Mr. Gerretsen.
Evidence of meeting #4 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was program.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #4 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was program.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
Let's hear the whole thing and bring everyone back another time, so we have full understanding of....
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
The reason I pause right now is that I wanted to get a feel for the room. The clerk and I were discussing this because it does seem it's going a little longer. We could let the presentation continue for the duration of this meeting. We could then do the tour on Thursday that we have scheduled, which may give rise to other questions once we're in the building. Then we have Tuesday's meeting when we have a steering committee scheduled right now, and that could be postponed to another day and we could just have a full meeting of questions at that point, if everyone's available. We could try to work that out. Does that seem reasonable?
Mr. Gerretsen.
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
I think that's reasonable if the witnesses can commit to coming back for that, because I have a number of questions already, and I just want to...
February 18th, 2020 / 12:35 p.m.
Deputy Clerk, Administration, House of Commons
We are committing.
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
Okay, thank you, and thank you to all the witnesses. It's been very informative, so I'll let you carry on. I think we're learning a lot.
12:35 p.m.
Director General, Real Property, Real Property Services, House of Commons
Thank you.
This image shows the Hill. The existing buildings are in blue, and the potential outline of the underground visitor welcome centre is in yellow. All those little circles represent the variety of entrances at the surface in the building.
The focus of moving toward a visitor welcome centre is to provide an efficient and secure entry for parliamentarians, visitors and business visitors. Essentially, the Centre Block will retain those surface entrances, so members will still enter in the members' entrances that lead into the foyer. The Speaker will still enter in the Speaker's entrance. The ceremonial activities will still happen at the front door under the Peace Tower, and accredited staff and parliamentarians can use that entrance as well.
What's really changing is the visitor and the business entrance into the building, as they will be moved out from Centre Block into the visitor welcome centre.
Again, we've done our homework and looked at the variety of possibilities on how to approach the visitor entrance to the Hill. What we are debating at this point are three options. The first two options are separating the business and public entrance into three separate entrances: one for the House business, one for the Senate business.... The first option is putting that public entry out at the south wall of what would be the visitor welcome centre, whereas the second option is pushing it back closer to the Vaux wall to be less disruptive to the front lawn.
What we're favouring at this point is a consolidated entry, for various operational reasons. However, we need to engage with parliamentarians to understand your view on the public entrance and how you meet and greet your constituents in that facility before we can come to any determination. We look at have those discussions in a more granular way with parliamentarians before deciding on an option that would go forward for further development.
12:40 p.m.
Deputy Clerk, Administration, House of Commons
I will not go through the list of the key decisions in relation to the Centre Block program, but I will provide you with a sense of the many components and requirements that must be decided.
We will be happy to answer questions and welcome any comments you might have on items on that list, or others that you don't see on that list but would like to have included.
For example, the original plans called for House of Commons committee rooms in phase 2 of the Visitor Welcome Centre. The administration has reviewed this need and will inform the committee that there is no need for additional House of Commons committee rooms in the Visitor Welcome Centre.
This gives you an idea of how our analysis of the project and actual needs have evolved, and we will make recommendations to the committee.
As you can see, it's a fairly exhaustive list. We may have overlooked some of your concerns.
All comments are welcome. Thank you.
Rob.
12:40 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Science and Parliamentary Infrastructure Branch, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Thank you, Mr. Patrice.
The program is advancing well, and to underline one of the takeaways from the presentation, engagement with parliamentarians on a number of key decisions is required to continue this progress. Given that the Centre Block serves all of Parliament, it will also be critical to ensure that decisions are based on input from both Houses.
We are ready to engage in any way that Parliament would find helpful and productive to provide additional information to support informed decision-making.
I will now shift the focus onto block two.
As we noted at the beginning of the presentation, the transition to a parliamentary campus strategy and the redevelopment of the three blocks across from Parliament are central to the long-term vision and plan. The architectural design competition for block 2 is the launch of this strategy.
These three city blocks were expropriated in 1973 for the future needs of Parliament. They contain 26 buildings, with a range of heritage designations, as well as having two prime places for future development, located on what is called block two. This is directly across from the Peace Tower.
While the LTVP has restored and modernized some of the key and largest buildings in this area, the vast majority of these buildings are approaching 100 years in age; and without having any major work done on them, several are now underutilized or empty. Many of these buildings have small, narrow floor plates. As individual facilities, they would provide very limited opportunities for adaptive reuse. When thought of on a block-by-block basis, there are many opportunities to reimagine these individual buildings into modern, flexible, complexes, conserving their heritage character while making them more functional, accessible and sustainable.
The restoration and modernization of these buildings, block by block, will achieve many objectives at the same time.
First, restoring and modernizing the three city blocks facing Parliament Hill, and which form the heart of Sparks Street, will provide a significant benefit to the core of Canada's capital.
Second, it will enable us to empty and restore critical parliamentary buildings that also require restoration and modernization work, such as the Confederation Building and East Block.
Last, it will enable, in the future, Parliament to be consolidated into a cohesive and modern campus. The buildings highlighted in yellow on the slide form the core of the envisioned work.
Block two is chosen as the launch of the campus strategy for three main reasons. One, it has the most pressing needs in the here and now. Two, it provides the most redevelopment potential to serve Parliament. And three, it is a prime location. It provides immediate adjacency to Parliament buildings on the Hill.
Moving forward with the holistic block approach, rather than building by building, has many benefits, including creating a cohesive, overarching design, as well as providing the opportunity to shift away from these limited-use individual facilities to creating a flexible, interconnected complex. This block approach also provides cost and schedule benefits.
Work on block 2 includes the construction of two new buildings on either side of 100 Wellington Street, a space for Indigenous peoples, and will be done through an independent process.
While the Valour Building won't receive a major overhaul, it will get a modern skin, aligned with the overall design vision for the block. The Victoria Building will be included in the overall design, but its restoration and modernization will need to wait until new space is created so that it can be emptied for its work to proceed. The redevelopment of five adjacent buildings—the Fisher, Bate, Birks, Marshall, and Canada's Four Corners buildings—will transform these inefficient and small facilities into a large, flexible space.
The heritage character of block two will be preserved and the commercial retail space on Sparks Streets will be transformed into modern storefronts, supporting the revitalization of this important area.
We believe that an architectural competition is entirely appropriate, given the problems we are facing with regard to Block 2. In addition, such a large site presents many design challenges, including the possibility of mixing new construction with heritage buildings. The goal is to ensure that the best architects reinvent this important site into a world-class development that adds value to Parliament and the National Capital, and contributes to the revitalization of Sparks Street.
The objective is not to get a final, detailed design that will be implemented; a flexible approach is being used. The objective is to select the best firm for the job based on a well-advanced concept design. This design can then continue to be further matured through engagement with parliamentarians to meet your needs.
We worked with the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, the School of Architecture of the Université de Montréal and [phase eins], which is based in Germany and is a world leader in the organization of architectural competitions.
The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada will oversee the competition. It will be responsible for selecting a high caliber jury to review a two-stage submission process to recommend a shortlist of designs and select the winners.
The proposed jury will consist of three categories: architects, both Canadian and international; generalists, having indigenous participation as well as representatives from Canadian academia and civil society to help ensure that a broader perspective is brought to the review of design visions; and given that this represents a significant addition to the parliamentary precinct, parliamentary participation is also proposed for the jury. Parliamentary participation could take many different forms, and feedback from you and other parliamentarians will be critical.
The jury will be fully supported by technical experts. Membership in the jury would be an important function, and involvement will spread over a one-year period, up to June 2021. It's anticipated that participation would take about 10 days of work.
The final jury report will be shared with parliamentarians and Canadians.
There are five main stages in the process.
Step one was launched on January 20. This was an advance notice that a competition was going to be launched. The intent was really to allow the industry to get ready, and there has been a lot of interest to this point.
Step two is the launch of the request for qualifications. Based on the submissions, a maximum of 12 respondents will be invited to the competition. At this time the jury members—the architectural and general juror segments—would also be announced.
Step three would be the first stage of the competition. Each competitor will submit a design concept, and based on the jury's assessment, up to six design concepts would proceed to the second stage.
The fourth step is the second and final stage of the competition. Each remaining competitor will submit an advanced design concept. Based on the jury's assessment, the winner—or competition laureate—will be recommended to the minister of public services and procurement. The final step will be to negotiate a contract with the winner.
The entire process is expected to take approximately 16 months from the launch of the request for qualifications. Construction is expected to begin approximately two years after the selection of the architect, in other words, in summer 2023.
In conclusion, on this slide you can see that, as with the Centre Block and the visitor welcome centre, there are also a number of considerations with this work, beginning with how Parliament and parliamentarians would like to participate in the design competition, and whether parliamentarians would like to participate in any way. We believe this is an important point in the long-term vision and plan, and it presents an opportunity for parliamentarians to get engaged on shaping the future of your precinct together.
Thank you very much for your attention, Madam Chair and committee members. We are ready to answer your questions.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
Thank you.
Thank you to all the witnesses for the wonderful presentation, and I think it's a lot for everyone to digest.
Since we've decided that we're going to hold a separate meeting for questions, I just want to bring up a few reminders for the committee.
First of all, I want to remind everyone that we have the informal meeting with MP Harmon from the U.K. at 9:30 on Feb 20 in this room 125-B. There were also invitations sent out from the British high commissioner for a reception, and I believe everybody received those. It's up to you to respond; it's not an official committee thing, but I just wanted to highlight that it was sent out and that there's a reception on Wednesday evening for that.
When it comes to the tour of Centre Block on Thursday, there are a few people who haven't responded back with the shoe sizes that are required. The clerk will come to you and find out about that. There's also an issue about the number of participants we can have in that tour. We've been informed that the group can't be too big and can't accommodate everyone having a staff member come along. I just wanted to find out from the committee how to resolve this issue. We have space for all of the members, the analysts, the translators, the clerk and maybe a few more additional people, but not too many more.
Are there any ideas what we could do?
Yes.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Ginette Petitpas Taylor Liberal Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB
I'm not available for the tour this week because I have another committee I have to attend, but I am wondering if, for those of us who cannot attend, a staff member could attend on our behalf.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
I believe you and I think another member can't attend on Thursday.
Monsieur Therrien?
12:55 p.m.
Bloc
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
12:55 p.m.
Bloc
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
I'm just curious what, for lack of a better expression, the rules of engagement are on the tour. Are we allowed to document and discuss what we've seen? Are we allowed to take pictures and that kind of stuff?
12:55 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Science and Parliamentary Infrastructure Branch, Department of Public Works and Government Services
I don't see any restrictions mapped out. This is meant to be an opening engagement with parliamentarians.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
Maybe if we suggested that one staff person from each.... I don't know how many you have...but what about one staff person from each of the political parties?
