The National Capital Commission (NCC) is planning to construct an underground Senate parkade at the cost of $1 million a spot, an expense one senator has called “outrageous.”
Alberta Sen. Scott Tannas told a Senate committee Nov. 9 that the NCC had proposed the construction of an underground parking garage at an as yet undisclosed location. The NCC, the Crown corporation responsible for Canada’s official residences, is the same agency that spent $8 million on a solar-powered barn for Rideau Hall.
Mr. Tannas described the proposed expenditure as “outrageous.”
“It’s not defensible,” he said, adding that while the current numbers show a $1 million per parking space cost, “there would be inflation. That was really a rough estimate.”
Manitoba Sen. Donald Plett predicted the $1 million per spot estimate “would not even touch it” due to the likelihood of cost overruns.
“We know it would be $3 million a spot and not $1 million,” Sen. Plett said, as reported by Blacklock’s Reporter.
The NCC has declined to comment on the matter.
The same agency is currently under investigation by the Commons public accounts committee for spending more than $8 million on a barn at Rideau Hall, the Ottawa residence of the governor general of Canada.
The barn’s expenses, totalling $8,039,853, were disclosed Oct. 18 through an access-to-information request by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
The new two-level building design was approved in June 2019. Construction began in July 2020 and was finished during the winter of 2021. It has vehicle storage space, a washing bay, a repair garage working area, a tool and equipment area, and storage space.
MPs were told at an Oct. 31 hearing the barn was also equipped with solar panels, fibre optic telecom lines, and an elevator.
Conservative MP Jake Stewart said the project lacked “accountability.”
“None of our storage sheds or barns cost $8 million,“ Mr. Stewart said. ”None of them have elevators and none of them have fibre optics. As a matter of fact, the people in my riding don’t have access to fibre optics.”
NCC spokesperson Sofia Benjelloun told The Epoch Times on Oct. 19 that the barn was constructed “to address health and safety concerns presented by the previous structures which were at their end of life.” The previous structures were removed in 2016.
