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LRT inquiry: Manconi defends using group chats to feed updates to city leaders, including the mayor

LRT inquiry: Manconi defends using group chats to feed updates to city leaders, including the mayor

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“The WhatsApp chats were not an attempt to be private,” Manconi told commission co-lead counsel John Adair on Day 12 of the inquiry hearing.

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John Manconi on Tuesday defended using a text message group to keep his bosses — the mayor, city manager, and chair of the transit commission — in the loop on LRT issues without including other councillors and council-appointed decision-makers.

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“The WhatsApp chats were not an attempt to be private,” Manconi told commission co-lead counsel John Adair on Day 12 of the inquiry hearing.

Only a handful of people at city hall were privy to the regular updates, leaving most elected officials waiting for the next memo or council meeting to receive official information on the delayed LRT project in 2019.

Manconi oversaw the LRT program as the city’s general manager of transportation until he retired from city hall in September 2021.

He, and other city staff and LRT consultants, used WhatsApp groups to communicate with each other.

Threads from the chat groups have been produced as evidence for the inquiry commission.

Adair pressed Manconi to explain if it was a good idea to only include two council members — Mayor Jim Watson and Allan Hubley, chair of the transit commission — in status updates.

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“In retrospect, I would do the same thing that we did here,” Manconi said.

During trial running in July and August 2019, council wasn’t supposed to get daily updates until the entire trial running process was complete.

However, Manconi came close to sending a memo to council when trial running was paused after a difficult start. The draft memo never ended up in council’s inboxes after city manager Steve Kanellakos reminded Manconi of their commitment to only update council after trial running was finished.

Adair also probed how influential the mayor was in deciding when to launch the LRT system.

Despite making sure he kept the mayor’s office updated and acknowledging that Watson regularly “wants to know stuff,” Manconi testified that he wasn’t under heat from Watson to launch the LRT system.

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“The mayor was not exerting pressure on me to get the system open,” Manconi said.

Answering questions from city lawyer Peter Wardle, Manconi agreed that setting up a WhatsApp group was an efficient way to communicate with city leaders and it wasn’t unusual for the “CEO of the organization,” meaning the mayor, to receive information.

“Every mayor and head of council I’ve worked for expected that,” Manconi told Wardle.

Manconi also addressed a decision by the city and Rideau Transit Group (RTG) to use criteria established in 2017 to assess trial running.

A required performance rating of 96 per cent established in 2017 was increased to 98 per cent in 2019, but was set back to the 2017 criteria during trial running.

There was no evidence the new 2019 criteria had sign-offs, Manconi said.

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Manconi said he asked all his advisers about moving from 98 per cent to 96 per cent. “Nobody objected to it,” he testified.

RTG achieved 97 per cent in trial running.

Adair showed an email that RTG CEO Peter Lauch sent to the company’s board about a meeting Lauch had with Manconi during trial running.

“Manconi made it clear that he wants to know ‘whats in it for me’ (sic) to get you a PASS on Trial Running,” Lauch wrote. “We have been down that road before.”

Lauch wrote that Manconi brought up the public perception issues about SNC-Lavalin’s technical score regarding the Stage 2 contract award for the Trillium Line.

However, Manconi disputed Lauch’s characterization of his remarks in answering a question from Wardle.

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“That is not my style. I would never make that statement,” Manconi testified.

RTG lawyer Michael Fenrick was more interested in the city’s relationship with his client.

Some of the evidence during the inquiry has focused on how fair the city has been to RTG as a contract partner.

Fenrick turned Manconi’s attention to a WhatsApp group chat with the mayor’s staff and city manager in which Manconi was talking tough about his dealings with the company. According to one message in July 2019, Manconi said there was “RTG/RTM blood all over the boardroom floor” after he met with the company.

“Should I have characterized it as ‘blood all over the boardroom floor’? No,” Manconi told Fenrick.

One of Manconi’s key advisers on Stage 1 was Thomas Prendergast of the firm STV. Prendergast testified before Manconi.

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Prendergast, an experienced transportation executive who now works for AECOM, was part of an independent assessment team that reported to Manconi.

Commission counsel Carly Peddle asked Prendergast about an Aug. 22, 2019, group chat on WhatsApp in which he told Manconi, “…you can always say that Ottawa ‘took one for the team’…you experienced the PAIN and others got the GAIN…and I say as much neither in jest nor malice…..just fact.”

Ottawa was the first city to use the Alstom Citadis Spirit train.

In the WhatsApp chat, Manconi had attached an article showing that the Citadis Spirit would be used for an LRT system in Mississauga.

In explaining his remark during his testimony, Prendergast said an agency that uses a new vehicle gets the early-life failures that require fixes, benefiting others.

The “team,” he said, is transit agencies at large.

The public can watch LRT inquiry hearings on video screens set up at Fauteux Hall at the University of Ottawa, online at www.ottawalrtpublicinquiry.ca or on Rogers TV (channels 470 in English and 471 in French).

On Wednesday, the inquiry commissioner is scheduled to hear testimony from Lauch and a city panel of councillors Allan Hubley, Catherine McKenney and Diane Deans and citizen transit commissioner Sarah Wright-Gilbert.

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