Light rail: It’s no mystery why the procurement flopped.
Cause of the LRT fiasco was political
Re: Inside the slow-rolling disaster of Ottawa’s $9-billion LRT project, March 7.
My long experience as a procurement lawyer in the federal public sector suggests the cause of the LRT fiasco may be rather less complicated than James Bagnall suggests.
When public sector procurements go wrong, one generally need look no further than the political masters of those tasked with making the buy. Being a curiously sanguine breed, despite oft-repeated experience suggesting caution and prudence might be in order, the political class habitually demand too much, for too little, too quickly. Make no mistake. They design their procurements this way, with scoring heavily weighted in favour of the lowest price. Cosmetic good value sells well at the polls after all.
But this strategy is unwise in sophisticated projects such as LRT. It tends to elicit unrealistic low-ball offers in circumstances so complex that substance and quality simply must be of the highest order. These are generally rather more, than less expensive. In the LRT procurement process, the three suppliers responding to the Request for Proposals together made it clear beyond a doubt that the RTG price, as the conspicuous outlier, should have been a clue that theirs was a proposal that was entirely too good to be true.
Donald Campbell, Ottawa
A positive story about community coping
Re: How Ottawa’s Chinese community set up a ‘wall of love’ against novel coronavirus, March 10.
What a wonderful story, and such a practical example of the support needed when concerned citizens go into quarantine. This story goes behind the scenes to show exactly what is needed in the day-to-day practicalities of staying away from the public for two weeks.
Positive, human interest stories provide a balance to all the worrisome ones. Thank
you.
Elaine Petermann, Ottawa
Don’t stockpile supplies health care workers need
I have been a nurse in Ottawa for 35 years. I have worked through the early days of HIV, when we didn’t know what we know now, through SARS, through H1N1 and through countless other infectious outbreaks, and through it all I have never seen a health care worker or first responder shy away from providing care to our patients. It doesn’t mean we weren’t afraid, but we quietly shared our fears with each other and we went to work.
When the roads are too dangerous for you to go out, we go to work. When you are at home celebrating holidays with your families, we go to work. When our resources are cut, and we must do more with less, we go to work. When our salaries are frozen, we go to work. We get punched, kicked, spit at and sworn at, but we go to work. When COVID-19 hits our community, we will go to work.
So, to those who are stealing or stockpiling masks and hand sanitizer, and to those, even worse, selling them for an outrageous profit, I say: How dare you? When you are safely tucked away in your homes with all your toilet paper, we will be looking after your friends and family who are sick. We don’t ask you to thank us, but would it be too much to ask that you make sure that we have enough personal protective equipment and supplies to keep us safe? I think not.
Susan Longbottom, Ottawa
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