular thud in light of his sudden, surprise departure on Monday, after decades of involvement in the city’s governance and plenty of public praise for his work.

The conclusion to the report’s executive summary is particularly damning, describing an “egregious” violation of the public trust in the lack of information sharing with council by senior city staff and Watson about the trial running of the Confederation Line.

“Because the conduct was wilful and deliberate, it leads to serious concerns about the good faith of senior City staff and raises questions about where their loyalties lie. It is difficult to imagine the successful completion of any significant project while these attitudes prevail within the municipal government,” wrote the inquiry commissioner, Justice William Hourigan.

A former mayor’s office staffer provided a response on behalf of Watson, stating that he’s out of the city “on a long-planned personal holiday and looks forward to reading the full report on his return.”

Kanellakos did not leave contact information with the city in the wake of his departure.

The report zeroes in on the days of trial running the new system underwent in the summer of 2019 ahead of its launch, which is when, the commission states, there was a shift from the general practice by city staff of “properly” sharing information about the project with city council and the public.

“Critical information” about the testing results and the city’s decision to lower testing standards wasn’t shared with council, but was provided on a regular basis to Watson, several members of his staff and Councillor Allan Hubley, through a WhatsApp group, of which Kanellakos and transit boss John Manconi were a part.

The commission said Kanellakos, Manconi, and Watson repeatedly testified that it was appropriate not to give council information about what was happening with trial running, because staff had committed on two occasions not to update council until after trial running was complete.

The commission rejected this claim, saying no such commitment was made and further, “the very notion that Manconi and Kanellakos would make a commitment to withhold information that was vital for councillors to fulfill their statutory obligations is nonsensical and smacks of an obvious attempt to justify the wrongful withholding of information retroactively and dishonestly.”

The commission describes communications that council did receive immediately before and during the trial running as “inadequate and, in some cases, misleading” and that the “content of the memos that Kanellakos and Manconi used to communicate with council during trial running stands in stark contrast to what was occurring on the ground.”

In one instance, Manconi penned a draft memo to council that, “if sent, would have informed council of the disastrous start to trial running and the need to use the “pause” and “restart” function that the trial running test procedure … described as reserved for ‘exceptional circumstances,’” the commission wrote.

But the memo was never sent. Manconi said Kanellakos directed him not to release the memo, with both telling the commission that it was because of their commitment to only advise council of the status of trial running testing once it was completed.

“Manconi revealed, in a moment of candour, the real reason the July 31, 2019 memorandum was not sent. He testified that if he released it, he feared the Council would ‘ask too many questions,'” the commission wrote.

Watson, meanwhile, “had been upset about and concerned by the early failures and the need for a restart, and he wanted information so that he could decide whether to act.”

While he received this information through the WhatsApp chat, the decision not to send Manconi’s draft memo to council “meant that council did not have the chance to learn of Mayor Watson’s concern and did not have the opportunity to inform itself and potentially act.”

Manconi, Kanellakos and Watson all defended their approach to information sharing with council during the trial running period because an Aug. 23 memo from Kanellakos did eventually advise councillors of the results of the testing, according to the commission’s report.

“Yet even a cursory examination of the August 23 memorandum shows that it did not provide critical information that councillors had a right to receive in order to fulfill their statutory obligations.”

It goes on to list examples. The memo doesn’t tell council “that early testing of the system resulted in repeated failures,” that testing was paused and restarted and that while the city and RTG had agreed to use higher 2019 standards for the trial running, these were lowered to obtain a pass.

Instead, the commission writes, council was given a “deliberate falsehood’ about trial running criteria, which Kanellakos later conceded was not accurate in his testimony to the commission.

The commission’s conclusion was that this memo from Kanellakos “did not seek to provide information; it sought to disseminate misinformation and hide critical facts from Council so that councillors could not properly exercise their oversight function.”

At another point in the report, they describe this as “shocking conduct, which constitutes deliberate wrongdoing, by the most senior public servant employed by the City.”

Summarizing its conclusions about city governance during the trial running period, the commission wrote that the City and RTG changed the testing criteria to make it easier to pass, as public pressure grew to get the system open to the public, and this change was “covered up” by Kanellakos’s memo.

“This is not only a serious finding regarding (the Confederation Line project), but it also has broader significance for other projects undertaken by the City.

“Without changes to the information-sharing process and a fundamental shift in the approach of senior city staff, the statutory oversight function of council will be irreparably compromised.”

The commission also described it as “concerning” that Watson “who testified that he believed in ‘over-communicating,’ made no effort to correct Kanellakos’s misleading information provided to the Council.

“The mayor’s failure to inform council prevented council from exercising effective oversight.”

Lack of oversight is one of a number of reasons the commission blames for why the system was launched despite having reliability problems — a decision that was “not a good (one),” as the commission puts it.

One factor was the “enormous amount of pressure to get the system open,” coming in part from many public statements made by Watson. One example put forward by the commission was announcements by the mayor in the spring and summer of 2019 of dates the system would open.

“The pressure on senior City staff also appears to have contributed to key staff directly interfering in trial running, undermining the independence and integrity of that process,” the commission noted. The report states that there’s “little doubt” that Manconi, despite not belonging to the trial running review team, “was engaged in a process of trying to figure out what could be done to ensure the (LRT) system passed trial running and could therefore open for public use.”

“This was not appropriate.”

The mayor is also criticized by the commission for directing staff to take a “design-to-budget” approach to the project — a mistake, the commission said, that pressured staff and tied the city to a $2.1 billion figure, campaigned on by the mayor in 2010, “that was not a budget at all, but rather an early estimate provided before any preliminary engineering was done, one that was subject to a 25 percent margin of error and did not account for inflation.”

“Although the mayor and council were rightly involved in managing the city’s budget, they did not have the expertise necessary to determine when and how the budget for this specific project should be fixed. Elected officials interfered with the work of experts on the largest and one of the most important infrastructure projects in the City’s history,” the commission wrote.

tblewett@postmedia.com

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...anconi-conduct

[rocketphish]

Mayor Sutcliffe pledges accountability in wake of scathing LRT inquiry report
664-page report 'accurately' portrayed Confederation Line's woes, Ottawa mayor says

Trevor Pritchard · CBC News
Posted: Nov 30, 2022 4:29 PM ET | Last Updated: 2 hours ago

Ottawa's new mayor has vowed to improve accountability and transparency around the city's light rail network and implement "key recommendations" from a scathing report issued Wednesday by the LRT inquiry.

At a Wednesday afternoon press conference, Mayor Mark Sutcliffe said the 664-page report issued a few hours earlier by the Ottawa Light Rail Transit Public Inquiry appeared to "accurately portray" the tumultuous run-up and launch of the city's $2.1-billion Confederation Line.

"I came into this job with fresh eyes and an open mind on how best to get the LRT system back on track," said Sutcliffe, who was elected mayor in October, a few months after the public inquiry wrapped up.

"I understand the frustration and disappointment of so many Ottawa residents that I have met and heard from over the last few months. And frankly, I share their disappointment."

According to the report, the City of Ottawa and Confederation line builder Rideau Transit Group (RTG) lost sight of the public interest in their race to finish the LRT, which was more than 15 months late when it came online in September 2019.

Both sides made "egregious" errors during the construction and testing of the $2.1-billion line, wrote inquiry commissioner Justice William Hourigan. The errors were so massive, Hourigan concluded, that it raises questions about the city's fitness to oversee such a grand infrastructure project in the future.

Sutcliffe said he'd already directed city staff to forge a plan to implement some of the report's 103 recommendations that would lead to "consistent, reliable service" on the line, which has been plagued with problems since its launch.

He pledged to deliver "regular reporting" about construction and maintenance on the line to both council and the finance and economic development committee.

That would include "timely updates" on system performance, testing and changes to safety and reliability criteria, Sutcliffe said. All of those would be subject to review by city council, he said.

There would also be increased monitoring and oversight by "independent" agencies to ensure LRT remains safe, Sutcliffe told reporters.

"Let's be clear: as Justice Hourigan indicated, there are still many issues to resolve," he said. "All of the recommendations in this report could be adopted, and that still would not guarantee perfect performance of Stage 1, nor will it ensure Stage 2 will be implemented without any challenges."

Hourigan's report came down hard on both former city manager Steve Kanellakos and former mayor Jim Watson, criticizing them for holding back information from the rest of council about the final testing phase of the Confederation Line.

During that testing period, the criteria for LRT to pass was lowered — but the rest of council was never told about it.

The inquiry heard that top city officials, Watson included, discussed the particulars of the 12-day trial run over a private WhatsApp chat group, a practice Sutcliffe said he had "no intention" of replicating.

"My intention is to collaborate with city council and not withhold information from them," he said.

When asked if the report necessitated some sort of inquiry into the massive Stage 2 expansion of Ottawa's rail network, Sutcliffe only said that he supported "[moving] forward with the recommendations" from the current report.

The report's release marks a "difficult day" for Ottawa residents, said Orléans South-Navan Coun. Catherine Kitts.

Kitts, who won a byelection in October 2020, said she understood the frustrations of regular citizens as she was an unelected transit rider herself when LRT came online.

While it was a surprise to learn there was a "deliberate effort" to withhold LRT information from council, Kitts said she believed Sutcliffe when he pledged to improve transparency.

She also was buoyed by the fact the inquiry's report dropped just as a new term of council is kicking off.

"I'm grateful that we have a lot of new councillors, we have a new mayor, we have a new GM of OC Transpo, a new [acting] city manager," Kitts said. "So I think that we can and we will turn the page, because our transit system is healthy to the essential growth of our city."

In a blog post, Kitchisippi Coun. Jeff Leiper said that while the findings left him "angry," he would hold off on sharing detailed thoughts until talking more with his council colleagues.

"Residents have been clear that they want answers," wrote Leiper, whose ward includes the current western terminus of the Confederation Line.

"And now they have pages of them."

With files from Joanne Chianello and Joseph Tunney

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottaw...uiry-1.6669675

[rocketphish]

LRT inquiry report buried one career. Here's hoping it brings democracy back to life.
Former mayor Jim Watson's actions were an affront to the democratic process and a meddlesome political decision to save face at the expense of doing things right and ultimately putting public safety at risk.

Bruce Deachman, Ottawa Citizen
Nov 30, 2022 • 42 minutes ago • 3 minute read

A coroner’s report doesn’t assign blame. Instead, it favours preventing similar occurrences from happening in the future. Commissioner William Hourigan’s LRT inquiry report, meanwhile, is laced with assigned culpability, with very few parties avoiding the bloodshed. It already buried one career in public office.

The most serious condemnation from the point of view of Ottawa residents lies at the feet of former mayor Jim Watson who, along with former city manager Steve Kanellakos and one-time OC Transpo boss John Manconi — all of them gone now — kept councillors and the public in the dark about the myriad problems related to the beleaguered Phase 1 of Ottawa’s Light Rail Transit.

Others at Rideau Transit Group and the firms and consortiums responsible for planning, building and implementing the system were also found at fault. But at nearly 700 pages, Hourigan’s report is a policy wonk’s version of a Stephen King novel, with Watson and his senior staff (what, another Watson club?) of Kanellakos and Manconi most betraying Ottawans’ trust. When Watson wrote “Our reputation is in tatters” in his now-famous WhatsApp message in 2019, he likely had no idea how personally prescient that note was. The very existence of the WhatsApp group, Hourigan noted in his report, was “an end run around proper governance.”

The report makes clear that while City staff properly shared information about the project with the public and council during the construction phase, it withheld critical information during the trial running testing period, when standards were lowered to ensure passing grades. Then, Hourigan states, only Watson, his office, and Transit Commission chair Allan Hubley were apprised. “Most troubling was the deliberate effort by Steve Kanellakos, the City Manager, to mislead Council on the decision to lower the testing criteria and on the testing results,” the report says. “The Mayor had accurate information about trial running and the decision to change the testing criteria but failed to provide that information to Council. Thus, the conduct of senior City staff and the Mayor irreparably compromised the statutory oversight function of Council.”

If Watson wanted to act on issues surrounding LRT, the only proper avenue by which he should have done that was through council, not around it. His decision instead to hoodwink council only supports statements made by then-councillors Diane Deans and Catherine McKenney, current councillor Riley Brockington and then-citizen transit commissioner Sarah Wright-Gilbert who all said they were not being kept in the loop.

The fact that Kanellakos left his $370,000-plus job two days before the report’s release rather than face the music of his own design is unconscionable. But the former mayor’s deliberate circumvention of council was worse. Watson’s micromanaging of the decision-making process, the report notes, was a problem both in principle and practice, opening a door for city staff to be influenced into making decisions for political reasons.

Watson, the report states, “[failed] to heed his own warning from the 2010 mayoral campaign that politicians should not be meddling in infrastructure projects.”

His actions were an affront to the democratic process, a deliberate autocratic slap in the face of taxpayers, and a meddlesome political decision to save face at the expense of doing things right and ultimately putting public safety at risk.

Hourigan’s report includes more than 25 pages of recommendations on just about every aspect of the project, from skills development in the workforce to maintenance and safety requirements. But, as Ottawa’s LRT plans continue, these words from Page 497 of the report, stand out: “The public must be able to trust that the government is making decisions based on complete, accurate and timely information. Anything less risks undermining public trust.”

Here’s hoping Hourigan’s report brings a semblance of democracy at City Hall back to life.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...y-back-to-life

[Truenorth00]

Given all these issues, gotta wonder how much lying and coverup went into Stage 2? SNC Lavalin got Stage 2 Trillium despite failing the technical score. It's any of this even salvageable for Stage 3 if there's no substantive policy and staffing changes?

[J.OT13]

Doesn't seem Hubley is getting the same amount of heat as Watson, Steve K. and Manconi. Anyone know if the report emphasizes his role in this campaign of deception?

[Richard Eade]

The heat is not anywhere near as intense for Hubley. This might be because he seemed to be more of a pawn than a player. He was not in anyway in charge. At best, he was included so that he could be the shill who had to go before the public to explain problems, but only if that became absolutely unavoidable. While Hubley’s credibility was shredded, the Mayor’s was shielded – until now.

Should Hubley resign as a Councilor? Probably. Just because he was a dupe, does not relieve him of being complacent when he had information. I expect that he enjoyed being part of the ‘In Crowd’, and that he was told that he had to safeguard the information because of 'proprietary secrets’. But he should have known that things like changing the testing parameters but hiding that from Council was wrong.

He should have come forth. He was not acting in the best interest of the people of Ottawa. I believe that, at the beginning of each term, all Councilors are required to pledge to do their best for the good of the city and its citizens. Such a breach of his oath should disqualify Hubley from holding the position of City Councilor.