NCC board member has firm whose private clients stand to benefit from LRT route
No conflict between Robert Tennant’s planning consultancy and his NCC work, Mills says
By David Reevely, OTTAWA CITIZEN January 23, 2014 7:00 PM
OTTAWA — A National Capital Commission board member who gets to vote on the city’s plans to extend its light-rail line west of downtown is a lead partner in a consulting firm whose clients stand to benefit from the route the line takes.
Robert Tennant is a veteran real-estate expert and urban planner who’s been on the board of the National Capital Commission since 2007. He’s also a founding partner of Ottawa’s biggest private planning firm, FoTenn Consultants, which makes money from developers by convincing city council and its planning department to do what the developers want.
Nancy Schepers is one of two deputy city managers in Ottawa, in charge of both the city’s rail projects and its planning department. She oversees the people who advise city council on whether to approve major development applications.
Ordinarily, that means people who work for Tennant go to people who work for Schepers to ask for things on behalf of their clients. On Wednesday, Schepers went to the National Capital Commission, as she has several times in the past year, to try to persuade its board of the merits of a billion-dollar extension of the city’s first rail line, from Tunney’s Pasture to Baseline station.
Tennant joined other NCC directors in reminding Schepers that the commission isn’t convinced of the city’s need to use 1.2 kilometres of commission property along the Ottawa River near Highland Park. The board still wants the city to bypass the river by cutting south across a field, which the city says would cost several hundred million dollars extra.
Tennant is also in favour of a new idea to add a spur west to Bayshore mall — but don’t use that as an excuse to skimp farther east, he warned.
“(We) continue to emphasize the crossing of the Rochester Field, that our corridor lands are parklands, not just corridor lands,” he told Schepers on Wednesday. “I have no change in my position regarding the 1.2 kilometres. Whatever the overall costs are, (you can’t come back and say) ‘I’m sorry, now that it’s a bit longer, we don’t really have the money to do what the NCC wants to have done.’ I really don’t want that as a final answer.”
NCC board members have repeatedly insisted the city spend more money to make the western rail extension more attractive and less intrusive on nearby landowners. A $900-million price estimate has risen to $980 million already, thanks to attempts to get the NCC’s favour by partly burying the line on its property and sprucing up the line’s new stations.
Tennant said by email he was too busy for an interview Thursday.
Giving Schepers a hard time is a sign that Tennant is doing his duty, said Russell Mills, the NCC’s chairman.
The two were named to the board at the same time but knew each other for a long time before that, Mills said. “I know him to be a man of great integrity. I trust him personally and in a business sense and in every other way.”
Tennant pulls no punches where the rail line is concerned, he said. Conversely, the idea that he might be extra harsh now so as to wring concessions from Schepers on FoTenn jobs is “pretty far out there, I think.”
Tennant’s personal dealings were a concern when he was appointed, Mills acknowledged. After an exhaustive examination that included the federal government’s ethics commissioner, it was decided he’d bow out when the commission’s board took up an issue where FoTenn was directly involved, such as a proposed redevelopment of the islands in the Ottawa River. “He’s been scrupulous about doing that,” Mills said. But “I don’t see any conflict here with western light rail. He doesn’t have any clients dealing with that.”
FoTenn actually has represented clients with projects around the planned western rail line, including right next to a proposed new station at Cleary Avenue and Richmond Road. FoTenn consultant Brian Casagrande addressed a city council meeting about it in July on behalf of a Toronto developer called Torgan Group, specifically about the site’s connection to the train station. Casagrande also lobbied three senior city planners who report to Schepers, according to the city’s lobbying registry.
At Wednesday’s NCC meeting, Tennant praised tweaks the city has made to the design of that Cleary station.
FoTenn shepherded an application to redevelop land at Scott Street and McRae Avenue, steps from the Westboro transit station, for Bridgeport Realty. Under the city’s plan, Westboro station is to get rail service to replace the Transitway.
FoTenn also works for Arnon Corp., whose holdings include a big property where the O-Train tracks cross Carling Avenue. A piece of that land, which Arnon wants to build on, is off limits in case the city needs it for an alternative rail route west. Tennant’s fellow founding partner, Ted Fobert, has lobbied the city on that.
The National Capital Commission Act says any board member who has a direct or indirect conflict of interest has to disclose it to the commission’s chair in writing and stay out of any debate or decision “bearing on the enterprise in which the interest is held.” Board members violate the rule “on pain of forfeiture of office.”
A detailed policy set by the commission board elaborates that board members have to “avoid any situation in which there is, or may appear to be, a potential conflict of interest which could appear to interfere with their judgment in making decisions in the Corporation’s best interest.” They’re also forbidden from using their positions to advance the interests of business associates.
Mills said Tennant’s work on the NCC board speaks for itself and his decades of experience make him invaluable. “Robert asks penetrating questions because of his deep knowledge of these issues, and has taken the lead in imposing some requirements on these issues,” Mills said, such as demanding quarterly updates from the city on its LRT planning.
With files from Don Butler
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