Accountability from devastating LRT inquiry report now in hands of current council
City Hall culture has to change if we don't want a repeat of the Confederation Line debacle
The people of Ottawa are angry — as they have every right to be.
For years, we knew that something was wrong with OC Transpo's Confederation Line — not just normal growing pains, but something deeper, more fundamental.
And for years, our city leaders told us that wasn't the case or suggested it was solely that LRT builder Rideau Transit Group (RTG) "failed" the residents of Ottawa.
It is certainly true that RTG — made up of SNC-Lavalin, ACS Infrastructure and EllisDon — designed and built a system riddled with issues (some ongoing to this day). Time and time again, executives told us the LRT would be finished on dates it knew wasn't possible.
But the private companies aren't the only ones to let us down. Our city's top leaders did too.
And that's because we didn't vote for RTG — we hired them. Of course, we should expect corporations to live up to their contractual promises, but we also expect them to act in their own interest.
But for elected officials and top public servants, their interests are our interests.
That is why the scathing report on the LRT public inquiry that Justice William Hourigan delivered this week hit a nerve with so many.
The inquiry commissioner concluded, among many other findings, that the Confederation Line was rushed to open before it was ready, and that everyone expected there'd be issues with reliability.
- 'Egregious violations of public trust': LRT rushed into service, commission finds
- Analysis: Residents want accountability from the LRT inquiry, but who will face the music?
You might expect a consortium of private companies to try to push the limits of what's allowed, but you also expect the people working for you to push back.
Instead, by mid-2019, with the project more than a year late, our agents in this $2.1-billion undertaking, sided not with us, but with them.
"The city was willing to compromise its rights," writes Hourigan in his illuminating 664-page report.
And, as headlines have screamed this week, the commissioner lambasted former mayor Jim Watson — who Hourigan found exerted political pressure to get the LRT open — city manager Steve Kanellakos and transit boss John Manconi for keeping critical information from most other councillors.
Their conduct "leads to serious concerns about the good faith of senior City staff and raises questions about where their loyalties lie," Hourigan found.
So it is understandable that the people of Ottawa are demanding accountability. But what does that look like?
There are those who'd like heads to roll, but the heads of those named in the report have already rolled right out of city hall.
You get the feeling that people would have preferred that instead of Steve Kanellakos voluntarily stepping down last Monday before the report came out, that he was still in his position so he could be fired.
Having any of these men respond to this week's report might be useful, but the call for public shaming that's being heard in some corners is not.
The $10-million public inquiry report has accomplished that already.
WATCH | LRT users share how inquiry affected their trust in the system:
Others are musing about the legal ramifications of some of these actions. But lying to council isn't a crime, at least not usually. For example, it is actually illegal for someone who has a "duty to disclose the truth" to lie to council if it influences a vote.
But while the city OK'd trains with defects, made final testing easier to pass and lowered the performance bar on the LRT, city council didn't get to vote on any of that.
While that might seem procedural nitpicking, it's exactly the sort of details that current council members have to start thinking hard about if we are to avoid this sort of debacle in the future.
If we care about the outcome, then we have to care about the process.
When councillors delegate their authority to staff — as is necessary to get anything done — do they know precisely what powers they are giving away? Councillors have been shocked to discover they have signed off on their right even to ask questions.
And speaking of questions, it's up to council to ask informed ones.
Councillors can't just pass their decision-making buck with the excuse they are not engineers or lawyers or planners — pick your expertise — and simply accept staff recommendations. They are thinking people who can read reports and it's their job to press for more details when needed.
At the same time, elected officials have to be open to hearing bad news without excoriating staff in public.
And there are concrete recommendations from Hourigan's report that council can adopt to make sure elected officials are getting the information they need. These include having an independent third party, overseeing LRT improvements on the critical track issues, report directly to council — and not first going through staff or the mayor's office.
Council could also press the province to protect whistleblowers on major infrastructure projects, as Hourigan calls for.
Mayor Mark Sutclffe has already said he plans to collaborate with councillors, "and not withhold information from them."
There are some early signs he means that.
In the giant governance report coming to council this week, Sutcliffe is calling for the deputy mayor position to be rotated instead of appointed.
That might seem like a minor point. But Watson's appointment of permanent deputies helped him forge a team of supporters beholden to him. The former mayor was able to wield considerable power only because most of council let him — and we know how that turned out.
One of the many lessons from Hourigan's report is that governance and accountability matter.
And ultimately, that can only come from our nascent council.
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