Environment Committee on Oct. 19th, 2017

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

All right. That's helpful.

[Robert Wright]

We're rehabilitating these for a life cycle of approximately 80 years, and in some cases 100 years. As well as rehabilitating them, we're bringing them up to modern use, so security, sustainability, accessibility—

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Which we've seen in this building, you're absolutely right.

What is the estimated cost for West Block?

[Robert Wright]

West Block is $863 million, including the addition. There's 50% new space added in that building. One thing I would say across the board is that most of these projects involve adding a lot more usable space: the Government Conference Centre, 30% additional usable space; West Block, 50%—

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

What is the estimated cost for Centre Block?

[Robert Wright]

We're not quite there yet for the Centre Block. The key strategy is to make sure we have really robust costing and scheduling so that we can report to Canadians and hold ourselves to account on that.

The key thing there will be emptying the West Block and really starting to do.... We know a lot about the building, but we need to do a detailed investigation of the building's conditions, which will include opening up floors, walls, and ceilings to really get at the full scope. That will, of course, then drive a precise scheduling cost.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

I'm assuming your costs will be in excess of $1 billion.

[Robert Wright]

It's a very large, complex building facing a lot of problems. For example, it's almost four times the size of the West Block, and you would know as well or better than I the type of sculptural ornamentation and so on.

There are the challenges and complexities of doing a full overhaul where you have structural steel that is losing its structural integrity due to rusting. You have masonry issues, mechanical and electrical systems that are way beyond their life cycle and original to the building, plumbing systems that are original to the building and well beyond their life cycle, and the challenges go on and on.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

East Block will be rehabilitated as well. Are there any estimates on costs?

[Robert Wright]

At this point, no.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

How about the Confederation Building?

[Robert Wright]

Yes.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

All right. These are major rehabilitation projects that are going to restore perhaps the most iconic historic buildings in Canada to a state you said will last for, what, 90 years?

[Robert Wright]

We're really focusing on trying to push as far as we can to a 100-year life cycle, because of the significant costs associated with this and the significant disruption to Parliament. The costs are related to swing space, moving people out, and we've done some key things to try to make sure it's really a “two birds with one stone” approach. We've brought three new buildings into core operations—the Wellington Building, the Sir John A. Macdonald Building, and the Government Conference Centre—to essentially double the impact of our investment.

These were buildings at the end of their life cycles, either empty or rusting out. They needed significant investment, and we needed to make investments for Parliament, to swing people out, so we combined and aligned those investments to accomplish both objectives with a single investment.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

As I'm running out of time, I'm going to ask one last question of the four of you.

I'm sure you've all reviewed the testimony to this committee that's taken place on this study. Often we run into recommendations, and because there are no counter-arguments they find their way into our reports. Are there any of the recommendations that former witnesses have made that you feel are inappropriate or unworkable or inadvisable?

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

You have almost no time.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Does anybody have something that would stick out?

All right. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

That made that easy. Thank you very much.

Next up we have Mr. Amos.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thanks for the presentations.

The constituents in my riding of Pontiac are very interested in the issues related to the restoration of the Parliament Buildings, particularly since they live here and work here. It is their community.

I very much appreciate the direction of my colleague Mr. Fast's questions. From a political point of view, his financial concerns are very interesting. I very much appreciate the way he frames his questions. It is very respectful and demonstrates his understanding of the cost of the work and his financial rigour in serving Canadians.

You demonstrate that this is also a very important issue to you. The work is spread out over not just years, but also many budget or election cycles, and a period time that covers generations. I would ask you to elaborate please on how our small and medium-sized enterprises benefit from these investments.

We all know that it costs money to restore our built heritage, but this also creates jobs for our plumbers, electricians, and stone workers. If possible, I would like an overview of the contracts that have been awarded to companies, for the West Block or the Wellington Building, for example.

More specifically, I would also like to know—this might mean a formal answer in writing later on—the names of the companies selected. I would like to know if any companies from the Pontiac will do some of that work. I am convinced that is the case.

Please go ahead, Mr. Wright.

[Robert Wright]

Thank you for your question, because it is important.

At a high level, most of these investments flow through to small and medium-sized enterprises and to individuals. For example, take the delivery of the construction work. Generally, we do that through a construction management contract to one large firm, but over 90% of the value of that contract is flow-through to subcontractors, which are competed for competitively and to small and medium-sized enterprises. The work happening here in the parliamentary precinct has a national footprint, so there's work happening across the country to support the work here.

Today, in the precinct, for example, there would be approximately 1,400 people working on a daily basis. For a project like the West Block, there's in excess of 5,000 person-years that have been created in employment. These types of rehabilitation projects are very labour-intensive jobs. These investments are creating thousands and thousands of jobs. In fact, we would have created more than 25,000 person-years' worth of employment to date, with 1,000 more coming.

Beyond the multiplier effect for small and medium-sized enterprises, we're also working to build capacity, so we're using apprenticeship programs. In fact, on the West Block, the largest stone masonry apprenticeship program in North America was launched, which included the largest proportion of female stone masons as well. As I indicated in my testimony, we are working with universities, so there's a large network of students who are working and using the Parliament Buildings, I think quite rightly, as a bit of a laboratory. We are harnessing the best research that Canadian universities can offer and students are getting real-life experience in what is quite a rare opportunity. We are continuing to look at mechanisms as to how we can increase the percentage of indigenous participation in the work, etc.

There's a large volume of work that's distributed across Ontario, certainly into Quebec, and then well beyond those borders as well.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

How would a member of Parliament discover what local companies have benefited from these major renovation projects?

[Robert Wright]

In many respects, it's a national footprint and a local market as well. Many people relocate as well to work on the Parliament Buildings. If you look at something like stone masons.... I've been involved in this for over a decade now. If you go back to some of the initial pilot projects that we were doing on the West Block and you look at the demographics, and I'm going to speak anecdotally a bit but if you go back about a decade ago, you would have seen people on the sites in their sixties and seventies. Now, it is new graduates and a much broader spectrum, so people in their twenties and thirties, males and females, and we're building capacity that can also be exported across the country and to other countries.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you very much.

Go ahead, Mr. Reid.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Thank you.

I know that I benefited from an earlier version of the construction work on Parliament Hill because when I was 17 years old, my very first job was working at a company called Clemann Large Patterson, consulting engineers, and we were involved in the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning in the East Block back in the 1980s.

I was going to direct a question to Genevieve Charrois to follow up on Mr. Fast's question, but I'll give you a moment to think about that because you might not have anticipated it.

Mr. Wright, if I could just ask a couple of questions of you. First of all, do you remember what the costs were for that renovation of the East Block back in the eighties? At the time, I thought it was very culturally sensitive, so it would be interesting to do a comparison between costs then and costs now.

[Robert Wright]

I don't have that at my fingertips, but I would say that escalation is a very important factor in this work. The costs rise over time, so doing work now saves you money later, and that is an important factor.