Apparently City Council is to be provided with details concerning the bidding process for residential and office development at Lansdowne Park. We have already been told that Minto was selected for the residential projects but that no acceptable bid was received for the office building proposed for Bank Street. A Fairness Commissioner was appointed to oversee the competition.
All this is fine... so far.
But what will be interesting to learn is the number of bids received for the residential part of the competition. If there were many bidders, that is a good sign. If there were few, we should be concerned.
I fear that there is a sense in the community -- whether right or wrong -- that the fix is in. If that is what developers think, they would not bother bidding.
If there were few bidders we should not blame Minto, the fault lies entirely with the City. Just think back to the City's actions in earlier stages of the Lansdowne redevelopment project.
Because of the redevelopment of Lansdowne, it was determined that trade fair facilities would need to be built elsewhere. The City staff proposed to simply offer City funds to Shenkman Corp. to erect such a facility. Some Councillors thought that was a bit much -- maybe someone else could submit a competitive proposal. So the City ran a competition and Shenkman was the only bidder. This was not surprising -- City staff had already announced that they wanted to give the project to Shenkman. Now it is quite possible that Shenkman was by far the most competent firm to erect and run the trade fair facility. It has now opened on time under the name CE Centre, apparently with good success.
But the original idea of simply granting the job to Shenkman without competition compromised badly the subsequent competition. The fault is not with Shenkman, nor Council (for once); the blame is entirely with City staff.
So now we wait to learn about the competition for the residential buildings. I hope that the tainted competition for the exhibition facility did not negatively affect the competition for the residential development.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Monday, January 2, 2012
A question of process
While we await the decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal regarding the case brought by the Friends of Lansdowne, it is interesting to consider similar issues which do not involve redevelopment of Lansdowne Park.
In the Globe and Mail of Friday December 30, there was an interesting article entitled "Does it matter if our laws are passed illegally?" by Peter H Russell, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Toronto. Professor Russell deals with the fact that Royal Assent was given on Dec. 15 to Bill C-18, the "Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act. This is the legislation which ends the Wheat Board's monopoly for sales of wheat and barley from Western Canada.
Professor Russell notes that on Dec. 7 the Federal Court had ruled that the way Bill C-18 was introduced into Parliament violated the Canadian Wheat Board Act. My understanding is that the Wheat Board Act calls for a referendum among grain producers prior to a change in the monopoly provisions.
This seems to be very similar to situation which applied to City procurement procedures in the case of Lansdowne. The Friends of Lansdowne argued before Ontario Superior Court that the City had violated its own procurement regulations in the way it proceeded with the Lansdowne redevelopment scheme. The Court seemed to take the position that because City Council has the authority to amend its procurement procedures, it has full authority to do whatever it wants. The contrary view, held by the Friends of Lansdowne, was that Council should amend its regulations if it wishes to engage in an as-yet-disallowed procurement action.
So there is a similarity to the Wheat Board matter. The federal government could have first amended the Wheat Board Act to remove the requirement for a referendum, and then eliminated the monopoly feature in the Act. Similarly the City of Ottawa could have modified its procurement procedures, either its procurement by-law or its Ottawa Option procedure for unsolicited proposals, to provide a legitimate basis for its actions in striking its deal with OSEG.
Both the City of Ottawa and, I expect, the Government of Canada, will be needlessly spending resources defending their mistaken ways of operating. It's great news for members of the bar, but not so great for taxpayers.
In the Globe and Mail of Friday December 30, there was an interesting article entitled "Does it matter if our laws are passed illegally?" by Peter H Russell, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Toronto. Professor Russell deals with the fact that Royal Assent was given on Dec. 15 to Bill C-18, the "Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act. This is the legislation which ends the Wheat Board's monopoly for sales of wheat and barley from Western Canada.
Professor Russell notes that on Dec. 7 the Federal Court had ruled that the way Bill C-18 was introduced into Parliament violated the Canadian Wheat Board Act. My understanding is that the Wheat Board Act calls for a referendum among grain producers prior to a change in the monopoly provisions.
This seems to be very similar to situation which applied to City procurement procedures in the case of Lansdowne. The Friends of Lansdowne argued before Ontario Superior Court that the City had violated its own procurement regulations in the way it proceeded with the Lansdowne redevelopment scheme. The Court seemed to take the position that because City Council has the authority to amend its procurement procedures, it has full authority to do whatever it wants. The contrary view, held by the Friends of Lansdowne, was that Council should amend its regulations if it wishes to engage in an as-yet-disallowed procurement action.
So there is a similarity to the Wheat Board matter. The federal government could have first amended the Wheat Board Act to remove the requirement for a referendum, and then eliminated the monopoly feature in the Act. Similarly the City of Ottawa could have modified its procurement procedures, either its procurement by-law or its Ottawa Option procedure for unsolicited proposals, to provide a legitimate basis for its actions in striking its deal with OSEG.
Both the City of Ottawa and, I expect, the Government of Canada, will be needlessly spending resources defending their mistaken ways of operating. It's great news for members of the bar, but not so great for taxpayers.
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