City wants Ontario to help pay for multimillion-dollar Red Hill Valley Parkway inquiry

Hamilton city councillors want the Ontario governmentto help pay for the Red Hill Valley Parkway inquiry after hearing it willinvolve114,786 documents and cost the city as much as $12 million.

Ward 9 Coun. Brad Clark,who moved the motion to ask the province for help, said he was "uncomfortable" with Hamilton paying forgovernmentlawyers. Ontario is a party too, he said, and sets standards for highways.

"I think that's eminentlyunfair that we would be paying those fees for a senior level of government," he said in a general issues committee meeting Wednesday.

The move came after a report showing the inquiry, initially estimated to cost between $1 million and $11 million, will likely bebetween $10 million and $12 million.

City lawyer Eli Lederman warned council in 2019 that it would have to pay the full cost of a judicial inquiry, but have little control over the scope once the inquirystarted.

Councillors and Mayor Fred Eisenberger voted unanimously Wednesday in favour of exploring and applying for funding. Council will need to ratify it next week.

Commissioner Justice Herman Wilton-Siegel heads the multimillion-dollar judicial inquiry, whichlooks into a damning friction report of the Red Hill Valley Parkway (RHVP) that stayed buried for six years.

The 2013 Tradewind Scientific report showed friction in some areas of the highway fell well below U.K. safety standards. There aren't any similar standards in North America.

The city said in 2018 the reportwas only found in a locked computer folder after the city hired a new engineering director.

Date for public hearings expected soon

A city report says it's not known when the public hearings will start, but it will be announced in the next few weeks. While the inquiry was aiming for the end of June, the report also said counsel might reduce the number of witness interviews, or otherwisemove to July or fall.

The city has spent about $6.65 million on the inquiry so far, according to the report, and expects to spendbetween $3.6 million to $4.6 million more over the next year.The city is paying for the inquiry from its tax stabilization reserve.

Broad inquiry means more work, costs

Ward 12 Coun. Lloyd Ferguson who voted against the inquiry in 2019, as did Ward 11 Coun. Brenda Johnson said it seemed there wasn't any accountability for what was being spent on the inquiry.

"I think history will show that we made a poor decision on this one, and the taxpayers are going to end up picking up the bill for it," he said. "I think it's a horrible mistake."

Ward 15 Coun. Judi Partridge said she was "floored" by the documents and costs.

Of the 114,786 relevant documents in the inquiry, the city provided 56,549.Sixty-five current and former city employees willbe interviewed by June 28, 2021.

Ledermansaid the costs are "commensurate" with the work, which he called significantdue to the inquiry's wide scope. He saiditmeant the city had to whittle down threemillion documents.

Since the terms of reference passed by council included other factors like lighting and driver behaviour, he said, that alsoadds to how much the commissioner needs to review.

Public wouldn't have accepted AGreview:councillor

Clark said he still supports the investigationand the public wouldn't have "accepted" another option.He said the public wouldn't have seen an auditor general review which would have cost about $300,000 as transparent.

"The community would have argued 'what are you hiding, why aren't you releasing information, why didn't we get to see this, why didn't we get to see that,'" he said. "That at the end of the day is [what]I recall [as] the predominant reason that this council said we should have a judicial investigation."

The city is also facing a$267-million class action lawsuiton behalf of people who crashed on the RHVP.