Weekly newsletter: December 5, 2022

Hello, Ward 24!

It's been an eventful seven days, so let's get right into it.

Last week, we received the LRT Inquiry report, and what struck me about it wasn’t the inexperience, lack of project coordination and systems integration, deliberate misdirection, or the choice of unproven technologies. None of that surprised me.

My surprise was how the project was doomed before it even started.

In brief, Jim Watson included the $2.1 billion price tag as a central component in the flagship item of his first mayoral campaign, what we know as the first stage of LRT. Steadfast to that promise, Mayor and Council approved the contract to begin work on the project in 2012.

What was overlooked was the fact that $2.1 billion was a preliminary estimate made by City Staff three years prior. The projection's 25 per cent variance (of which the final cost could be about $500 million more or less) did not take into account inflation over the three years of the estimate’s life.

The report has 103 recommendations directed at the City, contractors, and upper levels of government. To me, it doesn’t matter where blame lies, because ultimately, City Council is accountable to you.

Yes, we can enforce the contract against RTG and withhold payments all we want, but in the end, it was your money spent on the project and your life impacted by its shortcomings.

City Council is charged with providing leadership, accountability, and oversight of the municipality. Through delegated authority, misdirection, and seemingly forgetting the public interest, its ability to carry out those duties was compromised. The result is lost trust that will take a generation to rebuild.

The fix is not simple by any means.

Many “fixes” are not tangible, and it will be the responsibility of City Council to implement and demonstrate over time. These include improving collaboration and communication with current and future contract partners for the sake of the public interest, as well as many considerations for future contracts.

By comparison, the specific fixes, such as the ongoing wheel-rail interface issue or the to-be-determined root cause of the first derailment, are simple to achieve in theory (though by no means actually simple).

Although the report’s scope focuses on the section of LRT between Tunney’s Pasture and Blair, we now have this valuable tool to guide us in future city-building opportunities, LRT or otherwise.

A “companion report” will be compiled by City Staff for presentation to City Council at a future date. City Council’s decisions regarding recommendations to implement, define timelines, and future actions will be determined after that presentation.

Stay tuned as we receive more information