Brandt approval not a matter of proper process

For the next eight months or so, provincial auditor Judy Ferguson will be tasked with determining if proper process was followed in approving the Brandt Developments office complex in Wascana Centre that was found non-compliant by architects, but approved anyway for a now-vacant lot where the previous building was torn down without a proper city demolition permit.

Right off the bat, we seem to have a “process” problem.

Nevertheless, similar to the “no wrongdoing” mantra we heard from the Saskatchewan Party government during the Global Transportation Hub (GTH) fiasco, we are already hearing government rolling out the talking point line: “Process was followed.”

Was it? Really?

Given that it’s the long-standing political strategy of this government to convince us of something simply through repetition, it wasn’t surprising to hear Provincial Capital Commission (PCC) and Deputy Central Services Minister Mike Carr repeat this line Monday: “We don’t have a process problem. We have a perception problem.”

But Carr seemed to go even further. To hear him tell it, delaying this project is a magnanimous gesture on the PCC’S part. About the only thing more altruistic appears to be Brandt’s own efforts to build the 77,500-square-foot building and lease 4,000 square feet back to CNIB. Of course, that could happen while raking in $2.2 million in annual rent from everyone else, according to real-estate cost estimates offered by the NDP Opposition in the assembly last week.

Making that rent even more profitable is that the CNIB’S dollar-a-year lease was somehow extended to Brandt’s entire facility. However, what we aren’t seeing is any evidence of that lease agreement. No process problem? Really?

It appears the government strategy is to dump the mess on Ferguson’s lap for awhile, and then proceed with the project in less than a year, once the auditor produces her report saying “process was followed.”

But typical of a government that learned little from its GTH experience, it doesn’t seem to get that Ferguson actually talked a great deal about the processes either ignored or skirted by Bill Boyd et al. to do things that shouldn’t have been done. This is what auditors do. They find if process was followed and if the right processes are in place. So it’s rather dangerous for anyone to presuppose Ferguson will conclude something that neatly lines up with government talking points. Already Ferguson knows a lot about this “process” because of the information that’s already been reported, all of which has been passed on to her office by now.

For example, she knows Brandt was involved with the CNIB in the development of this project well before the tendering process that we still haven’t seen. She knows the Architectural Advisory Committee (AAC) chair in June 2016 concluded Brandt’s proposed development would contravene both the WCA’ s master plan and the Wascana Centre Authority Act.

She knows the WCA chair in July 2016 replied to the architect committee chair that both the Conexus/university of Regina and Brandt/ CNIB projects were “non-conforming” uses and would require amendments to the master plan that have never happened. She knows the WCA never formally approved the Brandt/ CNIB project, but the PCC (which took the place of the old WCA) did.

There’s actually lots of evidence suggesting process wasn’t followed in the Brandt deal, but the bigger problem is “process” is also law. And there is already more coming.

For example, Leonard Novak (an AAC member preparing a brief for the March 25 Regina city council meeting where two motions demand accountability) questions whether the old WCA and current PCC have “wrongly and variously misinterpreted, ignored, circumvented, and/or misapplied the rules” that should have applied to the act.

Novak cites the PCC’S own existing act that suggests “if an improvement is made or land is used in contravention of this Act, the master plan or a bylaw of the commission” the remedies could include “an order directing the owner of the improvement to remove it at the owner’s expense.” Ouch.

What Ferguson is now looking into is no simple matter of process.