Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

The committee met at 1410 in committee room 2.

PAN/PARAPAN AMERICAN
GAMES REVIEW

PAN/PARAPAN AMERICAN GAMES SECRETARIAT

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): I’d like to call the meeting to order, and I’d like to welcome members from all three caucuses and staff, the clerk’s office, Hansard, and legislative research as well. It gives me great pleasure, again, to welcome everyone. We’re here to continue with witnesses, delegations, regarding the Pan/Parapan American Games and the Pan/Parapan American Games Secretariat.

I’ll just give you a little explanation. We have two presenters this afternoon, both of whom will commence with a five-minute opening statement followed by a 25-minute round of questioning by each party and then a subsequent 10-minute round of questioning.

Following that, there is one other piece of business this committee has to discuss.

So I would like to welcome Mr. Saäd Rafi. He is the chief executive officer of the Pan Am/Parapan Am Games. Welcome, sir. The floor is yours for five minutes.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and committee members. I believe there is a copy of my remarks. If they haven’t been distributed, they are available.

As has been mentioned, my name is Saäd Rafi. I’m the CEO of the Toronto 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Am Games Organizing Committee, or TO2015 for short. I’ve been in this position since January 6 of this year—approximately 10 weeks. I’ll do my best to answer the committee’s questions and clarify issues to the best of my knowledge, based on the time that I’ve been in this role.

I joined Toronto 2015 because I strongly believe in the fundamental premise for why jurisdictions bid on games: that sport is a positive force in society. Like music, it’s a shared language. Sport brings us together, keeps us healthy, and teaches us teamwork and perseverance. I think these are all values we want to foster in our young people.

Games bring real benefits and legacies to the communities where they are held. All three levels of government believed that as well when they agreed to pursue the bid for the Pan Am/Parapan Am Games.

We haven’t had anything like this in Ontario since 1930, more than eight decades ago, when Hamilton founded what would become the Commonwealth Games. The potential for these games is enormous. Quite simply, we are region building. Sixteen municipalities are hosting sport competitions or training for the “people’s games.” But the economic, social and sport legacies from these games will have a much greater reach.

For example, sport tourism is a $3.6-billion industry in Canada, and it’s only growing. These games will enable Ontario to grab an even larger slice of that pie because of the new and upgraded world-class venues we’re creating for the games and the legacy of passionate volunteers we’ll be recruiting.

Ontario’s athletes will be able to stay here and train. That is a huge change. For the first time in decades, our track cycling team will be able to train at home in Milton; our wheelchair basketball team is making the new facility at U of T Scarborough their permanent home, and so on.

These games are already having an impact on our athletes, but seeing is believing. I’d like to invite the members of the committee to come and spend some time with the athletes who will be competing here in 2015 on home soil. They are beyond thrilled by the support they’re receiving, whether it’s the new infrastructure we’re building or the chance to promote parasport.

In closing, these games will be a celebration of sport and culture that embraces and reflects the diversity and cultures of Toronto and the greater Golden Horseshoe region. They are the largest international multi-sport event ever held in Canada.

I welcome your questions. Thank you. Merci. Gracias.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Thank you very much, Mr. Rafi. We will begin questioning with the third party, the NDP: Mr. Miller.

Mr. Paul Miller: Good afternoon, Mr. Rafi, and congratulations on your appointment. I hope you lead us to the promised land.

I’ll start off by asking a few questions. Some of them have probably just a slight, quick answer. Does TO2015 have a current staff who are part of the initial bid process still?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: There might be a few, yes.

Mr. Paul Miller: There might be a few.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Yes. I think there are two or three staff that would have been part of the bid process who are now on our staff.

Mr. Paul Miller: Could you get those names for us, please?

Could you explain the knowledge transfer process from the bid committee to TO2015? I’ll repeat that. Can you explain the knowledge transfer process from the bid committee to TO2015?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I’m afraid I can’t. I don’t have the continuity between the bid being approved and the organization being struck. I do understand that there may have been some conversations. Many of the individuals who would have been involved in the bid might have been athlete representatives, and one of those I’m thinking of has joined our team. Some of those would also be individuals who are involved in sport in places like Canadian Sport Institute Ontario and the sport association of Ontario. That feedback and that interaction would have definitely taken place.

Mr. Paul Miller: Would there be any documentation on that?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I don’t know—

Mr. Paul Miller: If you could try to find that, that would be good: some interaction between the new members of the committee and the old, and how they dealt with some of the problems that we may foresee.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I’d just add that there would be board members—

Mr. Paul Miller: That’s fine. I’m sure that’s public information.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Oh, sure. We’ll find it for you; yes.

Mr. Paul Miller: If there is little or no overlap in staff and expertise, how can the people of Ontario and TO2015 be certain that the estimates are accurate and current estimates follow similar assumptions about cost? The reason I mention “assumption” is because—you’ve recently certainly followed the papers with the doubling of the security. We are still down to, I believe, two firms that are in the final running, the shortlist. Of course, as you’re aware, one firm was operating at the summit with no licence in Ontario. They’ve been charged, and they were fined over $60,000. They were also involved in the Vancouver Olympics, and there were problems there too. What’s the status of that situation?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Of that firm specifically?

Mr. Paul Miller: Yes, exactly.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I’m not involved in the procurement, so I don’t know who—

Mr. Paul Miller: It certainly plays an important role in the bid, in the cost.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Oh, for sure it does. Yes.

Mr. Paul Miller: And you have no interaction with the procurement at all?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I’m not involved in the selection process, but we’re definitely interacting with the integrated security unit at all levels. The procurement as to who they choose is the security unit’s purview, and we will work with the providers that they have signed up through contractual obligation through a competitive process.

Mr. Paul Miller: My concern, I think I’ll reiterate for you, is the doubling from the projection, which was two years ago, to $239 million. We’re not done yet, and I’m assuming it’s going to be even higher. I can’t put a final number on it because I can’t even get the original numbers. I’m assuming that you will have some kind of reaction to that and some background information that you would like to share with us as to why it doubled. Who’s setting these perimeters? Is this another assumption, that it has doubled? I have no facts on what that would involve—the manpower, the equipment required, the barriers. There has been no breakdown given; it’s all talk. But I’m very concerned when talk goes from $113 million to $239 million and we still haven’t signed a person—with 16 months to go, we still don’t have a security firm in place.

I certainly don’t want the horror stories that happened in London, where they had to call in the army. It cost the taxpayers three times as much for that, by the way, I might add. They said, “Everything ran smoothly.” Well, it’s my information that in London, from people who have been talking to me, that they shut down the whole centre of the city—transportation—to deal with this, and it was an extreme loss of revenue for a lot of businesses in downtown London, obviously, because they rely heavily on tourism.

Can you answer those kinds of questions?

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Mr. Saäd Rafi: As I said, I can’t answer on procurement selection, but I can tell you that we’ve been working with the integrated security unit, looking at every venue that we have. The venues have changed. The number of sports has increased since the bid. So what we’ve done is, we started with the bid book and took a look at what obligations that bid book put on us as an organizing committee. In some cases, you have to make some calls that we are able to make, meaning that we can’t provide X level of service; we’ll have to provide something that’s different, and in some cases we’ll provide better service. But in other cases, the requirements are from federations and rights holders for the Pan American/Parapan American Games. They’re not ours to change or to defer.

So all of that goes into a venue-by-venue, sport-by-sport assessment, estimate and calculation that is continually evolving and continuing to take on those details to try to then get approvals.

Just one last thing, for example: the sports schedule. We’re about 85% there. That will be confirmed this summer when we issue the call-out for tickets, but again, the international sports federations and continental sports federations still have a say on the type of—

Mr. Paul Miller: Okay. I’m a firm believer in the five Ps: Prior planning prevents poor performance. Why I say that is, if it had been up to me or anyone I was involved with—some of the venues that you have selected throughout southern Ontario and that are excellent venues certainly provide a lot of infrastructure and jobs and financial benefits to their communities. However, by you putting the Olympic village, or whatever you want to call it—the Pan Am village—where you did, in Mississauga, it did absolutely nothing for housing in areas hard hit, like Welland and Hamilton and all the other areas.

You’re worried about transportation costs. Well, common sense would tell me that I would have put some of that housing—for example, all the soccer matches will be in Hamilton, at that stadium. So why would we be bringing athletes from Toronto to Hamilton every day or every second day for practice or whatever they have to do? That’s horrible organizational skill. It’s not good. Welland could have used some public housing. Hamilton could have used some public housing. Toronto benefits totally from the after-use of the village.

You could have had several villages at the same price, and probably cheaper, because they would have been built in areas that are not high-end, like the lakeshore in Toronto. In Hamilton, Welland, these smaller areas, you could have done it a lot cheaper. It would have been more efficient. There would have been less transportation cost. And this horror story about closing the lanes is going to be a real nightmare for 28 days—very poor planning. What’s your answer to that?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I would offer a couple of things. Many of the competition venues are in the city of Toronto. Secondly, we’ll have three to four other satellite accommodation villages, one in the St. Catharines area—

Mr. Paul Miller: It’s the first I’ve heard about it.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: We haven’t announced them yet.

Mr. Paul Miller: You stole another idea off me?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I’m happy to give you credit for that.

We’ll have one, of course, in the Minden area, for that kayak competition; one in the Innisfil area, because we have Mono, Oro-Medonte and Innisfil; and I’m forgetting—there’s perhaps one other.

Mr. Paul Miller: Hamilton is a huge venue for soccer, and you’re going to have a very huge influx of people. Of course, our hotels will certainly benefit—I don’t even know if we have enough, but certainly in the area, in the Golden Horseshoe, we do.

I think the residents—we have a very hard-hit area in Hamilton, which I represent. Twenty per cent of the people in my riding live below the poverty level. I hope that some of them will be able to go to the games with affordable tickets. But I wanted to see more infrastructure in the way of after-use of serviceable, manageable housing for the people who are suffering, because we’re down maybe 50,000 or 60,000 units in Ontario for those types of situations, affordable housing. I don’t think I see anything there for Hamilton.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Not in the way of a permanent accommodation facility. However, I would say that we are talking to the international soccer federation, as well as—I don’t know what the acronym means, but CONCACAF. You probably know the organization. Some of the teams will consider whether they may stay in Hamilton. We may have the opportunity for them to stay there for the day, have some quiet time—so that means hotel space—before their training and/or competition. We’re working with those countries, the national Olympic committees and their sports federations, as well as the international federation, to give them all the options that they can manage to pay for and/or that they prefer to have.

The second thing, if I could just add: We’re hoping that 75%—and we’re trying to get to that level—of our tickets will be under $45.

Mr. Paul Miller: Good. It’s reasonable.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: In the greater Golden Horseshoe market, that’s a pretty reasonable price for tickets.

Mr. Paul Miller: That’s a Tiger-Cats ticket.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Yeah, and that’s a good product. We think we’ll have a good product and we’ll get more uptake.

Mr. Paul Miller: In a little bit of a different direction, Mr. Rafi: Your board chair, the Honourable David Peterson, former Liberal Premier, was appointed as lead on the bid. Has he gone through the bid book with you from your predecessor and has he evaluated those figures and where you’re at and the analysis during that time and now in today’s reality? Have you guys done a comparative analysis report on then and now?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: We haven’t done a page-by-page turn, but the initial budgeting exercise was based on the bid book. As I mentioned, things change—by the federations and PASO, additional sports were added. So the board, the finance committee, the marketing committee and other committees of the board would have gone through those changes, approved those changes and discussed them. We have representatives from the Canadian Olympic Committee and the Canadian Paralympic Committee on the board.

Mr. Paul Miller: Just a quick amendment there: Would that include the increasing security costs—that we could have some dialogue on that and where they’re getting these numbers from?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Again, the province has taken responsibility for two areas—I believe that, too, was in the original bid book—and that’s transportation and security. We are a resource to the province with respect to understanding venues. For example, we might lay out the Para Pan road cycling or the Pan Am road cycling route. The ISU might look at that and say, “I’d prefer you to make some changes here.” That’s their very detailed level of interaction. The board would have very much gone back and looked at the bid book and then looked at what we’re being asked to take on by PASO and international sports federations, etc. to make some calls on what’s appropriate—my understanding is, right down to: What’s the level of transportation? What type of buses are we going to procure?

Mr. Paul Miller: Okay. Following the G20/G8 protests in 2011, a CBC article stated:

“The Ontario Provincial Police laid a string of charges in March against” Contemporary Security Canada, one of the two remaining bidders on security, “including three counts of offering security services while not licensed” in the province, “two counts of failing to ensure proper uniforms and one charge of hiring an unlicensed guard for the G20 and G8 summits. Many of its top executives were also charged.”

I guess I’m really concerned that, out of all the firms that are in Canada that I think could have handled it, you’re down to a foreign-owned company who made a mess of Vancouver, made a mess of the G20, and they’re in the final two. What do you say about that? I can’t see how they’re even in the running, but they’re there.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Mr. Miller, I can’t speak to that—

Mr. Paul Miller: I know it’s procurement again, but certainly you’ve got to work hand-in-hand with the procurement people if you’re running the whole show. You’re chair of the board.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Yes, that’s right. We are responsible for in-venue and venue-to-venue transportation and, of course, security. At some point, our conversations are with the integrated security unit that says, “Where do they stop and where do we pick up?” For example, in-venue: Are we going to have the venue manager doing the security for us? Will there be a combination of members from the ISU and the venue manager? But as I said, I can’t speak to the past accusations against this company.

Mr. Paul Miller: I can help you out with that. Were the security company’s previous serious problems a topic of concern prior to them being awarded an $81-million Pan/Parapan security contract, particularly when this company will now be directed by the same OPP that charged them? Curious. Can you explain that?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: As I said, I can’t. It’s not my area.

Mr. Paul Miller: I’d like some answers on that. You being the head of TO2015, I’d like some answers, because it’s very concerning to me that the OPP would not have made a bigger complaint or bigger show about this company that they had already charged previously and we’re using the same guys again.

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What I’m saying is: I don’t want a repeat of Vancouver—some of the riots—I don’t want a repeat of what happened at the G20, and here you’ve got the same players, who are American-owned and have a front office in Vancouver, handling a major Ontario project like this. It’s very concerning and very unexplainable, in my humble opinion. I really think we need answers on this, anyway.

How much time have I got left, Mr. Chair?

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): You have nine minutes and 16 seconds.

Mr. Paul Miller: Five minutes and—

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): No, nine minutes.

Mr. Paul Miller: Nine minutes. Okay.

Mr. Rafi, what assurances do Ontarians have that this time around the company will ensure proper licensing and properly trained security guards working, hopefully, hand in hand with the RCMP, CSIS and the OPP? Because I’ve heard nothing about the Mounties or CSIS, and I’m sure they’ll be playing a role in this and I’m sure that’s going to cost the taxpayers money.

You’re talking about the doubling of the costs to $239 million from the original bid. That’s where it’s at, because you said there are other venues and more sports that you weren’t expecting—whatever. I didn’t get a breakdown on that. I want to know what role the Mounties and CSIS will be playing in this, because they get paid by the taxpayers, too. How much of their involvement is not in the $239 million that the procurement people have said?

The procurement people, with all due respect to you, have to work with you. If the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing and what the costs are, it could make a big, big mess. So, I think someone—I don’t know whether it comes from the ministry or from you or from your board or from the OPP or from whomever—they’ve got to get their act together, as in rowing with the same oars in the same boat, because I don’t see a lot of that right now. What do you have to say about that?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Well, I would say—I hope I got the alliteration right—prior planning prevents poor performance, is what you said. I quite like that.

Mr. Paul Miller: You like that? You can use that. No charge.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Thank you. I will. I like it very much, because I would say to you that that’s exactly what we’re doing. We are working hand in glove with the integrated security unit, which includes the RCMP.

Mr. Paul Miller: And CSIS.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I believe the RCMP would work with CSIS, but I do know that the RCMP is definitely at the table.

I have confidence in the OPP and their ability to organize themselves with the RCMP and, I think, eight other municipal forces to work with us. They continue to plan with us at a venue-by-venue level to do their utmost to have highly safe games.

Mr. Paul Miller: With all due respect, I hear what you’re saying, but for me, if the OPP charged this company with whatever offences they did—I think it ran into $60,000 in fines—they may work fine with the Mounties and CSIS in coordination of their duties protecting the public, but I’m a little concerned about why they wouldn’t have brought forward more concerns about this company’s performance, the charges and all the things they’ve done in the past.

Are they doing due diligence? I don’t think so. Are they bringing these concerns forward to the public to analyze and decipher and feel comfortable with? I don’t think so. I think we need answers on that, and I think that you as the chair, with all due respect, should be following up to make sure we don’t have a repeat of what happened at the G20 and G8 summits. A lot of people are concerned about this, especially with their record. I’m very concerned.

I guess my question, following along those lines of thought—I know it’s not procurement, but you certainly should be working with them—is: Why was this contract awarded to a subsidiary of a US-based company rather than a wholly owned and operated Ontario-based company, one that knows our province, knows our people, knows our streets, our culture, our laws? These guys aren’t familiar with that. They’d have to go to school for a couple of years, I think, because the laws in the States are—what is it? You’re guilty until proven innocent there, and here you’re innocent until proven guilty. So I have a problem with that. I think this is being overlooked. It’s being shuffled aside like, “We’ll handle it. We’ll handle it.” No, I don’t think they’re doing a very good job—the committee or the ministry—on this, and the OPP have got to look into this a lot heavier than they are. Just to accept that is not good.

In the terms of the security contract, we know that the province is on the hook for purchasing new equipment for the private security firm. They got an $81-million contract and, additionally, we’re buying stuff to let them do their job. What are they doing with the $81 million that they’re getting and who will retain ownership of this equipment after the games? Is it going to be loaded up on trucks and go with the security company to their next gig?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: As I said, I think you’ll have to talk to the Ministry of Community Safety and the OPP about that.

Mr. Paul Miller: But why would I have to? Isn’t that your job?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: No, actually it’s not. The province has said it’s taking on that responsibility—

Mr. Paul Miller: So we have a huge undertaking of a Pan Am/Parapan Games. You’re head of 2015. You’ve got the OPP. You’ve got the ministry. You’ve got all these other people, all trying to drive that car down that road to the same exit to get the same results, yet I have people—all due respect to you—in very high positions telling me from different sectors, “That’s not my job; that’s their job. They should be taking care of that.” That’s nonsense. You all are responsible for a successful games. You all have to work together in unison. You can’t say, “That’s not my job,” and—

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I don’t want to leave you with the impression that we’re not working in unison and working together. We are doing that. There are some specific questions that I am not purview to, nor do I feel that I can answer effectively to. That’s all I’m trying to say.

Mr. Paul Miller: None of these questions are top-secret.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I didn’t suggest they were. As far as equipment goes, there is some equipment, such as scanning equipment, that will be rented, and of course you’re not going to continue using that equipment—

Mr. Paul Miller: The company doesn’t pay for it; we do.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Yes, that’s part of the security budget and the security spend.

Mr. Paul Miller: So the $81 million: What is the $81 million for?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: As I said, I didn’t contract with them, sir. I don’t know. I think you’d have to—

Mr. Paul Miller: Could you find out for us?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I can direct people to respond to the committee in that regard—ask them to respond to the committee, I should say—

Mr. Paul Miller: Thank you.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: —but it’s really up to them to provide those answers. I’m not the contracting—

Mr. Paul Miller: Well, they’re not providing the answers.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I’m not the contracting party.

Mr. Paul Miller: You’re part of the big group.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I am, but I’m not the contracting party responsible—

Mr. Paul Miller: All right, fine. I guess that was a kind of no-answer, but okay.

Are the costs for the training included in the current security estimate of the cost for security? Is it included—training? Is the cost for that—

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I would imagine it is. We have an expectation at the committee that these individuals—the security team has made a decision with respect to what it thinks it needs to have in terms of being supplemented by private security services. Again, I would presume that if there’s training needed—

Mr. Paul Miller: You don’t want to presume. I’ve seen that before.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Okay, fair enough. Perhaps the wrong term to use; I agree with that. What I’m getting at is, if training is required, it will be provided. We have an expectation that what we contract with and agree to with the ISU, they will deliver.

Again, we have to look to the police forces involved—and I think Ontario’s police forces, including the RCMP, are as good as any out there. We will rely on their expertise. We don’t have a group of people who are experts in this area.

Mr. Paul Miller: Okay. As the former ADM in the Ministry of Community Safety, I would think that you have some expertise in matters related to security. How are you using that to inform and move the security process in a more timely and financially reasonable way? I guess the response I’m concerned about from you was that it’s not your position to do that. If I was smart and I was running the show, I’d be tapping into your knowledge, not putting you on the sidelines and making decisions that may be not acceptable to the process. That’s a compliment, by the way.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Okay. Thank you.

Mr. Paul Miller: Why would you not utilize a person who has that experience? It doesn’t make sense to me.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Well, I—

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Thirty seconds.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Okay. I’m not saying that we’re not working hand in glove. We are working hand in glove. Because I worked at community safety doesn’t make me a policing expert. I was in a leadership position there, but I happen to know some of the individuals. I happen to know some of the processes that the police go through and how they would put together the threat risk assessments at various venues. So we will be working with them to understand, “Why are you putting the level of security in at this level? Why can’t it be drawn back a little bit? Why are we not putting enough security in”—

Mr. Paul Miller: So you will have input.

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Mr. Saäd Rafi: As I said, we’re working hand in glove. We’re doing prior planning with them to ensure proper performance. So we absolutely are working with them.

Mr. Paul Miller: So you could work hand in hand—

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Thank you very much, Mr. Miller and Mr. Rafi.

We will turn it over to the government side. Ms. Damerla.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Thank you, Chair.

Once again, welcome, Mr. Rafi, and once again, congratulations.

I noticed that a number of questions that were directed earlier on were not directly related to your responsibilities. I just wanted to clarify that anything that is around transportation and security—you can perhaps further clarify how we have divided it up. For instance, transportation and security is more to the Ministry of Transportation, the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport, and the Ministry of Community Safety, while you are really about the operational side of the Pan/Parapan Games. Perhaps you could comment on that.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: The original expectation—and I believe this goes to what PASO was also informed—is that the province would take responsibility for transportation across the entire footprint of the games: the greater Golden Horseshoe and the greater Toronto area. The transportation responsibilities at or near every specific venue will be jointly undertaken by ourselves and a transportation planning committee, which includes, of course, the Ministry of Transportation, every municipality and Toronto 2015. So the transportation, the shuttles for athletes, the shuttles for games officials and the shuttles for officials themselves are our responsibility. Managing transportation flow and other measures around the region is the Ministry of Transportation as the lead. That doesn’t mean we’re not involved. We are involved at the table with them every step of the way.

On security, it is a similar approach whereby the integrated security unit that has been established takes overall responsibility for security, understanding the threat risk, understanding the level of security that would be applied at other events that currently take place, be they hockey games, football games, what have you, and then understanding: What’s the difference when you have a Pan/Parapan Am type of activity, versus an Olympics versus a Commonwealth, versus a Canada Summer Games? There are differing levels of responsibility and individuals who are present who are internationally protected persons, for example, and that raises security needs.

That’s the overall call of the integrated security unit. However, again, we are working right at the table with them, with the handful of individuals we have who would then look at, “Okay, what’s going to happen when someone shows up at the Mattamy centre, which is the old Gardens here on Carlton, and who takes responsibility?” Will the security unit take responsibility into the facility, or do they stop at the gate and then we have to have a really sophisticated and appropriate transition process? Who will check bags? That’s the purview of the security unit to decide.

We get a chance to have a conversation with them to, I dare say, challenge their thinking, because with every aspect of decision-making that they make, there’s a cost, and of course, as Mr. Miller has suggested, I would say we are invested in an outcome that is the most effective value-for-money approach with the most secure environment.

So, yes, there are handoffs, yes, it’s complicated, but I feel very confident that we are working hand in glove. There are certain things that the Ministry of Transportation will look after: communications to the public about the game schedule, what are the routes, where’s the best traffic route to take—maybe through Metrolinx and an app. that was suggested. On the security side, working hand in glove to say, “Do you really need to have that level of security at a festival site that doesn’t have a ticket requirement and is open to the public?” We have good debates about that, because we want an experience as well. We don’t want a games that is so buttoned down that you can’t access it; they don’t want a games that is so wide open that there’s a security challenge.

This is a very, very difficult thing to get absolutely right, but we’ve been doing this with them now for several months, and this will continue almost right up to games time, or just before when we go through both our tabletop and rehearsal exercises for security and for transportation. Sorry for the long answer.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: No, that’s okay. Thank you so much for clarifying that. My understanding is that a lot of this was discussed at the technical briefing. I know that one of the other issues that was raised was the costs involved in transportation and security. My understanding is that those who attended the technical briefing got a very thorough understanding of the cost breakdown and how it came about. I would recommend that if there were any other questions that anybody had on transportation security, perhaps it would be beneficial to invite the OPP’s deputy commissioner to the committee for these details, rather than direct these questions at you.

You bring a lot of experience to this job. I just wanted to start off by asking—tell me a little bit about your Ministry of Health experience, the size of the ministry and the staff complement that you managed over there.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I was at the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care for almost four years. The budget is approximately $49 billion. It’s the largest health budget in the country. When I was there, I think the staff complement was 3,600 or 3,700 people. Of course, it covered the gamut of publicly provided health: drugs, hospitals, physician payment, OHIP management, long-term care, home care, and other related aspects that have to do with the connection between institutional care and home care. But if I might, in addition to that, I was first appointed a deputy minister in February 2003 by then-Premier Eves to the then Ministry of Public Safety and Policing Services. I was then given the opportunity to go to the Ministry of Transportation as the deputy minister. I left government for three years and started a consultancy practice with a big four consulting and auditing firm in the area of infrastructure and project finance. I returned to government in 2008 to the position of Deputy Minister of Energy and Infrastructure. Interestingly enough, four years ago I applied for this position and was on the shortlist. It was at that time that then-Premier McGuinty asked me to go to the Ministry of Health. Here I am, four years later.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: So clearly, complexity is nothing new for you. You’ve managed and have been in senior leadership roles in many, many complex situations.

Is it true that the 2015 games will be the largest and most complex games in Canadian history?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: They’ll certainly be the largest multi-sport games that Canada has put on, by the following measures: number of athletes and officials, number of sports, and number of countries. To give you an indication, I believe there’ll be approximately 6,100 Pan Am athletes and approximately 1,600 Parapan athletes. I believe the Winter Olympics in Sochi had 3,500 athletes. I’m not sure how many Paralympians there were.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: One of the things that makes these games so interesting and different for me is the legacy piece. From the get-go, we have, as a government, imagined the post-games scenario and learned from the examples of many other jurisdictions that didn’t get that right. That’s one of the drivers behind the fact that we have venues across Ontario and not just in one place, even though logistics and transportation and security are more complex. The reason we decided to have a distributed model was so that the legacy of all of these various infrastructure projects—stadia and swimming pools and soccer stadiums—is enjoyed by all Ontarians. Could you speak to me a little bit about how important this legacy piece is, because it seems to me that it’s something that isn’t always appreciated, especially by my opposition members? So perhaps you could talk about how different Ontario is—the leadership we’re showing in looking at the legacy even before the games are taking place.

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Mr. Saäd Rafi: Okay, thank you. I think what the winter games have done for Canada, these games have the opportunity to begin to do for summer high-performance athletes but also everyday kids who are learning new sports and taking up new sports. What I mean by that is, the facilities that were built through the Calgary and Vancouver Olympics, combined with the federal government’s approach to Own the Podium and investing in high-performance sport and now of course the provincial government is doing the same thing for Quest for Gold for summer athletes, as an example, has really demonstrated that having those facilities where you can train at home, where you can get advice from organizations like the Canadian Sport Institute network, which is sport institutes around the country, and Ontario has one as well—it helps with training, helps with nutrition. These sports have now gone down to a hundredth of a second to make the difference between gold and silver, and so what they try to do for the athlete—and that’s what these legacy facilities do—is give them the training, give them the ability to be their best, so the only thing the athlete worries about on game day or performance day is their performance, because they know that to the left or to the right of them, they’re equal in skill level, nutrition, sports medicine, you name it, against their competitors, and now they just have to perform.

The results are speaking for themselves. We don’t have these sport legacy facilities in Ontario or Canada. There’s not a permanent velodrome; we will have that in Milton. We will have a high-calibre, Olympic-qualifying-level track. We’ll have two 50-metre pools and a five-metre dive tank. Right now, I think there’s one 50-metre pool in Ontario, and, by technical specifications, it’s a few inches shy in terms of the space behind the board to qualify as Pan American calibre, international sports federation calibre activity.

Those are three key legacy venues, but we’ll also have a shooting venue, where all three—I think this will be the only location in North America, albeit a club, but there’s a 20-year agreement in place where community and sport can have access to the club for training purposes in the Innisfil area, which will have all three shooting disciplines in the same training facility. Right now, those athletes go down to Ohio, and as far as California, to train.

The opportunity here is to give venues for not just high-performance athletes, because the University of Toronto Scarborough pools, which will be the CIBC Pan Am aquatics centre, will welcome the community in to use that facility. The university will use it; it will have a field house, a training facility, and the home of the Canadian Sport Institute Ontario.

The next legacy, if I could address, would be the economic legacy. Yes, jobs, of course—very important—but more than just that. I think Mr. Whitaker was here from Tourism Toronto, and he talked more eloquently than I can about the increase in tourism, the uplift to GDP during the games, but well beyond that is that people understand what kind of a jurisdiction we have, what kind of a community the greater Golden Horseshoe in Toronto really has, and has to offer. So it’s both arts, it’s culture, it’s sport.

I mentioned sport tourism in my remarks. Again, I refer to the track and skeet shooting facility because it’s a great example of a small facility that might host three, four, maybe up to five events a year—provincial, national, maybe international—that will bring people from around the world. That will give a tourism opportunity, and maybe increase the infrastructure—according to the mayor and the local councillors, maybe another resort hotel could bear economies of scale to be constructed.

Of course, the other infrastructure investments—I can remember transportation talking about an air-rail link from the airport to downtown, and that goes back to 2003, 2004, 2005, so well before a bid for the games. So that’s going to be taking place as a result of that impetus. There’s an investment there.

The last is a social legacy. We have 20,000-plus volunteers that we’re going to attract. I’m led to understand that that’s the highest recruitment of volunteers in Ontario’s peacetime history. More importantly, these individuals will be trained, will be ambassadors, not just for sport but for this community, and at every one of these multi-sport events, people remember, typically, one thing, and this is a lasting impression: how they were treated in that jurisdiction. That typically comes from that volunteer who went the extra mile, the extra kilometre, for that individual, to help them find something, to help them get somewhere, or to help them in a time of distress, potentially.

There are also the arts and culture linkages. We’re going to be highlighting all manner of art activities that will profile Latin American culture, that will profile Caribbean culture, which will really bring the Pan American countries to life here, because, of course, we have every one of those communities represented in this wonderful area.

There will be an increased focus on accessibility, not only the Parapan Am Games, with all 15 sports being Olympic qualifying events—so you’ll see fantastic competitions and athletes—but every one of the these facilities will be accessible facilities. They’ll be created in a way that we will have volunteers who understand how to better work with individuals who might have accessibility needs. And on and on it goes.

The last thing I would say is that we have a Parapan Am development program that we’re required to do by PASO but very happy to do, because some of the countries in the Pan American nations don’t have a very highly developed Paralympic or Parapan program, and they’re very interested in doing so, so that they can send more than two, three or four athletes to the games in this area of competition. These will be the largest Parapan Am Games ever. Many of you may know that the Paralympic movement started in Canada in 1976, and so we have, I think, a significant obligation to pass along what we’re doing.

There are no manuals that the Pan Am Games have provided, unlike the Olympics, where you get a very systematized approach to how to do this. We will have created operating manuals for every single venue, every single sport and every single discipline in that sport. The provincial sport organizations, the national sport organizations, and the next country that will host these games—Lima, Peru—will have this legacy of knowledge and transfer of knowledge. We feel very passionately about making sure we do that. That is not entirely just a requirement, but we feel a responsibility.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Thank you for that answer and for the leadership. You’re absolutely right: Just watching the medals that our Paralympians have brought back, it’s certainly very high-profile, and I’m excited that we’ll have the largest Pan/Para—what’s the correct—

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Parapan Am.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: —Parapan Games this time. Thank you very much for that.

What about some of the partners you’ve been working with? What has their reaction been? How excited are they about the games and the opportunities?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I want to make sure we recognize that federal, provincial and municipal governments first and foremost as our key partners and funders. I think that the support we’ve received from all 16 municipalities, the federal government and the provincial government has been exemplary.

It’s these municipalities that are actually some of the most excited groups that we work with. They have made very difficult decisions at a time when—if you think about this—in the 2009-10-11 time frame, they made decisions to invest in sport facilities for their communities. That was a very tough economic time; it continues to be a tough economic time. They continue to be committed and are actually very strong proponents of what the games will bring, be that Milton, be that Markham, be that Toronto. Not to leave anybody out, but there are 13 others as well, as far afield as Minden, Oro-Medonte, Innisfil, Mono etc.

Of course, we have corporate sponsors who are our partners as well. CIBC is our lead sponsor. They signed up to be the lead sponsor four years ago, which was done through a pretty rigorous process. The Canadian Olympic Committee actually owns the Pan Am Games. The Canadian Paralympic Committee owns the Parapan Am Games. PASO, the Pan American Sports Organization, is the governing body of it. We had to work with the COC, the Canadian Olympic Committee’s funders, to determine—they would have first right of refusal, because they’re already lead sponsors in various categories. Once they had made their decision, then we went to those categories and asked—through sometimes competitive, sometimes an open call—and CIBC has led that list. We have several other organizations that we’re very proud to have on board.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: And how excited are they about all of this?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: One measure of excitement might be how a private sector company decides to spend its marketing dollars, which are always being called on by all manner of different organizations. For every dollar that they spend sponsoring us, they will then spend two to three times that in the community, “activating,” as it’s called, in addition to what they’ve spent with us.

Sponsorship comes with certain rights and privileges. We have a beverage sponsor; we have Molson, Coca-Cola, Cirque du Soleil, Chevrolet and CIBC. I’m leaving out many. Of course, Cisco has been just a fantastic partner with us. They’re very creative; they have terrific ideas. They bring others to the table. I just can’t say enough about the support we’ve received in that regard.

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The Toronto area is a very difficult fundraising/sponsorship market. There are, yes, many, many corporate contributors one could reach out to, but they have many demands, and these demands are booked years in advance. We’re very pleased to have those as our partners, but lastly, I would say, we also have many different partners from the communities, be they Caribbean, Latin American, aboriginal, francophone and other communities that don’t necessarily find themselves in the games countries but have an opportunity to benefit and to demonstrate why this region is the way it is and why it has the richness it does.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Thank you. I’m just going to preface my question with an example to get to what I’m trying to say. When you look at something like the original bid for security for the games, which was $113 million at the time we presented the bid, it was a skeletal budget. Everybody knew that as the games progressed and we got a better sense of the realities of the logistics on the ground, that security budget would increase.

But when something like that is characterized as a doubling, as if we have gone over budget, as opposed to something that would happen in any set of games, where you start with the skeleton and then, as you go along, you build that budget—that sort of negativity—can you tell me, is that affecting morale, this kind of negative misrepresentation of the facts?

Mr. Paul Miller: Mr. Chair.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Yes?

Mr. Paul Miller: I’m really offended by your comment about misrepresentation. I don’t believe the opposition parties—we are allowed to inquire. I call it an inquiry; she’s calling it a misrepresentation. I think that’s out of line, and I’d like you to deal with that.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Thank you very much.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Chair, I’d like the opportunity to respond. I have not said any particular person. I’m just saying that in general, I’ve explained that—

Mr. Paul Miller: In general?

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Yes, in general.

Mr. Paul Miller: What does that mean?

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Whatever it means.

Mr. Paul Miller: Oh, so it’s open to interpretation then. Okay.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: You could answer that.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: What I found, in the just-coming-on 10 weeks at this organizing committee, is that you have a group of individuals who feel very passionately about sport, arts and culture and the impact sports have on society. We see the games; we watched what happened in Vancouver; we see the performance of our athletes. It really generates a sense of civic and national pride. They are very passionate about what they do and how they do it, and I can certainly say that they want everybody to have the same passion they have. They’re not involved in the back and forth, because they don’t understand that stuff.

I would say that my job is to keep a focus on the job we have to do, and that is that there are lots of moving parts. We still have lots of venue operating plans to confirm. We have our rights holders to continue to reach out to and report to, because they want to hear. This fall, we’ll have the chefs de mission coming here from all the countries, and they have an expectation to see, to touch, to be briefed on what their athletes will get by way of experience so that they can excel. That is a very significant responsibility.

I would just say that our focus remains steadfast, and that is to try to deliver a games that is fiscally responsible, a games that will be something that will be in the lasting memory of Ontarians, Canadians and these athletes and the visitors for a long, long time.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: You briefly mentioned the municipalities as one of the partners. Could you just speak to the feedback you’ve been receiving from the municipalities about the games and the projects that are being built there?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Whether there’s a new facility or not, we have municipalities—Mississauga is a good example, where we’re using what is now called the Hershey Centre; it will be called something different during the games. They’re equally thrilled to be a host venue. Oshawa is another example where we’re not building a new facility but we’re using an existing facility. They want the opportunity to have festivals during the games. They want the opportunity to bring individuals to their downtowns and keep the spirit beyond just simply attending as a spectator, because many people will come to these events to participate in the festival aspect.

I see that my time is up.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Thank you very much. Now we’ll turn it over the opposition. Mr. Jackson.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Thank you, Mr. Rafi, for coming in today and taking time out of your busy day to be here to speak with us. I really do appreciate it.

I just want to start by clarifying a couple of things, certainly—and even the member opposite actually brought it up herself. It’s clearing up some of the responsibilities. I do this because I know that it seems like every time someone wants to hide something or doesn’t want to answer it, it’s my experience that, when we’re dealing with Pan Am, there’s a lot of double finger-pointing going different ways between the double bureaucracy, and by that, I mean TO2015 and the secretariat.

So to avoid this dilemma, with the aim to actually get some answers, I want to refer to Minister Chan’s briefing note this past Friday, from the technical briefing. I think I might be the only one in the room who actually attended it. So if I am to read out what the role of TO2015 is—the organizing committee:

“—organize, plan, promote, finance, stage and conduct the games (sporting events and ceremonies);

“—original $1.441-billion funding envelope, including operating and capital budgets: $500 million from Ontario; $500 million from Canada; $288 million from municipalities/universities; and $153 million in revenue”;

—oversee “sport venue construction/refurbishment part of TO2015 budget, funded by federal government and municipalities/universities.”

Conversely, the secretariat, the province, the host jurisdiction’s responsibilities:

“—oversight for provincial contribution to TO2015’s budget;

“—funding and oversight for athletes’ village project;

“—invest in provincial priority capital projects;

“—invest in Ontario’s promotion, celebration and legacy strategy;

“—negotiate agreements with municipalities for the delivery of municipal services;

“—plan and coordinate provincial service delivery for transportation, security, health and emergency management.”

Would you agree with all that?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Yes.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Before we go any further on that, actually, can you just give me a brief summation of your multinational, multi-sport games experience before you took on this role?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I have not run a multi-sporting event activity before, as I think the committee may know.

Mr. Rod Jackson: What kind of experience do you believe you bring that’s relevant to doing the job? I’m not saying you don’t; surely, you do. But what kind of relevant experience do you bring?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Well, I would say, and I feel, that I have experience in understanding complex operational activities. I understand how you plan and undertake operational—or operationalizing of plans. I have some experience in the area of emergency management: fire services and police services. I have, I would say, some experience in the area of transportation, be that road construction, but also regulatory aspects of drivers and vehicles etc.—buses and motor coaches. I have, I dare say, fairly extensive experience in the area of infrastructure—infrastructure project finance and infrastructure management, especially the PPP and AFP models. I have a passing knowledge of health management on certain issues.

So I think those are key aspects of what the games’ footprint is about, and I’m learning very quickly—as quickly as I can—about the rights holders and international federations as they impact the sports that we have to deliver. And I’m a sports fan.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Pardon me?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: And I’m a sports fan.

Mr. Rod Jackson: You’re a sports fan; that’s good. It should be a prerequisite for this job, certainly.

Okay, I just want to back up a little bit. So although responsibility for transportation, as was noted, falls under the secretariat, when I go to the March 5 quarterly report, in paragraph 5 of the first portion of the report, it actually mentions that $16.9 million “were predominantly spent in the areas of technology, risk management, transportation, sport operation and broadcast.” It goes on to explain how much money you’ve spent up to date.

You did kind of tell us a little bit about your responsibilities for transportation. I don’t think they’re to be understated. I think when people think of transportation, I think one of the biggest parts of it is how we’re going to get these tens of thousands of officials and athletes and spectators to the games quickly, safely and on time, and all those sorts of things.

What part of your budget is transportation? What are you responsible for, and what is it going to cost?

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Mr. Saäd Rafi: Our transportation responsibilities are for getting, as you said, athletes, officials, coaches from the various villages to the sport venues where they either will train or compete. In some cases, the training facility is not the same as the competition facility.

In addition to that, we are responsible to work with the municipality that has a venue to get the most efficient and effective way of spectators getting to their venues. So if that’s a Toronto venue, then of course we will encourage people to take transit. If it’s a Hamilton venue, we’ll encourage people to take transit within the Hamilton region and then a GO train from there. We’ll work with the municipalities, be that Burlington right through to Hamilton. There might be shuttle services, there may be other means of doing so, and that’s what we’re planning on what we call local area plans, which is part of the transportation strategic framework, to work with those communities.

I think our transportation budget is just over $32 million. That includes a small number of staff as well as procuring buses, doing the planning with local municipalities, perhaps then shuttle services as well.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Sorry. You said how much?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Just over $32 million.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Is that $32 million included in the $70-million to $90-million estimate that the Ministry of Transportation—

Mr. Saäd Rafi: No, it’s not.

Mr. Rod Jackson: That’s in addition to?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: It is, yes, but it’s within our $1.4 billion.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay. So the total transportation budget is more than $70 million to $90 million if you add the two together?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Yes, that’s right.

Mr. Rod Jackson: All right. It seems to be a trend with this organization.

Is the fleet included in that? You have to procure a fleet, and that’s included in that to $32 million—

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Yes, gas, drivers—

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay. So one of the main concerns PASO had when they came and visited Toronto was transportation, because although it has clustered, as you mentioned yourself, it’s still fairly separated, going as far as Hardwood Hills up in my neck of the woods and as far over as Caledon and Welland and Niagara. It remains quite a concern for them.

Are you satisfied that the plan that came out over the weekend that actually hinges on a 20% reduction in automobiles and trucks being on the road is satisfactory?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Well, much has been written about this, but other jurisdictions achieve those levels and beyond. Right now, what was issued on Friday, in my understanding, is that we’re talking about a strategic framework. It’s quite extensive, yes, but there is still much more work to be done. As I mentioned, one example would be the local area plans. I think you mentioned Caledon. What’s the best way to get people who will come to that facility from where they might park, where they might be shuttled from, right to the facility itself, and then you want to get people home and back?

Some locations—Innisfil, Hamilton—you know, Hamilton will have the luxury perhaps of putting on a festival right outside the new field. Mississauga may want to have people directed more to their downtown core; Markham, the same thing. That’s why the municipality, ourselves and the ministry have to work hand in glove, and we’ll continue to refine these plans so that you can either look on your smartphone, on our website or in a guide to see what’s going on in terms of activities around the venue, because many people who come to these games, I’m told, also come because they want to come for the cultural and tourism experience. They might go to a sporting activity and vice versa.

I don’t think any of us should rest until we feel absolutely certain that we have looked at all the permutations and details associated with moving many, many people. I think that strategic framework is well informed, has the participation of all municipalities, ourselves, security folks and the ministry, and the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport. I think it’s a good start. I think we have lots more to do, and I think everybody is committed to making sure that we can address the points that have been made by PASO and others. That’s why we’re looking at satellite accommodations. That’s why we’re talking to the sport federations to see. You know, maybe some individual Olympic committees from other countries will want to make a different choice or will move their people in different ways—you know, move them earlier, sort of post-Russia. There’s a multitude of options that we’ll have to examine.

Mr. Rod Jackson: For the transportation, how involved were you and your organization in creating that plan that was released on Friday?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Since that was my ninth week, I was involved to the greatest extent I could be, but the people who are at 2015 have been involved with the planning of the strategic framework from the outset. A committee was established, co-chaired by the city of Toronto and the province, and we’ve been key members of that group from the beginning.

Mr. Rod Jackson: If I was to share one concern of mine that I truly have on that transportation plan, it is the 20% number. I know it has been achieved in other jurisdictions, but I think it’s also important to note that, in a place like London that has a world-class transportation system—anyone who has been there knows that the Tube in London can take you right from your doorstep to almost exactly where you want to be; a very, very highly advanced transportation system in London. Most of their core was shut down during those games. Before the Olympic games, they had an $18-billion investment in their transportation and infrastructure to get it up to the point where they could have a 20% to 30%—I think it was even higher than 20%—reduction in traffic. Pretty dramatic things going on there to make sure they achieved those numbers.

I don’t see the same dramatic things happening in Toronto to achieve those numbers. I see HOV lanes and 750 kilometres of the event route network, I think it’s called, 150 of those being HOV lanes. Can you tell me what the remainder, outside of that 150—so there are 770 or 750—sorry; I forget the exact number—in that range, of total roads in the route network, and 150 of those are HOV. What does the remainder mean, the remainder of that route network? What’s going on there? What makes that special and any different from the rest of the HOV network?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I would put it, perhaps, this way: We will look at the sports schedule. We will look at the venues. We will look at the travel times. Then you match that up to determine what the best travel times are and which route to take, because not everything is, of course, clustered right around the horseshoe. That’s one thing.

Secondly, I think we have 14 sports—I don’t know how many disciplines—but 14 sports in the Exhibition Place area and the west channel of Ontario Place. That’s accessible by streetcar, by GO train—the stop is right there at Exhibition Place. So that’s just one example. The existing network of transportation, mass transit—bus, streetcar, GO train—will help and aid in access to those venues. We have others that are the Mattamy Athletic Centre, which is the Gardens; there are lots of sports taking place there.

For the sports on the periphery, I think the idea is to take advantage of adding temporary HOV lanes, as was, I think, explained in the briefing, and use that, along with other high-occupancy vehicles, to try to make sure that, along with the co-operation of companies, deliveries, construction schedules for those communities—all of that goes into a further detailed plan that will have to come out once we’re at that point of development.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay. So the remainder, the 628 kilometres of road, I think it is, that are outside of the HOV lanes in that route network, really are just going to be to expedite, generally, the traffic for the officials and the athletes, not the general public?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Yes, sorry, but also it’s going to be the regular highway network and road network. I think that was the idea: to demonstrate that the overall network—in other words, here are the arteries that go to these venues—you mentioned Caledon; Innisfil, of course, is 400/89, and on it goes—that, because of the nature of that venue, we don’t feel the need to put in an HOV or close a lane or something like that, and plus we’re looking at a satellite accommodation area for the Oro-Medonte-Innisfil venue—I think it’s the shooting and cross-country. So the amount of games traffic is much smaller, as it would be to Caledon, as it would be to Welland.

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Mr. Rod Jackson: So tell me a little bit more about the satellite accommodations for athletes. What is the total number of athletes that will be accommodated at the athletes’ village and what is the total number that will be accommodated at the satellites? And how many satellite—

Mr. Saäd Rafi: We haven’t come to ground yet on how many, but we’re thinking Welland-St. Catharines, Innisfil area, of course the athletes’ village proper, and then maybe up somewhere near the mountain bike cycling area, which would be sort of the four—that’s four, and then of course we’ll have one in around Minden, and Minden will likely have to have a contract with one of the resorts. Maybe we’ll do the same thing in the other two; maybe in the Welland area we’ll look to some existing infrastructure.

The idea there is—and this is the feedback we’ve received from athletes, because in Guadalajara they had venues in Puerto Vallarta, which would be at the west coast of Mexico—that athletes don’t mind having a satellite village. They just want to know that it’s of the same sort of calibre and experience that they were going to get if they were in the proper athletes’ village. They would rather not do the commute times, and they would take that approach.

So my understanding is that obviously the bulk of the beds would be in the athletes’ village. Now, this includes officials and athletes. There will be about 7,500 beds in the West Don Lands, and then the remainder of the beds—I don’t have the breakdown by the other satellite villages, but the remainder, the 2,500 or so, would be—oh, sorry; that’s not true. The bulk of the Parapan beds will be in the athletes’ village here, if not all, and then the remainder of the Pan Am beds would be across those four other villages. I call them “villages.” They will probably be existing facilities.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Yes, sure. Thank you. How much time, Chair?

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): You have eight minutes.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay. It goes by quick.

Tell me a little bit about some of the drama around the Hamilton soccer stadium. Although we hear the “on time, on budget” mantra, we know that certainly at least at one point the stadium wasn’t on time. It was tracking off-time, and that started a whole discussion about who’s responsible for the $1 million per game that the Ti-Cats would be forced to pay.

This is also, I might add, a theme that we’ve heard certainly from other venues themselves: the concern that they’re actually going to be on the nut for cost overruns at their venues, not in fact the province, as we’re told a lot of the time, as part of the memorandums of understanding, as I understand it.

Specifically, can you fill me in on the status of the Hamilton Ivor Wynne refurbishment?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I guess as we sit here in minus 15 degrees three days before spring, which is sort of hard to even say, let alone deal with—

Mr. Rod Jackson: Yes, no kidding.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: It’s been a pretty difficult winter for construction, be that here in Toronto—you’d think we would have had a break compared to some other locations right in the sort of westerly wind area. But many constructors have had challenges. I think the Hamilton contractors have been pretty open about that. They have admitted that they’ve had challenges with pouring concrete. They have admitted that one of their subs, I believe, had declared bankruptcy and so they couldn’t rely on that company.

My understanding is that they continue to try to catch up. I think there’s evening activity there. Mr. Miller, you might know better than I, but I have swung by there and saw some lights. They’re trying to do work where they can. Where they have heat and hoarding, they’ll work on other things, and I think that applies for other facilities as well.

So there’s no doubt that Infrastructure Ontario and the city of Hamilton and the contractor are having conversations, I’m sure as we speak, about what this is going to mean for the city and for the Tiger-Cats. Not to diminish that, but for us, if there’s a two-, three-, four- or five-week delay, we’re still getting these facilities available to us eight, 10, and in some cases 12 months before the games. We can withstand a bit of a delay. It’s kind of hard to think that you’re not going to have a delay given this weather, but by the same token, given the construction techniques where people are doing construction virtually year-round, we’re counting on these contractors to catch up.

As far as cost overruns go, the projects that are AFP or PPP models are such that the owner and the project manager—Infrastructure Ontario and the municipality or the university—and the funder, the federal government, get to determine when they are substantially complete. Until substantial completion, they don’t get their last payment. So it has a good regulating aspect on the contractor, who is paying out of their own pocket and risk capital to make sure that they get that project done, and the sooner they get it done, the sooner they get paid. The cost overruns are—that assumes a cost overrun, because it’s a fixed price; they bid a fixed price and it’s a fixed price unless you agree to a change order, and that’s very carefully monitored by Infrastructure Ontario and the facility owner.

Mr. Rod Jackson: In a nutshell, is the Ivor Wynne Stadium in Hamilton running on time right now?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: No. I think that the contractor has said that they’ve experienced delays and that they’re behind a few weeks.

Mr. Paul Miller: Four weeks.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Mr. Miller is saying four weeks; he might be closer to that than I.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Are they on budget for that build?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: As far as I know, they are. I’m not monitoring their budget; Infrastructure Ontario is. My folks would work with them, but as far as I know, they are.

Mr. Rod Jackson: We’re about a year and a half out, give or take; according to what looks like your own report here, maybe you can explain to me a discrepancy I see between the projected cost and the estimated cost of the velodrome: the estimated cost of $50 million and then the projected cost of $56 million. That’s a variance of $6 million. Does that mean that the velodrome is $6 million over budget?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: No, I don’t think I would look at it that way. The municipality, Infrastructure Ontario, ourselves and the federal government made a decision that they were prepared to put in differing amounts of funds. The budget rose to $56 million. The bid was at $56 million. Now, that is still going to have to come in under the $500-million contribution from the federal government. That was made clear. We’re working to that, and the contractor is working to the $56-million budget.

I suppose it depends on the point in time you want to put a pin in the actual amount, but the budgeted amount is $56 million. It’s not dissimilar to the shooting venue; that was decided on fairly recently. An agreement is being worked on and being struck. The federal government agreed that that venue would present the best location for those disciplines and that the approximately $3.5 million for the upgrades to that club will also have to come in within the $500-million budget that the federal government has apportioned.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Sorry; I kind of get what you’re saying, but I still struggle with the difference between the estimated and projected costs there. The estimated cost is something that would have come in through the bid book, and then the projected cost is something that would be more, once they got their heads around reality. Is that what you’re trying to say?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I don’t think the velodrome was initially in the bid book in Hamilton and planned for Hamilton. Certain municipalities have made certain decisions, and I think that the city of Hamilton said, “We’re not prepared to take on that particular project.” The town of Milton stepped up and said that they would.

They had a certain amount of money. I think that everybody agreed that what was estimated to be a $50-million project would likely be a higher amount, and that higher amount was agreed to at $56 million, and that became the budget. I’m not trying to split hairs with you; I’m just saying that, if I understand them, that was the sequence of events.

Mr. Rod Jackson: How much time?

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Fifty seconds.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay. Can you explain to me quickly, in 50 seconds or less, what will make this velodrome different than the Montreal velodrome that is now an arboretum? What is going to make Milton the destination for the rest of North America? Because right now, one of the only velodromes that actually does anything with a profit or is actually a destination of choice is in Atlanta at a major sports facility that has other training facilities near it. What is going to make Milton the draw to bring athletes there?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: The legacy fund. You said 50 seconds. I’m happy to expand on that if I don’t get the hook. The three facilities—I always forget the third one—oh yes, York, the Milton velodrome and the aquatic centre—will benefit from a legacy fund, which will be a 20-year fund to operate those facilities as high-performance sports centres, with other people having a chance to use them. I can expand on that later.

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Mr. Rod Jackson: Yes, we can come back to that later.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Sure.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Thank you very much. We’ll move on to the 10-minute round with Mr. Miller from the third party.

Mr. Paul Miller: Do you want a drink of water before you start again?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I’ll probably need a break if I have more water, so I’m good. Thank you.

Mr. Paul Miller: I want to continue the line of questioning on the electrical for the Hamilton stadium and the instrumentation contracts. It’s my understanding that they were awarded to an offshore company, a French company. I, obviously, was approached by my local unions, who are highly trained individuals—Canadian companies, some from Burlington, some from Hamilton. They had put their bids in for the bid process and were competitive. Two of them were removed from the bidding numbers—two out of the seven were removed without any explanation, which were local. Then it got down to about two or three, and a foreign company won it. I guess my question is, regardless of whether they undercut them or whatever the reason was on the bidding process, I don’t understand why we’re using foreign companies to administer electrical subcontracting and instrumentation, which are two separate issues with the electricians—there are instrumentation electricians and there are regular electricians who do the lines and things.

Also, it’s my understanding, in the building, that at one point, a guy who was the head of the French company had sent out an email, which I have a copy of and which said, “Don’t hire any unions,” which is a pretty scary thing in our province. I have his name and everything. Of course, I haven’t had any response from the ministry or 2015 or the waterfront or any of them. They haven’t said anything about it. I want to know what the status is of why those companies—for instrumentation from Burlington and the Hamilton local union; we have a very big local union, highly trained—probably one of the most skilled training centres in North America for electricians is in Hamilton. Why aren’t our people being used in the Hamilton area? Some are, but why didn’t we solely get that contract, because the expertise is not required from overseas? We’re far advanced in electrical in Ontario and in Canada, as opposed to any other country—or as good as. So, why did that happen?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Were these subs to GC?

Mr. Paul Miller: They were subs. This guy was the overseer, the French company, and he hired subs, but some of the subs were brought in from other places.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Partially, at the risk of having you—

Mr. Paul Miller: Attack you again on procurement?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: No, get frustrated with me in terms of where I draw the line in terms of what we’re meant to be doing—we’re using these facilities; others are contracting and managing the development of them. But what I know about the procurement process and Infrastructure Ontario is that they put out a consortium bid, as you know, and I don’t believe every sub is identified in the proposal, and then, as you’re indicating, the GC or maybe the GC and the financier go out and then look for subs, right down to instrumentation. It sounds to me to be a pretty specific skill set.

I can’t tell you why those companies were excluded. I can tell you that we have ways of giving—I don’t want to say “preference”—but additional opportunities and scoring if you’re using local versus non. Then things come down to value for money. I’m sure Infrastructure Ontario, which has a good reputation in choosing contractors based on the best value for money—

Mr. Paul Miller: At one point, another letter was sent out by the same individual, and he was using labourers to do electrical work—bases for motors—which falls under the electrical code of Canada. Of course, I brought it up at the time, and I still haven’t had any answers on that. They were looking into it—and still looking into it. But there are a lot of unhappy campers in Hamilton about not using local—and one of the things Ian Troop promised me, when he met with me three years ago, was that local unions, local companies, would get preference. I don’t think they followed through on that, and it’s a big concern to me. Obviously, you don’t have the answer for that and I’ll have to—

Mr. Saäd Rafi: But I would hope that the Electrical Safety Authority would be watching—

Mr. Paul Miller: Well, they have to; it’s law. They have inspectors.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: That’s right, so they’re permitting, they’re approving and they would be inspecting the work. I’m not excusing not using properly qualified workers—

Mr. Paul Miller: I haven’t had any complaints in the last three weeks, because I believe they’ve—

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Gone to the site.

Mr. Paul Miller: —looked into it.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Right.

Mr. Paul Miller: So, obviously, my continued moaning about it did pay off.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: But that’s a good regulatory organization, as you know.

Mr. Paul Miller: Yes, but they also have to be able to identify quality work as well, and if our unions are quite capable, and they are, of providing the expertise, the background and the record of good work throughout the province, they should be utilized.

Getting to the transportation plan: It relies on a 20% reduction in regular traffic. As you know, we put in the HOV lanes for that very reason, because of the gridlock. It helped a bit; it certainly hasn’t solved all our problems, but it’s alleviated some of it. I wish there was more carpooling and I wish there was more of that; that might help, too. Do you find it concerning that we have a 20% reduction target for traffic, yet no one can tell the public how this will be achieved? They’ve set about temporary closings—is this going to be 24 hours for the 28 days? Are they going to do it in peak times? What are they going to do? I don’t have any details other than the 20% that the minister seems to think he can achieve. I don’t know what rabbit he’s going to pull out of the hat for that one, but he seems to think that there will be some disruptions but not a major negative impact on the communities, and I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: My understanding is that there are numerous initiatives that could be deployed. You mentioned a couple: hopefully increased carpooling; hopefully more use of the lanes—the determination of whether two- or three-plus in the vehicle has to be made yet, I understand; additional lanes, which will help regular commerce and regular commuters; companies themselves making decisions—many companies may want to put a large number of their people into the volunteer group as a corporate social responsibility activity, and may allow their staff to work from home or may have differing approaches; delivery companies; and I think Toronto has agreed to take a look at their construction schedule in the games route network. So there are several aspects to this. Local traffic management will have to be examined, and that’s part of the local area plans.

Mr. Paul Miller: Okay.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: So I think several of those things are in the full material that gives examples. The point of putting it on the Environmental Bill of Rights, as well as taking it out and continuing to work with the 16 municipalities, ourselves, and the government, is to continue to refine that, refine that, refine that and make sure we have individual plans.

Mr. Paul Miller: In the technical briefing, when it comes to the HOV lanes, we were told that Ontario would follow in the footsteps of cities like London, England. Do you really believe that this is a reasonable assumption? Surely, the folks at 2015 are aware of the many differences between Toronto and London, England, from a geographic perspective as well as a transportation perspective. A comparative analysis is usually done with cities of similar size and similar population, so, really, this is not a good comparative analysis. It would be like comparing Toronto to LA, Chicago or Paris. Population-wise, geographically, transportation grid—they are totally, totally different in these cities. So I think this is a bit of an assumption on the part of 2015, the ministry and the rest of the people involved.

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The HOV lanes or priority lanes will be operated. Are they going to reserve them 24/7? Are they going to, just at peak times? Because we certainly have to continue the commerce and grid flow to keep our business lucrative and competitive. Twenty-eight days in anyone’s business is a lot of time. It’s a month out of a year. Some of them are based on peak times and summertime. I don’t know if that has been taken into consideration, because some of them—certainly you won’t be using the hockey rink in July. You might be using it for basketball. But the bottom line is, you’ve got the Blue Jays there. Has that been taken into consideration: the traffic impact with the Blue Jays and other—there are many other activities that could go on during that 28-day period in the city. Have they been taken into consideration—the negative impact it will have on your projections for the games?

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Time is up, so a quick response, please.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Okay. I believe yes.

Mr. Paul Miller: All right. I’ll mark you down as a yes.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: To the greatest extent possible—it’s hard to find an exact comparator. They were looking at other games. They looked at Vancouver as well. I think that what was heartening in that comparison is to say, “If London”—to the points you make, which are correct—“can get to 30% and, in some cases, 40%, surely to goodness we can achieve 20%.”

Now, many pieces will have to come together, and the network will not be needed 24/7. Can you do off-peak deliveries? Can you do overnight deliveries? Are you prepared to do that? What will it take? All that still has to be worked out.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Thank you very much. We’ll move to the government side: Mr. Fraser.

Mr. John Fraser: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Rafi, thank you very much for coming in today. I really very much appreciate you being here and answering our questions.

Before I get started here, I just want to add that I think that you’re particularly well qualified for the task that you’ve taken on. I think your experience in government and outside government bodes well for TO2015.

I want to go back to an earlier question in regard to the transportation budget and that $30 million. I just want to clarify that that money is already in the overall budget and is a matter of public record.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Yes, it’s in the $1.4 billion. Specifically, it’s part of the $500 million that the province has provided for operations.

Mr. John Fraser: Okay, good. I wanted to make sure that that was clear, so there wasn’t the impression that this was a new number. Thank you very much.

I’d like to ask you a question in regard to governance. This is, obviously, a large undertaking, with a great number of partners: the federal government; other municipal governments, as you’ve mentioned; the Canadian Olympic Committee; and the Canadian Paralympic Committee. I’d just like to understand how TO2015 works in terms of the relationship with all those parties—or partners, I should say.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Maybe I can start with the board of directors. There’s a multi-party agreement. At the outset, when the games are granted to the region and to the city, the following board structure was established: The Canadian Olympic Committee would have four board members; the Canadian Paralympic Committee would have one; the federal government would have three; the provincial government would have three; and the city of Toronto would have one. I believe that the province appoints the chair. The province also appoints, if I’m not mistaken, the chair of the finance committee.

Since the board members are predominantly—not predominantly; they are—appointed by these bodies, the board has decided to put, in some, if not many, cases for board committees, non-board members as chairs, and then board members participate in those committees to try to bring that expertise of someone from finance, someone from audit. Richard Nesbitt, the COO of CIBC, is the finance board chair. Axel Thesberg, a former audit partner at one of the big four firms, is the audit committee chair, etc., and so on and so forth.

We also have to look to: The COC essentially owns the franchise called the Pan Am Games. Of course, the COC is overseen by the International Olympic Committee, but for the Pan American sport, one of the continental sport governing bodies is the Pan Am Sports Organization, and then there’s the equivalent, the International Paralympic Committee, so there are a lot of layers.

Then there are governing bodies for sport. There are the international and continental sports federations, and they are responsible for the technical aspects of sport: the field of play, the rules, the officials and the number of athletes they will allow and permit, which then governs the sports schedule, which says, “Okay, you’re going to have an 18-round robin. Is it X number of heats because of the number of athletes coming from the various countries?”

They then work with the national sport organizations of every country. The national sport organization could say to their governing body—to use FIBA, the basketball association, over the athletics—“You know, we really want to field a larger team this year, and we think we have the ability,” and so on. They may be given that number of spots.

All of that is—I don’t want to say “dictated”—not our decision; rather, we must implement those decisions. Then, of course, our funders, as I mentioned—the federal, provincial and municipal governments—have chosen various areas that they’re going to fund. Then, lastly, the province has a financial guarantee.

Mr. John Fraser: So that’s outlined in the multi-party agreement?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: That’s all outlined in the multi-party agreement: who has what responsibilities, who we report to, how often and in what form.

Mr. John Fraser: I’d like to ask you for a comment on something. I know that the minister has said that these are the most open and transparent games ever. I know that you’re relatively new, but in terms of your experience until now with this and your experience in government, can you comment on how open the process that we’ve been going through is, from your perspective?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: What I’ve seen and learned from how Olympic Games are undertaken is that the IOC provides funding through broadcasters, both internationally and nationally, and then the host Olympic committee has their own sponsors, so you have access to those sponsors. A large amount of money is provided there; governments provide far less money to those types of games.

Here, of course, 90% of the money is coming from federal, provincial and municipal governments, so, by the nature of governments and today’s approach to governing, there is an increased transparency relative to other games and other organizing committees. I don’t know enough about what happens in Commonwealth Games to know whether they are equally transparent, but there’s been a light shone on all aspects of activity here, so we continue to strive to be as transparent as possible.

Mr. John Fraser: Okay. I think that answers my question. Thank you.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Okay. Thank you very much. We’ll move to the opposition.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Chair?

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Yes, sir?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Would it be possible to have a short break? A bio-break?

Mr. John Fraser: He can have whatever time I had left.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): There were three minutes and 21 seconds left, so—

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Oh, okay. Fine. Sorry. I thought there was another round.

Mr. John Fraser: No, no.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I lost track of time. Okay. Please.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): So another 10 minutes is fine?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Sure.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Okay. Absolutely. Mr. Jackson, from the opposition.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Did you want to continue where we left off, or—

Interjections.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Are we doing another round?

Mr. Rod Jackson: You can take his—

Mr. Saäd Rafi: That would be very beneficial.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Okay. If you need the three minutes, feel free. Five-minute recess.

The committee recessed from 1548 to 1552.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Back to order. Mr. Jackson, from the opposition.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Welcome back.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Thank you.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Would you like to continue where you left off last time? We cut you off.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Yes, thank you. The federal government has committed $65 million and the provincial government has committed $5 million to create a $70-million legacy fund. That fund is specifically for those three facilities. You mentioned the velodrome—that’s one; the aquatic centre at the University of Toronto, Scarborough campus, is the second; and I believe the York University athletic facility is the third.

A committee has been struck, with representation from the Canadian Olympic Committee, Canadian Paralympic Committee, the province, the federal government and one other. They will work with the Toronto Community Foundation, which has been selected to manage the $70 million in a fund and create a 20-year investment approach and use of funds. Each facility must demonstrate how they are using it as a high-performance training centre on an annual basis so that it doesn’t lie fallow and not get used for its purpose. Then, the time that remains beyond those training needs, that facility will be made available to the community that it resides in.

This group has just been struck. They’ve just started. I think they’re going to have or have had their first meeting to establish the parameters for which the sport that will have its home there—for example, wheelchair basketball has chosen, believe it or not, the aquatics centre and field house to be their home, and then they will have to submit a plan, if I’m not mistaken. Cycling Canada will have to submit a plan for the velodrome.

Mr. Rod Jackson: So that $70 million is included in the TO2015 budget?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Yes.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Does that include the projections for operations and maintenance of those facilities as well, or is it just for programming and staffing? What exactly does that legacy fund—

Mr. Saäd Rafi: My understanding is that it is for operations and maintenance of that facility. If someone did the analysis on the amount, they feel that, if properly managed and invested, it could provide perhaps a 20-year annuity to maintain and operate those facilities—again, for high-performance sport. Of course, there may be some other opportunities to rent the facilities to use them for other demonstrations that would bring in revenue to the municipality that has to run it.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Would marketing and advertising be a part of that $70 million?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I don’t think it would be, in the sense that if, let’s say, Milton wanted to market for sports tourism, as we were talking about, that would be their responsibility, because that benefit would derive to them. I believe, and I’m not dead certain here, the responsibility lies in using the facility for sport, and that’s where the sport governing body in the country is responsible. But I’d have to check for certain about marketing.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay. So that legacy fund takes into account all—I just find that for those three facilities, they’re all three pretty large facilities. I imagine it costs a fair amount to keep going. I can’t imagine, especially the velodrome, to be fair, running at a profit. Is that taking into account the losses that facility will incur?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I think any other cost would be the responsibility of the facility owner, so the town, the universities.

Mr. Rod Jackson: What’s the fail-safe if there is a loss? I’m going to use the velodrome as an example to outline the other two, assuming they have the same sort of deal going on. What is the fail-safe if the facility runs at such a loss that even the legacy fund can’t save it?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: This is where I’m perhaps not as conversant on the details of the legacy fund as I need to be for these questions. If I could, I would say that it’s not my understanding that the legacy fund is responsible for the entire maintenance costs of the facility and the operating costs. I think it’s responsible for a predominant amount of use by, again, Cycling Canada. The difference to operate it will likely come from the asset owner.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Could I ask you to endeavour to get the details on the legacy fund and what exactly that includes and doesn’t include over the period of the 20 years?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Certainly, yes.

Mr. Rod Jackson: I appreciate that. How much time, Chair?

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Five minutes, 37 seconds.

Mr. Rod Jackson: An extra day has been added to the Pan Am schedule. Can you explain why this day was added and what exactly the cost is and all the logistics that are associated with that?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: The extra day was added to the Parapan Am schedule, actually, not the Pan Am. One reason was that August 14 is a Friday and we would have still had competitions taking place in some significant sports on the Friday while we were doing the closing ceremonies, so those athletes would miss out on those closing ceremonies because they were competing. The closing ceremonies in games are predominantly for athletes and to celebrate what has been, by all accounts, a successful competition as well as a successful celebration.

Secondly, we also didn’t think that a Friday lent itself as much as a Saturday could to have people come out and appreciate what these athletes and competitors have brought to the region and have done for their sport and for all of us to understand and accept accessibility—to open our minds to that—in a way we may not. So we made the difficult decision of saying, “Let’s add this so that we can quite comfortably finish all the competitions and then have an opportunity to end the full Pan/Parapan Am Games in a way that all athletes get to benefit from.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay. Just moving on to something totally different: Can you outline to us what kind of perks your executive members get? For example, do you drive your own car? Does your executive drive their own cars? Or do you drive cars that were offered to you by sponsors of the Pan Am Games?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I believe that has changed and they no longer have access to vehicles from the sponsors.

Mr. Rod Jackson: At one time they did, though.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Yes, that’s right.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay. Are there any other perks that are given to executives or members of the TO2015 organizing committee from other corporate sponsors?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Not that I’m aware of. Since those changes, they’ve been following the perquisites directives from government. I started to examine that as well since I got there, and if there are any that continue, then they will not.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Can you give us a heads-up—the sunshine list is always something people are interested in. I understand that TO2015 will continue to grow up until the games. Can you give us an idea of how many sunshine listers will be on TO2015 that will show up this year?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I don’t have that at my fingertips, but it’s going to increase, as you said. What the magnitude of the increase is, I don’t know off hand.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Are your executive team members achieving yearly annual increases in pay, or does it vary from executive to executive?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: They receive no base increase in pay, and haven’t for three years.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay. So it’s stagnant?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Yes.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Can you tell us what was cut out of the budget to be able to cover your predecessor’s severance?

Mr. Saäd Rafi: We haven’t cut anything out of the budget. We’re trying to manage that cost in the overall budget, like we would with anything. If we have, for example, an RFP that comes in that’s above what we thought it would be for temporary equipment and whatnot, we’re going to have to find a way to make that work, just as we’re going to have to find a way to make that payment work in our overall salary budget.

Mr. Rod Jackson: How much time, Chair?

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): One minute and a half.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay. So tell me a little bit about the mascot, the jet-setting stuffed toy that seems to be going all over the world. We saw him, I think, in Russia and in other places.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Our mascot?

Mr. Rod Jackson: Yes, that’s my understanding.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: I don’t think so.

Mr. Rod Jackson: You might want to check that.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: It’s jet-setting around Ontario, but I don’t believe it—

Mr. Rod Jackson: No. No, he’s been internationally. You might want to double-check that.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Okay. Sorry, I will.

Mr. Rod Jackson: That kind of answers my next question: What’s the budget? Because we’ve seen—you know, he’s been to the Caribbean, South America, Russia and other places. I’d be very curious, and if you could endeavour—obviously you don’t have the numbers there. I’d like to know how much money is being spent on a mascot to travel around the world and who’s travelling with him and what kind of benefits we’re receiving from having him go to these places. I’m interested to know how he’s travelling—

Mr. Saäd Rafi: No, I understand. I will endeavour to get that for you. I can understand him travelling kind of north-south, in the Pan American countries, because he represents the brand of the games, designed by four young girls here in Markham. Certainly, he’s been in numerous schools around Ontario—probably two a day. I could see why there might have been a time where, you know, if you’re going down to take the flame—let’s say, when we pick up the torch relay and pick up the flame, do you want to have the mascot there because he represents what the games are about? I’m sorry, you have me on the Russia thing. I’ll have to look into that. I’ll see if we have a discrete budget just for the mascot and the—

Mr. Rod Jackson: Yes, if you could look into that, let us know. I’d be curious to know that.

I’m assuming I’m out of time.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): That is time.

On behalf of the committee, we would like to thank you, as you’ve heard many times, for taking the opportunity to come before us and answering questions and making comments. We appreciate it.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Thank you, and thank you for your questions.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Good luck with the games.

Mr. Saäd Rafi: Thank you.

Mrs. Donna H. Cansfield: I’ll move a five-minute break.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): A five-minute recess for everybody to come in and get ready.

The committee recessed from 1603 to 1609.

WATERFRONT TORONTO

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): I’d like to call the meeting back to order and, again, welcome the members of government, opposition and the third party.

It’s a special honour to have with us today representation from Waterfront Toronto. We have with us the president and chief executive officer, Mr. John Campbell. Mr. Campbell, we welcome you. You have five minutes for a presentation, and it will be followed by 25 minutes of questioning or comments from each party, and then another subsequent 10 minutes of questioning. The floor is yours, sir. Welcome.

Mr. John Campbell: Thank you very much. I want to thank you all for the opportunity to come to speak to you today at the committee. I just want to take a few minutes to give the committee some context, outline our role and mandate and how it fits within the context of what your discussions are.

We were established in 2001 by three orders of government to oversee all aspects of the planning and development of what’s called the designated waterfront area, defined by Dowling Avenue in the west, Coxwell in the east, and down to the water’s edge of Lake Ontario. Each order of government committed $500 million, $1.5 billion in total, as seed capital, plus control of land. We act as the master developer for those lands, about 2,000 acres in total. Using the seed capital, we invest in enabling infrastructure, environmental remediation, flood protection, and roads and services. We zone and obtain all planning approvals from the city, as well as pre-negotiating section 37 agreements with the city.

The funding model leverages the seed capital by working with private development partners who buy the land for development. We’re not builders; we’re the master developer, and builders come in and develop the particular buildings. The land is tendered competitively, and development partners are chosen based on their ability to meet and deliver on a comprehensive list of criteria. The money earned is used to further public infrastructure.

Our approach is based on smart-planning principles and works in sync with market realities. That means we’re guided by public policy, so it’s not about real estate development; it’s about real estate revitalization, which is about being driven by public policy: reducing sprawl, creating sustainable communities, increasing the supply of affordable housing, building a spectacular public realm, delivering quality of place overall, and developing a transit-first approach to development. It’s really what I’d call an economic long game, about how you create a quality of place that allows us to attract the best and brightest people that will make Toronto and Ontario a competitive entity going into the future.

When we’re finished, the waterfront will be home to more than 40,000 residential units, so about 110,000 people, and 40,000 jobs situated in diverse, mixed-use communities. All of this is being achieved through a very inclusive process of public and stakeholder consultation and prudent fiscal management. Ultimately, a revitalized waterfront will be at the hub of creative industries’ innovation, all enabling Toronto and Ontario to become globally competitive.

I would say the approach is working. An independent economic analysis last summer, in 2013, confirmed the returns on the public investment of the $1.26 billion invested to that date, last summer, in waterfront revitalization. For that, we had $3.2 billion in economic output for the Canadian economy, and the creation of 16,200 full-time years of employment, with 96% of the expenditures made in Ontario.

In addition to that, development projects valued at $2.6 billion were undertaken, and the construction from these projects yielded $2.2 billion in value to the Canadian economy, and an additional 24,000 full-time years of employment.

In addition to that, I would say that our work has been the catalyst for private sector investment and development around our designated waterfront area, valued at $9.6 billion, on privately owned lands across the waterfront and in adjacent neighbourhoods.

Within the first 10 years of our mandate, we’ve effectively returned to the governments, through revenues alone, the total cost of the tripartite $1.5-billion investment. So if you look at the $1.3 billion of our direct investment, it’s generated about $622 million of revenue, $237 million to the provincial government, and an additional $838 million of revenues to three levels of government—again, generated by the $2.6 billion of private sector investment so far. So when you look at that, we’ve already generated about $1.5 billion in tax revenues back to the governments. The provincial return on that is about $550 million, approximately. So we’re already returning the initial seed capital investment, so that model is working.

Turning to the West Don Lands, in particular, we are the master developer for the West Don Lands, and we have developed an award-winning precinct revitalization master plan that’s really transforming now, before our eyes, an urban brownfield site, one of the worst, into one of Toronto’s great new communities. It’ll be a mixed-use community, integrated with parks and open spaces that emphasize design excellence—again, with transit-oriented urban living and global best practices in sustainable development.

The plan creates a community seamlessly integrated with Corktown and the Distillery District. Interestingly, the decision to situate the athletes’ village here was made, in large part, because the approved precinct plan and rezoning, the community buy-in, and the infrastructure were all well under way. In the summer of 2009, when the PASO group came to look at Toronto as a site, we showed them that the work was already under way and would happen anyway, so it gave them great comfort that in fact this would be done.

To date, we’ve invested about $325 million in the West Don Lands revitalization. The athletes’ village is about one third of the total West Don Lands neighbourhood, and it really is a phenomenal catalyst to advance the development of this area. This would normally have taken 10 to 15 years; we’re going to have a third of it done in a couple of years’ time. By 2015, 50% of the West Don Lands will have been completed.

Our role in the delivery of the athletes’ village was to partner with Infrastructure Ontario to make sure that the contractual and RFP requirements deliver the precinct plan and planning principles for the community. Minister Chiarelli at the time told us that there were on-time and on-budget goals and legacy goals. That’s why he asked us to partner with Infrastructure Ontario to make sure that these things included sustainability, design excellence, and adherence with the built form and zoning requirements that we’d already talked to the community about.

We also contributed as a subject matter expert on a real estate development, management, municipal approvals and so forth. Our real goal, given the extensive public consultation of the precinct plan, was to ensure that legacy and community-building objectives, such as affordable housing, community centres and so forth, were met.

That concludes my opening comments. I’d be very pleased to take questions on it.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Thank you very much, sir. We appreciate that. We’ll move to the government side. Ms. Damerla.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: I think MPP Cansfield has a question that she’ll go with first, and then I’ll follow up.

Mrs. Donna H. Cansfield: Thank you for your presentation. Maybe if I could find a way to put this—one of the presenters who just spoke to us, Mr. Rafi, from the Pan Am Games, spoke about the whole issue around how we were going out and sharing the good news, if you like, with the world. I presume you have some of those initiatives as well under way in terms of what you’re planning to do. I’d like you to share those with me.

Mr. John Campbell: Yes—

Mrs. Donna H. Cansfield: I know that one of the things—just so I can get this on the record—was that the Pan Am Games had actually been in Sochi for the Olympic Games, and that is not true. Our mascot was not there. I’m going to presume that your mascot was not there either. That’s the wonderful world of tweeting and whatever. It can provide a misrepresentation or misconception.

I am interested in what you’re planning to do and how you’re working with the—

Mr. John Campbell: It has been a challenge, because it’s very difficult to get communities outside the immediate area interested. Our view is that this isn’t a neighbourhood asset or a city asset. This is a national, provincial, regional, city asset that we’re building, because we are the economic engine of the country. But it has been challenging to get the word out.

In the first few years, we had huge public cynicism because we’ve had 200 years of studies, and now we’re finally doing it. So there was that built-in resistance and cynicism. Now that people can actually see what’s going on, I think the tone has changed, and they see that all these plans are coming to fruition.

We’re mostly looking at how to expand that knowledge base, and we’re focusing this year in particular on advancing through social media. Right now, our business model is basically funded by grants, so we try to put that into the project, as opposed to self-promotion. But we are trying to get the word out to the entire province and beyond the 416 area. This is a regional, provincial, national asset that we’re building. So it’s mainly though social media plus our own website and those kinds of things.

Mrs. Donna H. Cansfield: Thank you. I’ll give this back to my colleague, but I just wanted to make a comment as a former Minister of Natural Resources. I have to say how pleased I am to see something being done with that particular brownfield and the fact that it has been revitalized. I think that’s very important, but also how you’ve kept the component of the park. If there’s anything that really needed to be cleaned up, it was the whole Don River and the basin, especially at the bottom, and looking at how that can be managed in a way that benefits everyone, particularly those who live there. But it’s a benefit to the entire city.

Mr. John Campbell: There’s two points that I’d respond with. I appreciate your comments. I think what we have learned in looking at other cities around the world is that great cities are defined by their great public realm and their parks. It’s not the buildings; it’s really the experience you have as a citizen walking around that defines what a great city is.

In particular, in the Don—Corktown Common, as it’s now called—it’s a dual purpose. It acts as a 17-acre, city-wide park, but it also acts as a huge flood-protection landform that frees up all the land that was frozen, the old Ataratiri lands. In fact, it protects all of the eastern part of downtown from floods.

If we had the flood that we have to design for—you have to design for a certain number of years cycle or a large event that you’ve just had. Well, we had Hurricane Hazel in the 1950s, so that’s what we have to design for. If we have a Hurricane Hazel in the Don River watershed, we actually will have two thirds of the water of Niagara Falls coming down through the corridor, and you’d have water in the lobby of Brookfield Place on Bay Street.

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The first thing that we’ve done is build the flood protection landform with a park on top that acts as its double duty. We have more to do. There’s a second phase we have to do in the Portlands, but it is a key element in transforming that area.

Mrs. Donna H. Cansfield: Thank you. You’ve also protected the biodiversity in that area, which is also very important because it is a significant bird and small animal place as well, so thank you so much for what you’ve done.

Mr. John Campbell: Well, that’s great. We actually have a sustainability framework that defines how we design this, and that is an important element.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Thank you. Ms. Damerla.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Thank you, Mr. Campbell, for coming out today and for that wonderful presentation. I do want to say that when I read on your resumé that you were part of the leadership role in building BCE Place—I just have to say, that’s one of my favourite buildings in downtown Toronto. I still remember the first time I walked in and I saw this old facade preserved and this absolutely beautiful atrium built on top; a marvellous job. I’m pretty confident that we’re in very good hands with you here with the Toronto waterfront.

You bring all of this experience, and I just wanted to ask you a few questions around that, if you don’t mind. Could you tell me how long you’ve been with Waterfront Toronto?

Mr. John Campbell: Since the spring of 2003.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: What other organizations did you work with before Waterfront Toronto?

Mr. John Campbell: I worked for the Brookfield organization for, I think, 12 or 13 years; I had a number of roles in that capacity—the development of BCE or Brookfield Place, as it’s now called. I ran a national property management firm and I also was involved in, I’ll call it, their initial foray into high tech for a couple of years, Brookfield Ventures. Before that, I worked for Bimcor, which was the pension fund manager for the BCE group of companies, for about three years as part of their cleanup team, post the 1986 scandal. I went in as part of their cleanup team. Before that I worked for Bell Canada in their real estate department doing construction and construction management.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Thank you for sharing that.

Just moving on to the athletes’ village itself—actually, I was very intrigued to hear about some of the flood protection measures that you were talking about, because certainly after the last summer flooding in parts of Toronto and Mississauga, we’re very sensitive to that. It’s good to know that as we build forward, you’re already not only ensuring that the construction doesn’t add to flooding—if anything, you’re making sure that as you construct, you protect from flooding, so bravo to that.

The athletes’ village, for whatever reason, has been one of the most scrutinized parts of the games so far. Perhaps you could tell us about the partners that you’ve been working with in order to build this large, very unique project.

Mr. John Campbell: I think one of the reasons it gets a lot of scrutiny is, in any bid—from what I’m told; I’m not an expert in this at all, but I’m told by others that the village is the core element of any bid because that’s the experience the athletes and visitors take home with them. You may have a pool in Scarborough and a stadium out in Hamilton or whatever, but the experience they feel, it’s all in the village. That’s a critical element in the bid, and I think that’s why we were successful in the bid, because we were well along in that exercise.

Our role really was, as you know, because the province is basically the financial backstop for the games—the province wanted to make sure their procurement agency was the one bringing it on stream, which is fine. The only exception was the village, because there, there were legacy attributes they wanted to ensure.

This is an interesting situation because, unlike London, England, as an example, where the village was purpose-built for the games—they’re going to try and figure out what they’re doing with it afterwards, and I think they’re having some difficulty. We’re building exactly what we told the community we were going to build before the games came along. We’re building a mid-rise on the main streets, stacked townhouses on the side streets for family; we’re building the community housing that is the right end use, and we’re just temporarily using it for the games, whereas London has built these very large, squat—I don’t know how to define them—they’re like bunkers—and they’re trying to figure out what to do with them now. So I think we’ve got a good situation where we’re using the games to advance the right end outcome.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Thank you, Mr. Campbell. I think you’re spot-on about that. I feel the same way. In fact, I was talking about it in my earlier round of questioning. These games have been planned from the get-go with the idea of what we do after the games with everything that we’ve built. Certainly, the athletes’ village is the jewel in the crown in terms of post-games use.

I heard you say, rhetorically, I think, that after 200 years of planning, finally something is being done on the West Don Lands. Could you tell us how it came about that it was selected as the site?

Mr. John Campbell: I think it was selected as the site because of timing more than anything else because, in fact, we were under way. We had the municipal approvals and we were under way developing it and putting the infrastructure in. It was just very timely that we could pick a location that was already being built, and so it gave great credibility to our bid.

In the fall of 2009, when we went down to Guadalajara, where they chose the next games after Guadalajara, the Saturday before the decision, the new governor of Jalisco decided to change the location—the equivalent of from West Don Lands to Mississauga, 18 months before the games. That threw them into quite a fit.

In our bid, we were saying, “Look, we’re building anyway,” so we provided a great deal of certainty that the village was going to get built. I think that really helped our bid.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Would it be fair to say that the games have actually sped up your development plans for the West Don Lands?

Mr. John Campbell: Oh, absolutely—I would say by at least five years. When you look at the development before that, we had River City being done by Urban Capital, which is probably four phases, a total of 1,000 units. They’ve done their first phase; their second phase is under construction and they’re thinking about getting into the third phase. That’s maybe 750 units. We’ve got all this area, but we’ll have half done by the end of the games, so it’s a huge catalyst.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: I already heard you talk about what the development is going to mean to the area and the city, but could you also talk about any spinoffs that this kind of revitalization project might have?

Mr. John Campbell: One of the things that we’re all struggling with when we look at trying to build a mixed-use community is that affordable housing is a real challenge. We all know that. We have provided land, but who’s providing the extra dollars? I think the fact that now the games have generated a YMCA at George Brown and a couple of affordable housing buildings is absolutely phenomenal. These are things we would struggle with. I think there’s a huge legacy for the community that wouldn’t have been there otherwise, probably.

We had already been dealing with YMCA and George Brown, but we hadn’t been able to finalize a deal, and then the games came along and that accelerated everything and that got put into the hopper, so we have that now as well.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Would it be fair to say that these are perhaps the first games in the history of these games where the village is being turned in part into a residence for university and college students?

Mr. John Campbell: I don’t know. I’d like to say yes, but I don’t have enough background in the games, per se, to be able to say that.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: What would you just say to critics who say that it’s a poor investment for the province to spend on building this athletes’ village and the legacy pieces that it’s going to offer after the games?

Mr. John Campbell: I think that’s the wrong message. I think that this has been a great-news story—not just a good story; it’s a great-news story. We’re building a community. The whole east part of downtown—the perception has changed. It was a real sort of down-at-the-heels place. It’s not. It’s now the next new sustainable great urban design and great public realm. I couldn’t agree less with that statement. It’s really, I think, a great-news story that has advanced redevelopment and revitalization. It has allowed us to really revitalize—it’s not just real estate; again, it’s about this public policy—in a way that I think is a great city-building endeavour.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: You’ve seen a lot of real estate deals and transactions, so could you speak a little about the financing of this project and what makes the financing unique?

Mr. John Campbell: We were engaged in partnership with Infrastructure Ontario, so I can’t say a lot about it. We were there, kind of managing the front end with them and doing the procurement. I think that once it got into the contractual arrangements, I took that over. We’re, in a sense, effectively owned by three governments, so in some cases we’re trusted by all three and in some cases we’re not privy to any of the privacy issues. We’re not privy to treasury board documents.

I know that, for example, we’ve got good procurement. We’ve got a great team in there. The overall price tag was around $514 million for the village, for the basic housing, the buildings and the servicing for the temporary pads and so forth, but other than that I don’t know a lot of details about the intricacies of the contract arrangements.

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Ms. Dipika Damerla: It just seems like such a unique project. I’m just curious: Has this project won any awards?

Mr. John Campbell: Oh, yes. I don’t know which ones it has won. We’ve won over 60 awards in the waterfront for the last 10 years, but I’m sorry I can’t tell you; I don’t have them divided up by project. We’ve won awards for Corktown Common, for the precinct planning and all kinds of stuff. We won an award for our public consultation process. I’d have to go back and check which ones—we’re focused on the West Don Lands.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Yes, I’d be curious to know.

Mr. John Campbell: We’ve won a lot of design awards, because we have been out making sure we attract the best and brightest people.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: The previous presenter spoke about how accessible the games are in terms of people with disability issues and that sort of thing. Could you speak to the accessibility of the village?

Mr. John Campbell: That’s been designed with all those considerations in mind. I don’t have the details. I’m not an architect, so I can’t tell you the curb heights are this much or this high, but clearly we’re building a modern, up-to-date village that includes all those attributes for curbs and—

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Yes, it would have to, because I’m going to assume that the Parapan athletes would be living there as well, so it would automatically have to be.

Mr. John Campbell: Yes. Initially we had some challenges, because we’re building in a certain area. We’re trialing a new street typology called woonerfs—it’s a Dutch term. It’s a street in which no one has the right of way. It’s not signed, so cars, bicycles and pedestrians all mix. As a consequence, everybody looks after everybody else, so people take care. It’s not the typical way, where you have curb-to-curb black asphalt, I’m the driver and I’ve got the right of way. In this particular case, no one has the right of way. It’s a pedestrianized surface.

But one of the challenges we had was how to deal with the visually impaired, because they were relying on the curb. We’ve had to think about new ways of making sure we also look after the visually impaired, on top of this new street typology.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: That’s fascinating.

It’s always good to have an economic story behind these good-news stories. Could you speak to how many jobs the construction of the athletes’ village is going to lead to?

Mr. John Campbell: I don’t know if we have them broken down, per se. The information I have was, in a sense, the global number of jobs we’ve created. I don’t have it broken down by the West Don Lands—by precinct.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Thank you. No more questions.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): You’re all done? Nine minutes remaining. Thank you very much.

We’ll go over to the opposition. Mr. Jackson.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Thank you for coming in today. I appreciate it. I know you’re a busy guy and you’ve got other things to do, so I really appreciate your time.

Mr. John Campbell: There are a few things on our plate.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Yes, I bet, so I really do appreciate your being present.

Can you outline for the committee your involvement with TO2015 and with the secretariat?

Mr. John Campbell: Yes. Typically, we deal with each government through our own secretariat, so we report to the Ministry of Infrastructure. There’s a secretariat there that we deal with for funding and for all these issues. We’ve met the Pan Am secretariat, and we’ll probably have more involvement with Toronto in 2015, looking at ways that we can leverage each other’s activities to try to promote what we’re doing.

For example, Saäd and I have been having discussions. We want to look at an event this summer, a celebration one year ahead of the games starting. So we’re looking at how we can work with them to use the waterfront or other areas as a venue.

We’re looking at how we can use the areas all along the waterfront for informal venues. For example, I did make a presentation to Saäd’s predecessor about looking at Queen’s Quay as, perhaps, our Robson Square, because Queen’s Quay will be built out in the spring of 2015. It’s an absolute nightmare right now when you go down there, but it will be absolutely spectacular in the summer of 2015. It will be Toronto’s new signature street. So how can we use that to our advantage to bring visitors there for informal celebrations, for example? There’s a lot of that discussion going on.

We have a public art program that we’re working with. One of the unique attributes we have is that, because we’re the master developer of large areas, we can do things differently. By that I mean that typically in Toronto, like most major cities, developers have to put 1% of the hard cost of projects into public art. Well, it ends up being what I call band-aid art—a bit here and a bit there.

What we’ve said is, in West Don Lands, for example, let’s create a community art program. We’ll front-end the money and, through the city’s help, we’ll go to developers and get their 1% afterwards as they bring buildings on stream, so we get a community-wide public art program that puts public art in very visible, prominent public places and avoids what I call the ticky-tacky sort of band-aid art that people stick in their lobbies and backyards and so forth. It gets a bit more value. Those are the kinds of things.

So on East Bayfront—we’re looking again at the waterfront—are there ways we deal with Toronto 2015 to look at what they’re doing and incorporate some of those themes in our public art program, as one example? It’s rather informal, but we are working with them to try to take advantage of each other.

Mr. Rod Jackson: So it’s an informal relationship.

Mr. John Campbell: Yes.

Mr. Rod Jackson: You said something interesting: that this project would have been built anyway at some point, within probably the next five years I think is the number you used. What would the funding model have been if the Pan Am Games weren’t coming to Toronto?

Mr. John Campbell: It would have been our typical funding model, which is basically that we provide the infrastructure investment through government grants and we sell pieces of government land to the private sector for them to develop the buildings.

The challenge would have been—it’s easy to build condos; you can build condos till the cows come home these days, but the hard part is, how do you get the other community facilities, like the George Brown and the YMCA and the affordable housing? Those are real challenges.

Mr. Rod Jackson: So, if the Pan Am Games weren’t coming, the funding model would have seen a return on the investment, correct, the actual monetary investment?

Mr. John Campbell: Yes. I mean, I think our model is, all the money we get gets plowed back in; it just gets cycled like a revolving loan.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Right, sure. Before I move into the second part of that question, I actually do have some clarification I’d like to ask you about. In your document—I’m not sure what page—this one right here.

Mr. John Campbell: Yes, 2.6, the first six projects we got—yes.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Yes. The Pan Am athletes’ village is in there as $814 million. Is that a current number?

Mr. John Campbell: Oh, that’s the retail—sorry. Thank you. That’s the development value, not the cost.

Mr. Rod Jackson: That’s the cost?

Mr. John Campbell: No, no, it’s not the cost. It’s the development value, so the retail value of the project.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay. So it’s my understanding that this is being funded entirely by Infrastructure Ontario. Correct? The building, not the retail value—so $709 million is what we’re told is the—

Mr. John Campbell: Infrastructure Ontario is paying $514 million—I think that’s the gross price they’re paying the developer for the village. On top of that, there are investments in infrastructure that have been made.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Okay. Are you aware of what the return is after the Pan Am Games are over, to the government, after having made that $709-million investment?

Mr. John Campbell: Other than our calculation of the tax return, meaning the indirect and direct taxation revenue, which we’ve calculated in the presentation.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Right. So we were told that the return could be anywhere between $63 million and $70 million, which is a very small percentage of that $709-million investment, I’d say. Wouldn’t you find that a little disturbing as a return on investment?

Mr. John Campbell: It depends what you’re getting for it. I mean, if you were strictly building high-rise residential condos, yes, but I think you’re building community facilities as well, so that’s a big value.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Who takes ownership after the Pan Am Games are over? Who owns and is responsible for the Pan Am athletes’ village?

Mr. John Campbell: The city effectively picks up the public realm, and the YMCA and George Brown pick up their individual ownerships, of course, and the market condos go to the owners who buy them or have bought them, and then the balance of the undeveloped land stays in the joint venture within the boundaries of that village, and they basically sell the units afterwards. So their model is interesting, because it basically minimizes the amount of pre-work you have to do to house the athletes and the visitors. It creates a sense of place, and they’ll enhance their return by building on the blocks that are left over afterwards.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Would you be able to tell me who is actually benefiting from the remainder, after the $63 million or $70 million is returned to the government? Who actually benefits from that remaining $600 million-odd? Who actually takes control of that capital investment and benefits from that investment after the government has walked away?

Mr. John Campbell: Are you referring to the money that the joint venture is putting in?

Mr. Rod Jackson: I’m talking about of the $709-million total investment by Infrastructure Ontario, there is projected between—I’ve heard two numbers: $63 million and $70 million. The remaining amount then, my understanding is, from the deputy minister, or ADM, rather—sorry; I’ve forgotten his name—from the last committee meeting told us that then the keys are handed over to the developer, and the government walks away, getting the benefit of low-income mixed housing and George Brown and the YMCA. All decent investments, but what I’m trying to find out is, who is benefiting outside of the YMCA and maybe the Toronto housing corporation? A non-entity won’t own it. So who’s going to own it, and who’s going to benefit from that investment?

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Mr. John Campbell: It’d be broken up into eventually. The developer will basically get returns on those lands that he has that are—“leftover” sounds pejorative—but lands yet to be developed. He’ll get a return from that. Arguably, we’re all going to benefit from that, because we’re building on a great part of the city.

Mr. Rod Jackson: Well, everybody in Toronto will. I don’t need to tell you that the rest of the province is actually—I know in Barrie alone, my own riding, there’s a dramatic need for housing. So for almost a billion-dollar investment to be made in one spot in Toronto when there are other places—in Haliburton–Kawartha Lakes–Brock, I’m sure, and Hamilton East–Stoney Creek, there’s also a dramatic need for this type of investment. What makes it so special that the rest of the province should pay and feel happy about paying $709 million with a $63-million return?

Mr. John Campbell: Well, I think that you’re getting into the kind of political spectrum, which is not my—

Mr. Rod Jackson: Well, you’re in a political committee, and you were invited to be here, so welcome to the big show.

Mr. John Campbell: Toronto is the economic engine of the province and of the country. We’re growing as a city—or as a region, rather—by 100,000 to 110,000 people a year. We’ve got to sleep somewhere. That’s where the job growth is. That talent pool is coming in. It’s creating great wealth for all of us.

Mr. Rod Jackson: So everybody should move to Toronto.

Mr. John Campbell: No, I’m not saying that. I know there’s probably another problem with rural depopulation, which is another issue that probably we’ll have to deal with later on, because we’re urbanizing very quickly, but—

Mr. Rod Jackson: I wouldn’t call Barrie rural. I wouldn’t call Hamilton rural. Not everywhere else outside of Toronto is rural, sir.

There is a lot of scrutiny on this development. It’s not because it doesn’t meet a need that’s not here; I’m not saying that. I’m trying to get to the bottom of what this investment is going to get the people, the taxpayers, all over Ontario. It is getting the scrutiny it is because it is the single-highest investment that’s being made in the Pan Am Games. It is the biggest ticket item. When we’re getting such low monetary investment return on it, yes, it’s causing some concern.

It was in the Pan Am TO2015 bid book. There are pictures of you with Ian Troop and the minister—I think Minister Sousa at the time—touting its benefits, yet it still wasn’t included in the TO2015 budget, although it appeared in all their marketing material. That’s where the controversy came in, not in the value of it, not in what it’s going to bring to the people of Toronto.

If I’m you, and I’m in your boots, I’m extremely happy about that investment. I would be. But we’re all here in this Legislature representing Ontario, and our question is, what does the rest of Ontario get from this investment? If it’s $63 million—which is a very meagre amount to give back into the coffers—so that there can be a Y in downtown Toronto, and George Brown students could have a residence, and some more low-income housing provided, I find that disturbing, frankly.

I’ll pass it on to my colleague here, if she has any questions.

Ms. Laurie Scott: My colleague spoke of figures: the $709-million expense and the $69-million, maybe, return. Who’s profiting in the middle? You’re going to have housing, but is there not someone making a big profit somewhere in the middle of this?

Mr. John Campbell: Well, the developer is obviously getting—by the way, I should say up front, those numbers you quoted, I’m not familiar with those numbers—

Ms. Laurie Scott: Okay. So we’ll say ballparking.

Mr. John Campbell: We only see our numbers, which are a smaller portion of that. We know that we’ve invested so much in the West Don Lands—rather, you have, through us—but I don’t have access to the information that you’re getting from Infrastructure Ontario and the deputy minister. So I’m sorry.

As far as who’s benefiting from it, I presume that it was a competitive process and we had good bids at the table, and I presume that we’re getting a competitive price.

Ms. Laurie Scott: I caught most of your presentation, and you were comparing—London just had the games, but compare anywhere, if you want to. Is this normal practice, that this much is invested by taxpayers or whoever is hosting it?

Mr. John Campbell: I really can’t—

Ms. Laurie Scott: I mean, I don’t have a lot of experience—

Mr. John Campbell: I don’t know. I’m not sure. I’m not an expert in games. We’re invested in the waterfront, and I can tell you a lot about waterfronts, but I can’t tell you a lot about Olympic Games or Pan Am Games or Commonwealth Games.

Ms. Laurie Scott: Okay. You’re a businessman, obviously—

Mr. John Campbell: I don’t know how this compares—

Ms. Laurie Scott: Obviously, it’s just striking a note that we’re pretty concerned about. We’re here to protect taxpayers’ money. Yes, I get a little portion of the Pan Am Games coming up to my riding, and that’s fine. But there have to be some accountability measures, because right now, it’s pretty tainted out there about the accountability for the games. I know you’re kind of in the middle of it. It’s just that I think when you take on a project like that, and you look at what has been done by the government, you get a little worried that this is not a great investment. You obviously get suspicious of who’s making the profit. We don’t mean to personally attack you here, so I don’t want you to feel that way.

Mr. John Campbell: No, no. It’s quite all right.

Ms. Laurie Scott: We’re trying to get to the bottom of this and say, “Why don’t you just be up front and give us the information we’re asking for?”

Mr. John Campbell: From my point of view or my perspective, the information I have is that things are going quite well. There’s good pricing, and we’re getting a good project and good timing. Everything is on track. We’re doing very well.

Ms. Laurie Scott: Do you think that overall, having games like this—again, it was brought up, I think, in an earlier presentation. We haven’t experienced games to this level, or anything like this, for a long time. You’ve mentioned some benefits that we’ll get out of it, and I don’t disbelieve you at all.

Overall, do you think we’re actually getting the investment that we’re making as a province, that we’re actually going to get the value, say, in the social side? It’s hard to measure, but it’s a lot of money. I could be doing a lot of other things with that amount of money that might have a more direct impact—and I could guide it directly—on social improvements or education.

Mr. John Campbell: I think that we run on the bottom line. We’re focused, when we do our waterfront, and other projects as well, on triple bottom lines, not just on the economic side but also the environmental side and the social side. I think what we’re doing across the waterfront, including the Pan Am village, is building communities, not just building real estate.

I think we are, as best we can, trying to ensure we’re building full communities that have the services, the community centres and affordable housing, and, as well, trying to ensure that as we build housing out, we’re looking at trying to ensure that we build housing for all Canadians. We’re trying to build, for example, in our mandate, 5% low end of housing for ownership, and 20% affordable rental. That’s the mandate, to make sure we’re building mixed communities.

Most waterfronts you see around the world are what I would call enclaves of the über-rich, and normal people can’t afford to live there. You go to Melbourne and Sydney and places like that in Australia, and the units are all empty because absentee owners from China have bought them, and there’s no community.

What we’re doing is building communities. I would say that we are very much concerned about the social mandate and making sure we’re building communities as opposed to just real estate.

Ms. Laurie Scott: Should there have been more demands put on the developers that are involved in it? I don’t know their names, and I don’t know the file as well as my colleague does, so I don’t pretend to. I know there’s going to have to be some investment, probably, by the province, but should there not have been even close to some type of revenue-neutral investment?

When they sell off the market-value ones, for example, are they just getting pure profit, the people involved, the developers?

Mr. John Campbell: They’ve got costs. I think people tend to think that the private sector developers are a bottomless pit of gold. That’s not the case. They have pro formas; in fact, it’s difficult to meet those pro formas.

They’re going to sell those units at probably, let’s say, $700 a square foot. It’s going to cost them $550 or more, or in those ranges. So they’re going to need those revenues to pay back the money that they’ve invested.

Ms. Laurie Scott: I don’t know if you know the answer to this question; I apologize if I’m not asking a question that’s appropriate. Were there a lot of people bidding on the RFP process? Do you know that?

Mr. John Campbell: I think we had two or three. I’m not sure.

Ms. Laurie Scott: Really? Okay.

Mr. John Campbell: I know at least of two names, but I think we had more than that. It’s a long time ago, so I’ve just forgotten.

Ms. Laurie Scott: I know. It’s just that we’re getting close to the deadline, and that’s—

Mr. John Campbell: Yes, I know. Bovis were one of the bidders. They did the London Games. Dundee Kilmer were a bidder, and—I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten some others.

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Ms. Laurie Scott: Is it the scale of the project? Is that why there weren’t more bidders?

Mr. John Campbell: It’s a big risk, and as I understand it, they had to put a lot of equity in front. So there was a lot of skin in the game. It was challenging.

Ms. Laurie Scott: Yes.

Mr. John Campbell: Again, I’m sort of talking from the sidelines here. Infrastructure Ontario have a great procurement model, and I think they want to make sure that those who are bidding had the financial wherewithal to deliver. It’s a big project.

Ms. Laurie Scott: Okay. So we’re obviously going to follow that closer, but I just wanted to get your take as to past experiences and bringing them to the table.

I don’t disagree. You’re right about the models, and I think we can learn a lot from it. When it’s coming down the track, we’ll try and make it as accountable as possible, but we’re in opposition and we’re trying to do the best we can. I guess we’ll see at the end of the day if it has been of benefit. My colleague did mention that it is a benefit to the city of Toronto people; not so much everywhere else in the province. But we understand. We’ll come back for more at a different date maybe—more information.

Can you speak a bit to the city’s involvement here? What are they actually going to gain out of this in housing units? Do you know their list for affordable housing? I’ve got a long one, and I live in rural Ontario. I couldn’t imagine how it is here.

Mr. John Campbell: They have a long list. Before the games came along, we had done a deal with the housing corporation for the units on the corner of King Street and River—about 258 units, half of which were mid-rise seniors’ housing, and in behind, when you ran down River Street towards the south, stacked townhouses on the side streets. That was the first project that we had done, and that was a very big challenge to do because we don’t have an affordable housing program. So the city is taking on those units. They’ve got a long list. Of course, we held a procurement process for the other two buildings that are part of the village—Wigwamen has won one and Fred Victor has the other one. So there’s a mixture of affordable housing operators in the area already. So you’ve got three now going in.

Ms. Laurie Scott: So does this help the city of Toronto and their affordable housing list? How many units is it?

Mr. John Campbell: It’ll take pressure off this—presumably if Fred Victor and Wigwamen fill 500 units, that’s 500 units that don’t have to be looked after by somebody else.

Ms. Laurie Scott: Are we talking that number, roughly around 500 units?

Mr. John Campbell: I think it’s around 500 for the two—Wigwamen, Fred Victor and 250 for the TCH building on the corner of River and King.

Ms. Laurie Scott: It certainly all helps, but probably it’s kind of a drop in a bucket—a big bucket of need that’s out there, and it’s across the province. It’s not just Toronto that has the affordable housing problem.

Mr. John Campbell: No. We’ve done studies on this, and we’re still struggling for that magic answer, but, boy, it’s tough. What we’re mandated with is to make sure that the affordability is 100% of the average rent as defined by CMHC, or, if the money flows down through the city, 80%. When we look at those numbers, that rent will only support a mortgage of so much, so you need about a $150,000-a-door subsidy on top of the mortgage to be able to make it happen, and that’s a lot of money.

Ms. Laurie Scott: Astronomical.

Mr. John Campbell: Yes.

Ms. Laurie Scott: So I’ll ask you a question: What do you think of wooden structures? Should they be more than—it’s more affordable, if you’re talking affordable housing. Do you change the building code?

Mr. John Campbell: It’s a very interesting point. We’ve just been involved with a firm called Quadrangle, looking at a submission. We did submit to work on a prototype wood frame high-rise building or a mid-rise building, but were unsuccessful. The government—it was FCM that were doing it, I think—gave it to somebody else. But that is a future possibility of looking at stick frame construction at a higher level.

Ms. Laurie Scott: Yes, it’s just affordability—getting back to the question of how you provide affordable housing when it just seems that the lists never end everywhere across the province for affordable housing. It’s getting harder and harder. I don’t know how people buy the houses they buy now. I think they’re mortgaged for generations. They’d have to be. It’s kind of—

Mr. John Campbell: Yes, it’s sort of like in England. When you buy a house, I think you buy the mortgage for your children and your grandchildren. You don’t pay it off like in Canada.

Ms. Laurie Scott: Anyway, it’s just questions for the future. From your side, it’s a very exciting development, the Don Lands. I know that the MPP from Etobicoke Centre—right, Donna? Yes—brought valid points about doing it in an environmentally sustainable way.

Mr. John Campbell: Yes. I think it’s a great-news story, and it’s not just for Toronto. The waterfront, including the West Don Lands, is a regional, provincial and national asset. To Ms. Cansfield’s earlier comments, we’ve got to get the word out that it belongs to everybody and people should be able to enjoy it.

Ms. Laurie Scott: Okay, well, thank you for coming today and talking to our questions. We’re just trying to get accountability in the games, so we appreciate your participation in today’s committee.

Mr. John Campbell: I’m sorry I can’t answer—a lot of the information we don’t have is sort of held privy by the province. So we have some information but not all the information we would otherwise have.

Ms. Laurie Scott: Thank you again for coming to the committee today and making your presentation and answering the questions.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): We’ll move to the third party. Mr. Miller.

Mr. Paul Miller: Good afternoon, Mr. Campbell. I guess I’ll start off by with: Would it be fair to say that your organization would oversee contracts awarded to builders and developers? Would you be involved in that?

Mr. John Campbell: The answer is, it depends. Our mandate really is to use control of land to bring on developers, and we do contract directly for some infrastructure. In other cases, it’s through other agencies. For example, we’re funding the TTC for the second platform. We fund TRCA for work in water. We are funding Infrastructure Ontario. There’s money flowing out of our budget that goes to Infrastructure Ontario for the flood protection land berm. In some cases we do it directly, and in other cases it’s indirectly. It’s really quite a mixed bag.

Mr. Paul Miller: In your direct cases, would you have a cap on contracts awarded to companies outside of the province—or the country, for that matter? Do you have a cap on percentages? We’ve had some problems in Hamilton with the stadium contracts being awarded to overseas French companies and other companies in reference to instrumentation jobs and electrical jobs that our people are more than qualified to do in the Hamilton area. The expertise is there, so it wasn’t a lack of local input. For whatever reason, they did not get the contract, and there were no really good reasons. You can’t talk about Hamilton, but have you had any companies or potential builders and unions complaining about the lack of participation in your process? Are they going to play a huge role? We want to keep the jobs in Ontario. We want to put our people to work. We don’t want to be awarding overseas contracts.

Mr. John Campbell: I think if you look at our stats I showed, most of the expenditures are in Ontario. Clearly, even where we have cases where we’ve gone outside for design help, basically they have to link up with an Ontario firm.

I’ll talk about design first. When we go for design, we basically canvass the world, quite honestly. But we know that whoever gets appointed has to have a local partner, and that works quite well. So a lot of the—

Mr. Paul Miller: Is it a tendering process?

Mr. John Campbell: Yes. Well, it’s an RFP process. So it’s slightly different than a tender. It’s not a true tender.

Mr. Paul Miller: Okay. Slightly different.

Mr. John Campbell: So there’s a value equation there.

On the actual construction, I don’t think we’ve got jobs big enough to have a foreign firm want to come in. I think the only case I’ve seen, even sort of on the edge, was Bovis, with a tender for the village itself. That was the only case I think I saw a—

Mr. Paul Miller: Well, they have a French company and a Swiss company in Hamilton that are doing some of the work, which was really upsetting to us—me, representing that area—because we had companies in Burlington, in St. Catharines and in Hamilton that are more than qualified to have handled that work, and they didn’t get it. So there was a lot of questions asked around that.

Mr. John Campbell: Most of our work is civil work. For example, if you look at our construction managers, they’re Eastern, PCL, EllisDon, people like that. They typically hire local trades. That’s where most of it is—

Mr. Paul Miller: That’s what I was trying to get at. I want to see local trades used, because we certainly have the workforce, the ability and the wherewithal to do work in Ontario that would be long-lasting and rewarding.

I believe in September 2010 at the TO2015 Diversity Business Conference, you were a speaker. It was stated: “The speakers will outline opportunities and steps that diversity-owned businesses can take to be involved in the games independently or in partnership with tier 1 suppliers.” Could you possibly get some information for us on the structure, the background, and provide an update on that? You did mention it in that presentation you made.

Mr. John Campbell: We tried to encourage that by basically making sure that whenever we issue contracts, the information goes out there so the diversity-owned companies can talk to the PCLs or Easterns or EllisDons of the world, to make sure that they are available. When I spoke at that conference, a lot of the people who were there who were, I’ll call it, diversity-owned business were much further down the value chain: the guy who manufactures shower doors, or those kinds of things.

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Mr. Paul Miller: They weren’t large companies?

Mr. John Campbell: No, they were more a kind of entrepreneurial small business—

Mr. Paul Miller: Which is good for our province, and which is 74% of our province, by the way.

Mr. John Campbell: I’m not being pejorative about the companies. I’m just saying that the time isn’t there yet, in a lot of cases. If we’re doing Queen’s Quay Boulevard, for example, we’re focused on having hydro, gas, Bell and paving done—all that kind of stuff.

Mr. Paul Miller: All the utilities. Would it be possible, then, as you progress and you get into the final stages of this wonderful project, that you could provide us some information on the percentages of local contractors that were used and the percentage of small businesses that you mentioned—the guy with the taps or the guy with the windows? I would like a percentage on that, because some people are concerned that out-of-province, out-of-country, out-of-Canada will benefit from some of this, and that maybe it would better that our local businesses benefited.

As you know, the stimulus from a lot of these projects that I’ve seen in the past, over the years—secondary and third industries are hugely beneficial, because they supply the big companies with whatever it might be, whether it’s electrical, other things, hardware. So I think it’s important that you keep track of the contracts that are awarded outside the province and the country, as well as the number of personnel used that are non-Ontario residents. Because, yes, it’s a long-lasting legacy we want to leave, but we also don’t want to burn our local people—small businesses—and hurt them by bringing competitors in here that shouldn’t be here.

Mr. John Campbell: In most cases, it wouldn’t make sense to bring small competitors in; it doesn’t make any economic sense. We have some information on our projects, but I don’t have access to, if we do a deal with Urban Capital, as an example—

Mr. Paul Miller: Certainly. You’d have only your half.

Mr. John Campbell: I don’t have access to—

Mr. Paul Miller: Whatever you’ve got, I’d appreciate.

Mr. John Campbell: Okay.

Mr. Paul Miller: And you could do an ongoing—not every month, but every five, six months, maybe, give us an update on how things are going.

Mr. John Campbell: We do certainly track—you saw from the numbers. We know how much is invested locally.

Mr. Paul Miller: It’s very important to the people I represent. I, too, have three trades. It’s very important that what’s built in Ontario stays in Ontario, so to speak. I want to maintain that direction, because it certainly would have a long-term asset to our working people.

Who’s your main contact at TO2015?

Mr. John Campbell: Personally, it would be Saäd Rafi. It was Ian before; now it’s Saäd. There are probably a lot of connections at various levels of the organization.

Mr. Paul Miller: Do you, in your role as the waterfront—and we do have a waterfront in Hamilton too, by the way—

Mr. John Campbell: Oh, I understand that.

Mr. Paul Miller: But do you work in conjunction with other business organizations throughout the province for utilization of future endeavours or also for positive input to your projects, or are you just strictly, “It’s all about Toronto”?

Mr. John Campbell: What we try to do is figure out how we can share that information. Lessons learned have been at taxpayer expense, and we like to have that information available to any other Canadian taxpaying organization. But we haven’t found a very good vehicle for it just yet, and we’re trying to figure out how we do that.

Mr. Paul Miller: I agree with my colleague from the official opposition that we like to think that Ontario doesn’t end in Burlington, but the bottom line is that it’s certainly obvious that this is our showcase Toronto and we want to reach out to the world. I don’t have a problem with that, and I understand that investment is important. But certainly we would like a little bit trickling our way after the events are over, in reference, maybe, to potential backup buildings, especially speaking of housing.

I am in an area that is the second-poorest area in Ontario. Twenty per cent of the people in my riding are living below the poverty level in some very bad conditions. I was hoping that, in the infinite wisdom of the people from 2015 and the waterfront people and all that, they would want to build affordable housing in Hamilton for the games and then for after-use, because we’re down about 12,000 units in the Hamilton area that we could use. It’s sad. I really don’t think that was taken into consideration. Moving athletes, transportation and moving people around a large city like Toronto is certainly a challenge, but also, in the Hamilton area, it certainly would be beneficial to be able to have some legacy buildings. If I had been running the show, I would have had affordable housing in every major—now, I’m not talking every town; I’m talking Welland, Waterloo, Hamilton, wherever the events are taking place. For example, all the soccer is going to be played in Hamilton, everything. Practices, games—everything is going to be played at the Hamilton stadium. Why couldn’t we have provided affordable housing? Soccer is one of the biggest events, and it takes in hundreds and thousands of people and teams and things that would be coming into the Hamilton area over that 28-day period. We certainly could have used some affordable housing.

I just wish sometimes people would look outside the bubble and not focus directly on Toronto all the time. That’s unfortunate, but that happens.

Mr. John Campbell: Yes. I think when you look at the bids, though—again, I’m not an expert at the games and so forth, but what I have been exposed to is that the village issue was a major component of every bid. We competed against Lima and Bogotá. Having the village in one location, which is the experience the athletes share, living there, was a critical part. If we had fragmented it and put it in three or four venues, I doubt whether we would have won the bid.

Mr. Paul Miller: Well, according to the last speaker, you do have four satellite buildings that are going to be built, which he informed us of just a couple of hours ago.

Mr. John Campbell: For housing?

Mr. Paul Miller: For housing. That’s what he told us, unless there’s some mistake.

Mr. John Campbell: Well, that’s news to me.

Mr. Paul Miller: Maybe you’d better have a conversation with him.

Can you provide a definition of affordable rental and affordable ownership and a breakdown for the 2015 housing—I think you discussed it, you touched on it—in terms of market affordability and other kinds of ownership of the rental housing? You mentioned roughly 500 to 600 units. What would be the involvement of the developer in those things? After the building is completed, does the city of Toronto take control of those units, or is it privatized?

Mr. John Campbell: I think it’s turned over to organizations like Fred Victor, in one case, and Wigwamen in the other.

Mr. Paul Miller: What are they? Are they non-profit organizations?

Mr. John Campbell: They’re non-profit affordable rental providers.

Mr. Paul Miller: And that’s for sure, that they will get administration?

Mr. John Campbell: That’s my understanding, yes.

Mr. Paul Miller: Okay. Who set the target or definition for what is classified as affordable, and how many units are to be designed affordable rental or affordable ownership in reference to the private sector? Some of the units are going to be sold by a private developer, whatever he chooses to put in. I’ve been told that these will be basic, and when the developer gets a hold of them, once again, everything’s going to be great, and they’re going to fix it up and make it really nice.

Will the value get out of the reach of an average family income? That’s what I’m concerned about. You can develop the waterfront, and you can say it’s for everybody, but as you’ve pointed out, all over the world, it becomes top real estate. You know, if you’ve been in real estate, how that works. So what’s your answer to that?

Mr. John Campbell: The whole issue of gentrification is a real concern. That’s why basically, across the waterfront, we are mandated to provide land for 20% of the units to be affordable rental; another 5% of ownership is affordable—I think they’re low end of market, so they’re smaller, more affordable units.

“Affordable” is defined by us and Waterfront Toronto as being 100% of the average rents defined by CMHC in the Toronto area. So it’s around $1,150, roughly, for a one-bedroom today.

Now, because there’s no funding around, if the city of Toronto provides the funding or it flows through the city of Toronto, they have another criteria which says, “No, if we provide the money, it has to be 80% of that level.” So it’s roughly $850 or thereabouts.

Those are the two definitions. We have our definition, but it’s superseded by those who fund.

Mr. Paul Miller: What’s your total budget for the 2015 waterfront projects? Do you have a number for that?

Mr. John Campbell: Oh, yes. We—

Mr. Paul Miller: It’s not going to double like the security one, then?

Mr. John Campbell: No, no. Our first business plan is about $1.8 billion, and we’re now looking at what we’re calling Waterfront 2.0, which is the next half of our mandate. We have a 20-year mandate, so the next half is probably $1.5 billion.

Mr. Paul Miller: So $1.5 billion on top of $1.8 billion?

Mr. John Campbell: Yes.

Mr. Paul Miller: So you’re looking at close to $3 billion over a 20-year period? Okay.

You mentioned earlier that you’re satisfied that you’re on target, and you’re happy with the progress and—

Mr. John Campbell: I wish it was faster, but—

Mr. Paul Miller: Have you given yourselves a cushion, a two- or three-month—because we do create weather. There’s weather and problems, as has been mentioned before. Have you given yourself a cushion so that you can meet the deadlines that are in place?

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Mr. John Campbell: Yes, I think so. I think the one project we have that we really want to make sure we get done for the spring of 2015 is the Queen’s Quay revitalization, which is a very complicated project. We’ve been hit by weather; this has been the coldest winter, I think, since 1949.

Mr. Paul Miller: The weather from hell.

Mr. John Campbell: Exactly. So we’ve had challenges down there, but we’ll be on track for the spring of 2015.

Mr. Paul Miller: Has Waterfront Toronto been part of any discussions or information around games transportation and security? If you have, what contributions have you brought to the table on these types of demanding issues?

Mr. John Campbell: No, we have not been engaged at all with the operations of the games in any way. We are, in a sense, a partner in the capital investment of the village, and that’s pretty much it for the games.

Mr. Paul Miller: Do you meet on a regular basis with—I guess it would be Saäd now, and all the other organizations that will be primary in the construction and development and final after-use? Do you have meetings all the time? Does the left hand know what the right hand is doing? Because I know that in projects of this size, there have been some nightmares. I was around, believe it or not, in Montreal for the Olympics. You know what happened there with the Big O. The people of Quebec and Canada were paying for 22 years on some real nightmares. Mayor Drapeau got himself in a lot of trouble. I do remember those times.

Mr. John Campbell: We have not been engaged in any capital works outside the village, so I have no knowledge of the pools or the Hamilton stadium. That’s not our involvement.

On the village, I think, we’re comfortable that—we’ve done the preliminary work and we’re sort of monitoring other work that’s going on, so we’re dealing regularly with Infrastructure Ontario and people like that on the capital side. The procurement model there, bringing Dundee Kilmer in with a very, very tight procurement model, really, is kind of—you can’t get involved too much because you don’t want to be accused of interfering, and they’re going to go, “Well, wait a second. We didn’t meet our dates because Campbell said to do this.” It’s kind of hands-off: Let them do their thing and make sure they’re accountable for the end result.

Mr. Paul Miller: Do you have a contingency fund set up for any possible overruns? Why I say “overruns” is that, from my experience in construction over the years, I’ve seen many companies whose eyes were bigger than their pocketbooks. A lot of them ended up going bankrupt halfway through a process. Our projected costs, in a lot of cases, triple, or double or quadruple. Has the waterfront organization with 2015 got anything for a contingency for those types of things? Because I know for a fact that when things aren’t running—and at the last minute, when we want to get everything ready for the world to come see us, the last couple of months could be very expensive because of the replacement of bankrupt companies or an increase of necessities by the Pan Am committee that comes in, that we may not have met their requirements. Have you got money from both organizations set aside for such a project?

Mr. John Campbell: No. You have to go back to our funding model, which is very unique. Basically, our projects are funded through contribution agreements, and we do not have the luxury of being able to take money from this account and move it to that account. They’re very, very much contained in separate bank accounts—well, one bank account, but separate funds. If we’re under in one project, we can’t move the money across to another project.

Mr. Paul Miller: What you’re telling me, then, if you cannot move it around and you’re on a tight schedule and you have to stick to that model—are you telling me that—and, just off the cuff, do you believe that the things I mentioned could happen? Do you believe that there could be some problems without contingency funds that may crop up in the next 16 months?

Mr. John Campbell: Not in the village. I’m comfortable there because the developer has a lot of skin in the game.

Mr. Paul Miller: There are a lot of other projects.

Mr. John Campbell: The project that we have is not really an official Pan Am project, but we’re trying to get it done. Everyone’s coming to dinner, so you’ve got to make it look nice. We’re trying to ensure that the Queen’s Quay boulevard is done. We’re seeing some budget pressures there, some time pressures. It’s a very complicated project, and we’ve got time issues.

Our way of dealing with contingencies is that we have certain land assets that we can mortgage or sell. We can’t mortgage them today because, in fact, we don’t have the powers to borrow, but that’s hopefully coming through the government in the next few months. We have to look to our other potential sources of revenue to cover off any kind of overages that we would have.

Mr. Paul Miller: As you’re aware, and I’m sure you’ve read through some of the criticisms—the opposition parties were concerned about the lack of joining in the total cost. In other words, the Pan Am village was separate from the original projection. Now we find out that the security has doubled; it was not part of the original amount that the minister brought forward. We’ve gone up close to $1 billion more on things that we felt we were told that that was it. All of a sudden, we’re getting all these surprises that were not tied in.

With all due respect to you, do you have any surprises for me, or are you okay?

Mr. John Campbell: I think we’re okay.

Mr. Paul Miller: That’s good to hear. How much time have I got left? I’m starting to paddle now.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): You’re doing quite well: 4:35.

Mr. Paul Miller: You know what? I think you’ve answered my questions. Thank you, Mr. Campbell. You can have my four minutes for a break.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): We can move to the next round, which will be a 10-minute round. We do have time; is there will for a five-minute break?

Ms. Dipika Damerla: If he wants a break, sure.

Mr. John Campbell: I’m good.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): He’s fine. Ms. Damerla: government side.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Thank you, Mr. Campbell, once again. On the issue of value for money, I was just thinking about it while listening to some arguments here. What I see, is for the $814 million, not only are we going to get some money back from the city of Toronto, but I see we’ve leveraged that into $2.6 billion of additional investment. As a business person, how good is this return? I did some quick math: For every dollar, it’s about $3 back in additional investment. I just wanted your sense on that.

Mr. John Campbell: Well, I would call this the tip of the iceberg. These are the initial six projects. Real estate has a long gestation period. So we’ve done all the infrastructure, and the first six projects are going to generate $2.6 billion, another 800-million-some-odd dollars of direct and indirect tax revenue, I think, getting great returns. So even in the first handful of projects, we’re paying back the seed capital. That’s not to speak of the other projects that are going to come along stream, because we’ve done the infrastructure, or those projects that are in some way catalyzed by the fact that we’re focusing on that part of town, and people say, “Oh, that’s a great place to invest.”

Ms. Dipika Damerla: I worked at a bank, and I ran a small business. I do know that if I was investing and for every dollar that I invested, I could get others to invest $3, I’d be doing pretty good.

The government is in the business of economic development and social development, so if we’ve put forward $800 million for economic and social development, and we can leverage that into $2.6 billion of economic and social development, how would you characterize that?

Mr. John Campbell: It’s pretty good.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Thank you very much.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): We’ll move to the opposition: Mr. Jackson.

Mr. Rod Jackson: We’re going to pass.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): We shall move to the third party: Mr. Miller.

Mr. Paul Miller: I’m a little disappointed; I thought I was going to get a little help there with time.

All right, I’ll go into an area that you probably are going to tell me that you’re not an overseer of. But I just want to get your opinion on it, because obviously, you have a ton of experience.

As you know, we had some trouble with the G8 and G20 security. Of course, the security of the village and the security of the waterfront projects and everything would certainly fall under that 28-day period where the government and the taxpayers are responsible for protecting the athletes and our citizens.

How do you feel about the fact that a private company from the States, that had made several errors in the Vancouver games—they also operated illegally in Ontario for the G20 summit, and they were fined. The Ontario Provincial Police laid a string of charges in March against this company, CSC, Contemporary Security Canada. They’re not really from Canada. They’re from the States. They have a satellite office in Vancouver. They call themselves Canadian. They agreed to pay a $45,000 fine for some of the unqualified efforts they made.

1720

“The Ontario Provincial Police laid a string of charges in March against CSC, including three counts of offering security services while not licensed, two counts of failing to ensure proper uniforms” for their people “and one charge of hiring” unlicensed guards who were not trained “for the G20 and G8 summits. Many of its top executives were also charged” for lack of due diligence. It was worse than that, but I’ll be nice.

“The crown dropped most of those charges—including the more than 20 against company officials—on Friday, telling the court that it was the RCMP that solicited CSC’s business”—convenient for them to drop it—“and granted the contract without considering bids from other, licensed Ontario security firms.”

I’m getting back to that point about jobs in Ontario. Now, this company is in the final two for the bidding. They had a 10-company list that they shortlisted down to five. Now they’re down to two, and this is one of them. Not only has this company been charged and last time operated in Ontario without a licence—and some of their executives were of questionable conduct—but now the provincial police, who laid the charges, are saying they can go with these guys. But now they’re saying they don’t want to do that, because they really were working for the RCMP.

What I’m trying to say is that nobody knows really who hired these guys, or at least they’re not telling us, and now they’re going to be taking care of your village and probably all the other security systems within the games outside of here, outside of Toronto—I’m sure they’ll be in my town too. I have local firms that are very upset, because we have the expertise, and our people—I hate to brag—are way better trained than anything this company could bring forward. They’ve done many, many venues—smaller, but venues. Why aren’t the Waterfront people—security certainly falls under your direction during those days—talking with Saäd and the OPP and the Mounties, or CSIS for that matter, whoever is involved? Security is going to be a huge cost and a huge part of the games, and we certainly want to make everyone safe and feel welcome in Ontario, without any incidents.

Have you had any discussions about security for the games?

Mr. John Campbell: No. That’s not our mandate. Our mandate is really to invest in capital—

Mr. Paul Miller: Well, with all due respect, I’ve heard that from four different people who are saying, “That’s his job.” No disrespect to you. I heard it from Saäd. He said, “Oh, no, I don’t handle procurement,” and the procurement people, “Oh, I don’t handle that.”

Well, folks, this is probably the biggest thing that’s ever happened in Ontario. You would think that everybody would be in the boat, rowing with the same oars, but I don’t think that’s happening. Things fall apart and start to cause problems when the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, or doesn’t care or doesn’t want to be involved, and only cares about their little piece of the pie.

To make the games successful, the pie has to be whole and everyone has to know what everyone else is doing. I’m really concerned that leadership—present company excluded, of course—in these venues and these events is not coordinated; they’re not working together. Every presenter today has told me how wonderful everything is. I’ve got nothing to worry about, and it’s all going to be great. But when I hear people say, “Not mine,” “Not mine,” “Not mine,” that sends up the alarm bells.

I think, with all due respect—this is more of a statement than a question—that you guys had better get your act together, all of you, because the bottom line is that this could end up not good if you don’t know what the other guy is responsible for or what he’s doing. If you say, “I’m not responsible for this”—yes, you are, sir. You’re part of this big project that’s going to happen for Ontario for the first time in our history, and all the people in positions like yours should be aware of what the other guy is doing.

Mr. John Campbell: I’m actually surprised. Your comment sounds very legitimate, but it comes as a surprise to me that someone clearly hasn’t been appointed as being responsible for security. To say it’s all fragmented is somewhat surprising.

Mr. Paul Miller: It is, and I’m just trying to get a handle on it, because obviously, when we’re 16 months away, I’m concerned that—once again, I hate to use it as an example, but if people are rowing in different directions, it certainly could cause some chaos and last-minute blunders and running around at the last minute.

As I said to Saäd, one of my favourite savings is the five Ps, “Prior planning prevents poor performance,” and I’m really getting this feeling—I get these feelings once in a while—that not everybody knows what they should be in charge of or what they can be in charge of, where they should take a proactive role in making this a successful games.

When I hear five major agencies that are involved in the Pan/Parapan Am Games say to me, “Not my responsibility”—the police are saying, “Oh, no. OPP, no; it’s the Mounties’ fault.” The Mounties are saying, “Oh, no, it’s OPP,” and then when one of the biggest and most important items in these games is security and you’ve got a company that’s been charged—charged by the OPP, I might add—fined by our courts, and the OPP’s going to let them do it.

I wouldn’t be hiring these guys. They screwed up in Vancouver. They screwed up the G20, and we’re sitting here bringing them back. Come on. And it’s $81 million. Wow, that’s a lot of taxpayer bucks.

The bottom line is—

Interjection.

Mr. Paul Miller: A little comment about Sochi—well, we don’t live in Russia.

Anyway, the bottom line is, if you’re going to run security, you should run it right, and if you’re going to run a successful games—and I’m not preaching to anybody. My humble opinion is that people in major structural positions should know everything about each other. You should mesh together to run a good games. I really don’t think you’re there yet, and I don’t even know if you will get there. I hope you do. Thank you.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Well, thank you very much, Mr. Miller, and also thank you, Mr. Campbell, for coming before the committee. We really appreciate it, and enjoyed your comments and your insight.

Mr. John Campbell: My pleasure.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Have a good afternoon.

We’ll take a five-minute recess, if that’s okay.

The committee recessed from 1726 to 1730.

COMMITTEE BUSINESS

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): There is another agenda item. I just wanted to point out that at the committee meeting on February 19, the committee did agree to move forward to consider Bill 11. I’m here to see how we are going to move forward with that. I believe, Ms. Damerla, it’s your turn—

Mr. Paul Miller: Mr. Chairman, you were going to deal with this first, you said.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): That will come after. No, I never—no, no, no—

Mr. Paul Miller: Why are we dealing with Bill 11?

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Mr. Miller, we’re going to deal with the agenda, as we had said—

Mr. Paul Miller: Okay, go ahead. Go for it.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): —and then we’ll deal with that.

Ms. Damerla.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: As was discussed at the last meeting, that this would be an agenda item, I’m going to move—and the parts that I’m going to move we already discussed at the subcommittee meeting, at which the NDP was present as well.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Do you have copies of the—

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Yes, we do have copies, right? Yes.

I haven’t talked about the motion. I just wanted to give some background. A subcommittee meeting was called, I believe, last Wednesday during regular committee time. The NDP was here with France Gélinas and I was here. Chair, you were here as well. This is really just a summary of everything that was discussed. This summary was also circulated by the Clerk to all parties, so there are no surprises here. This is something that everybody knows about because this was circulated to all the parties as well.

I’m going to move the motion, Chair. I move that the Clerk, in consultation with the Chair, be authorized to arrange the following with regard to Bill 11, An Act to amend the Ambulance Act with respect to air ambulance services:

(1) One additional day of public hearings to take place on March 26, 2014, followed by two days of clause-by-clause consideration of Bill 11 on the two following Wednesdays during which the committee is scheduled to sit;

(2) Advertisement on the Ontario parliamentary channel, the committee’s website and Canada NewsWire;

(3) Witnesses to be scheduled on a first-come, first-served basis;

(4) Each witness to receive up to five minutes for their presentation, followed by nine minutes for questions from committee members;

(5) That the deadline for written submissions be 3 p.m. on the day following the public hearing; and

(6) That the deadline for filing amendments with the Clerk of the Committee be 11 a.m., two days before clause-by-clause consideration of the bill.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Any further discussion? Ms. Scott.

Ms. Laurie Scott: Can I just make a comment that we still do not have the report from another committee with regard to Ornge, which Bill 11 is addressing? Do you not think we need that report before we have Bill 11 before committee?

Ms. Dipika Damerla: We discussed that with the NDP representative at the subcommittee that day, France Gélinas, and she was fine with us proceeding. I think the original terms, when they were discussed at this committee, were that Bill 11 would move forward, and there were no riders at that time. At that time, it wasn’t made clear that Bill 11 would only move forward if a few things happened. The understanding was that Bill 11 would move forward in exchange for the hearings on Pan Am. Given the understanding we had and the decision that we came to in committee, that’s the basis for moving forward.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Thank you. Mr. Miller.

Mr. Paul Miller: I call for the vote.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): No further discussion? Okay. Those in favour—

Interruption.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Oh, sorry. We’ll just take a minute.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Point of order.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Point of order.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: I just wanted to clarify that the committee voted to move Bill 11 forward, so I don’t understand—I’m just trying to understand what we are doing here right now, because Bill 11 has to move forward, so if this motion doesn’t go forward, my understanding should be that there’s a discussion on what it is that is not in the motion that is liked and to change that. But we can’t not move forward with Bill 11 in some substantive form, because that was agreed to by all parties.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Okay. Thank you.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: I just wanted that on the record, that all parties agreed to move the bill forward, so we cannot have a situation where the bill doesn’t move forward. We can—

Mr. Paul Miller: You mean like Bill 71?

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Sorry?

Mr. Paul Miller: Like Bill 71, which is ready on the order paper and is not moving forward?

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Okay, those in favour of the motion? Those against? The motion is defeated.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: In that case, Chair, can we introduce another motion?

Mr. Paul Miller: I thought I was next.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Yes, but this agenda item isn’t done. Right?

Mr. Paul Miller: Take your turn. Next?

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Mr. Miller has requested to put a motion forward. He was next on the docket.

Mr. Miller.

Mr. Paul Miller: Mr. Chairman, I move that the Standing Committee on General Government continue report writing on the auto insurance study pursuant to standing order 111(a) for the dates of March 26, April 2 and April 9.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Do you have a copy of the motion that’s being passed out? All right.

I think it’s just important to note that the committee had set direction, back on February 19, indicating that on Wednesdays, Bill 11 would be the bill that would be before the committee. I just want to make a point for the committee’s awareness that this would change the direction of the committee as to moving forward.

Mr. Fraser.

Mr. John Fraser: Just a quick question in relation to what you’re saying. The report by the other committee that you were mentioning before: What’s the status of that? Where’s that at? Does anybody know?

Mr. Paul Miller: The government should know.

Interjection.

Mr. John Fraser: It’s not ready? Okay.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Ms. Damerla.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Chair, I’m trying to understand. We have an understanding here that all three parties agreed to that on Wednesdays we would discuss Bill 11. Once the committee agrees to that, does it not move forward with that?

Mr. Paul Miller: Not if there’s an amendment.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Sorry. I’m directing my question to the Chair.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): What I believe is that when a motion was put forward on February 19, there were many factors taken into consideration and concessions made that the Pan Am/Parapan Am Games would be before the committee and that Bill 11 would follow. What’s before us now is that that previous agreement by the committee is not going to be, I would say, respected, or is being changed.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Chair, I’d like to go on record, then, to talk about this motion, because I think it really is unfair. We do business here based on an understanding of how things are going to proceed in a minority government. We give a little, take a little. The give and take with the opposition was that you can move forward with the questioning on Pan Am, and we would, in return, move forward with Bill 11. To just break that arrangement midstream is not honourable. I just think it’s not fair.

I wanted that on the record because our understanding was that we would go forward with Bill 11.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Thank you. Any further discussion? Mr. Miller.

Mr. Paul Miller: In reference to the comments by the member opposite, the parliamentary assistant, and her definition of honour, this is part of the procedures of a committee. These are the types of things that are allowed. So her saying it’s not honourable is total nonsense, because that’s the process.

I’ve brought forward an amendment, as you are well aware, of what we’d like to do. I’m asking for a vote, just like we voted on her important Bill 11 that she said everybody agreed on, which they didn’t. The bottom line is, I would like to move ahead to vote on this amendment, and then if there are any other amendments, that’s fine.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Ms. Scott.

Ms. Laurie Scott: I think that we’re getting committees and subcommittees mixed up. But anyway, the day in February, I think you meant the whole committee—I wasn’t present, I don’t think. That is the problem when you don’t have the critics involved when you vote on Bill 11. Then when we went back to the respective critics, we found out that they haven’t done the report on Ornge, which impacts the bill. That’s all that I’m trying to state. We went back to our critic; they just said, “Why are we doing it before we have the report done from Ornge?” So you’re right.

In the room they voted for Bill 11—I don’t disagree with you—but then when we got the critics involved, who follow it closer than we do because we each have certain segments, critic roles etc. that we follow, we came back and said, “We don’t have the report back from Ornge, which Bill 11 was addressing,” and so that’s why we’re saying that it’s premature to discuss Bill 11 at committee. That’s all—nothing against, breaking deals; it’s just that.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Thank you. We’ll go with Ms. Damerla and then Mr. Miller.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: I really appreciate the perspective brought by Ms. Scott. It’s not that I don’t understand where they’re coming from, but part of it, as to when the report comes, is that there’s nothing that says that one cannot incorporate the recommendations of the report after the bill has passed through this committee. We could still change many things by regulation or even amend the act, but at least we can get something moving. That was our thinking, not to say there isn’t merit to what MPP Scott was saying. I just wanted to leave it at that.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Thank you. Mr. Miller.

Mr. Paul Miller: I appreciate what Ms. Scott said. It certainly follows the reasoning I had. First of all, I don’t sit on this committee. I am not the critic. I don’t want to be okaying or naying something that I have no background information on. What was done in the subcommittee meeting and what was done in the committee before that in reference to this situation quite possibly happened. But sometimes, with all due respect—not the Liberals, of course—some people will bring stuff forward at inopportune times when people who are not familiar with what they’re dealing with may make a mistake. Ha, ha, ha. Well, that’s not happening here, and that’s all I’m trying to get across. The Ornge report is not completed. They’re trying to move a bill ahead when the critics aren’t here, putting us in a very awkward position. That’s why I have a problem with it.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: Chair?

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Ms. Damerla.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: I just wanted to say that the last subcommittee meeting was attended by your critic, France Gélinas.

Mr. Paul Miller: It’s not me.

Ms. Dipika Damerla: It may not be you, but to charge that we’re trying to move this ahead without the right people being there is unfair, because at the last subcommittee meeting, every party had the opportunity to send their critic, and your party did send France Gélinas, and I was there. I just wanted to set the record right that we’re not trying to move anything forward in the absence of the critics on that issue.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Any further discussion? Those in favour of the motion?

Ms. Dipika Damerla: We request a 20-minute recess before the vote.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): There has been a request for a 20-minute recess prior to the vote, so this committee will recess for 20 minutes, which will take us past the 6 o’clock deadline.

Mr. Paul Miller: Who requested that?

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): As such, this vote will be first on the agenda at our next meeting.

Mr. Paul Miller: Perfect, thank you.

The Chair (Mr. Grant Crack): Thank you. This meeting is adjourned

The committee adjourned at 1744.

CONTENTS

Monday 17 March 2014

Pan/Parapan American Games review G-501

Pan/Parapan American Games Secretariat G-501

Mr. Saäd Rafi

Waterfront Toronto G-518

Mr. John Campbell

Committee business G-531

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. Rod Jackson (Barrie PC)

Mr. Phil McNeely (Ottawa–Orléans L)

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