City Staff Got Sprung Structures Right, Wrong: BENN

03/15/2025

benn.logo

In math tests only one mark out of five is given for getting the right answer. The rest are given for showing how you got the answer.

The City of Ottawa recently announced that it would not be proceeding with either of the sprung structure based Asylum and Refugee Welcoming Centres. The reasoning is set out in a long memo to council.

Staff acknowledged that it was always the intent to sole-source the supply and construction of the sprung structures. After months of denying it, sort of. Buried a thousand or so words into the memo is a statement that having to proceed with a competitive bid meant that the artificial deadline of end of 2025 occupancy could not be assured.

So, the timeline, which was set by staff, was only realistic if it willfully acted in contravention to the long-standing policy of seeking competitive bids. Except that staffers did not want to say that out loud. They did not want to tell council and the public that circumventing a long-standing policy was a fundamental part of their plan. When challenged on this, staff claimed that this wasn’t a sole-source project. It just looked that way because there was only one source. Then three local construction companies submitted documents that said that what was being asked for was a straight-forward construction project.

Elsewhere in the memo there was an acknowledgement that the flow of asylum seekers and refugees has been on a downward trend since June 2023, that date being about six months before council delegated the authority to make all the decisions. This downward trajectory was reinforced with the decision by the federal government to curtail immigration volumes in the autumn of 2024. During the same time frame, staff acknowledged that the supply of transitional housing, the term used for the landing space for the ‘graduates’ of the asylum and refugee temporary housing facilities has increased.

That this has only come out now is the intriguing part. Senior management at city hall knew, or ought to have known, about the decreased demand for temporary space for people on the path to transitional housing. They knew or should have known that the supply of transitional housing had increased. Rather than return to council on a timely basis with an update on a material change in circumstances, staff continued along the path that it alone defined, with their blinders firmly in place. Rather than ask council if staff should stay on a path that was likely no longer required, staff decided to keep council in the dark.

The new plan is to revisit the use of the downtown YMCA facility and one on Lanark Avenue as temporary housing facilities for the dwindling supply of asylum seekers and refugees.

The YMCA site has been used for temporary housing for the target demographic for some time now. Suffice it to say that it is proximate to existing support services. The Lanark building is close to the existing LRT system, which would allow the occupants and the service providers to get to and from the site.

In fairness, per the staff memo, these two properties were previously being offered for sale, and thus did not represent a viable alternative, given the terms of reference that staff created.

Much of the above was identified by the community groups who spoke out against the proposed sprung structure solutions. Concerns that were either ignored or dismissed with not-so-veiled accusations of prejudice.

I read the memo a couple of times, looking for any apologies from staff. None to council for failing to keep them apprised of material changes in circumstance. None to Knoxdale-Merivale Councillor Sean Devine for hanging him out to dry. None to those who pointed out that what was being proposed was a de facto sole-source contract. None to those who challenged the underlying demand for space.

So, kudos to staff for (finally) getting the right answer. But another failing grade because the manner in which they arrived at that answer was fundamentally incorrect.

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