Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Dec. 11th, 2018

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Will consultations happen with the press gallery?

[Susan Kulba]

Yes, of course.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Do we have a timetable on that?

[Susan Kulba]

Over the next six months, aside from the parliamentary consultations, we will be meeting with all the service providers to Parliament, whether it be House of Commons internal service providers or the press gallery, as an example, gathering their very detailed requirements. We do that on every project. Then we establish what their functional needs are and we work with those user groups throughout the project.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Have any final decisions been made in terms of assignment rooms, office spaces and those types of things?

[Susan Kulba]

No, sir.

We're very early in the project. We're still, as we say, gathering what the requirements are. At some point we'll have a good idea of what those requirements are and then we'll need to balance that with all the various priorities of heritage, life safety, and come up with a schematic at that point. We're way before that in the project.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Can you help me out here? The chair mentioned that we're definitely not architects or engineers.

In terms of this process going parallel with construction and/or demolition and renovation work in this building, what's happening in the first six months to a year that is going to allow this consultation period to run parallel to the actual work being carried out in the building?

[Susan Kulba]

Once the building closes in January there's a whole decommissioning phase. It's expected to take up to nine months to actually decommission the building, remove all of the House of Commons and Senate infrastructure and furniture and then prepare the building for some of that future construction.

In the meantime, PSPC will also be carrying out intrusive investigations. You've started to see some of that work already. You'll see enclosures in the hallways and various offices. That's why it was important to start moving some of the members out earlier so that we could start the minimal amount of investigative work. Once it's fully vacated we will do the remainder of that investigative work. There are a lot of hazardous substances, and we can't just normally carry out some of that work in a fully occupied building. There's a full amount of work that needs to be done so that we can understand how this building is made. We have information and drawings from the original architects. What we found out already is that it hasn't been built according to those plans so it's very imperative that we do that investigative work to inform things like design, schedule, cost, etc. We're very early in that process and that's the kind of activity that will be happening in parallel to the requirements gathering.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

I appreciate that this place has to be taken apart and put back together like a jigsaw puzzle with many historical features.

At that time in the process does there have to be essentially a final plan so that the rehabilitation and construction can take place in terms of room designation, sizes, allocation and those types of things? I'm also keeping in mind this parallel consultation process.

What's the time frame on that?

[Rob Wright, Assistant Deputy Minister, Parliamentary Precinct Branch, Department of Public Works and Government Services]

Maybe we can jump in from Public Services and Procurement Canada.

Thank you for the question.

As Ms. Kulba indicated, 2019 will really be a parallel activity of focusing on getting a full assessment of the condition of the building and on developing the functional program for the building. Those are the two key activities that will allow us to develop a scope, schedule and budget for the facility. That's based on many years of lessons learned and best practices to be able to establish an approach and a design so that real construction can then begin.

Over the next year it will really be those parallel paths of focusing on what the expectations are for Parliament for this facility to deliver to future parliamentarians and what the actual condition of the building is, and then what needs to be done to make sure it will serve parliamentarians and Canadians for the next century.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Does anyone want to take a stab at this on the record in terms of the timing, keeping in mind that we don't know what's behind these walls? In terms of how long we think this is going to take, how many years—plus or minus—are we building into that based on what's behind the walls?

[Rob Wright]

Thank you again for the question.

I think the answer really lies a bit in your question. The critical thing is to complete these parallel activities in terms of what the expectations are of parliamentarians for this building to deliver and what the condition of the building is. At that point, we'll have a real scope and then a schedule and a cost.

Also, of course, we will be doing everything possible to make sure that this building serves the needs of Canadians, that Canadians can be proud of this building and that it serves the needs of parliamentarians into the future, and to balance that with doing this as quickly and in as cost-efficient a manner as possible.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

Mr. Reid.

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

I've heard that one of the chief concerns with this building in particular is how to keep it safe in the event of an earthquake. I've heard—and I don't know if this is true—that in the event of a serious earthquake this would be the most dangerous building in the city of Ottawa to be in.

Can I just ask about earthquake-proofing the building? I gather that it is one of the chief expenses we face, but this is all based on second-hand information.

[Susan Kulba]

Part of the project will be seismic upgrading to the building. There is no seismic reinforcing in the current building.

I wouldn't consider this the most unsafe building. We have weathered a fair amount of earthquakes to date, and the building has held fairly well, but it certainly doesn't meet the new codes established from 2011 for earthquake reinforcing. As part of the project, we will be addressing that.

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

Okay. One of the early ideas that has been floated there was.... I think we'd all be interested in getting your feedback going forward on how this issue is dealt with. I did get a chance to see the West Block, as did other members of this committee, and to see how that was being dealt with in terms of attempts to ensure that the stone-and-rubble walls would not bulge out and collapse under their own weight in the event of a seismic event.

I heard that for this building that was not—for reasons I can't explain—an adequate solution and that we needed to find new solutions, which I assume would be much more costly. Is it the case that this building has unique issues based on its size or some other feature that render it particularly difficult to deal with and more complicated than the West Block?

[Rob Wright]

Thanks again for the question. Perhaps I'll start off, and then maybe I can hand it over to the architects.

No decisions have been made at this point on how to seismically retrofit the Centre Block. What I will say is that in all of the projects we've undertaken over the past decade, including the Wellington Building, the West Block, as you've referenced, and the Government Conference Centre, seismic retrofitting or seismic upgrading to meet modern building codes has been a key element of the project.

In the West Block, it is a stone masonry. It's a load-bearing stone masonry building that is different from the Centre Block. The Centre Block is one of the first steel structure or steel frame buildings, so the stone is more of a facade. It's a different type of building. The Wellington Building and the Government Conference Centre were different buildings again.

In the case of the West Block, we used approximately 10,000 seismic reinforcing bars to ensure that the three layers of the wall would respond in a harmonious way during a seismic event. In the Government Conference Centre, new shear walls, stairwells and elevator shafts were primarily used for seismic reinforcing. Again, it will probably be a different approach for the Centre Block, because it is a different building.

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

Before we move on to anybody else giving any thoughts on this question, when you say that this is a steel structure on which the stone is primarily a facade, that would suggest to me that it should actually be.... I know that there's more building to deal with here than there is in the West Block, but pound for pound, if you like, or ton for ton, it should be less expensive than it was in the case of the West Block. Is that the case?

[Rob Wright]

I think it would be too early to indicate that.

Certainly, the Peace Tower is one of the tallest, slenderest elements that exist on Parliament Hill, so that is a challenge from a seismic reinforcement perspective. You're quite right that the Centre Block is a different building from the West Block, so a different approach will be required.

I don't know if there's anything that Centrus would like to add.

[Duncan Broyd, Functional Program Lead, Centrus Architects]

Yes. Thank you.

We have a team of engineers on our team who have been working in this environment on the Hill for many years, so there's a lot of experience there.

We're looking at options. As Rob Wright said, the building is constructed differently from the other buildings on the Hill. It's a combination of steel frame and load-bearing masonry. Part of the investigation is to totally understand how that structure works today and to look at two or three different ways of solving the problem—evaluate that with the construction manager, look at comparative costs, and then be in a position to make some kind of recommendation to move forward.

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

That's helpful.

I have a general question.

We're going to be coming back here, correct?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Yes.

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

All right. Maybe it's something to mull over and respond to in more detail when we get back.

It seems to me there are essentially three conflicting things that we all want—the fastest possible time to completion, the lowest possible cost and the largest number of features we can each think of on our wish list. Each of us has expressed all three of these contradictory desires at various times. At some point we are going to have to make compromises on some of these things.

In the end, I can foresee a decade from now an outraged Canadian public looking at the total bill for this and saying that some of the features we put in ought not to have been put in, given the costs. Either we or our successors will be faced with dealing with that at the political level. What kind of structure is set up to ensure those compromises that must be made get made by the kind of decision-making apparatus that the Canadian people ultimately would regard as being satisfactory?

I've probably used up almost all of my time. It might be something to mull over and get back to. Maybe I should stop my question now and let people think about this.

[Stéphan Aubé]

Mr. Bagnell, perhaps I could answer that question.