Mayor continues to defend process that saw SNC-Lavalin win $1.6B LRT bid
Jim Watson won't say explicitly when he knew SNC-Lavalin didn't meet technical score threshold
Mayor Jim Watson continues to defend the bidding process that saw SNC-Lavalin win the lucrative contract to extend the Trillium Line, even after the city admitted the troubled Montreal company's bid failed to meet the technical threshold — twice.
- SNC-Lavalin failed to meet technical bar for LRT bid — twice
- Analysis: Was council lied to about process that awarded LRT2 contract to SNC-Lavalin?
Watson was away on vacation when the city finally admitted earlier this month that the SNC-Lavalin had twice failed to achieve the minimum 70 per cent technical score required by the city to qualify for the $1.6-billion contract to extend the north-south rail line to the airport and into Riverside South.
The mayor was back in town this week, but has been dodging the media.
On Wednesday, however, he told CBC News he was "satisfied" with the process that saw SNC-Lavalin win the contract, and said he has confidence in the people who recommended the company to council — everyone from senior city staff to the city's outside legal firm, Norton Rose Fulbright.
"We don't have, to the best of my knowledge, procurement experts that sit on city council," Watson said. "We have to rely on the best advice we get from staff, who are well-paid, as well as outside consultants because they have expertise in running these large procurements around North America."
Mayor won't say when he knew SNC-Lavalin's score
In March, Coun. Diane Deans first raised the question of whether SNC-Lavalin had achieved the 70 per cent threshold in technical scoring.
But the city's outside lawyer, Geoffrey Gilbert of Norton Rose Fulbright, would not confirm SNC-Lavalin had passed. Gilbert also refused to tell council if there was any language in the bid documents that would allow a proponent to somehow move ahead without scoring 70.
Deans and two colleagues — councillors Rick Chiarelli and Shawn Menard — voted against the LRT Stage 2 contracts because they said they didn't have enough information to make such a massive decision. A number of other councillors voted in favour, but said they did so with trepidation.
Asked this week if he knew SNC-Lavalin had failed to score 70 per cent, the mayor prevaricated.
Although pressed to answer yes or no, he said only that he is "usually briefed a day or two" before major reports are made public. He also said he "didn't get into the specific details on a line-by-line item. I was was given an overview briefing, as was council, that the fairness commissioner signed off on the process."
It turned out that the city did have discretionary power to move SNC-Lavalin through the bidding process even though it failed the technical scoring. But most people, including councillors who approved the LRT Stage 2 contract, didn't know it existed until early this month.
It's also unclear when Watson knew about the discretionary power for the city to unilaterally decide to allow a bidder with a sub-70 technical score to stay in the bidding process, and whether he had knowledge of the procurement process that the rest of council did not.