Oh, I know—all the time.

Recommendation 2: “We recommend that Infrastructure Ontario obtain sufficient procurement data from external capital project managers, including all bids, change orders and bid evaluations.” That’s not in this bill.

Recommendation 3: “In order to ensure the fair and economical procurement of project contractors, we recommend that Infrastructure Ontario obtain sufficient information on procurements conducted by external project managers, and analyze this information to determine whether there are any trends that suggest non-cost-effective procurement practices and ... implement its planned controls over external project managers.” It goes on—not in this bill.

There’s a section: “Ineffective measures to hold external project managers accountable for controlling costs and time to complete projects.” Why aren’t you reining them in? This is about efficiencies?

Interjections.

So in the last little bit of time here, I’m going to read this section, because this is what my concern is about these 14 agencies whose properties are being transferred to the Minister of Infrastructure. If they’re going to find themselves at the mercy of the same operating and maintenance services as being provided by these contracted-out project managers or the contracted-out services, I feel badly for them if this hasn’t been remedied.

Again, from the Auditor General’s report, these are just some client ministries. These are your ministries, okay? These are not random folks.

“Client ministries’ written comments on operating and maintenance services....

“‘We have also found that new contracts for cleaning, snow removal, etc. are tendered by [the external property and land manager] and services have been removed or frequency of services have been changed. We have no input in these changes and in some instances the [external property and land manager’s] on-site maintenance staff are not even made aware of the change. For instance I noticed that the parking area (at one building) was not being cleaned as it normally was and I mentioned it to [the external property and land manager] after some time [it] told me that the cleaning of the parking garage was removed from the last parking contract. After many months they have hired the building cleaning company on a separate contract to clean the garage.’”

Again, we’re in the weeds here, but folks have a job to do. The government is navigating these contracts. It’s contracted out, and nobody is paying attention. What kind of management is that? And now you’ve got 14 new agencies who get to be a part of this management family? I wonder how they will feel.

Another client ministry said, “‘[Regarding] interior cleaning, [we] have yet to see a schedule of what is done where/when even though we have asked a number of times.”

Here’s another one. They used to have an agreement in the early 2000s “‘that detailed all the services for the building and who had the responsibilities to perform those services.... Currently, occupancy agreements provided to [our ministry] do not identify individual buildings or provide specific details of services provided for them. We no longer have a quick reference document that can confirm what services are provided for ministry-occupied buildings, and must contact IO ... or their service provider to get those details. If we request a copy of a lease from IO, typically only a portion of the applicable segment of the agreement is provided. If we request a copy of a service contract, IO does not provide a copy, only some details as they deem relevant. This can be an issue as illustrated in a very recent example. [Our ministry] questioned the cleaning services being provided to another building. [Our ministry] was initially told by IO that certain services were not part of the cleaning contract, and [we] acquired a third-party vendor to perform those services. It was recently discovered, after much persistence on [our] part for IO to verify the contract, that those services were in fact included in the original contract. [Our ministry] has been paying twice and we are now in the process of rectifying this issue and hoping to be reimbursed for the error. We have estimated that we paid approximately $16,000 unnecessarily over the last five years.’”

Just another day in Infrastructure Ontario’s management portfolio.

Speaker, recognizing that we are coming to the end of an hour—and I appreciate that when I said, “How am I supposed to fill an hour?” my party whip said, “Oh, you can fill an hour.” Yep, I guess so.

I’ll distill it down here: We have a bill in front of us that I’m surprised they have brought forward as its own stand-alone bill. Normally, we see these types of amendments or schedules put into a larger government bill. But as I said, this sort of solves a problem I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s been a day and a half; I’m trying to understand what motivates them, and hearing things like “efficiencies” and “holistic,” whatever—that doesn’t mean anything to the folks who go to work every day in one of those properties. What will it mean for them? I guess I would like to know, what is the end goal? Is this a part of the story of improving things as per the 14 recommendations of the Auditor General for the real estate services portfolio?

And when it comes to the class environmental assessment, that 30-day waiting period, we’re holding our breath about how often that will be used. This government’s track record on how it treats public input and consultation on the environment is poor. I would say the public is treated with disdain, frankly, and often so is the environment. Perhaps the government can take today’s debate as an opportunity to walk us through how the environment will continue to be protected and how this piece of legislation, indeed, will not just reduce efficiencies but make the world a better place, because I don’t see it.

I don’t know. I can’t answer that. How? How does this do those things? Walk me through it.

—“that unsuccessfully bid on P3 projects up to $2 million per bid to cover some of their costs.” That is an amazing consolation prize.

So these few companies that bid on these projects can actually receive a cash windfall for simply putting in an application—not even for being successful, for just simply putting in an application. Toby calls it “a cozy fraternity of lucratively paid P3 companies and consultants getting wealthy at the public’s expense.” That is not fiscally prudent. That is not good business.

Back in the day, the Conservatives, as opposition, were quite critical of this sort of spending, yet now that they’ve changed to the other side of the House, they’re quite happy with the status quo. In fact, they have become the status quo.

I’d also like to take a look at some of the Auditor General’s report on real estate services. Now, the Auditor General states—

Interjections.

The Auditor General said that the agreement, the enterprise realty service agreement, between Infrastructure Ontario and the Ministry of Infrastructure—here are the problems: “The agreement does not set out any mandatory, minimum standard of performance for managing the costs of capital projects. It does not set out timelines for meeting.” And it does not make sure that government properties are being “used efficiently.” These are all the buzzwords that we hear from this government all the time, and they’re not doing it. It’s abundantly clear that this is not being upheld. They are not doing their due diligence. They are not participating in what is a good business model.

So if we take a look at the request for proposals, the RFP approach, the Auditor General pointed out that that attracted only a few bids for the management of 7,500 capital projects. These were projects worth about $900 million over five years. There was not a broad range of companies that bid on this. It’s very curious.

She also criticized—it says, “Better oversight of external projects—

Interjection.

She also states, “Better oversight of external project mangers’ procurement methods for capital projects is needed.” She goes on—she believes in competition. She believes that things should be fair. And on the side of the official opposition, that makes sense. She states, “Infrastructure Ontario does not track how many vendors bid on capital projects and which vendors are winning the bids.” They actually don’t track what they are responsible for—wow. Where’s the accountability? Where’s the transparency?

The Auditor General talks about the vendor rotation process, which is supposed to be an electronic bidding service that’s supposed to provide these contracts in a more fair manner. “However”—this is where it’s interesting, Madam Speaker—“since 2013-14, Infrastructure Ontario has allowed its external project managers to select vendors from its ... list and manually add them to the list of bidders.” So they cherry-pick the ones they wanted to get the contracts to make sure they got the contracts.

Speaker, as we look at Bill 69, the Reducing Inefficiencies Act, there is far more that this government needs to do in terms of reducing inefficiencies. On the side of this official opposition, we hear this government with all of their buzzwords, we hear them with all of their rhetoric and their language, but we’d like to see actual action that is reducing inefficiencies. We’d like to see a better business model where there is true transparency, accountability and actual efficiency.

Let’s see the government do this. Let’s not hear them talk about it; let’s see it reflected in legislation. I look forward to the briefing, and I want to thank the Minister of Infrastructure for providing that.

This program showed great promise. It cost about $18,000 per person per year, rather than the cost of a mental health bed. It was great cost savings. It was efficient. It was amazing. And it was also something to be prescribed by a doctor. The device and the program would be prescribed. It was to be added to the Assistive Devices Program. I heard lots from this government about how ADP is 30 years old and it’s for mobility devices and sensory aids and that’s it. They had the opportunity to modernize ADP and they chose not to, so I’m tired of hearing—