Trillium Line Audit Watch: Where’s The Procurement Probe?

Published 09/24/2023 · Updated 09/24/2023

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick …

With each tick of the Trillium Line Audit Watch, a bit of the credibility of the City of Ottawa and the office of the auditor general disappears.

The Watch, near the bottom of each page of The Bulldog, shows the amount of time that has passed since auditor general Nathalie Gougeon has had to begin an audit of the highly controversial Trillium Line contract bidding process. Gougeon said she would audit questionable areas of the light-rail process outside the mandate of the shocking provincial LRT inquiry. The inquiry released its report on Nov. 30, 2022, the date at which the auditor general knew exactly what the parametres of the inquiry were. The Trillium Line Audit Watch begins on that date.

How Will We Measure The Performance Of The Mayor?

One would believe that given the mind-boggling amount of lying, withholding of information from council, incompetence, corruption and covering-up that the provincial probe found in its inquiry that the city auditor general would be all over the revelations that came out of the Trillium Line procurement process.

Former councillors Diane Deans and Rick Chiarelli discovered that the winning bidder failed the technical qualification twice for the Trillium Line contract yet that company received the contract. The revelations around that created a hurricane of controversy in the national capital and demands to see a detailed and objective investigation of the Trillium Line procurement. That fell into the mandate of the city auditor general. That probe has not occurred.

On the AG’s work plan for this year, it says the Trillium Line audit will be done if her office has time.

That is an outrage.

Gougeon’s schedule should be Trillium Line procurement audit first, everything else second. That’s what the public wants to see … in fact, demands to see.

And yet the most important audit Gougeon will do during her term as AG keeps falling down her priority list to the point where it might disappear altogether.

City Learns Zip From LRT Inquiry, Lansdowne 1.0: BENN

Why is that? Gougeon owes an explanation to the residents of Ottawa.

And most certainly she should start an audit of the Trillium Line procurement right now. No more waiting or the public will start wondering why this audit isn’t being done … if it isn’t concerned about the delay already.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick …

With each tick of the counter near the bottom of this page, a little bit of the credibility of the city auditor general’s office and the City of Ottawa disappears.

Ken Gray

(pictured on the front of this post is audit committee chairwoman Cathy Curry, the councillor representing Kanata North.)