Secrecy rules at Calgary city hall as reports are buried and Green Line deal nears complete collapse
The sense of Green Line doom escalated Monday with a blast at the province from Mayor Jyoti Gondek.
“A critical public transit investment has been crushed by a government only interested in power and political stunting,” she said at the close of a 13-tweet thread.
“It’s shameful. We exist in a time when we have no hope of partnership and trust. Instead, we are left to watch as the UCP compromises Calgary’s future.”
City hall believes the three-party funding deal began its death rattle when the province withdrew its funding.
That’s the interpretation, anyway. Ottawa has not said it will withdraw. But Gondek later told Defend the Green Line demonstrators the funding agreement is virtually done.
Premier Danielle Smith obviously wants city money for her version of the project, whatever that turns out to be when a study is concluded in December.
But the province is also clearing the ground for total collapse of the deal.
Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen said the Green Line will go on the shelf indefinitely if the city doesn’t agree to the province’s alignment.
Dreeshen has said that if city council formally withdraws as early as Tuesday, after hearing a report from officials, “then it goes to the lawyers, and we’ll have to assess whatever they come up with at that time.”
“There’s a concern out there by many wondering what will happen to construction that’s underway,” he told a sombre public meeting of the Green Line board.
“There’s lots of work on 5th Avenue. There’s still work that’s happening by Enmax in the Beltline, and obviously we have the 78th Avenue works underway in Ogden.
“I can assure you that every step that we take moving forward will have safety in mind.
“We’ll make sure that the works are completed to a point where it’s safe for us to hand over to the city or to the appropriate authority.”
Bhatti has headed up major transit and renewal projects from Toronto to Windsor in southern Ontario. He was a high-level catch for the city, and now he’s winding down his project. What must he think of this Calgary mess.
The Green Line board is itself an odd creature. Technically a committee of council, it’s composed of experts who have some independence as long as they meet council goals.
That was supposed to shield it from political interference. Then they got crushed in the ultimate political conflict.
Most board members, including chair Don Fairbairn, weren’t even in council chambers Monday morning. They participated virtually, and not much at that.
The public part of the meeting consisted largely of burying reports behind privacy legislation.
After a long in-camera session, the board approved “the confidential recommendations contained in confidential distribution.”
It directed that “the closed recommendations, the confidential distribution and closed meeting discussions, be held confidential ‘to prevent’ disclosure harmful to economic and other interests of a public body.”
The public body in question could only be city hall and council.
The board was only doing what the law seems to require. You can bet that in a situation like this, city lawyers will interpret the law to mean no single fact can be entrusted to the public.
In almost any American city, a public body would never get away with burying one report after another on a crucial and hugely expensive public project.
But this is Canada. Official secrecy has become endemic. This is a major reason for the loss of faith in governments everywhere.
Even the law itself is hilariously conflicted. It’s call the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
Guess which part gets precedence, as the Green Line walks the line between life and death.
Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald.