Ottawa light rail settlement vote Friday

Lawsuits over the cancellation of Ottawa's light rail contract three years ago could be effectively settled out of court Friday.

Mayor Larry O'Brien has called an emergency meeting for 9 a.m. ET to vote on a proposed settlement, a city spokesman confirmed Thursday afternoon.

"I'm hoping … that we'll be able to wrap this up and get it out of the way very, very quickly," O'Brien had said Thursday morning as negotiations continued.  "That's the businesslike, the honest, the long-term way of dealing with problems. We made a decision and now let's solve this. Let's move forward."

Ottawa city councillors spent five hours Wednesday discussing with the city solicitor the possible settlement of lawsuits launched by companies contracted to build and maintain the line starting in 2006. A new city council was elected later that year and cancelled the $778-million project.

Siemens Canada, PCL constructors and Ottawa LRT Corp., announced the following June that they were suing the city for $177 million after the city turned down their proposed out-of-court settlement. In Sept. 2007, St. Lawrence Cement Inc. announced it was also suing the city, for $40.5 million in relation to the cancellation but was willing to take a $31.7 million settlement instead.

While Wednesday's meeting was held behind closed doors, city staff briefly left a slide on a screen in a meeting room that listed an "offer" of $36.7 million. However, a CBC reporter saw the number only briefly and wasn't able to deduce any details about its context. O'Brien would not confirm the amount Thursday.

Coun. Clive Doucet said that whatever the amount may be in the end, it's only a fraction of the real cost.

"We're going to end up paying more to cancel this project than we would to build it. It's not just the $40 million, if that's what it is, in lawsuits," he said. "It's the $60 million we flushed down the toilet when we flushed down all the investments that we made and the staff that we fired."

New plan includes tunnel

Since the previous plan was cancelled, the city has been working on a new light rail plan that includes a tunnel through downtown Ottawa. Coun. Alex Cullen, chair of the city's transit committee, said the new plan is better than the cancelled plan.

"We knew that there would be some cost associated with abandoning the previous plan and we hope that those costs will be manageable," he added.

The Siemens-PCL/Dufferin group's contract was approved by city council under former mayor Bob Chiarelli in July 2006.

A new city council was elected in November led by O'Brien, who opposed the project. In December, they voted to cancel the contract.

The 29.7-kilometre, 23-station rail line was to run north from Barrhaven to Lebreton Flats, then east through downtown to the University of Ottawa.