By: Liam Baker
Allan Hubley is facing a barrage of calls to resign from his position on city council after details of a secretive group chat he participated in as chair of the transit commission were revealed in the LRT inquiry report this week.
The report shows how Hubley, along with former OC Transpo head John Manconi, former city manager Steve Kanellakos and former Ottawa mayor Jim Watson, as well as other members of Watson’s staff, withheld critical information regarding LRT testing results and standards from city council.
According to the report, decisions to lower testing standards and information regarding testing results were provided regularly through a WhatsApp group chat that included Hubley and Watson. Decisions regarding which information council members were privy to regarding critical testing information, such as testing failure, were limited to the same group chat.
“Decision-making authority and information sharing were informally restricted to the people on the WhatsApp group,” the report stated Wednesday.
Two days before the report’s release, Kanellakos resigned from his post as city manager.
During the hearing, Hubley was asked whether all of council would have been made aware of an independent firm’s assessment of the LRT’s readiness. “I can’t think of anything that I was told at that point that wasn’t later shared with council either through a briefing or if it became public information sometimes it was sent out in memos,” he said, according to online transcripts.
But, former citizen transit commissioner Sarah Wright-Gilbert noted in an interview Friday that she and former councillors Diane Deans and Catherine McKenney – who were not in the group chat – did not receive the same information.
“Rather than doing what they should be doing, which is bring these issues to city council for decisions to be made … [they] decided to make decisions for themselves, and not only make those decisions but then try to hide those decisions from city council, from the public and from transit commission,” Wright-Gilbert said.
Since the report was released, progressive community activist group Horizon Ottawa, Wright-Gilbert and former Gloucester-Southgate councillor Deans have all called upon Hubley to resign.
“At the end of the day, Allan Hubley needs to accept responsibility for his actions and for his part in this,” Wright-Gilbert said. “He needs to accept responsibility publicly, he needs to atone for his actions.”
Reloading News called and emailed Hubley’s office Friday and was told the councillor was not available for an interview.
Hubley’s fate as a councillor rests solely with his constituents in Kanata South, not his colleagues at city hall.
According to Jon Willing, a journalism professor at Algonquin College who covered Ottawa City Hall for years for the Ottawa Citizen and Ottawa Sun newspapers, there’s no legal tool that can remove Hubley from council by city councillors.
“Provincial law governs also what goes on in municipalities in Ontario,” Willing said. “There’s no mechanism for a council to turf one of their own.”
Hubley narrowly won re-election in Kanata South on Oct. 24, with roughly 34 per cent of the vote. Erin Coffin and Rouba Fattal each won nearly 23 per cent of the vote.
“I think that if the community wants it, they can call it,” Coffin said. “It has to be something the community decides.”
Despite the initial shock of the group chat revelation, both Willing and Coffin said that they were not surprised by the report.
“It was not surprising, but it was very interesting that the commission found out about these things,” Willing said. “It just shows you that over years there’s been business decisions being made outside of the public eye and there’s been communications being had between leaders outside of the eye of even decision makers.”
Coffin echoes this statement, adding that rather than a surprise, the report simply confirms claims made in the commission hearings.
“I think it’s disappointing, really, because I think people would like to have faith in their elected officials,” Coffin said. “I think that the secrecy is really disappointing.”
Coffin said she is hoping the new council will consider the report’s recommendations when making future decisions. Coffin also said she hoped the chat’s discovery would spark significantly more transparency when providing the public with information regarding city council dealings.
According to Willing, “I think there’s going to be a lot more attention put on keeping decisions and keeping communications formalized rather than having endarounds on elected politicians and us, the public.”
Even with calls from the community for Hubley to resign, the ultimate decision will fall to Hubley himself.
“Mr. Hubley has to make a decision, what’s best for the community,” said Coffin. “This is Mr. Hubley’s decision of how he wants to proceed.”
Coffin stated she would consider running for ward councillor again in the case of a by-election. Fattal, who also ran against Hubley and Coffin in the last election, could not be reached by the time of publication on Friday.
Mayor Mark Sutcliffe also could not be reached on Friday.
Regardless of the future, Coffin said she believes it is clear what the residents of Kanata South deserve.
“We deserve an honest and transparent councillor who puts our needs first.”
The Ontario government established a commission of inquiry to broadly investigate the circumstances and reasons behind multiple derailments and breakdowns of Ottawa’s LRT Confederation Line. The commission was established in December 2021 and the final report was released on Wednesday.
