Councillors, commissioner decry lack of details about LRT's pre-launch woes

A trio ofcurrent and former members of Ottawa's transit commission felt they weren't receiving key information about the reliability of the Confederation Line in the days and weeks leading up to its 2019 launch, the city's light rail inquiry heard yesterday.

Those sentiments were shared by councillorsCatherine McKenney and Diane Deans and citizen commissioner Sarah Wright-Gilbert, whotestified on a panelwith Coun. Allan Hubley, thecommission's current chair.

Some of their concernsrelated to information shared ininformal WhatsApp messages between high-ranking city officials, including Hubley, Mayor Jim Watson and now-former OC Transpo head John Manconi.

Deans, who chaired the transit commission until 2014 and sat on the city's finance and economic development committeeuntil 2018, said she only learned of the existence of the WhatsApp group when Manconi was questionedabout it Tuesday.

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"It was confirmation that a lot of what I had been suggesting publicly in interviews was in fact absolutely the case that there was more to it than met the eye, that all of the information was not being shared publicly," Deans told commission counsel Chris Grisdale.

"We're a public corporation spending public dollarsand we should not be hiding that kind of information from public view."

'Casting about in the darkness'

Manyof Grisdale'squestions focused on the run-up to the Sept. 14, 2019 launch of the $2.1-billion Confederation Line, which by then was already more than a year behind schedule.

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Citing testimony earlier in the week from Thomas Prendergasta highly-regarded transportation expert and a key City of Ottawa consultant on the projectGrisdale asked Hubley if he'd ever discussed Prendergast'sconcernsabout "maintenance readiness"with Manconi over WhatsApp.

Hubley said thatwas possible, noting he believedcouncil eventually learned of those concerns anyway through briefings or memos. Details shared over WhatsAppwould be "no different" than other confidential briefings given to committee chairs, he testified.

Yet Deans, McKenney and Wright-Gilbert all told the inquiry that information never trickled down to them.

"One person having information, to me, is like giving the foreperson of a jury all of the details, the salient details of the case. But that person doesn't tell the rest of the jury," Wright-Gilberttestified.

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"Without this information we were as commission members casting about in the darkness,trying to figure out why all of the sudden our brand new system has all of these issues, compounding one upon another."

The revelation of the WhatsApp group, Deans added,was confirmation there was an "inner cycle of information that all of us were not privy to."

Performance standards under microscope

The inquiry has already heard that during the LRT's12-day trial run, the city relaxed the performance standards the line needed to meet before it could open to the public.

When asked about that, Hubleysaid he recalled discussions about altering the criteriabut wasn't involved in them. He did agree he knew things changedbefore council did.

"Yes, I was aware ahead of them," Hubley told Grisdale. "Coun. Deans, as a [former] chair, can attestthis is not unique to the transit or the LRT. Every single committee chair had these kinds of briefings with staff."

Deans agreed, but said if she was in Hubley's shoes, she would have shared that information in a "timely fashion."

"Frankly I'm shocked [the standards wererelaxed]. That is not what Mr. Manconi had emphatically promised members of council in Sept. 2018."

Grisdale also asked Hubley about a series "report cards" issued during the testing period, with the line passing some days and failing others and if his fellow councillorswould have wanted to be alerted tothe results.

"Certainly, everybody wants to know as much information as possible," Hubley said. "However in the vacuum or the context of the situation, if we had published the results every day, it would have caused a lot of issues."

The inquiry is slated to resume Thursday, with consultantsDerek Wynne and Sergio Mammolititestifying in the morning and Watson appearing in the afternoon.