The Ontario Place redevelopment project has seen its costs increase by more than $1.8 billion, while the selection process for new tenants of the sought-after lakefront property lacked transparency and fairness, the province’s auditor general says.
The first annual report from the office of Ontario Auditor General Shelley Spence found government officials were in communication with representatives of companies competing for the redevelopment project, even though such interactions are in violation of the province’s own regulations.
“The [call for development] process and realty decisions were not fair, transparent, or accountable to all participants,” the report released Dec. 3 says. “There were many instances where the rules and guidelines … were not followed.”
One of the instances cited related to Therme, the European company awarded the contract to build a spa and waterpark on the west island at Ontario Place. The report noted nine emails and one call were exchanged between an Infrastructure Ontario vice-president and Therme’s legal counsel.
Infrastructure Ontario is the Crown agency that oversees all major provincial infrastructure projects in the province.
The cost of the redevelopment project has also risen substantially in the past five years, rising from a maximum estimate of $424 million in 2019 to $2.2 billion since the call for development was issued, Spence’s report said, amounting to an increase of $1.8 billion.
That updated estimate includes $700 million for the design and construction of a new Ontario Science Centre, an increase of $346.9 million in site-servicing expenses, $280 million for a parking facility, and $500 million in public realm improvements such as parks and landscaping.
Some costs could exceed current estimates and do not account for maintenance costs associated with the site, the report said.
NDP Leader Marit Stiles has called for Premier Doug Ford to fire Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma, saying she has “denied” there were issues with the development process.
Surma did not attend the Dec. 3 press conference to respond to the auditor general’s report. Deputy Premier Sylvia Jones and Infrastructure Ontario president Michael Lindsay were on hand to field reporters’ questions.
Jones said there was no reason for Surma to step down from her post.
“She’s actually leading some very important files and has made progress on them,” Jones said. “I know if she was here she would talk about the need to move forward on these projects.”
Lindsay said that while the auditor general had found fault with the process used by Infrastructure Ontario (IO), she had “found no evidence there was any inappropriate contact between IO employees and our bidders.”
Infrastructure Ontario was directed by the government in 2019 to run a “structured procurement process” for the project, Lindsay said.
“We wanted to take in ideas from across the globe and compare them on an apples-to-oranges basis to see which of these ideas best aligned with the government’s vision and would have the best benefits to taxpayers,” he said.
“We did so creating a process that was competitive, that had non-partisan evaluation at its core … and I would absolutely stand behind the notion that the recommendations that we made to government after evaluation were on the basis of conversation by non-partisan evaluators.”
Relocation Plans
The premier announced last April the Ontario Science Centre would move to the waterfront, with construction slated to begin in 2025. Ford unveiled additional plans last July for redeveloping Ontario Place to include not only the Science Centre but an expanded amphitheatre, a public beach, bars, restaurants, a new marina, and a spa.The project has been the subject of much debate and criticism since with proponents of the plan saying the current science centre is old and not worth fixing, while critics have said the proposed budgets were subject to change which could make the endeavour too costly.
That topic was also addressed in the auditor general’s report, which noted that relocating the science centre has become more expensive than continuing its operation at the existing location.
A March 2023 study estimated maintaining the Ontario Science Centre at the existing Don Mills site “would cost the province $1.3 billion in net present value over a 50-year period” while designing, building, and maintaining a new centre at Ontario Place would cost $1.047 billion over the same timeframe, the auditor’s report noted.
“Relocation was presented as a savings therefore of $257 million,” the report said. “As of November 2023, based on the latest available cost information, the total cost assessment for building and maintaining the new Ontario Science Center at Ontario Place increased by $397 million or 47 percent.”
Lindsay said the figures in the auditor general’s report are preliminary, adding that moving the Ontario Science Centre makes more sense than revamping it in its current location.
“I think it’s worth remembering what we’re doing,” he said. “We’re creating a new state-of-the-art, bespoke, built-for-purpose Ontario Science Centre that’s going to last for several generations, that’s optimized in respective exhibit space and is going to give incredible experiences to generations of kids.”
The costs associated with rehabilitating and remediating the existing facility have also increased since the 2023 study, he said, noting that there have been additional discoveries about the building’s condition. The roof in particular would be costly to fix, he said.
A business case study released last fall by Infrastructure Ontario said the Science Centre, which was built in 1969, has had a notable decline in attendance for several years. The report blamed the declining attendance on the “lack of long-term investment in visitor experience” and not enough capital investment in the building’s overall upkeep.
