OTTAWA — Hundreds of public servants and downtown workers trudged shoulder to shoulder down the sidewalk on the outskirts of Ottawa’s core on a dreary October 2019 morning, making an unexpected march to work.
Laptop bags slung over their shoulders, the crowd followed the route of the newly opened Confederation LRT line where trains had come to a sudden standstill. The public later found a rider at University of Ottawa station had tried to hold the door open in a dash to make the train, which somehow caused a system-wide shutdown.
It wasn’t the first mishap to strike Ottawa’s $2-billion system, or even the most dramatic, but it was the first time the transit-going public felt the full force of just how troubled their commutes would be on the line.
A provincially imposed public inquiry began to hear testimony Monday from city staff and the consortium that built the line in an effort to find out how the capital’s largest transit project went so far off the rails.
The line has been beset with problems since the first few weeks it opened, from service delays, overcrowded platforms and stations that inexplicably smelled of sewage to derailments and showers of sparks flying off the train cars.
City council initially voted against the idea of having a judge look into the long string of breakdowns and derailments on the line, but in late 2021 the Ontario government made the decision for them.
Ontario Appeal Court Justice William Hourigan was appointed commissioner with a mandate to investigate what went wrong.
On Monday morning, the inquiry’s co-lead counsel John Adair grilled the city’s former director of rail implementation about the kind of pressure staff faced to get the project done quickly and to the budget that was set in the very early days of the line’s planning.
John Jensen, who was responsible for the procurement of the project, was also questioned about how the city and the contractor settled on the train model that is thought to have been the source of many of the technical issues with the line.
The city had asked for a vehicle that could operate in -38C, snow, ice, salt and all the hard elements that Ottawa has to offer in the winter, as well as withstand the capital’s muggy, humid summers.
Jensen told the commission that the city wanted a “service proven” train car, in other words one that had been used in similar conditions elsewhere so the city didn’t act as “guinea pig” for a new product.
What the city got was what the manufacturer, Alstom, referred to in a sworn interview with the commission as a “development project” to bring low-floor technology to North America.
The project, which was supposed to be handed over to the city on May 24, 2018, was delivered 456 days behind schedule.
At one point RTM, the consortium responsible for maintaining the line, reported the wheels were no longer round, prompting a train shortage.
One of the earliest ill omens for the project appeared years earlier in 2016, when a major downtown street opened up and swallowed an unoccupied van above the tunnel for the underground track.
Hourigan and his team have already listened intently to two full days of public meetings, where residents were invited to air their grievances with the system.
The formal hearings, which are expected to happen daily for the next three weeks, will feature testimony from 41 witnesses, including city staff, elected officials and representatives from the companies that built and maintain the line.
Later in the afternoon, they will hear from Riccardo Cosentino, who served as the vice-president of investments for SNC-Lavalin, one of the construction consortium’s parent companies.
The commission has until Aug. 31 to deliver a final report on its findings to the Ontario transportation minister with recommendations to prevent future projects from suffering a similarly bumpy ride.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 13, 2022.
Demands for government intervention in Air Canada labour talks could negatively affect airline competition in Canada, the CEO of travel company Transat AT Inc. said.
“The extension of such an extraordinary intervention to Air Canada would be an undeniable competitive advantage to the detriment of other Canadian airlines,” Annick Guérard told analysts on an earnings conference call on Thursday.
“The time and urgency is now. It is time to restore healthy competition in Canada,” she added.
Air Canada has asked the federal government to be ready to intervene and request arbitration as early as this weekend to avoid disruptions.
Comments on the potential Air Canada pilot strike or lock out came as Transat reported third-quarter financial results.
Guérard recalled Transat’s labour negotiations with its flight attendants earlier this year, which the company said it handled without asking for government intervention.
The airline’s 2,100 flight attendants voted 99 per cent in favour of a strike mandate and twice rejected tentative deals before approving a new collective agreement in late February.
As the collective agreement for Air Transat pilots ends in June next year, Guérard anticipates similar pressure to increase overall wages as seen in Air Canada’s negotiations, but reckons it will come out “as a win, win, win deal.”
“The pilots are preparing on their side, we are preparing on our side and we’re confident that we’re going to come up with a reasonable deal,” she told analysts when asked about the upcoming negotiations.
The parent company of Air Transat reported it lost $39.9 million or $1.03 per diluted share in its quarter ended July 31. The result compared with a profit of $57.3 million or $1.49 per diluted share a year earlier.
Revenue totalled $736.2 million, down from $746.3 million in the same quarter last year.
On an adjusted basis, Transat says it lost $1.10 per share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of $1.10 per share a year earlier.
It attributed reduced revenues to lower airline unit revenues, competition, industry-wide overcapacity and economic uncertainty.
Air Transat is also among the airlines facing challenges related to the recall of Pratt & Whitney turbofan jet engines for inspection and repair.
The recall has so far grounded six aircraft, Guérard said on the call.
“We have agreed to financial compensation for grounded aircraft during the 2023-2024 period,” she said. “Alongside this financial compensation, Pratt & Whitney will provide us with two additional spare engines, which we intend to monetize through a sell and lease back transaction.”
Looking ahead, the CEO said she expects consumer demand to remain somewhat uncertain amid high interest rates.
“We are currently seeing ongoing pricing pressure extending into the winter season,” she added. Air Transat is not planning on adding additional aircraft next year but anticipates stability.
“(2025) for us will be much more stable than 2024 in terms of fleet movements and operation, and this will definitely have a positive effect on cost and customer satisfaction as well,” the CEO told analysts.
“We are more and more moving away from all the disruption that we had to go through early in 2024,” she added.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
