In a previous article I referred to the Third Party Report by WSCS Consulting into the Ma-Te-Way situation as a flawed document.
I should be clear that in no way am I questioning the integrity of the authors of the document, nor am I diminishing the level of rigour, depth, and detail that was put into what was, essentially, a very difficult job. I want to make sure that I come across as applauding the work done, and the report proffered.
There can be no such thing as a perfect document because there’s no such thing as a perfect investigator, author, or subject matter, all involving three heavily involving human elements. In the case of this report, it’s the third part, the subject part, that made the compilation of information and the cobbling together of that information more than just your average challenge. It made it virtually impossible to get down to the absolute brass tacks of the issue, although the authors did successfully pull back the curtain on much of what transpired in what has to be the Town of Renfrew’s biggest debacle ever.
One needs to be careful when bandying about allegations regarding others, and that need for care can often lead to an extraordinary level of caution when attempting to report on items that may involve measures of incompetence, negligence, and malfeasance. And sometimes that can lead to a report that hovers around the periphery rather than drilling into the potentially dangerous areas. This report navigates those difficulties about as well as one might hope for.
To say that it’s flawed has more to do with the labyrinth of criss-crossing bread-crumbs leading here, there, everywhere, and nowhere all at the same time. Record-keeping in the municipality was fraught with stumbling, bumbling, and nothing at all, and at best can be compared to filing away stuff in a shoe box under the bed, only we’re not sure which bed in which room in which house, and no guarantee that the bed and the box hadn’t been chucked into the landfill, possibly on purpose to avoid detection.
I suck at keeping receipts, warranties, manuals, and all manner of stuff that I’m supposed to keep track of, but I come across as a freaking obsessive-compulsive type compared to what was going on at Town Hall and the Rec Centre during the good old days when we were flying by the seat of our pants on a flight that would eventually cost us over $50 million dollars. And the meal we got had a really bad taste and smelled beyond imagination.
So for those saying let’s just smile and move on, maybe sprinkle something on that naivety of yours, because we have to make sure this kind of meal never gets served again. And if we choose to walk away from what happened in the kitchen, it will.
Did you hear the one about the guy who was central to just about everything in the report offering his cooperation for $1500.00 a day? And editing rights? My goodness, what a nose for a buck, now when it’s too late. Too bad that nose wasn’t so acute back in the day when it appears to have been lodged up the nether parts of various other parties, both local and not-so-local.
The Wheeler and Dealer, the King of the Town, and wannabe member of our own local version of Upper Canada’s Family Compact or Lower Canada’s Chateau-Clique. For the low, low price of $1500.00 a day.
I wonder what quality of info would have been on hand for that money? It would have been cool to find out, but I guess he priced himself out of the market, which is good for anyone hoping to keep what this guy might have to say under wraps lest they be exposed as playing an unfortunate role in all of this.
But it’s not just that guy, the wheeler-dealer, the bully in the room, the guy who seemingly intimidated everyone to the point where he was running the show while everyone else scattered in his wake. What about everyone else? This report doesn’t articulate a simple failure, it articulates a failure of significant systemic scale, with many people appearing to share the culpability that comes with omission of responsibility, of due diligence, and of standard of care. And of a basic human storyline that happens over and over and over again. A strong personality, seemingly running-amok, but nobody with the whatever to step in front of him or her, to question it all without withering in fear at the bombast of any push-back. Intimidation in the office space, leaking into the council chambers. A person out of control with no checks and balances, human or otherwise, to reign that person in. And an entire lineup of other folks seemingly more than willing to benefit from it on the backs of everyone else.
When police investigate crime, they ask early on, “who benefits?” from the misfortune in front of them. An interesting question that.
The list of winners and losers in the Ma-Te-Way thing skews mostly in the direction of losers, as there are more of them, they being the taxpayers of Renfrew. But there are winners. Some people and interests did come out ahead. So who are they? And how did they benefit? And why do they not want you to know? Is it because you might judge them on it? And maybe act upon that judgement?
Maybe even seek redress?
How did Buttcon get this contract to expand Ma-Te-Way? It didn’t meet the basic requirements of references from municipal sources for work completed in other municipal sectors. In fact, in one of the closing determinations, the Director of Parks and Recreation lauded Buttcon for its work on Maple Leaf Gardens back in 2012 when no such work is recorded anywhere, and if it was, it wouldn’t have counted as a completed municipal project. It wouldn’t have mattered in any event, since nobody was getting around to checking on the references offered by the competing companies anyways.
Checking references. We do it for babysitters, and we do it for just about anyone applying for a job. Yet somehow, we couldn’t motivate ourselves to do it for a company applying to be the one to head up a multi-million dollar construction project. Absolutely flabbergasting.
We’ve alluded to some suspect record-keeping on the part of the town. One damaging comment from the text of the report is as follows:
“WSCS has attempted to gather the direct costs from the Town’s financial records, but, unfortunately, the financial practices of the Town made it difficult as expenses were charged to a variety of general ledger accounts and ‘miscellaneous vendors.’ Further, the town has not had a practice of charging staff or equipment time to projects in the past. This results in an undervaluation of all assets and will impact the Town’s asset management plan and replacement costs.”
An absolutely damning collection of sentences from a document that’s rife with them.
The Third Party Report is bursting with examples of all the things you don’t want to do when undertaking a project on this or a similar scale. As such, there’s far too much to be dealt with in any single article, and even a series of articles wouldn’t be enough to wrestle all the points to the ground for proper scrutiny.
There will be no proper scrutiny in any event.
The Town has “received” the report, which is town-talk for “Yeah, we got it, thanks.” That gives them the political cover they need to say that they’ve addressed it. Then they do what municipalities do, in that they’ll let it sit on their website, and that means that they’re transparent, even when they don’t respond when anyone has any questions regarding it. As to any segments that might involve criminality, they sloughed that over to the local detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police, thereby washing their hands of the whole thing. Nowhere that I can see has it been articulated what changes have been made internally to respond to the Third Party Report. And any changes that have been made appear to be peripheral.
They have put pretty curtains up in the window of an empty room.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 