Okay, half a billion, give or take, so a lot of money, and the science centre is going to be on top of that. So the science centre won’t have a basement or a foundation because that will actually be the parking garage, right? It’s on top. We don’t have to build a basement. It’s sitting on a parking garage. The parking garage is its basement, so that doesn’t count.

We’re talking about building a new science centre, but we’re not factoring in a basement or a main floor because we’re assuming the parking garage. Now, if the parking garage moves to the different location, it’s going to need a foundation. In order to build a foundation, a basement foundation, it would cost perhaps some hundreds of millions. That’s not in the number, okay? So we’re building a science centre that doesn’t have a foundation if the parking structure doesn’t work out—not comparing apples to apples here, kids.

Beyond this, the government numbers for what it would cost to build a new science centre on top of a parking garage, it also “excludes the cost for a 150-metre-long underground, two-level link between the new science pavilion on the mainland”—proposed—“and the bridge to the pods”—think of the iconic pods—which is going to be “an enormously expensive component of the project,” and it will be “an essential element for allowing ticketed visitors to move from the main science pavilion to the pods and cinesphere.”

This massive two-level connector, 150 metres long, underground, beside a lake, isn’t part of the figure. So what it will cost to build a new one doesn’t include this two-level, 150-metre-long link; doesn’t include a foundation or a basement, because it assumes a parking garage, so shh.

Now, on the other side, the science centre’s required repairs: The government has chosen not to invest over many years. Someone will have to pay that eventually, but that’s someone else’s problem, I guess.

“The cost of building a new science centre, which the report pegs at $384 million, disregards pricing put” out “by its own consultants. It doesn’t include quantity surveyor A.W. Hooker’s allowances for soft costs and a construction contingency—including consultant fees”—sorry, these are numbers that are not in the cost of building a new one, okay? So it doesn’t include “consultant fees, project management fees, independent inspection and testing, third-party commissioning, legal fees, development and permit charges, client FFE, and the cost of change orders made post-tender—which amount to an estimated additional $100 million.” That ain’t in the number. “A.W. Hooker’s overall estimate for the project is $499,200,000. And that’s for a building whose program relies on” a 150-metre-long underground link next to the shoreline, not included, and “2,750 square metres of underground functional space—a full floor—but whose price tag does not include that floor, nor any type of parking, basement, or foundations.” Again, it ain’t comparing apples to apples here.

I want to thank Elsa Lam because she puts this all very clearly. I’m happy to share this article with folks.

She goes on: “The business case’s costing for the relocated Ontario Place omits the costing for the rehabilitation of the pods and cinesphere, as well as the cost for building the underground science link … detailed in the test fit documents as a two-storey underground link.” Okay. So the pods and cinesphere that everybody thinks of—and that’s where exhibits will eventually be and whatnot. That’s the link we aren’t paying for, or we’re not talking about, that’s where it goes—they’re old, okay? And they have to be rehabilitated. The money for that rehabilitation—not in this. So we’re going to put exhibits in the pods, but we’re not going to talk about what they’ll cost. But interestingly, that $499-million price tag—and that is from their own consultants. The A.W. Hooker’s allowances and all of that is their work. The $499-million price tag also excludes exhibitions from the majority of the pods.

It says that the Ontario Science Centre—I guess this is their board—“has opted to not program three of the pods on opening day” and that “removes $16.8 million from the previous allowance.” So we have heritage pods that need to be rehabilitated, but the money to do that isn’t included in how we’re going to put the science centre there.

It doesn’t include the “$25.5 million currently being spent on recladding those structures” and the Ontario Science Centre—I don’t know if it’s the board—has opted not to program on opening day, so we don’t even have to count the $16.8 million to have exhibits in three of those pods. Because on opening day, they won’t be ready, so we’re not factoring that into the cost of putting the science centre—

Props aren’t allowed.

Oh, it is so.

This also “assumes that there will be no phased work, no accelerated construction schedule, and no work completed during the winter, after hours, or on weekends.” All of those things would be more expensive and “command premiums.” Thank you, Elsa Lam.

I’m going to read this section, also from her article. For folks following along at home, this is the article “Debunking the ‘Business Case’ for relocating the Ontario Science Centre.” She has written, “For the sake of simplicity, a somewhat more accurate high-level comparison might be to just put the two consultant estimates, in full, side by side: $499 million for a new science centre and partial exhibitions, to which should be added the cost of a basement level” and “foundations … versus $328 million to repair the existing science centre, including giving its exhibitions and public spaces a generous $100-million refresh,” or a $109-million refresh.

Also, “the massive carbon cost of building an underground, multi-level concrete parking garage … next to a lake—as opposed to renovating an existing building whose embodied carbon has already been locked into place” is something that we should value.

Another piece of this math is “the government’s case for relocating the … science centre is strongly based on the efficiencies of a smaller facility, but also on its ability, paradoxically, to attract more visitors. It estimates that 1.15 million people will visit the relocated science centre in its first years. It also expects to accrue cost savings through staffing reductions: the estimates count on laying off 53 people, or one out of every six people who currently work at the science centre.” Yes, firing one out of every six is going to save them some money.

However, it continues, “They are expecting that 50% more people will visit a facility that is 45% of the size of the current science centre, with a significantly reduced staff managing it all.”

A few more interesting pieces is that, if we were looking at reasons to keep, or what would happen if we kept the science centre where it is—if we actually looked at the numbers, this business case that the government has put forward “assumes that the opening of the Eglinton LRT and eventually the Ontario Line, the densification of the area with condo towers, and the investment of over $100 million in exhibitions and public spaces in the building will result in precisely no increase in the visitors to the science centre in its existing location.”

So all that housing, all the transit, all the money into new exhibits, maybe a couple of bucks to advertising, but no one else will come. And so those are the numbers presented in this triple-checked business case.

Another fun fact, again, from this article: “When you remove the ‘adjustment factor’ of 1.3 that” Infrastructure Ontario “instructed its consultants to apply to the replacement value of the existing building, which carries forward in maintenance costs that are inflated by 30%”—yes, the savings from the Ontario Science Centre evaporate and, in fact, are reversed.

So if we didn’t actually doctor the numbers, if Infrastructure Ontario had not instructed their consultants to use an adjustment factor of 1.3, maybe we’d have a sense of the real number there.

The business case contorts itself and makes clear a justification for relocation.

Two years before any public announcement, it was determined to relocate the Ontario Science Centre to Ontario Place. The business case clearly supports that plan, but there does also have to be value. So, real numbers aside, there should also be value in a gem like the Ontario Science Centre, in the experiential value science should still have value.

It’s a great article. I’d invite everybody to read it. Thank you, Elsa from Canadian Architect, “Debunking the ‘Business Case’ for Relocating the Ontario Science Centre.”

But all of that to say that Infrastructure Ontario and its contractors have not made the case for themselves to be given more properties to look after, that the embedded private contracts are more expensive, significantly so, as clearly laid out by the Auditor General. The Minister of Infrastructure has said at some point that this was in answer to the Auditor General’s 2017 report, but certainly nothing we can point to and all of the other very clear solutions and challenges, as laid out by the Auditor General, remain unaddressed.

Speaker, as I said earlier, I had the opportunity to speak at committee—I’m sorry, not to speak at committee; to sit at committee. I did speak, though. Don’t worry. And I had the opportunity to listen. There were a few folks that came. There was thoughtful discussion. There were also some shenanigans. One of the independent members had brought—

The committee process was a rushed process, and that’s too bad. We have seen that the government wants to do away with the science centre as we know and love it, that they have other plans, but plans that people aren’t clear on. The contract, the lease, anything to do with real estate holdings, the government pulls behind the cabinet curtain and folks don’t get to know. That doesn’t mean they don’t care, and that doesn’t mean they don’t have questions.

I would think that the minister would bend over backwards to be transparent and share those clear numbers with folks, but the breakdown of the business case where Infrastructure Ontario has been the landlord for the science centre and we see mathematic or financial gymnastics in that business case, and that’s not what people are looking for.

I don’t see much accountability in the province for many things. I would challenge the government to point to numbers, to point to where in the budget, to point to a contract that anyone in Ontario is allowed to see. The only thing that we get to see is through the Auditor General and what we can glean from their reports.

This is the second part of an initiative, this bill is a second part in a series of pieces of legislation, as the minister has told us, to pull more holdings under the control of Infrastructure Ontario, to make their role permanent with many more public gems, public treasures, public agencies, and I think Ontarians broadly have concerns. We had someone come to the committee and say that they did not agree with the centralization for centralization’s sake and was challenging them on that, but they raised that we don’t have accountability.

I asked questions of the minister at committee about why the need for more and more privatization, more and more opportunities to pull public entities behind that government curtain, but again we’re not entirely sure for whose benefit. If they’re going to sell stuff, we want to know. Is someone planning to sell something? Like, is there something in the works? Does the government know something the rest of us don’t about the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Science North or the Ottawa Convention Centre Corp.?

We don’t know what it’s for. Is the ROM planning a sell-off of its assets and property? Is Science North planning that? I don’t think so, but if they know something and they want to stop it, there’s more conversation to be had.

I’ll take the last bit of my time to raise an issue that my colleague from Nickel Belt has raised repeatedly, with much frustration, in this House in various ways. I sit beside her, of course. She spent so many minutes of a debate, one time, breaking down the housing in Gogama story. If you google “Gogama housing” and the MPP for Nickel Belt, you’ll get stories that go back to 2015 or 2014 and whatnot. But the more recent version—I’ll share some of her thoughts from committee that she was actually able to ask the minister directly about. That was a first because, to this point, the member from Nickel Belt has been able to send letters to various ministries and ministers and has received boilerplate responses—and then sends back, and they get the same one. It has been quite a ridiculous process. It was a big deal that she raised it in committee and actually had the minister acknowledge what she said. So I’m hopeful this may one day be remedied.

What the member for Nickel Belt said was, “In September 2020, the Premier, the Minister of Mines, the Minister of Northern Development, the Minister of the Environment—a whole bunch of ministers came to my riding for the grand opening of the Iamgold mine. While they were there, I showed them—’Look across the street, in the community of Gogama. You, the government, own 11 properties that people want to buy.’

“In January 2021, I wrote to your ministry, I wrote to the Premier, I wrote to the Minister of Mines, I wrote to the Minister of Natural Resources—I wrote to seven different ministers to say, ‘There are 1,800 workers sleeping in bunkers at the mine across the street from Gogama. You own 11 properties in Gogama that hundreds of people want to buy. Would you put them up for sale?’ The answer I got back in January 2021 from your predecessor was that you had to do due diligence—’Give us a few months.’ A year later, I checked, and they said it would be one to two years. Two years later, I checked and I wrote to you, and you wrote me back the exact same letter—’Give us one to two years to do due diligence.’

“If having government oversight of real estate is to improve efficiencies, taking three years—actually, we’re going into four; we are into February 2024—to sell 11 homes, and most of them are not worth more than $200,000, is not efficiency. That’s leaving 1,800 workers to sleep in bunkers across the street from where you own properties that are beautiful, that you have paid to maintain—to cut the grass, to shovel the snow, to trim the hedges. They are beautiful. You’ve paid for all this for years.

“Why don’t you put it up for sale? And how is that efficiency, four years later?”

That’s a great question.

The minister said, “I can appreciate your frustration. Certainly, I am aware that there is a need for more housing in northern communities, given the government’s investments in mines.

“The response that was provided to you in the letter is correct.”

She went on to explain the involved process and said, “But it’s noted. I will take that back to the team....”

I’m saying that with a little bit of hope for the member from Nickel Belt, who raises this issue all the time. But it’s an example that, as we’re talking about a government initiative to centralize their real estate portfolio—to make it optimized, maybe more efficient. These are not measurable things—maybe they are, but we don’t know what the measures are. We have a community that has been begging for years and years and years to have those properties be usable. Maybe the government wants to do something else. Maybe it doesn’t want to sell them—but then tell them. Maybe it wants to keep the land but sell the houses on it and it’s—I don’t know. But is there not a conversation to be had? This is why the relationships, the open back-and-forth, are so important and why privatizing real estate and centralizing real estate—why people are nervous.

Speaker, I have had a second opportunity in this House to speak for an hour about Bill 151. Knowing that this is just the second in a series, I have a sneaking suspicion I will be back to deliver what I hope is a very different speech; what I hope is a speech, next time, that says, “Wow, look, the government did something that the folks can trust, that they have full understanding that this solves a problem that’s been identified by an officer of the Legislature.” But I have a sneaking suspicion that may not be the speech I get to deliver.

We don’t know what problem this bill is meant to solve. It certainly does not solve the very clear problems that were revealed in the Auditor General’s 2017 report. This may make them worse. In short, this bill does nothing to address the actual problems cited by the Auditor General with respect to the Ministry of Infrastructure’s poor oversight of real estate services in Ontario.

With that, I look forward to questions from my colleagues.

Say it’s not so.

Shenanigans?

It’s now time for questions.

I want to thank the member from Oshawa for all the work she did in preparing for the last hour. Thank you very much. I also want to assure her that the new science centre will have a foundation underneath it. I’m 100% confident of that.

But I want to talk about change: the changes to technology that we see today, the changes to building materials, the changes to safety requirements, accessibility requirements for our buildings. It provides the need to support and manage these changes. This needs to be done efficiently: cutting red tape, practising good governance, minimizing administration through centralization and reducing regulations through red tape reduction. Would the member not agree that these are good initiatives for the taxpayers of Ontario?

The Auditor General found that Infrastructure Ontario does not obtain enough information from its external project managers to assess whether procurements are done in a competitive and fair manner. The AG found that the external project managers do not have an incentive to complete projects on time. The AG found that almost $19 million was spent in one year on operating and maintaining 812 vacant buildings. We have a housing crisis; maybe we can do something with those vacant buildings. And then, finally, she found that one private sector company with a history of poor performance is still being awarded new contracts by Infrastructure Ontario, and Infrastructure Ontario does not have a formalized performance evaluation program of private sector companies.

Infrastructure Ontario is the problem. Why has this government doubled down on giving more responsibility to Infrastructure Ontario?

I appreciate the comments from the member opposite. I just want to repeat a very important fact to the member: that we’re talking about 40 million square feet of property. We’re talking about approximately 30 million feet that are owned by the taxpayers of Ontario. And I don’t understand—and perhaps the member wishes to clarify—why we never heard anything in her remarks about centralizing the oversight, about creating this centralization so that we are efficiently optimizing the assets that we have.

Thank you to the member from Oshawa for her very enlightening remarks on this bill and on the science centre this afternoon.

I want to ask a question about the fact that the Ottawa Convention Centre is included in this bill. I’m not aware of anyone in Ottawa who asked for this to be included. I haven’t heard any hint of a concern that the Ottawa Convention Centre was going to acquire or dispose of property.

I know that the real concerns of Ottawa residents are the affordability crisis, the lack of affordable housing and our health care system, which is falling down around our ears. So how does this bill make life any better for the residents of Ottawa?

The member opposite spoke a lot of the science centre. Of course, we are very proud of the decision that we made, because now we will have a brand new science centre that families will be able to enjoy for another 50 years, as opposed to letting an old facility continue to break down and never actually address the issue. But nonetheless, Ontarians will have a brand new science centre.

The member opposite spoke about it. She refuses to acknowledge the facts that were mentioned in the AG report, which do confirm everything the government said in terms of building a brand new facility and some of the challenges of the old building. My question is, then, will the member opposite accept the recommendations and comments made by experts in the field like Lord cultural planning, Ernst and Young, and Pinchin, all of which have commented on the science centre and conducted business cases to move the science centre over to a new—

The cherry-picking—

Interjection.

The cherry-picking is bonkers. It’s a document that does not compare apples to apples, and saying that the critical maintenance, the $369 million in deferred costs—the government is using a number that stretches it over 20 years. That’s not what it will cost to fix; that’s to fix and maintain over 20 years. That’s a big number.

When Infrastructure Ontario had their consultants use a 1.3 increasing factor, those aren’t real numbers. That is inflated by 30%. That’s not a fair number.

When the government is choosing not to listen to its own consultants, quantity surveyor A.W. Hooker’s numbers—that put it at $499.2 million. How come you’re not listening to your own experts in that regard?

This is just trying to make the story fit their narrative, but that doesn’t make it real.

In fairness, I had asked the Minister of Infrastructure about the buy-in or if they had had positive or negative feedback from the institutions within this, and the government has said, by and large, there was buy-in or there wasn’t pushback, except for some. But we don’t know what the “some” is. We don’t know who. We don’t know what their concerns are, because that’s not for us to know.

It might be interesting for you to circle back to the folks in Ottawa and ask them how they feel about privatization; how they like seeing their money, public dollars, go to these private consortiums, the P3s; and how they feel about accountability and transparency in provincial assets.

The optimization, centralization, modernization, all of that—tell me what that looks like for the taxpayer. All of these fabulous gems in our community, Science North, the Royal Ontario Museum, the science centre, Public Health Ontario, Ontario convention centre corporation—all of these, when people walk in, what is it that they’re going to see and measure that they’re going to be like, “Oh, my God. Thank goodness the government centralized the optimizable modernness”?

What are you talking about? We don’t want word salad. We want value for our tax dollars. We want investment in our gems. That’s what we want. Show us what that looks like.

Response?

Further debate? Further debate?

Ms. Surma has moved third reading of Bill 151, An Act to amend various statutes regarding infrastructure. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

Interjection.

Miss Taylor was escorted from the chamber.

Third reading agreed to.

The House recessed from 1727 to 1800.

Report continues in volume B.

I said no.

We said no.

Oh, you’re kidding me. Both of them said no.

Madam Speaker, no further business.