'Deliberate malfeasance:' Read the conclusion of the Ottawa LRT report executive summary

"Deliberate malfeasance."

"Egregious violations of the public trust."

"Outright misrepresentation."

These are among the words that Justice William Hourigan, the commissioner of the Ottawa LRT public inquiry, uses in his scathing conclusion to the inquiry report's executive summary.

The report is a sprawling 637-page look at what went wrong—and right—during the construction and maintenance of Ottawa's $2.1-billion Confederation Line.

But the two-page conclusion stands out for its criticism of senior city staff and Rideau Transit Group.

Here is what it says.

Conclusion

"As mentioned at the beginning of this summary, the Commission views its primary role as providing answers about what happened and why, and making recommendations to avoid a repetition of the project’s problems. In doing so, I do not hold the project or its participants to a standard of perfection. That would be unrealistic and unfair. In any enterprise of this size and complexity, there are bound to be errors and misjudgments. What is essential in a review like this is to identify those missteps, determine their causes, and learn from them for future projects.

While human errors are understandable and expected, deliberate malfeasance is unacceptable in a public project. When participants deliberately mislead the public regarding the status of a public undertaking, they violate a fundamental obligation that underlies all public endeavours. The public rightly trusts both the government and private-sector entities to act in a manner that furthers the broader public interest. As a condition of their involvement, participants in a public project undertake to honour that obligation to the public. There are two instances in the OLRT1 project that stand out as egregious violations of the public trust.

First is the conduct of RTG and OLRT-C in providing RSA dates that they knew were entirely unrealistic. It is evident that this was done as part of a misconceived scheme to increase commercial pressure on the City. As a commercial tactic, it was a failure because the deliberate communication of unachievable dates did nothing to improve RTG’s commercial position with the City. To the contrary, this gambit only served to increase and accelerate the mistrust that was developing between the parties. More fundamentally, it represented a troubling lack of concern for the public nature of the project and the interests of the people of Ottawa. The leadership at RTG and OLRT-C seemed to have given no thought to the fact that the provision of this misinformation adversely impacted the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of people. The people of Ottawa trusted RTG and OLRT-C to be straight with the City and tell them honestly when the system would be ready. The Commission finds that RTG and OLRT-C betrayed that trust.

Second is the conduct of senior City staff and Mayor Watson in not sharing information about trial running. This conduct prevented councillors from fulfilling their statutory duties to the people of Ottawa. Moreover, it is part of a concerning approach taken by senior City officials to control the narrative by the nondisclosure of vital information or outright misrepresentation. Worse, because the conduct was wilful and deliberate, it leads to serious concerns about the good faith of senior City staff and raises questions about where their loyalties lie. It is difficult to imagine the successful completion of any significant project while these attitudes prevail within the municipal government.

Is there any reason to believe that their conduct regarding the trial running testing results was an aberration or that transparency has improved within the City? Unfortunately, based on the City’s conduct during this Inquiry, there is not. By way of example, throughout the hearings, the City published, at taxpayers’ expense, a summary of the proceedings that was a blatant attempt to spin the testimony in a way that was favourable to the City. This appears to be unprecedented in Canadian judicial history and is part of a troubling pattern of controlling and shaping information flow to Council and the public.

In the end, the problems with the OLRT1 were a consequence of myriad factors, including the reliance on new vehicles and new relationships, a lack of integration, decisions to rush the system into service, an inadequate investment in maintenance, and several other factors, some of which were beyond the control of the parties. The result was a flawed LRT that failed to meet the needs of the people of Ottawa.

Despite the foregoing, there is reason for optimism, as the parties have begun working together more co-operatively and the reliability of the system is showing some signs of improvement. This improvement demonstrates that, over time, structural problems can be resolved through good faith, communication, and co-operation. However, until such time as the private and public entities involved in the OLRT1 project understand that their first obligation is to the public, there is reason to be concerned that the project will continue to suffer problems."