Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The committee met at 1551 in committee room 2.

PAN/PARAPAN AMERICAN
GAMES REVIEW

MR. TIM CASEY

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): I’d like to call the meeting to order. I’d like to welcome members of the committee on general government of all three parties, legislative research, the Clerk, members from Hansard, and a special welcome to our guest, our witness delegation this afternoon, Mr. Tim Casey, who is the assistant deputy minister for the games delivery and infrastructure division of Ontario’s Pan/Parapan American Games Secretariat.

I’d just like to point out that we have time for a five-minute opening statement. Each caucus will have 25 minutes in which to make comments and statements, and/or question Mr. Casey. So at this time, I would like to give you the floor to introduce yourself for the record.

Interjection.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Oh, excuse me. Ms. Damerla.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: I just had a procedural question. Who goes first in the questioning?

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): It’s a Progressive Conservative witness, so we will start the questioning with the PC caucus. Thank you very much.

Mr. Casey, the floor is yours. Welcome, sir.

Mr. Tim Casey: Good afternoon. Thank you for the invitation to appear before this committee. My name is Tim Casey, and my role is the assistant deputy minister for the games delivery and infrastructure division of Ontario’s Pan/Parapan American Games Secretariat, which is one of three divisions in the secretariat. I’ve been with the organization since June 2011.

The games are quite a significant undertaking. To give a sense of scale, each of the over 50 venues deals with its own particular sports, activities and clients. The delivery date is cast in stone. There are over 40 partners and multiple funders, 28 capital projects and dozens of approval authorities.

Although the bulk of the venues is in the Toronto area, there are also a number of other venues throughout a sizable footprint stretching over 10,000 square kilometres, from Minden to the Niagara region. That broad footprint shares the benefits of the games across many jurisdictions and creates its own challenges in games planning and delivery for the province and 2015, which is the organizing committee. They’re normally known as TO2015, but I’ll refer to them in short as 2015 in these remarks.

To assist in that planning and delivery effort, my division is focused on three key activities; namely, coordination, facilitation and oversight for the games operations, including large infrastructure projects. Because of the relative size, cost, complexity and importance to the games, our primary focus has been on infrastructure, transportation, security, emergency planning and municipal services. We don’t deliver the games or oversee their corporate administration activities; that’s 2015’s role. But we help ensure that the supportive provincial services are planned for, funded and delivered effectively, and that there is integrated operational planning between 2015 and the province. As regards our coordination role, my division works to ensure that the many games partners are working together in a coordinated way on operations in order to help make the games a success.

Early on, we set up the initial coordinating committee structures for the host jurisdiction services that have since developed into a comprehensive planning matrix of over 15 planning groups, with membership from 2015, provincial ministries, municipal governments, police forces, transit agencies and the federal government. These deal with each respective critical aspect of the games where the province has a delivery role, and this structure integrates directly with the 2015 operating planning structure.

An example is our lead role on the integrated exercise program, which will help test operational planning and readiness for the games. Another example is that, with every partner having their own project plan, the division has established a repository for the sharing of these plans in a common format and has initiated a master plan analysis that looks for critical gaps and overlaps across the various partner project plans.

A great deal of our time is spent troubleshooting coordination issues, and with so many partners involved in the games, that need is not unexpected. Our oversight role as regards 2015’s operations focuses on those areas of operations and sports which could potentially impact or be impacted by provincial services. This could include things like transportation, security, health, emergency services, venues, space and so on. We’re there to help protect provincial interests.

With infrastructure, the division’s oversight is primarily for the athletes’ village and the large capital builds, all of which use Infrastructure Ontario as their project manager.

Until the village is turned over to the developer in late summer next year, the secretariat is IO’s client for the village. We act as the project owner, setting the scope of the project, seeking appropriate provincial approvals, overseeing implementation, authorizing project payments and handling issues management. We also oversee Infrastructure Ontario for the 10 other major capital projects that they are project-managing.

Currently, the village will be completed a bit early and is well within budget. The other 10 large capital projects will all be finished this summer, about a year ahead of the games, and all are on or under budget.

As we move closer and closer to games time, facilitation takes on an increasingly important role for the division. We’re the one-window contact for 2015 into the province for operational matters, so rather than having to find its way through the many departments of a wide variety of regulatory and service ministries in the province, we can facilitate and expedite the necessary contacts, information flow and planning.

For instance, we’ve helped 2015 to obtain approvals, to negotiate contracts and MOUs and to analyze design options to generate cost savings. One of our important facilitation activities is leading the municipal services contract negotiations. This will entail multiple negotiations with various lower- and upper-tier municipalities around incremental municipal services provided in support of the games.

Those are major tasks that the division is responsible for. I welcome any questions you may have. Thank you.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Thank you very much, Mr. Casey. I turn it over to MPP Rod Jackson.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Thank you very much, Mr. Casey, for coming in today. I really appreciate your time. I know you’re a busy man. And thank you for the overview of your department.

I have a couple of general questions that you could probably spend a lot of time answering, but for the sake of brevity—we only have a certain period of time—if you could just give me a quick oversight answer to a couple of these, I’d appreciate it, as best you can. I certainly don’t want you to leave any details out.

You’re in charge of a fair, large chunk of the expense of the games. The infrastructure, the capital costs and expenditures are a significant piece. Would you be able to give me a little bit more of a breakdown of the—I guess let’s start here: What amount of money is your department responsible for?

Mr. Tim Casey: My department has a particular budget that we deal with, but with regard to overseeing certain activities, it may not necessarily be in my budget, so there is some shared responsibilities in the activity that the secretariat does.

For instance, I look after infrastructure—

Mr. Rod Jackson: What’s your total budget?

Mr. Tim Casey: Oversight for the village in particular—the money is not in my division’s budget. However, it flows through the secretariat’s budget.

We also look after some oversight with regard to Infrastructure Ontario around some aspects of the capital infrastructure program they’re administering or project-managing on behalf of Toronto 2015. That money would be flowing from the secretariat through the transfer payment into Toronto 2015 and from other partners, including the federal government and municipal governments. So this is a distributed model, and there’s funding that goes into Toronto 2015 from a variety of sources.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay. So to be clear, although the budget of your department is one thing, you’re actually responsible for a greater piece of the budget within the secretariat. Would that be a fair statement?

Mr. Tim Casey: We provide oversight over certain activities. We have a certain amount of oversight over Infrastructure Ontario, because we are the client for Infrastructure Ontario on the athletes’ village. When it comes to something like the large capital builds, we provide a different level of oversight for that. We don’t get into the nitty-gritty of their day-to-day activities, as 2015 might do. We’re more interested in where it comes in and may affect the province and the province’s interests.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay. Currently, Dundee Kilmer is in charge of the design, build and finance of the project. Is that correct?

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Mr. Tim Casey: For the athletes’ village, yes.

Mr. Rod Jackson: The athletes’ village. Yes. Sorry, that’s what I’m referring to. Who is responsible for any potential cost overruns that might be seen in that project?

Mr. Tim Casey: This model that was used, the AFP model, alternative financing and procurement—what that does is, unlike the traditional model of procurement for infrastructure, this model shifts the risk for both delivery date and cost over to the developer. They have to provide it on time, on budget. If they don’t, they have to pick up the cost. They have to do whatever is necessary to bring it in on time.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Are there any penalties associated with them not being on time and on budget? Presumably, if they weren’t on time, that could cause quite a wrench thrown into the games when they come in 2015.

Mr. Tim Casey: The aspect there would be that they’re required to be on time. Infrastructure Ontario does a very close monitoring of these projects. They have milestones that they have to meet, so if they’re starting to get anywhere close to a point where it would look like they could not deliver on time, I don’t think Infrastructure Ontario would be sitting idle at that time. They would be making sure it would happen.

However, it’s also important to recall that the village is essentially going to be done a bit early, some of it earlier than others. So, consequently, we have every confidence the village will be on time.

Mr. Rod Jackson: This building is going to undergo—well, not the building, but certainly its use after the Pan Am Games is going to undergo quite a transformation. You mentioned that the developer, after the games, becomes responsible for that transformation. Is that correct? Who has responsibility for the whole transformation to make sure that this goes smoothly? There’s going to be a mixed use for these buildings? It sounds like quite a project, in and of itself, to be transformed. Who is going to make sure that goes smoothly, and who has the end responsibility for that transformation?

Mr. Tim Casey: Well, there are requirements with regard to the developer and the other parties who are involved in this, so let’s just take a look at what happens at the end of the games. The lands and buildings remain under the control of Infrastructure Ontario, under their ownership, until the games are completed. At that point in time, the facilities, the land, is then handed over to Dundee Kilmer, which then has to develop the 800 market units that it has built but not finished. To give you a little bit of definition, when I say “built but not finished,” you don’t put kitchens in these. The athletes have dining facilities; they have no need for kitchens. You don’t want to have kitchens put in and then damaged. Many times the floor finishes are not in there. It could be concrete floor. It could be that you have a minor finish on the concrete floor, but the finish that a condo buyer would get is not put in there, because, again, when they are sold to condo owners, these will be new units. So there’s a lot of finishing to be done. Dundee Kilmer would have to do that.

In addition, there are going to be 253 affordable rental units that will be going to a couple of non-profit providers who do that with regard to social housing. There’s also a residence for George Brown, which is a 500-student residence, and that would also be completed by Dundee Kilmer. All of this has to be completed within there.

Other activities have already been done by that time, so the example is that, as part of the project, Cherry Street is being rebuilt and a new streetcar line is being put in—those types of things. There’s an 82,000-square-foot YMCA that’s being built there, which will be used for recreation for the athletes when they’re there. All of that will have already been completed. So there’s work that will have been totally completed by the time they get there, there’s work that is partially completed that they have to complete afterwards, and then they have to finish it up so they can get the condos ready for the exchange of ownership to whoever is buying those.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay. The numbers for the Pan Am village have changed. Originally, it was announced at $1 billion, then the number decreased to $700 million and something. Can you just give us the most recent total estimate of the build for the Pan Am village?

Mr. Tim Casey: Sure.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Including the setup of the ground.

Mr. Tim Casey: Okay. The total cost is about $708.8 million. Now, if it would help, I can distribute a document that will sort of give you a breakdown.

Mr. Rod Jackson: I would appreciate that.

While this is being distributed, I have another question about accessibility. Is the Pan Am village planned to be fully accessible for Parapan athletes as well?

Mr. Tim Casey: Yes, it is. For all the Parapan athletes that require, for instance, accessible units as opposed to accessibility into buildings and such—the village will be fully compliant with all the building code and AODA requirements for that access—there will be ample facilities for those who require that accessibility. In addition, for the affordable rental housing, 10% of those units will be fully accessible. That’s the unit itself. Those are the types of units that the para-athletes that require that accessibility would be using.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay. Sorry, how much time do we have left?

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Fifteen minutes and 55 seconds.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay.

Who has the final say over how the money is being spent on Pan Am? Is that your department? Do you have total oversight—the Pan Am village; pardon me. Do you do have full oversight over the day-to-day operations, the week-to-week operations there? Are you getting full updates on progress?

Mr. Tim Casey: That’s right. We have the project manager, which is Infrastructure Ontario. They do the day-to-day activities with the contractor, which would be Dundee Kilmer, and any other contractors who are involved in the village itself, and we keep track of things through them, just like any client would with IO. So, if were a hospital, for instance, and IO was building a hospital for us, we would have the same controls that they would have.

Now, with regard to decisions about things, an example might be what the floors look like right now and what they will look like when an athlete walks into them. In that particular case, we have to make sure that we understand what the expectations are for athletes when they come in. It may be a case where Toronto 2015 comes into the package, looks at those types of things, advises us what the standard would be, and then we work with Infrastructure Ontario, which works with Dundee Kilmer, to figure out how we can actually make this work the best way. We look at various options, and that’s exactly an example that has gone on. We have done that, and we’ve taken what we consider the most cost-effective mechanisms to do that. An example there is the fact that some of the floors look quite good. They were concrete, but well done. Others, you had floors where perhaps they had spilled the coffee before the concrete had set and you had big coffee stains and such. So you look at how you can handle that.

So while, yes, we have a great deal of control, it’s not that we know all the requirements. Some of those requirements are coming out of Toronto 2015 because this still has to serve as the athletes’ village. At the same time, Dundee Kilmer, at the end of the day, has to have units that can serve as a condo.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Sure. You mentioned earlier in your opening statement that you’re also overseeing some coordination issues. As you mentioned, there’s several different partners involved in this, especially for end usage. Can you tell us who all is involved and who you’re consulting and liaising with while this build is happening?

Mr. Tim Casey: With respect to the village in particular?

Mr. Rod Jackson: Yes.

Mr. Tim Casey: Well, obviously the biggest one is Toronto 2015 that we deal with, but we also have contact, in this particular case, with Waterfront Toronto, because this is part of their large precinct plan, and they are a major player in this exercise. It’s their design concepts that have encouraged this type of design that Dundee Kilmer has come up with, who has advised us that they’re finding a lot of resonance with the public out there on these types of things because of the nature of the community. That’s one aspect.

We also deal with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. Obviously, there’s some funding that they do with some of the social housing providers. There’s the YMCA people, there’s George Brown, those types, and then the biggest player, of course, is the city of Toronto, because this is right in their area where they have a tremendous interest about how that development will proceed.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Sure. What would you say are your—I’ve been involved in similar projects where there’s big coordinating factors happening. One of the biggest challenges, often, can be coordination between interested parties. Can you tell us what your greatest issues or challenges have been as far as coordinating all these parties coming together on this project?

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Mr. Tim Casey: With the village, probably it was at the beginning, the start-up phase of trying to marry Toronto 2015’s needs with what was going to be practical within the village itself, with what DK saw their needs were to have a viable village, and with what the city of Toronto was hoping to get out of the whole package. That’s usually where you’re going to find the biggest issues, trying to get everyone aligned at that point in time. As time goes on, those issues tend to fall off as you resolve them.

Right now, things have actually been going quite smoothly. The village is looking good. It will be actually looking quite nice this summer, because a great deal of it will have been very close to conclusion; there will be mainly just the interior work. Corktown Common Park opened—I’m not sure if people are familiar with it, but it has really galvanized the community. That has brought attention to the village itself.

So we’re finding a lot more support from the standpoint of getting it done and let’s see what it looks like than the problems coming out of it. We thought, given the size of this one, that there might be more issues from a municipal standpoint. We have not found that at all.

We’re also finding that around the village itself, there seems to be, from the business community that’s around there, an excitement of getting things going and such. I’m sure that that the Distillery District is just waiting for the games to come because they’re right across the street from the entrance to the village.

So we haven’t really seen much of any problems. The neighbours seem to be just waiting for us to get going and having it open.

Mr. Rod Jackson: We know the number is $708 million or $710 million for the total cost of the village. Once the transformation happens, what is the return for the province on that investment, the financial return?

Mr. Tim Casey: Financial return? There’s not a direct financial return. The land and buildings are turned over to the various owners of them, whether it be Dundee Kilmer, which then, in turn, sells them as condos, or to the social housing providers, the YMCA, George Brown—they all go over there. There’s revenue that does come in, which you can see on your chart, from these various parties that will actually lower that cost somewhat for the Pan Am Games. But the province doesn’t pick up a direct financial amount from selling anything at that point in time. However, it has lands adjacent to that. Those lands presumably will now be going up in price, because, prior to this, you had a brownfield site. After this, you have a very viable community, and they’re seeing a good bit of real estate action going on around that area.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Let’s say that the revenue dollar amount of $71 million is correct. That still leaves over half a billion dollars of provincial investment in a property that’s turned over to a private interest. Is that correct?

Mr. Tim Casey: One would have to fully understand the financing around it. The requirement is to provide the village, which is what they’re building, along with a number of other ancillary things. As you look at that list of activities, it’s not that someone is turning over just some housing in there. If you would look at any other developer, most developers aren’t going to rebuild something like Cherry Street and put in a streetcar line on Cherry Street. Those are all part of this activity. The other provincial works that you look at, someone would have had to have done them anyway.

We essentially have a situation where, when you’re going to look at putting in a village, you’d have to put a village someplace. You would have to pay for a village someplace. You had the West Don Lands here, which the province was looking at redeveloping, along with Waterfront Toronto, which is a partnership between the province, the city and the federal government—looking at redeveloping this entire West Don Lands. There was a need to complete the flood-proofing on that area because—for those who are not aware, the Don River goes down there. The banks of the Don were not sufficient to hold back a 100-year flood, so consequently, there was that concern about the flooding. Well, this entire project accelerated all the activities. Flood proofing has now been finished, and that protects about 500-plus acres of downtown land, including the financial district, from flooding.

So there’s a lot of work that goes into this entire activity. You can see from the list there that it’s not just that someone has built some apartment buildings, condo buildings, and someone is turning those over. This entails a great deal more of investment that the province has put in, and in some cases, it’s part of the broader West Don Lands development that the province would have been looking to put together anyway.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Would you categorize this as a triple-P sort of project?

Mr. Tim Casey: I beg your pardon?

Mr. Rod Jackson: Triple-P, a public-private partnership?

Mr. Tim Casey: To a certain extent. It’s a rather complex AFP type of project.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay. I’m just trying to understand this as clearly as I can. For an investment of $708 million, the province is saying it gets a return of $71 million on that investment, a fraction of the original investment. You mentioned earlier that the project is handed over at some point to the developer, which is Dundee Kilmer. Is this the largest such project of its kind that has happened in Ontario?

Mr. Tim Casey: That, I couldn’t tell you. I would have to check with Infrastructure Ontario.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay. I’m still kind of struggling with it. I understand the YMCA and affordable housing and George Brown residence. Presumably there will be some sort of revenue generation here. I know that affordable housing does generate income for landlords. I’m just trying to figure out who is benefiting from this massive provincial investment. It seems to me that once the transition is made, the developer takes control of it, is going to be managing that and accepting any revenue that comes after that investment and after that transformation has been made. Who owns Dundee Kilmer? Who is behind the name Dundee Kilmer?

Mr. Tim Casey: That, I wouldn’t know. I would have to inquire of Infrastructure Ontario to determine what is the ownership structure of Dundee Kilmer.

Mr. Rod Jackson: So you have no idea who the principals are at Dundee Kilmer, even though it’s a project that you’re overseeing?

Mr. Tim Casey: I oversee the overall project; I don’t oversee the contractor himself. It’s not a need-to-know for me to know who the principals are. I have a project manager, which is Infrastructure Ontario, who have done billions of dollars’ worth of infrastructure development. They know the contractors.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay. Just for clarity, who do you report to?

Mr. Tim Casey: I report to the deputy minister, Steven Davidson.

Mr. Rod Jackson: And he reports to?

Mr. Tim Casey: Mr. Davidson reports to the secretary of cabinet and also reports to Minister Chan.

Mr. Rod Jackson: You also mentioned earlier that you’re overseeing other capital budgets, capital build budgets; I think you said 10. Is that correct?

Mr. Tim Casey: Ten capital builds, yes.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Capital builds in the Pan Am Games, right?

Mr. Tim Casey: Yes.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Before I go too much further, I just want to know how much time I have left.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Just under four minutes.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay. Would you mind just quickly listing what those 10 capital builds are for us?

Mr. Tim Casey: The ones with 2015?

Mr. Rod Jackson: Yes, please.

Mr. Tim Casey: We have the aquatic centre, which is up in Scarborough. We also have the York University field track; the Markham field house and pool. We have the U of T field hockey, the Etobicoke Olympian—that is not a new build; that’s essentially a renovation that we’re doing.

Mr. Rod Jackson: What was that last one called?

Mr. Tim Casey: The Etobicoke Olympian.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay.

Mr. Tim Casey: That’s pools that are being essentially reconditioned. It’s a long-standing project. The Hamilton stadium that the Tiger Cats will be using; the Milton velodrome. Did I get them all?

Mr. Rod Jackson: I get the sense of where that’s going, and if you could provide a list after this, I’d would appreciate it.

Mr. Tim Casey: I think I got them all there, but I can give you a full list and where they are.

Mr. Rod Jackson: That’s okay. The question I want to ask quickly about them is, who is responsible for the cost overruns in any of those major capital builds, if there are any cost overruns?

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Mr. Tim Casey: Those were all done by the same AFP process, and so the developer takes the risk of the delivery date and takes the financial risk.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay.

Mr. Tim Casey: As I noted, those projects, at the present time, are due to be completed this summer, except for a few of the tracks, which we don’t need right away. They’re very small projects, but they’re bundled with them. Those projects will be—right now, they look like they’re all on budget.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay. Are there any builds that are projected to happen between now and the beginning of the Pan Am Games that have not been announced?

Mr. Tim Casey: Any capital builds?

Mr. Rod Jackson: Yes.

Mr. Tim Casey: None that I know of at this point in time. There’s always the chance that a venue, the 2015 plan, didn’t work out, and it would have to then bring in the system. However, we’re about 17 months before the games; it’s getting a little bit late to be doing capital projects.

A number of the other projects that they have—in 2015’s case, they do have a capital program that they administer in the smaller projects. Some of those projects have not yet started, but they’re fairly small and they won’t start those until probably a little bit later on this year.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay. Thank you.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Thank you. You still had 42 seconds, so if—

Mr. Rod Jackson: That’s okay. I’ll waive the 42 seconds.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): I just want to be fair.

We’ll move on to the third party: Mr. Miller.

Mr. Paul Miller: Hi, Tim. Thanks for coming. I guess my first couple of questions, you kind of answered in your submission about the village being on time, and the after-use of the village, and what the breakdown was on the lodging.

I’m going to go right into some other questions. The initial objective was to put as many Ontarians to work as possible. I remember having discussions with Ian Troop when he was around in our office about what he foresaw as putting our people to work, and he seemed quite positive that he was moving in that direction.

Previously, I had had discussions with a man named Lorne Newick. He’s the business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 105, in Hamilton, who expressed concerns about the use of foreign companies in this large endeavour.

Maybe you could answer me quickly on three concerns I had:

(a) Who made the decision to use foreign companies, and why?

(b) What is the number of Ontarians being utilized in the games, whether it be trades or labour?

(c) What was the plan to ensure maximum hiring of Ontarians and Canadians?

Mr. Tim Casey: Hopefully I can remember all three of those.

Mr. Paul Miller: I’ll do it again for you: Who made the decision to use foreign companies, and why?

Mr. Tim Casey: The procurement process for the province and for these projects was an open and competitive process. There are various trade agreements that Ontario has to adhere to as well. It is not uncommon to have these types of infrastructure projects open to whoever wishes to bid on them, as long as they qualify. In this particular case, a company that was outside of Canada did win this bid. We’re trying to get the best price possible for this.

Mr. Paul Miller: And (b), what is the number of Ontarians being put to work? Out of the whole picture, roughly, what percentage?

Mr. Tim Casey: Sorry, but I don’t have the details on the total numbers that would be working with regard to the games, or the infrastructure projects that Toronto 2015 is ultimately responsible for. I do know, for the village—it falls under my direct responsibility—that it is calling for approximately 5,200 direct and indirect jobs, of which 700 of those are in construction.

Mr. Paul Miller: Locally, 700 out of 5,200.

Mr. Tim Casey: There are 5,200 direct and indirect jobs, 700 of which are construction. I cannot confirm whether they’re local jobs or not local jobs or where the people have come from for those. We don’t track that information.

Mr. Paul Miller: If possible, could you get that information through 2015?

Mr. Tim Casey: I can try to find that information. Could I clarify what specifically—are we talking about the—

Mr. Paul Miller: I’d like to know the percentage of Ontarians, whether they be trades or labour, being used on the construction of the various venues throughout the province. It’s my understanding, through Mr. Newick—he told me that the company that was awarded it from France had no superior expertise in this field. The instrumentation people, which is one notch up from the regular electricians, was also denied—a company in Burlington was denied—and they went with another French company. These people are local people that could have worked on the stadium in Hamilton. They’re very upset, and they came to me with that. Obviously, just in those two alone, there’d be no—well, unless they were hiring locally, but according to the unions, they weren’t. They were bringing in their own people, some of them. So that’s not good.

The man that the province put in charge—his name is Andrew Smerek. He’s the coordinator in charge of electrical and mechanical tenders for the Hamilton venues. He is employed by Bouygues, a French company, in partnership with another company that’s foreign, called Kenaidan. I understand from my investigation that Mr. Smerek contacted a tender applicant in Hamilton, one whom he had led to believe, on more than one occasion, that the contract was his. These people went out and hired people and refused other work because they thought they had the tender. They also put out a considerable amount of money for architects and design for the stadium.

Mr. Smerek apparently wanted them to sign a contract requiring them to sign a document stating that they would not use unionized tradespersons to do a significant portion of the work on part of the electrical systems but would hire labourers to do their jobs. These labourers were not qualified to do the jobs—bases for transformers and such—and it fell within the criteria of the electrical unions of Canada and the labour code.

I want to know why we’re using foreign companies when our people are more than qualified in the Golden Horseshoe to do these jobs. If it’s based on money, is the quality of work going to be as good? If they undercut our local companies, whether they’re unionized or non-unionized, is the quality of work going to be good?

Mr. Tim Casey: First, I want to stress that we take very seriously our procurement processes and the purity of our system in both the procurement as well as in the management of the contracts itself. One thing I think would be useful is just to clarify that when you refer to these foreign firms, are you referring to the general contractor or are you referring to the subcontractors of these particular gentlemen?

Mr. Paul Miller: I assume it’s the general contractor who was awarded it. What his makeup or his labour percentages of local technicians is, I don’t know; I’m not privy to that. I’d like to know, because I have a lot of local unions in the Hamilton area that are upset. They were in the bidding system, and they did not get a suitable answer when they were let go. This guy, Mr. Smerek, apparently wanted them to—especially the electricians and the technicians that do the instrumentation—allow labourers to do some of the work that they are not qualified to do in Hamilton.

I had this argument before and it seemed to have died. They never did get an answer as to why they were out of the tendering process, and this guy wanted them to sign a thing saying that they wouldn’t use unionized electricians. This company owner—I can get you the name and everything—said he couldn’t do that because he hires unionized people and is himself part of the union as an owner and could not sign that document. He made it quite clear, and we have access to the document that he put out saying not to hire unionized workers to do this work.

To me, the unionized workers in this province are very well respected and more than qualified to do the work, especially the technicians that this French company either outbid or, for some reason, they got let go in Burlington. I’m really concerned. Are we cutting corners? This is in question form, not a statement: Are we cutting corners? Is the quality of work good? Are the inspectors sent by the labour board okay with some of the stuff that’s gone on? There’s no way that labourers should be putting in transformer bases for huge transformers. They shouldn’t be doing that work. That falls under the electrical code of Canada.

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I certainly want—and I’m sure you do—the work to be above par and that it’s going to last a long time. Certainly safety is a huge part of this. So I need more information from your ministry in conjunction with 2015 as to why we’re using foreign companies, what was the scope, why did they get the tenure and why are they being used as opposed to local trades?

Mr. Tim Casey: Okay. I will definitely look into that and get back to you.

I did want to stress—I am aware that this issue had come up about—not the full package that you have talked about today, but particularly about some of the electrical contractors there and the work that was being done. That was looked into. The contractor is required to comply with all provincial health and safety standards. The contractor indicated that they were doing exactly that. According to the Ministry of Labour, no formal complaint was ever filed. We did check just very recently, and that remains the situation.

IO has monitored it from before and continues to monitor it. The Ministry of Labour is aware of the situation. However, based on your concerns here, we will definitely look into that and get back to you on that and advise you of what we find.

Mr. Paul Miller: I appreciate that. I guess my next question is, despite their original mandate, they are increasingly using non-unionized foreign companies to complete this work. A lot of unionized workers are more than qualified to do this work, and they’re very proud Ontarians, proud Canadians, and to be left out of the process on some of the venues that are going to be around for a long time has really put a lot of stress on local unions. They’ve confronted me on it and said that they want more answers. They’ve been left out of the process. They want to know why they’re out of the process, why they haven’t been, in their opinion, treated fairly, and I agree.

My next concern—now that I’ve worn that one out, I guess, a little bit—is about security. In today’s announcement, community safety and correctional services said:

“The private security contractor will provide services across 58 venues, working 24 hours a day, every day for the 59 days of the games.

“The OPP’s ISU is a partnership of all law enforcement agencies involved in the games, to ensure effective coordination of security planning and execution. It includes the eight municipal police services impacted by the games: Toronto, Peel, Halton, York, Hamilton, Niagara, Durham and South Simcoe.”

I guess my question to you is, do you know if the private security company is Canadian-owned and operated? Do you have a schematic that shows who actually has the final word on all policing and security matters—who has the final say on that?

Mr. Tim Casey: I don’t really know who the final say is because I just learned that information myself yesterday. Consequently, that particular one is still under procurement. So it would be something that is part of the procurement process until actually the contracts are signed. That would be when they would normally release that information. I don’t have it. I could attempt to find that information for you, if you wish.

Mr. Paul Miller: I’ll give you an update. I may be a little ahead of you on this, but I may be fortunate to have had some contacts.

According to my contacts, this RFP model is outdated. It’s six months behind schedule for security. It still won’t be announced until April, and their biggest concern is that the company that is in the final two is an American-based security firm that has an office in Vancouver. This firm has had charges against it at the G8. It’s had charges against it at the Olympics in Vancouver for various issues, which they paid a token amount of money to make go away. The G8 was the biggest concern. This company has been known, in the past, to be strike-breakers, to use tactics that were questionable at best to change the direction of strikes, representing the companies in that case. My concern would be that if they have utilized methods that are going to incite the situation as opposed to calm it down and make it run smoothly, I’d have concerns.

Apparently, the other one that’s left in the running is a Canadian company from Ontario that is quite capable. It’s my understanding that the OPP are not happy with the Vancouver-based one and they’re happier with the other one. They tell me that it’s way behind schedule. It should have been in place. You’ve got a little over a year to go, and your security is not good. We came out today with a $30-million or $32-million increase. My people tell me that that’s going to go way up from there. It’s at $32 million over budget now. It’s supposed to be $208 million; I believe it’s $232 million, and it’s going to go up even more.

I guess my question to you is, when you’re saying everything is hunky-dory in your submission—the village is on target and everything is hunky-dory. I’ll tell you, from my experience in construction, many, many times I’ve seen overruns that crop up from time to time when push comes to shove and you want to finish off the projects, whether it be foreign companies or local companies. This could also apply to security. They don’t like the RFP model because they fear it’s outdated now. How do you feel about that?

Mr. Tim Casey: I want to stress that security is a top priority for the province for the games. The Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services has a responsibility for the security for these games and that procurement is being done through them. So if you have questions with regard to who might be the eventual contractor, what their qualifications are or any of those other questions, I would not be the person to answer those questions. I would have to refer that to MCSCS to handle that.

Mr. Paul Miller: I’m sure that you could send my concerns to them and have them contact me directly with answers.

Mr. Tim Casey: Yes, I can do that.

Mr. Paul Miller: Because I thought you were the guy that we were supposed to ask this to, but apparently you’re not. So if the left arm knows what the right hand is doing, that’s good. If you can line that up for me, I’d appreciate it.

Mr. Tim Casey: We can do that, and they would also be able to respond to your concerns about the time frame in which this is being done. At the present time, we have every confidence that this will be done on time and that—

Mr. Paul Miller: The security.

Mr. Tim Casey: The security—we have a little over 17 months to go, and the procurement is just about complete now.

Mr. Paul Miller: It’s my understanding that the G8 summit security systems were being applied and prepared three years in advance of the G8—and the Vancouver Olympics. According to you, everything is good and 17 months is enough, but I’d be very concerned if the people that we’re getting to do this and that are going to run this have had a cloudy past, because you saw the problems we had at the G8. Potential problems—there probably will, unfortunately, be some protesters, I imagine, for whatever reason, at the Pan Am Games. There’s always somebody that’s not happy. So of course, we’re concerned about how they’re going to be handled.

I’m certainly not thrilled that an American company that’s based in Vancouver is one of the last two, because they sure messed up the last one. They’re in the running again. So I’ve got to know that too: why they’re there again.

Back to the village: You made the statement that it’s going to have no kitchens and it’s going to be very basic, something which is probably a lot better than Sochi, but it’s going to be basic. Are the people that are involved after, once you’ve wiped your hands clean of it, it’s done and the games are over and the period of time when the developer takes over, that developer is responsible for all upgrades for the units—will the quality of workmanship be the same for the condos as for the public housing? Will they cut corners? Are there any performance bonds that will be put in place to make sure that the 230-or-something units you mentioned in your submission going to social and public housing will be up to standards? Obviously if someone’s paying half a million dollars for a condo, it’s not going to be the same, but are they going to be adequate and good?

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Mr. Tim Casey: I think it’s important to keep in mind, with regard to the village, that there are different owners. Dundee Kilmer owns the condos, and they have to sell those condos, and they have to be sold as new units to come under the warranty. Consequently, they have a certain obligation to make sure that happens.

There are other owners for the social housing, for the affordable rental housing. Those owners have their own requirements, and they will be doing their own inspections at the end of the day to make sure they meet those requirements.

Mr. Paul Miller: MPP Sattler has a question for you.

Ms. Peggy Sattler: Thank you very much for your presentation. We’ve talked a lot about infrastructure and now security. You made mention of some of the municipal infrastructure improvements that are going to be made.

You also mentioned that one of your primary focuses has been around emergency planning, but you haven’t really talked very much about that. Can you give us some more details about what’s involved in the emergency planning? Is that part of this security contract, or is that something separate? Just fill that out a bit for us, thanks.

Mr. Tim Casey: Thank you. Again, the safety and security of people is a very high priority for us. Emergency management takes into account other activities than the policing services. Policing services coordinate with them, but we’re talking primarily about health, ambulance services, paramedics, fire services. That tends to be the emergency management part of this.

When you’re into a situation like the games themselves, where you have this very extensive amount of activity that’s occurring all at once—it’s the equivalent of 50 Grey Cups happening at the same time over a number of weeks, with all these people. You’re dealing with 1.5 million or 1.7 million ticketholders coming in at that time, over those few weeks. You’re dealing with probably in the neighbourhood of 30,000 people involved in putting on the games, including the athletes. That’s a lot of moving parts there.

If emergencies occur, you have to be able to respond to that. You have to be able to get first responders in, you have to be able to move whatever the emergency vehicles are along the roads and the highways and such, and you have to be able to get them into the venue itself, so security has to be ready to do that. All those types of things come along.

Toronto 2015 has certain responsibilities within the venue itself. They look after the first aid type of activities; it could be St. John Ambulance or something like that. Beyond that, if there’s something more serious, we bring in paramedics. They either come in through a staged vehicle process, depending on the nature of the venue, or we have worked out the response mechanisms. The same thing is true with the fire services, not only the fire service that you provide in case of a fire, but you also have the aspect of what you do in the case of the fire inspections and things like that. All the emergency management comes together.

We also put on exercise programs, and there will be three of them. One of them has already happened; there will be two more. They’re increasing in complexity. We bring in people from all over—municipalities, federal government, first responders and so on. They all come in, and they work on how these systems will actually work. It’s based on—really focused on—the emergency activities that go on to make sure they all work in conjunction with each other. That is quite a complex activity. Just to give you an example, the first exercise program had nearly 400 people at it from all over; it included private sector, public sector, non-profit sector and the Ontario and federal governments. They all came in to work on that exercise program. The next one will be even more sophisticated than that. The idea is, if something goes wrong and it needs emergency management response, the system works extremely well. That’s really the target.

Ms. Peggy Sattler: Is there a budget line allocated to the emergency planning?

Mr. Tim Casey: Not really. I mean, the reality is that a number—everyone contributes. All those partners I mentioned, they all contribute. Essentially, what you’re putting in is people; you’re putting those people in to do it.

Mr. Paul Miller: One quick question, or, actually, one statement: It has come to my attention that the American-based company I was concerned about is called Contemporary Security. It’s my understanding that during the G8 summit in Toronto, they were operating in Ontario without a licence, and they were charged and pleaded guilty in court and paid a $65,000 fine. So I hope they’ve got a licence to operate in Ontario this time.

Okay, thank you.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Thank you very much, members of the third party. We’ll turn to the government side: Ms. Damerla.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Mr. Casey, for so patiently answering so many of our questions.

Since 2009, as you know and we all know, there have been numerous incidents of threats to public safety. I don’t have to remind anyone in this room about the incidents the world has seen in recent years. It has only increased our alertness and concern, not only for the safety of the athletes and officials that are involved in the games, but also for the general public, both domestic and foreign.

Of course, with the recent Winter Olympics that we were all watching so closely, and the Paralympics that will be starting in a couple of days, it’s certainly understandable how quickly things can change and escalate, as we approach the start of the games. In fact, there are a few groups that publicly declared a threat against safety, shortly prior to the games in Sochi, and that’s why I think it’s important not to underestimate the costs of those items, but more importantly, not to undermine the process of planning for them.

Even now, with the Paralympics starting in a few days in Sochi, the situation in Ukraine has people saying that our para-athletes and coaches should perhaps not be attending, as they feel it’s too dangerous, which just goes to show you how quickly things can change in a few weeks’ time.

Given this background, given what’s taking place in Ukraine as well right now, could you give us an overview of the planning process that goes into security for the games?

Mr. Tim Casey: Sure. As I’ve noted, security is a key cost factor for the games, and it’s a very high priority for the people who are planning these games. I’ll give you a little bit of an overview of how the security process and planning and budgeting comes about.

To start off with, number one, these games, from a security standpoint, are a community and sporting event. They are not a security event. In the G8/G20, it was a security event because what they were trying to do was protect eight and then 20 heads of state. That’s not what’s happening here, unless an internationally protected person, an IPP, happened to come. That would be the only situation where you’d be into that.

Consequently, as I talk about a community and sporting event, this is one of the prime operating principles for the ISU, the integrated security unit, which is made up of the OPP and eight municipal police services. They see that. It’s something we work with them on regularly, and as we get closer and closer to the games, both they as well as all the private security will be focused on trying to ensure that’s the image that is created by this.

The reality of this is, that’s not unusual in places like Ontario and in Toronto. If you look at all the various events that go on at any point in time here, you’ve got marathons, a Caribbean carnival, TIFF, the Indy, the Grey Cup and so on. Those, again, are cultural events or community events or sporting events. They come off very well. If you think about those kinds of events, can you really recall the security in any of those? Again, it’s not the G8/G20. We have a history of being able, in this province, in Toronto, to put on big events and do it in a way that is friendly and that people don’t notice the security.

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As you go through this, the comparisons are difficult with other jurisdictions—that’s one of the key things I wanted to mention—because the size, scope, risk levels and security practices all differ. You can’t compare our security practices, or our risk, to what people in Mexico faced during the 2011 Guadalajara games.

However, we do learn from those, and there are a lot of learnings that have come out of Vancouver, Guadalajara, London and Glasgow, who is, like I said, a year ahead of us in putting on their games; theirs start this summer. That has worked very well because, in the OPP, we have officers there who actually worked with the RCMP during the Vancouver games, so they have some skills. We’ve been able to bring in a lot of advice there. They’re working diligently to mitigate potential and known risks.

Budgets are notoriously difficult to scope out at the bid and early stages. There’s just not enough information available at that point in time to give the kinds of details that we would have today. You might wonder, “Well, why can’t you do all that?” Well, you’re putting in a bid; that in itself is costly. There’s no guarantee you’re going to do it. You talk to municipalities about what kind of venues they may have or they may want to build as a legacy for these. They’ll put in proposals; you’ll use that. You don’t have anything, in many cases, to actually go in and analyze around a venue. What does a venue look like? How big is it? Where is it going to be located? What kind of transit route does it have? What kind of security permit might it have? You just don’t have that kind of information. You’re using primarily historical information to do these things. The trouble is that you’re dealing with something that is actually going to happen somewhere six to eight years later, when you’re doing it. A lot of water goes over that dam between now and that point in time. That’s part of the difficulty in putting together the original budget.

Then you’ve got an organizing committee that comes into play once the bid is won. They put together their budget based on the bid budget and make the modifications coming out of that. Then, they start their planning. They do get into the detail. Some of it is sequential. Some of it happens simultaneously. An example is that our shooting venue was one of the last venues to come out of the system, but it’s not a big venue; it’s not much money; it’s not critical. If you tried to do everything at once four years ago, you would have had to have a lot more people in the organizing committee and in the province planning all these things. And even after that, things still would have changed, because again, you’re dealing with a lot of moving parts, a lot of venues, a lot of different activities around those venues and how you move people back and forth between them.

The venues change. It’s not unusual in games to have 40% to 60% of your venues change from the time of your bid to the time you actually put it forward. They change for a variety of reasons. In some cases, what they thought was going to be an adequate field of play just doesn’t meet the sports association’s requirements, so you can’t put it on there. We had one where the field was in the wrong direction with regard to the sun; it was probably fine for general recreation, but for that sport, it just doesn’t work that way. So these things are constantly changing. Some municipalities decide they don’t want to do it after all. They don’t want to spend that money, so they change.

As time goes on, you’re trying to figure these out. The cost drivers for security are your venues: What are your numbers? What are your locations? What’s your design? The design is a critical part: How do you move people in and out of venues? How many athletes do you have? How many officials do you have? Where are they going to be located? We have satellite villages; we have a main village. What is your schedule? In many cases, you don’t know the schedule until the last six months, sometimes three months, before. Some of it depends on when these athletes might actually be available to come.

You’ve got spectators and dignitaries. How many of those are going to be going in? What’s your anticipation for ticket sales? Celebration events: How many of those are you going to have? Where are they going to be? What are the transportation routes? All these things are happening at the same time, and you’re trying to figure how to move athletes back and forth through all these venues—you can see the complexity of it.

Then the risk assessment happens. I was involved in building large infrastructure for many years, and having done that, I’ve never seen anything this complex, trying to put together this many operations at one time. It’s an evolutionary process. As your operating parameters change, any one of them will change all the others. It changes the transportation costs; it changes the security costs. So if suddenly you decide, “I have this venue and it has this big a perimeter. I now have widened that perimeter; I have now changed the security parameters; I have now the transportation costs,” I’ve actually changed the operating costs for that venue. Multiply that by all the venues we have and I think you can see some of the problems. It’s an evolutionary process, and that’s how we build up the budget.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Thank you. That brings me to my next question, which is that I think some concerns were raised as to whether our security planning is on time. I think one way to gauge that is perhaps to compare what other jurisdictions are doing, so I’ve been doing some research. I was very interested to come across that the Commonwealth Games that will be hosted later this year in Glasgow—is it true, because this is what my research shows, that they still have unsigned security contracts just mere months away from the start of the games? That tells me something: that, right up to the last minute, if my information is correct, these things are fine-tuned. I was just wondering: Given that context, how far along are we in the security planning stages? How does it compare to past games in other jurisdictions?

Mr. Tim Casey: Thank you. The reality is that for games planning, we seem to be pretty much bang-on where most jurisdictions are at this time. I haven’t checked into Glasgow in the last several weeks, but I do know, earlier this year, that they had not yet moved ahead on theirs, and they are holding their games in 2014. They did run into problems, and we learned by their problems. They were quite frank with what they encountered.

To give you an example: In Glasgow, 28 months prior to their games they were forecasting a budget of $42 million for security. Eighteen months prior to their games, that budget moved to $143 million—a little more than three times what it was. London’s budget actually didn’t get published until about 18 months. Vancouver didn’t put theirs in until about 12 months before the games. The reason is not that they just didn’t want to publish them; in many cases, it was the situation. They had to finalize all these requirements. You had to know essentially what your private security costs were going to be, so you had to finish your tendering process on that. You can see what happened with London. Again, a lot was learned by our people from London.

If you wonder why our costs went from $206 million last fall to $239 million, it was due to changes in some of the planning around it, but it was also due to changes in the costing and the estimates for private security. Once London happened—if people are not familiar, they had a lot of problems with private security. They just were not able to deliver, and the Olympics had to bring in the military to supplement. Not only did the various jurisdictions that will have to put on security in the future learn by that, but the industry learned by that. They learned what you have to do to put on security for these big games and the risk factors that were involved in that. That was a massive reputational risk to that company.

For that reason, you have a situation now where the original request for interest that was done back in 2012, which indicated a difference in the price structure that has now changed as a result—probably coming out of London, I would have to assume. We have been basing it on that factor, and now we have additional information. This is the reality of games. Things change. If London hadn’t happened, you probably would have had a whole different mix at that point in time if the London private security problem had not occurred. It’s one of the realities of games: You adjust to things that are happening, because you have such a time frame between when you do your bid and when you actually deliver games.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Thank you for those very interesting comparisons and insights. Based on what you have said, given the obvious complexity and the constantly changing parts, for the opposition parties to constantly demand a final security budget to be revealed up to this point—would you suggest that that’s perhaps a little naive, given the complexity?

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Mr. Tim Casey: Like I said, security is a top-of-mind item for us. All we can do is continue to build the security budget based on the information we receive from Toronto 2015 around their operating requirements, and then adding in all the other activities that impact that security budget as well, including the risk assessments that come out of it. That can change even during the games itself. Consequently, we see it as a true evolutionary process. Your budget continues to get better, more certain, as time goes on because you’re locking down information. We’re just about at that point where all the venues are known with certainty. That helps us out. We still have some uncertainty around celebration venues. As those get locked down, it brings even more certainty to the security budget—each one of those.

So it’s an iterative process, and it’s a process that moves along at its own pace. But even if we got to a point, months from now, and we said, “We’re fairly certain this is the budget”—if your risks change, your budget can go one way or the other. That’s one of the realities of security. We will do whatever we need to ensure these games are safe, whether for the spectators, for the athletes or for the public.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: So there are things where you really want to come under budget, but there are things where your focus is not necessarily cost, but ensuring the security. That’s a good take-away as we measure these numbers.

Mr. Tim Casey: I should stress that when we look at it, we’re not saying we’re saving money or we’re cutting corners on the budget at all. What we look at—and I think this is an important distinction. You can look at other ways of doing things in other kinds of activities outside of security, where you might say, “I can use a lower-quality product,” or something like that. That’s not how we do it when we look at how we do a security budget. The example that I can give you is: If you have three avenues into a venue for people to go, one for people with tickets, one for people who are accredited and perhaps one for the workers who are going to be there in the venue, and you decide that you’re now going to use two avenues to do it, you’re not decreasing your security at all. What you might be doing is maybe creating more lines; maybe, instead of a one-minute wait, it’s a three-minute wait for people to get in. But you can see how that could have an impact on how many security personnel you need, because you don’t have to have one avenue of a magnetometer with security people there, and so on.

That’s what my division works at. We look at that. We don’t get into the operational details of how many police you need, what those police are going to do, how many private security guards there are going to be—none of that. That’s an operational detail that we’re not privy to. What we can impact is how you actually design the venue activities to allow you to minimize some of the other costs so that you’re not spending money if you don’t have to do it. In some cases you may need three access points because that’s the most effective way to do it, or the lines would be too long. You judge around that.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: In terms of costs, I understand that, from the technical briefing Deputy Minister Steven Davidson gave a few months ago—I believe it was mid-November, the one that the Progressive Conservatives were invited to. I know that two staff members from the NDP attended, but nobody from the Conservatives did, unfortunately. At this briefing, you provided some rationale as to why there isn’t a solid or final number for security and transportation. Can you possibly—and I know you’ve alluded to it already, but perhaps one more time—explain, to the best of your knowledge, why is it that it’s usually a range of estimated costs and not a set number for security?

Mr. Tim Casey: Thank you. The costs—we can put an estimate in, and in some cases we can put a range in, and in some cases we can put an actual figure in, but I think the reality is, we know those numbers are fluid. They continue to move until all the data that goes into making these numbers are locked down. And that still is not at that point yet.

In this case, it was, as I recall, $206 million back in the fall, and that number, from what I now understand, is moving to $239 million. That’s due to a variety of things, like I mentioned. Some of it is the celebrations; some of it is a change in venues. We’ve added one “para-day” for the para-sports to the system to give us a little more flexibility. All of those have some cost impacts. There are cost impacts still to come of other things. Like I mentioned, some of the celebration events have not yet been locked down. We have just about gotten there with the venues and we’re still now moving into more detailed transportation planning, which will also then have an impact on security.

An example there is, if you’re looking at an incident management program on the highways—how do you manage traffic accidents?—you might be able to speed up the ability to move traffic and clear them and such. Well, that has, essentially, a police cost to it, and we have to look at that. But we’re not to that point yet of doing that.

A lot of work is going on; it’s not like nothing has happened. When you talk about security planning, it’s important to keep in mind that at G8, when they did it, the reality was that they had about, I think, two or three years’ planning, something like that. G20 had six months of planning. Our people have been planning this since, essentially, I would say, late 2010, the security forces. So they’ve been doing a lot of work since then. They’ve been gearing up for it. They didn’t start with a whole pile of people at that time, because they didn’t have the information to go by. As time goes on, they get more and more information, and now they’re involving all the municipal police forces in this. So this is quite an extensive activity that they do, and adjustments are constantly made as new information comes in.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Thank you so much.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Thank you very much. So that’s it for the government side. We have 10 minutes each for the next round, and we’ll move to Mr. Jackson from the PC caucus.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Thank you.

I have a couple of quick questions for you around the temporary structures that are happening at some of the capital builds. As an example, at the athletes’ village, a lot of the site is made up with temporary structures, including a restaurant and dining hall that will cover, I guess, approximately 5,000 square metres—a significant space. York University has a 5,000-seat athletic stadium being built; it will increase its capacity to 12,500 people. And the aquatics centre at York University also has some seats that are being added as temporary structures.

I guess my question is, in that overlay for those temporary structures, is the take-down a part of that budget? I think it’s a $116-million budget for venue management. Is that included?

Mr. Tim Casey: When you say $116 million, which budget were you referring to?

Mr. Rod Jackson: It’s a budget for venue management.

Mr. Tim Casey: Venue management for Toronto 2015?

Mr. Rod Jackson: Yes. I would assume it is under your operations.

Mr. Tim Casey: No. Their venue management—and I’m just going to speak at a very high level on this one because I don’t get into their details of the venue management; that’s one of their specific roles, and it takes a number of things.

If you’re dealing with venue overlay—I’d have to see whether that is part of the budget; I don’t have that document in front of me. Venue overlay, as 2015 describes it, is, if you took a venue and you turned it upside down, everything that fell out of it would be venue overlay. It’s all those things: It could be tents, temporary facilities. It could be broadcast towers—any of those types of things. That would be within the budget of Toronto 2015. They provide that, and they would be responsible for putting it up and taking it down, wherever that is, in a particular venue.

But venue management could incur a lot of other things. It could be the actual managing of that venue and all the different things that go into the venue, from the volunteers who work in the venue to the people who deal with the various activities around it where the equipment is being stored, and all those types of things. So if you wanted more detail, I could ask 2015 to provide that.

Mr. Rod Jackson: I’d appreciate it if that would be the case. Thank you.

Moving on, I want to talk a little bit about transportation. You mentioned earlier that you oversee some of the transportation issues. I certainly have some questions surrounding transportation.

If I go back a little bit, I guess some of the officials from PASO—which is the international organization that oversees the Pan Am Games, as you know—noted that Toronto has the largest budget ever for any Pan Am Games, but also noted that they had two things that they were very worried about. One of them was transportation.

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By the Ministry of Transportation’s own studies, let me give you a few reasons why they’re concerned about it. I’d like to know what your thoughts are around this and where you are on this.

So, 90 minutes to the soccer stadium in Hamilton—these are all from Toronto—82 minutes to the Milton Velodrome—by the way, these are travel times for the athletes as well—68 minutes to the baseball park in Ajax; 56 minutes to the athletic stadium at York University; 52 minutes to the water polo in Markham and the badminton centre—that’s the field house; and 45 minutes to the aquatic centre at the University of Toronto campus in Scarborough—these are peak times and peak hours. It’s my understanding that there have been a couple of versions of a transportation plan that have been provided—to whom, I don’t know, and maybe you can enlighten me on that. Certainly, we know that a transportation plan is overdue.

Having said that, and knowing that it’s something that PASO themselves are very concerned about, can you tell us where you’re at with it and what you know? Are you aware that there are at least two versions of a transportation plan? Is there one that is forthcoming, knowing that there was one that was due at the end of the year, a final one?

Mr. Tim Casey: Thank you. Obviously, transportation is a key activity within any type of games like this, and it’s a very significant priority for the province as well.

I think it might be useful—just a little bit of context there. Transportation, like security, is dependent upon the information that comes out of Toronto 2015, the organizing committee. You need to know where the venues are going to be, how they will operate, how many people are going to be in them—spectators, athletes, all those types of things—and you need to know when and how you’re going to be moving athletes.

Again, like I said, with security, it’s an iterative process; it’s an evolutionary process. The more information you get, the more that you can start to lock down these things. When you’ve got the venues locked down and the celebrations locked down, it helps you with all the rest of it.

Unlike with security—when they’re looking at a celebration here and a venue here and you want to lock those down—with transportation, not only do you have to lock those two down, but if you’re running your people through the celebration, if that’s where they’re going to be closing roads because of that, that has an impact.

When PASO talked about their concerns and such—obviously, they were here at that point in time and they were looking at the venues and such. They also got a chance to see what our traffic was like.

I don’t know the document that you were reading from, but there has been a lot of planning, since around 2011, going on with regard to transportation. This has not just been done by transportation in isolation. It’s transportation with all of its partners—its municipal partners, for instance—that are actively involved in this. There are a variety of committees that meet on this all the time and work this information out. The transit providers are in there as well. The TTC has been extremely active, GO has been extremely active, and so on.

The reason you’re not seeing people dumping plans out all of the time is because venues have been changing; they haven’t been locked down yet. Plans have changed around those venues. The schedules have changed. What you put out at one point in time could change dramatically. If you looked at a plan of this time last year, it has changed quite a bit from the plan that would have been seen in the fall, and that has changed to the plans you’ll see today.

If it would help, I can talk to the Ministry of Transportation and see if we can get a plan for you, but it has to be with the realization that there are still things changing, and some of that will change.

The ministry has been using a consultant that did the primary transportation planning in London. For those who weren’t aware, London was fearing the worst, and it turns out that it actually worked out pretty good. There were a few hiccups right at the beginning of the games. They solved those, and people don’t remember the transportation.

We have a lot of moving parts, a large geographic footprint, and already congested roads. To speak to the points that you were talking about there, about the travel times at peak times, the idea of your traffic management plan or your strategic framework that’s going to be dealing with these things is that you’re going to look at the routes that the athletes need to take.

When we talk about the athletes travelling, one of the key things is reliable travel times. For a high-performance athlete who gets there, who has to get ready for their sport and psychologically be set to go and get there in time so he doesn’t miss the sport, you can’t say, “Well, it’s generally 30 minutes, but it could be an hour and a half if we back up traffic.” They’ve got to know they can get there. So you’re looking at the routes you can take and how you get them from point A to point B to make sure they get there in time. That’s the games route network, and that also takes into account if you’re dealing with any transit in there as well.

You’re looking at high-occupancy-vehicle priority lanes that could be used for moving not only athletes, but also HOV lanes that we’re quite familiar with today. So you have that as a possibility that comes in there.

And then you look at how you might optimize your network. Take something like limiting construction on your games route network. I think if you look at any summertime here in the Toronto area, at least, just taking construction off those main roads would speed up traffic to start with, but they also look at rapid incident response, as I talked about earlier. They’re looking at providing a lot better information to users for what they might do on transportation options.

Then you’re looking at how to shift demand. You’re dealing with employers and people about maybe changing the time you go into work, maybe not travelling always at peak times. You’re looking at moving people into transit, which is one of the objectives, obviously, for the province at the best of times, to get cars off the road.

We’re dealing with municipalities on things like nighttime deliveries. They’re very interested in it. In many cases they are looking at this and saying, “Can we model this? Is there a way?” That’s always been a question, as to whether they want to do that or not. Now they’re interested in looking at that. That takes a lot of vehicles off the road. You might not then see the delivery truck parked in a no-stopping lane on one of these main roads.

Then you’re looking at giving people alternate routes and maybe biking and things like that.

All of this comes into this plan, all dependent upon what the state of planning is for the organizing committee about every one of those venues, every one of those celebration sites and all the sports that are going into those.

Essentially, that’s what it is at this point in time. But like I said, if it would be helpful, I can talk to the ministry and see about pulling the plan as to what it is today.

Mr. Rod Jackson: I would—

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Thank you very much. The 10 minutes are up. I appreciate that. We’ll go to the third party. Mr. Miller?

Mr. Paul Miller: Thank you. I listened intently to what you had to say, Tim, about security and the ever-changing requirements for security, whether it be building design, whether it be monitoring accessibility by disruptive individuals who might want to do damage. Transportation to and from the venues: very important.

I’m a little surprised by your comment that you can’t be prepared for any possible crisis. You certainly can have contingency plans for any possible crisis.

Your comments about London not being prepared: London was on high alert, obviously, because of the accessibility of Europe and their diversification in England, and they were very concerned about security. They brought in the army because the security firm was not able to handle a crisis when it came to terrorists. That was their biggest concern: They were not trained; they didn’t have the ability to be a nice wall between the visitors and the security. That’s what happened in London, and they certainly underestimated the cost.

But, saying that, I’m quite surprised that the parliamentary assistant said that we’re naive about what could be and could not be. I’m a little older than the assistant and I’ve been around a while. I remember Expo 67, I remember the Montreal Olympics, I remember the Vancouver Olympics, the Calgary Olympics and the World’s Fair in Vancouver. These are a lot bigger than Pan Am. It was huge. I remember going to Expo 67, and they had some problems. The FLQ were around and there were things going on at the time. They were concerned about the Mounties and all that.

What I’m trying to say is that our forces, whether they be municipal, provincial, the Mounties or CSIS, should have the ability to handle any possible crisis. They should have—from their experience from all those huge venues that have operated in Canada, and not so long ago, they would be able to handle that. Certainly things change as you go along, but we’re talking here about—and I don’t buy this. It was $206 million; now it’s jumped up, I guess, with the announcement today, to $233 million—

Interjection.

Mr. Paul Miller: Two thirty-nine? That’s a 34% increase just now, and we’re not done yet. We haven’t signed the contracts. I don’t know who’s throwing the figures around or who’s got the numbers, but we haven’t even signed the contract and we’ve already gone up 34%, so I’m assuming—I may be naive, but I’m assuming that before we’re done, we’re probably looking at about a 50% to 60% increase from that original $206 million.

1720

I was once told the five Ps, “prior planning prevents poor performance,” and I don’t think this government is planning very well. To sit here and listen to all this, “Oh, everything’s great. Everything’s hunky-dory. We’re on target with everything”—I don’t buy it, and I don’t buy that there aren’t going to be any overruns. I’m certainly going to be monitoring the situation as we go along; no disrespect to you or your ministry, but I’ve heard these things before, about Expo 67 and all these things, where everything was on budget.

I do believe the people of Quebec spent 23 years paying off—Mayor Drapeau in Montreal—23 years paying off the debts from the Olympics, and the “Big O,” if I remember correctly, which was built by a lot of non-union people, actually caved in a few years ago. Chunks of it came down, some of it during an Expo baseball game.

So I’ve heard this trip before, that everything is hunky-dory. I’ll be vigilant, and I’ll be watching, and I can assure you—and I’ll say it right here—that your $233 million is going to be a lot more, for security, and some people in these government-run things have a tendency to milk the public and milk the government and escalate the cost; and when you get down to the time when it’s ready to go—“Oh, sorry; we need another $10 million for this; we need another $15 million.” That’s what happened in London, England, just recently, and trust me, it’s going to happen here, unless we get a handle on your procurement and get some tougher—because a lot of times when companies fold, they can’t follow through on what they’re supposed to do; they fall down, go bankrupt, and who gets stuck with it? The taxpayer. Because what are you going to do—sue them? You can’t get blood out of a stone.

I just wanted to make that statement, because I’ve seen this, and I’m sure you’ve seen some of it. I’m very concerned that you’ve gone up 25% to 30% already, and you told me, “Oh, it’s okay. We can go 12 months before”—like England did. They weren’t prepared, and made a mess of the security. The G8 summit was a mess. The Olympics in Vancouver were a bit of a mess for security. So, if you’ve gone up 35% or 40%, would you sit here and tell me that everything is okay on the security budget?

Mr. Tim Casey: Well, to start off, for the record, I would like to make a clarification here. You attributed that I had said that we can’t plan for emergencies. I said just the opposite: We are planning for emergencies. We are doing extensive planning for emergencies.

Mr. Paul Miller: But the costs are going up too?

Mr. Tim Casey: Costs go up, but costs going up or not going up doesn’t stop us from planning for emergencies.

Mr. Paul Miller: Can I ask you a question, Tim? If you’re going to plan and you’re going to set a budget at, let’s say, $206 million, contingency plans flow into any budget, possibly a 5% to 7% overrun. That’s the norm; maybe 10%—possible. Maybe you didn’t plan it right or we didn’t get the numbers right, or there were some unknown things that happened during the procurement program or the tendering out, or the companies run into financial difficulty when they’re building the venues. But to tell me that you haven’t even signed—sorry; the Ministry of Public Safety hasn’t signed a deal yet. How did it go up from $206 million to $239 million? No one has signed a contract yet.

That’s a 25% to 30% raise, without a contract, and once the contract is signed, how much more is it going to go up? I want to know, because certainly if you budgeted at $206 million for security and you end up at $330 million, that’s a kick in the head to the public, financially.

You can’t predict and I can’t predict where we’re going to end up, but I can predict one thing: It’s not going to be anywhere near 10%; it’s going to be more like 50%.

Mr. Tim Casey: The second thing I would like to clarify—I did not say that London was not prepared. I said that London had problems with their private security. London did—and this is a personal opinion—an excellent job with regard to their security, because if you look at the incidents they had during the Olympics, you don’t really see much at all that came out of that. Personal opinion only: From the standpoint of that, I would not say that London was not prepared. They’ve done an excellent job. They had problems with their private security, and that was then addressed through the use of the military.

Mr. Paul Miller: I know someone who’s in the army over there, and they said the cost to the public was astronomical, bringing in the army, because they’ve got to pay the army. They’ve got to feed them. It was astronomical, how London ended up, because private security couldn’t handle it. It cost the taxpayers, who pay for the army, a heck of a lot of dough on top of the initial costs.

Mr. Tim Casey: Okay. Then the third comment you made was that the various police forces—provincial, municipal, federal—should have the ability to handle any crisis. That is our position as well, and we see nothing that would go against that. Everything we have seen in all of this planning—the RCMP has been involved as well in some elements of it. We have every confidence that the security forces can handle any crisis. They are doing this planning, they’re doing peer reviews, and they’re looking at it. They’re doing it jointly with a lot of police services, with individuals who have a huge amount of experience at policing and at events. So we have every confidence that this will come through. If—

Mr. Paul Miller: So what happened at G8?

Mr. Tim Casey: I was not responsible for the G8.

Mr. Paul Miller: Oh, I’m not blaming you. You’re detailing—

Mr. Tim Casey: I’m sorry. You would have to pass that question on to the police—

Mr. Paul Miller: With all this expertise that you’re saying—something went wrong. A breakdown in communication or something?

Mr. Tim Casey: Again, I have to stress what I talked about at the beginning, which was that this is a community sporting event, and we have a lot of those that we do every year, year after year. To my knowledge, we don’t do too many G8s or G20s. Consequently, if you look at the skill base of our security forces here in the province, we have every reason to believe they are as excellent as they appear to be.

Beyond that, I wasn’t sure that there was a question that you have that I could answer. I think it—

Mr. Paul Miller: Yeah, there was one.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Thank you very much. Time is up. Really appreciate it. We’ll move on to the government: Ms. Damerla.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Mr. Casey, I just wanted to thank you so much for your time. There will be no more questions from the government side.

Chair, before we adjourn, I did have some other business that I wanted to bring up, so just a heads-up. That’s all.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Thank you very much. I guess that ends the delegation this afternoon. I would like to thank you very much, Mr. Casey, for taking the time and answering the questions—appreciate your comments as well. Keep up the good work.

Mr. Tim Casey: Thank you.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Now I will entertain comments from Ms. Damerla and from the government side.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Thank you, Chair. As we all know, two weeks ago, this committee had agreed and passed a motion that Bill 11 would be heard on Wednesdays. Since then, I know we have tried, Chair, but we haven’t been able to meet for a subcommittee meeting. So I’m hoping that we can discuss right now—because we do have the time, and everybody is over here—a plan for how we can move Bill 11 forward. We already have a motion that says it will be heard on Wednesdays. We have a proposal as to one way of proceeding on Bill 11, and I can outline that now. We were thinking maybe one day of public hearings—

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Are you prepared to put a motion forward?

Ms. Dipika Damerla: I could, or—

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Or are you just having some discussion?

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Did we just want to discuss this first?

Mr. Paul Miller: Mr. Chair, before the motion is dealt with, we’d like a 20-minute break.

Mr. Bob Delaney: You can have that before the vote.

Mr. Paul Miller: Yes, that’s what I want; before the vote.

Mr. Bob Delaney: There won’t be a vote before you’re ready, but she is allowed to present the motion.

Mr. Paul Miller: Absolutely.

Mr. Bob Delaney: Before you ask for a break.

Mr. Paul Miller: There will be no vote.

Mr. Bob Delaney: That’s entirely your privilege.

Mr. Paul Miller: Thank you, Bob.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): We’re entertaining some discussion now. I’m not sure if you would like to put a motion forward.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: I could.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): If you do that—okay.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: I’m going to put a motion forward that Bill 11 be heard, not this coming Wednesday, but the first Wednesday after the break—I don’t know what that date would be—and that we have one day of public hearings and two days of clause-by-clause. This would start a week after constit week. That would be, actually, Wednesday, March 19, 2014.

1730

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Okay. Would there be any direction in the motion or amendments to provide some direction to the Clerk as to advertising?

Ms. Dipika Damerla: I’m happy to discuss that now, or once the motion is passed.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Do we want to entertain it at a subcommittee meeting later this week, or do we—

Ms. Dipika Damerla: We could, but we have half an hour now, so I’m thinking—because we tried to have a subcommittee meeting last week and we couldn’t work it out. My concern is, if you don’t have a subcommittee meeting on Wednesday, for instance, then we go into March break and then, when we’re back, we’re no further ahead. So if you can, I’d like to get it worked on today.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Okay. So just for clarification purposes—Ms. Scott, very shortly. The first Wednesday after March break: so we’re looking at March 19, one day of public hearings, followed by two days of clause-by-clause, which would be the following two Wednesdays. Correct? Is that what you’re proposing?

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Yes.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Okay. Thank you very much. Ms. Scott?

Ms. Laurie Scott: I just want to ask the question. I know there was a committee that was doing a report. I think all parties—the critics who were following that, because we weren’t here, discussed that there’s no sense in having the committee meetings on Bill 11 until that report is in. So the inquiry was, what stage is the report at? Because I know that Frank Klees from our party consulted with France and consulted with—I’ll get it in a second. The medical officer of health you have—

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Oh, Helena Jaczek.

Ms. Laurie Scott: Helena. I’m sorry.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: This is the Ornge report you’re talking about?

Ms. Laurie Scott: Right.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Okay.

Ms. Laurie Scott: Yes. So we’re waiting for their report to be done, I think, before it would really be appropriate to bring Bill 11 back. That’s why I was just wondering—those aren’t the reasons maybe why the subcommittee didn’t meet. But once I heard—because I wasn’t in the last committee meetings when they had it—then I brought it up to our respective critics. That was kind of the word that I had: that they didn’t have—it would be futile to do it before the Ornge report was back.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Just for clarification, which report are we looking for?

Ms. Laurie Scott: Is it called the Ornge report? Again, I’m not even—

Ms. Dipika Damerla: The air ambulance something.

Ms. Laurie Scott: Air ambulance. I’m not exactly sure of the wording, but it’s—

Interjection.

Ms. Laurie Scott: Yes. It’s in another committee.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Chair, could we just have a five-minute recess on the issue so that we can get back to—

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Mr. Miller?

Mr. Paul Miller: No. Mr. Chairman, I’m not prepared to vote on this today. I’m not on this committee. I’m filling in for the Pan Am. I don’t have the background or the information available to me to pass something that they’re bringing forward that I haven’t got all the details on. I’m not prepared to vote on it today or support it.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Chair, if I could just say, the motion has already been—I mean, the motion to go forward with hearings on Bill 11 has already been passed by this committee, so all we’re asking is a way forward. I’m not sure why that is problematic.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Due to the special circumstances, would it be appropriate if we were to call a subcommittee meeting for Wednesday to finalize some of the details, to ensure that everybody’s needs are being met here?

Mr. Paul Miller: I’m okay with that.

Ms. Laurie Scott: I’m okay with that. I think we have to find out what stage the report is at, because when I did speak to the respective critics, when I got caught up—I was off sick for a couple of days—it was that that report was not back. So I’m fine to defer to a subcommittee. I think that’s appropriate, and then we can ask our respective leaders on that committee at what stage they’re at.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Okay.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Okay. So we will call a subcommittee meeting, scheduled for Wednesday at 4—what time is it at?

Interjection.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): The regular meeting time is 4 o’clock on Wednesdays. So is it fair enough that we do that at that time?

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Yes, that’s fine.

Ms. Laurie Scott: Yes. I think I’ll probably ask Frank Klees, our lead, to sub in on that because, again, I don’t have the background to comment. But that’s where it was when I did catch up: that they hadn’t gotten the report done, so there wasn’t any sense of having Bill 11 come forward to committee till that was done. Thank you.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): So it is confirmed. There will be a subcommittee meeting on Wednesday at 4 p.m. to discuss how we move forward on Bill 11. Fair enough? There’s consensus.

Thank you very much. That’s the end of the business. This meeting is adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 1735.

CONTENTS

Monday 3 March 2014

Pan/Parapan American Games review G-483

Mr. Tim Casey G-483

STANDING COMMITTEE ON GENERAL GOVERNMENT

Chair / Président

Mr. Grant Crack (Glengarry–Prescott–Russell L)

Vice-Chair / Vice-Présidente

Mrs. Donna H. Cansfield (Etobicoke Centre / Etobicoke-Centre L)

Ms. Sarah Campbell (Kenora–Rainy River ND)

Mrs. Donna H. Cansfield (Etobicoke Centre / Etobicoke-Centre L)

Mr. Grant Crack (Glengarry–Prescott–Russell L)

Ms. Dipika Damerla (Mississauga East–Cooksville / Mississauga-Est–Cooksville L)

Mr. John Fraser (Ottawa South L)

Mr. Michael Harris (Kitchener–Conestoga PC)

Ms. Peggy Sattler (London West ND)

Ms. Laurie Scott (Haliburton–Kawartha Lakes–Brock PC)

Mr. Jeff Yurek (Elgin–Middlesex–London PC)

Substitutions / Membres remplaçants

Mr. Bob Delaney (Mississauga–Streetsville L)

Mr. Rod Jackson (Barrie PC)

Mr. Paul Miller (Hamilton East–Stoney Creek / Hamilton-Est–Stoney Creek ND)

Clerk / Greffière

Ms. Sylwia Przezdziecki

Staff / Personnel

Ms. Anne Marzalik, research officer,
Research Services