Law expert tapped to probe land deal
Brampton wants George Rust-D’Eye to determine if bidding process for major development was fair
The city of Brampton has appointed a well-known municipal-law expert as its interim auditor general, tasked with looking into a controversial development worth more than $500 million.
George Rust-D’Eye was selected to investigate the process used to determine who would receive the contract for the first phase of one of the biggest projects in Brampton’s history. The unusual and secretive decision-making process used in the development, known as competitive dialogue, prompted one company to launch a $28.5-million lawsuit against the city.
Several councillors called for an independent investigation after court documents filed as part of the lawsuit revealed that the city paid $480,000 for an option on a parcel of property. The councillors had previously been told that Dominus Construction, the winning bidder, paid for land that was not owned by the city.
“There were a number of things that came through the court documents that members of council were a little surprised at,” said Councillor Elaine Moore. “I think the purpose of having an auditorgeneral is to match up what actually transpired with the questions that were asked, the answers that were given, the information that was in the staff reports, just to see where things may have gone off the rails.”
Selecting Rust-D’Eye was slotted into the agenda of a raucous final meeting of Brampton city council Wednesday, at which the outgoing group was slated to discuss issues related to Mayor Susan Fennell’s spending violations and a different procurement issue at the city-funded Brampton Downtown Development Corporation.
Rust-D’Eye’s appointment was recommended by Brampton’s chief administrative officer, John Corbett, at Wednesday’s council meeting.
Councillor John Sprovieri suggested that council also engage the help of Stephen Bauld, an expert in municipal procurement. Corbett’s recommendations include authorizing Rust-D’Eye to contact experts if needed. Councillor Gael Miles questioned whether council should be spending additional money on RustD’Eye’s services, which Corbett said could cost more than $60,000.
“I’ve been pushing for this ever since last September, I’ve been pushing to have a review of some sort on this project,” said Sprovieri.
Council has asked Rust D’Eye to investigate the procurement process, which considered three bidders and ultimately landed on Dominus. Developer Inzola Group, which is suing the city, contends it was unfairly disqualified from bidding on the project. Dominus was awarded a $205million construction contract in 2012 to build the first of three phases.
The bid was awarded using “competitive dialogue,” a process sometimes used in public-sector bidding in Europe which Rust-D’Eye says has never been employed by a Canadian municipality. He said the nature of that process would be part of his investigation.
“That will hopefully be demonstrated in the material. I’m not entirely sure exactly where that came from, no. Also I’m not aware of the competitive dialogue process ever having been used by another municipality. I’ve never come across it before,” he said.
“There are various forms of procurement process for municipal lands, goods and services, ranging from a tender, which is determined by fairly strict issues involving primarily price. Competitive dialogue, I’m not sure if it’s ever been defined, and I guess that’s one of the things that I have to determine — what was the competitive dialogue? How did it work?”
“I think we owe it to our taxpayers to say with some certainty that (competitive dialogue) was the right process and it served them well . . .” COUNCILLOR ELAINE MOORE ON APPOINTMENT OF GEORGE RUST-D’EYE AS INTERIM AUDITOR GENERAL
Rust-D’Eye says he’s never performed the role of auditor general, but has functioned as an integrity commissioner in the past and completed one-time reports as a thirdparty accountability officer. Recently he was tasked with investigating Oshawa’s auditor general. More re- cently, Rust-D’Eye was hired by Toronto Mayor Rob Ford when he was stripped of his powers. Rust-D’Eye is to present council with an interim report in four weeks, followed by a fuller report that will take months to produce. “It’s a documentary thing, it’s an issue of process, an issue of what authorities are given by council, what powers were given to staff, what did staff do, what kind of led to the final decision . . . and in effect how it was determined ultimately that Dominus would be accepted as the successful applicant,” he said. Councillor Moore hopes RustD’Eye’s report clarifies whether the “competitive dialogue” approach was the right one in this case. “A first-time-ever-used process in Canada, if not North America — the competitive dialogue — I think we owe it to our taxpayers to say with some certainty that it was the right process and it served them well, or that it was not the right process and was not good value for their hardearned money,” she said. With files from San Grewal