A Brutally Bad LRT Report Response: BENN

According to Meatloaf, two out of three ain’t bad. Given that metric, what can we say about zero out of 15?

Because that is the score that city hall’s finance and corporate services function scored on the city’s response to the provincial LRT commission’s report.

Of the 103 recommendations in the report, 15 were determined to be the responsibility of Finance and Corporate Services. Of those 15 recommendations, the mismanagement team “leading” finance and corporate services made meaningful progress on none. Not one. Zero. The responses to each of the recommendations were, give or take a couple of words, a copy and paste for all 15. “Yadah yadah yadah, we’ll get back to you in Q4 2023.” Or not.

LRT: ‘We’ve Got Trouble:’ WHOPPER WATCH

Some five months after the most damning report ever issued about the mismanagement of a mega-project by a municipality in Canada, one in which the commissioner censured senior officials of egregious malfeasance for failing to provide the information that council required to fulfill its statutory obligations, a key department within the structure of city hall has stated that they are working on it.

Over the course of my career, I have reported to a number of boards of directors. Four of them for publicly listed companies. I have also been and continue to sit as a director. Never, not once, did I ever provide a status report that stated that “we are working on it.” Never, not once, have I ever received a report from management that stated “we are working on it.”

It never occurred to me that that was an option. Perhaps it is because my colleagues and I respected the role of the board. Perhaps neither my colleagues nor I were individually or collectively so incompetent as to have dug ourselves such a deep hole that we would need a full year to get around to providing a fulsome response. Had I been so disrespectful of the board of directors, I have no doubt that my services would have been deemed to no longer be required. For cause.

So, councillors, are any of you going to take the senior management that reports to work down at city hall to task? Are any of you prepared to present a resolution of censure? To instruct, or to borrow some words from Shakespeare, to entreat, management to provide an actual status report at the next council meeting. 

Nothing is expected of the councillors who were re-elected. None of them could be bothered to censure former mayor Jim Watson for willfully failing to keep his fellow councillors apprised of the fiasco that was the LRT. If that did not offend them, then there is nothing in this status report that would ruffle any of their feathers.

Time To Return To BRT: MULVIHILL

No, I am asking the councillors who are sitting around the horseshoe in the council chamber for their first term whether they are prepared to accept a continuation of this culture of disrespect for the role of council. Ask yourselves, is zero out of 15 an acceptable score? Would you be upset if your child came home with a message from the teacher that stated your child made insufficient effort to meet expectations? That they couldn’t be bothered to complete their homework? That your child is not putting enough effort into their school work?

If you accept this status report with no pushback, then you are reinforcing a culture of disrespect. For you as a councillor. For all of council. For the very role of council. There is but one opportunity to re-set expectations, and it is now.

Ron Benn, a finance executive, has been a member of the Centrepointe Community Association for the better part of three decades.

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