audio test. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we'll get started in one minute. Jeff's like, >> "All right, everyone's very excited that it's a Friday, I think." >> Do I have to use my like fizz teacher voice? >> Okay. We are starting. Good morning everyone. >> Good morning. Bonjour atus. Welcome to today's audit committee meeting. I'm glad everyone is excited and uh full of energy. Uh let's see if we can bring that down a little bit. This is audit committee. Okay. Um we have a very full agenda today as well. We'll begin with our consolidated financial statements for the city. We'll have a presentation by Isabelle Jasmine, our deputy city treasur, and then a presentation by KPMG, our external auditor. Um, we will then move on to our syncing fund financial statements. There won't be a presentation for that, uh, but staff are happy to take questions. We'll review one audit and one follow-up audit, uh, on bus service planning and scheduling and on job evaluation processes, respectively. Very likely after that, we'll have a short break depending on what time it is uh, so that we can also set up for the in camera portion of this meeting. After our inc camera meeting, we will have to resume an open session to carry the motions that were uh talked about in camera. Uh just a friendly reminder that for the report submitted by the office of the auditor general, we'll first ask questions of the OAG. After their presentation, we'll move to C questions from staff. We'll start with questions from committee members and then from other members of council. Uh for any items today where there are delegations, we'll hear from the delegations prior to the motion. Today, there are two delegations for the item on bus service planning and scheduling. And a quick reminder to delegations and to and to uh counselors, please keep your questions and comments on the meetings materials. You know, there's always a topic like this, there's a um a human need to stray from that, but we try to stay to the meetings materials and uh the reports. All right, let's get started. Uh so regrets, councelor Kavanaaugh will be here, but not until about 11:00. And I'll ask the committee coordinator to call the role, please. Here. Councelor Brown. >> Councelor Carr. >> Here. >> Councelor Hill. >> Very serious. >> Present. >> Councelor Kavanagh. Councelor Kits >> here. >> Vice Chair Hubley >> here. >> Chair Curry >> here. >> You have quorum chair. >> Thank you very much, Eric. Um, as an initial housekeeping matter, I'll ask for a motion to add the Office of the Auditor General uh reports to the agenda as they were distributed and published after the agenda. The motion will also include a technical amendment to approve corrections to the draft consolidated financial statements considered under item 4.1. Uh, vice chair, could you please move that motion? >> Thank you, uh, Madame Chair. Be it resolved that the audit committee approved the addition of the following reports distributed to members and published with the agenda on June 18th pursuant to subsection 89 bracket 3 of the procedures bylaw to allow for consideration of the reports. A office of the auditor general audit of bus service planning and scheduling. Uh B office of the auditor general follow-up report review of job evaluation process. C. Office of the Auditor General O Audit of Cyber Security Critical Infrastructure. D. Office of the Auditor General follow-up report number two, audit of cyber security. uh approved the following amendments incorporated into the revised version of document one supporting document to the report 2025 city of Ottawa consolidated financial statements uh distributed to members and published with the agenda on June 17 a page four the accounts receivable line is amended to read $575,871 and the account payable line is amended to read $1,575,10 in the 2025 column. B, page 8. The decrease in the account receivable line is amended to $14,765 and the increase uh or decrease in accounts payable and acred liabilities line is amended to $346,315 in the 2025 column. Part C is page eight. The investing activities purchase of investments line is amended to $347,000 147 and the disposal of investments line is amended to 774,185 in the 2024 column. Page 25, note three is amended to agree with the amount of 575,871 showing on page 4 as amended. And finally, E page 29, note 7 is amended to agree with the amount of 1,575,10 showing on page four as amended. Thank you. Please don't ask me to read that again. That was excellent reading, Vice Chair Huby. Thank you very much. Okay, so um that motion is that carried? Carried. Thank you very much. And uh declarations of interest, uh none were filed. Um and we move to the audit committee minute 17 from April the 30th, 2026 to confirm these minutes. Are they carried? >> Carried. >> Carried. Thank you. And now we move to the finance and corporate services department for the consolidated financial statements. We'll wait for Isabelle to come to the desk. >> Thank you, chair. So, we have the presentation. Okay, good. Uh, so my name is Isabelle Jasmine. I'm the deputy city treasurer of corporate finance for the city of Ottawa and I will present the financial statements for the year ended December 31st, 2025. We also have KPMG with us today, Rebecca McDonald, the KPMG managing partner responsible for this audit, co-partner for the audit, Kevin Travers, I believe he's online, and Inennis Grubes Grubes, the audit manager. They are here to present the results of the audit and after I've made my presentation. Next slide. So, we're reporting an annual surplus for the year ended December 31st, 2025 of 750 million, which is different from the 20.9 million deficit reported at the end of 2025 for budget purposes. Financial statements are reported based on Canadian public sector acrual accounting standards, whereas the budget is reported on a modified cash basis. There is a surplus on an acrrual basis because it recognizes revenue that is not included on on cash or budget basis such as assets contributed from developers and the share of earnings from hydro Ottawa and expenses include the annual depreciation of the historical cost of assets which tends to be a lower cost than what is contributed to capital annually on a budget basis to replace those assets. Next slide. In 2025, overall revenues increased by 459 million, which represents an 8% increase from the prior year. There were increases in taxation and fees and user fee revenue, government transfers of 194 million, contributed to tangible assets of 9 million, investment income of 46 million, and other revenue of 10 million, which was offset by decreases in development charges of 35 million. Next slide. Total expenses for 2025 increased by 503 million which represents an increase of 11% from the prior year. Factors for the increase include inflation, the imple implementation of Trillium line in early 2025, increasing the cost of operating that line compared to the previous year and changes to the program delivery under the restructured Canadawide early learning and childare system funding model. Next slide. So net debt is the difference between our financial assets and total liabilities. It is a measure of the future revenues ex required to pay for past transactions. Net debt at the end of 2025 was $4.9 billion but this is offset by non-financial assets of 25.4 billion which is primarily made up of tangible capital assets that we've invested in. The netbook value of tangible capital assets increased by 1.5 billion during the 2025 and this reflects the increased investment in capital made by the city mainly for stage two of LRT 547 million water and wastewater infrastructure 462 million and roads related projects 225 million. A substantial portion of this capital investment includes assets contributed from developers to the city of Ottawa of 474 million primarily in the form of roads, water, and wastewater infrastructure. The difference between net debt and non-financial assets is the accumulated surplus which represents all of the accumulated surplus of the city since its inception. Much of that balance is not in the form of cash but in the form of capital, infrastructure and reserves built up over the years. And this accumulated surplus represents the assets that are available to service future generations. The city's overall accumulated surplus increased by 700 million in 2025 to a total of 20.5 billion. The increase is primarily due to the annual surplus of 750 million reported on slide two. Next slide. Financial assets. Cash and cash equivalents make up 26% of our financial assets or just over $1 billion. Accounts receivable decreased in 2025 by 576 million. Investment in government government business enterprise represents the net assets of Hydro Ottawa which we report on our financial statements on an equity basis. The city received dividends from Hydro Ottawa in the amount of 22 million in 2025 related to the results from Hydro Ottawa's 2024 operations. The loan receivable is for the stage 1 LRT loan to RTG from long-term lenders that was assumed by the city in 2019. Liabilities accounts payable and acred liabilities make up 41% of total liabilities. Deferred revenue makes up another 21% and has increased by 255 million mainly due to government funding related to housing and child care that was received but not spent yet. The P3 liability relates to the trillium line private debt of 129 million outstanding at the end of 2025. The next slides will provide additional details on the next two major items, employee future benefits and pensions as well as the net long-term debt. Next slide. The employee future benefits increased by 54 million mainly due to plan amendments relating to Ottawa police services as well as increases in WSIB related to certain cancers. These liabilities represent benefits earned but not payable until future years. The amount payable in the current year is budgeted for each year and changes in future liabilities are primarily because of changes in actuarial assumptions and legislation. This future liability is an estimation and may or may not reflect the actual amounts that could be paid in the future. The most significant changes include postmployment benefits increased by 39 million based on the actuarial estimation of this future liability and the estimated future liability for WSIB increased by 16 million. Next slide. Debt is only used to fund capital expenditures which have a long life to which we can match the term of the debt to the life of the asset. When you look at the debt level compared to the total cost of the city's gross capital assets, it represents 11.2% of those assets. Our net long-term debt increased, reflecting the issuance of 488 million of new debt issues and loans, which is offset by 155 million of debt principal repayments made during 2025. We issued new debt primarily for Atosoki LRT road and water wastewater projects and the new police headquarters. Principal and interest payments are restricted in two ways. Council has established a specific targets for debt whereby principal and interest payments for tax and rate supported debt are not to exceed a combined target of 8.5%. of the city's own source revenue. In 2025, this percentage was 4.7%. The provincial measure looks at the cost of debt issued including mortgages as a percentage of own source revenues and that limit is 25%. In 2025, this measure is calculated at 8.79% which is far below the provincial limit. Next slide. So, the overall netbook value of the city's tangible capital assets increased by 1.45 billion in 2025. The most significant construction projects contributing to the increases are 547 million for light rail stage 2 which is reported in assets under construction, 225 million for roads infrastructure, and 462 million for water wastewater infrastructure. As you can see from the chart, water and wastewater infrastructure makes up 28% of the total tangible capital asset netbook value. The LRT stage 2 capital asset costs are still accumulating within the assets under construction category. Apart from the trillium line where costs have been transferred to the LRT asset category in January 2025 as sections of stage 2 are put into service, those asset costs are relocated to the LRT asset category. This concludes my presentation and I will now pass it to Rebecca McDonald from KPMG for an overview of the audit results. Thank you and good morning. And as we head into our presentation, just a thank you to management for their support and collaboration through the external audit process as well as this committee in terms of the discussions we've had to date to get to our findings presentation this morning. On the following slide, we contain our audit status. Our report was prepared a few weeks ago. So I do comment that the first three bullets there have since been completed and we are where we would intend to be being before this committee having our discussions. Our audit window will stay open until council has approved the financial statements and we obtain a signed representation letter from management. We do send legal inquiry letters and we request that those come back within a certain number of days of the anticipated audit report date. So those are coming in on track to be that last final outstanding audit evidence. On our following slide, we speak to our independent auditors report which were included in your package. We are prepared to issue a clean and unqualified audit opinion on both the city of Ottawa's consolidated financial statements as well as the syncing fund which is included in your package. Our auditor's report is standard in nature with respect to our audit opinion, the responsibilities of management, yourselves being charged with governance and ourselves as the external auditors. On the following slide, we go through some of the highlights for this year. Um, there were no new accounting standard changes impacting the city this year. Financial statement note 26 in your draft statement speak to some future pronouncements that will impact your 2027 year end. And we've certainly had ongoing conversations with management about um the impact of those in the presentation and they've participated in webinars and training that we've offered at KPMG. As you know, your statements are consolidated. So we do consider the group audit impact when we look at Ottawa hydro, Ottawa community housing and the business improvement areas. We consider those non-significant components to the city of Ottawa as a whole. But we do share that we do perform standalone audit opinions over each of those financial statements with the Hydro Ottawa and Ottawa community housing being issued to date and the business improvement area financial statement audits underway at this time. In terms of our audit plan, we had communicated two significant risks. The first around the consolidation process recognizing some of the manual interventions in that as well as a presumed risk of fraud which is a requirement under Canadian auditing standards. With respect to the consolidation process, we do have some observations on the following slide for some uncorrected audit differences and with respect to the risk of fraud. No concerns in terms of the performance of our procedures. looking at areas of estimates, judgment, significant unusual transactions, um, and manual journal entries. All right. So, I'll turn it over to Inennis to speak through our audit misstatement. >> Uh, thank you, Rebecca. Um, upon our review of the consolidation process with the Ottawa Community Housing, uh, we have noted the following uncorrected misstatements. A reclassification error between the accounts payable and the employee future benefits liability of the amount of 7.9 million. A reclassification error between the accounts payable and deferred revenue of 6.3 million and consolidation error between accounts payable and accounts receivable of 6.6 million. Um just to emphasize that these amounts are not material to our financial statements and do not modify our audit opinion. As for the correct in the statements, um we have noted simply a reclassification errors of realized gains on investments of 19.7 million in the statements of for measurements of gains and losses between the unrealized gain and the amounts reclassified to statements of operations. And as for control deficiencies, we have not noted any significant control deficiencies over financial reporting and any performance improvement observations were made aware to uh management. Thank you. I'll pass it to Rebecca to finalize the presentation. So our last point to share is with respect to our independence. So through the course of the audit, KPMG as a firm has not performed any additional services for the city that could be thought to encroach on our independence as the external audit team. Certainly recognizing that's the value we bring as the external auditors. So that would conclude our presentation. Chair, >> thank you very much to uh both of you. Must be nice to get a good audit. Um, okay. Questions from committee members and or uh other members of council. >> Thought this was a >> Okay, councelor Hill. >> Yeah, thank you very much uh for these reports. I would agree. I don't see any major red flags that come to it. But just uh to validate from a a public uh awareness and transparency perspective uh with regard to the sustainability in debt, given the increase in net long-term debt and overall net debt in 2025, can staff explain how the city is assessing long-term debt affordability and whether capital commitments could constrain future council's ability to respond to emerging priorities or unexpected financial pressures. So chair, there's a few um things we have in place. We have the longrange financial plans where we take into consideration what our requirements are for the next 10 years. Uh we also have our policy to maintain debt within uh reasonable levels. We do get a credit rating agency's reviews every year to make sure that we're u maintaining our AAA credit rating. They look at that in terms of not just our current debt but future expected debt. Um and so all those measures are in place to manage that as much as possible. >> Okay. Um and the statements also show an increase in accumulated surplus but also a decrease in reserves and an increase in future liabilities. Can staff clarify whether the city's reserve levels remain adequate for asset renewal risk management and unforeseen events particularly given the scale of major capital projects that are underway in the city right now. >> Thank you for that question because that was the fourth item. We have a policy for reserves. Uh we have established a minimum and maximum requirement and we are maintaining those minimum and maximum amounts. As we uh update our tax and rate and other LRFPs, we are updating those maximum and minimum levels. As we see trends changing, we are also adjusting those maximum and minimum levels and we have been maintaining the minimum levels since that policy has been in place. >> I didn't see it spelled out clearly. Um, I may have missed it, but did the number um, is it clear the year-over-year city growth in terms of revenue, not including tax increases or anything to that effect, but simply in terms of city growth? I know I think we projected 1.1% last budget season, but did we meet that target uh, year-over-year in the 2025 um, audit? I'm not sure I could answer that question, but uh we base it on the roles from the previous year. So, it's based on actual numbers of what we're expecting in the in next year, but we can follow up in terms of what the actuals were. >> And I guess my last question is with regards to the uh KPMG's comments on uh some of the outstanding procedures and I just want to get an appreciation for the comfort level that we have uh with the status that we have right now given that there were outstanding uh uh documentation So from our perspective certainly no concerns that we feel you should be aware of. Everything is quite standard in nature. We're have one legal letter to come back and from those that have been returned there's been no differences between management's position as well as the external council and the items are quite standard in nature in terms of leading up to council's um review and approval next week. >> Okay. Thank you very much madam chair. >> Thank you councelor Hill. Any other questions? Uh, I just have a couple of quick questions. The uncorrected misstatements, staff, I'm wondering if you can make a comment on that. Why would that ever be? >> I guess I'll speak to that. Um we have uh brought up to management that these um misstate sorry we have brought up to management that these um misstatements are not material to financial statements and they always have the option to leave them uncorrected if they choose. So um they are really not material when you think about it and um if you if you prefer them to be corrected they could always choose to correct them. They do not impact our opinion. Yeah, we could change it. Just get making it in time for the audit committee and making sure we give you the most uh accurate financial statements. Uh it would require an an edit to the financial statements and then probably just include that in the council meeting that that change that happened between audit committee and and council, but they're not material >> and they will be um in in in the following year we catch up we we include those in the next year's financial statement. So the bal the balance sheets are always up to date in terms of the uncorrected statement. >> Okay. I just want to make that clear for anyone listening that's thinking why is there something that's uncorrected a misstatement that's not corrected? Sounds like a bad thing but we understand it. Um the other thing is the amendment that count uh vice chair Hubley read out the changes. Anything material there? Anyone have a comment on that? >> No we didn't feel they were material. >> Okay. All right. I don't see any other questions uh of councilors or so. I think we will read the motion out then that uh the audit committee recommend council approved the 2025 city of Ottawa consolidated financial statements including document one as amended. Is that motion carried? Carried. All right. Thank you very much. So the syncing fund financial statements. Any questions on the syncing fund financial statements? No. Okay. So, we just have a motion there as well that the audit committee recommend council approve the syncing fund financial statements for 2025. Is that carried? Carried. All right. Thank you very much to everyone. Thank you to KPMG. Always great to see you. All right. So, now we'll move to the office of the auditor general item 5.1 uh the audit of bus service planning and scheduling. So um I did want to just say that when we get to the delegations which we will do right after uh our presentation. There is one more uh delegation as well that was added a delegation request went to a spam folder. We have corrected that. So you could be prepared for three delegations. All right. Whenever you're ready. Office of the Auditor General. The first audit that we would like to present to you today is the audit of bus service planning and scheduling. This audit was included in our work plan due to the importance that the city's transit system plays in the day-to-day lives of Ottawa residents as well as concerns raised by members of council throughout my annual discussions. Our hopes with this report is that it will provide clarity on the root causes of some of the issues, key issues I should say, that OC Transpo has been facing, enable a transparent discussion of these issues, and of course to provide management with recommendations both short-term and long-term focused. I would like to take a moment to thank management and staff at OC Transpo who worked collaboratively with us in support of this audit. They have had, as I'm sure you are all aware, a lot going on, and we very much appreciate the effort and time commitment that an audit such as this does require. You may realize that some of the issues raised in our report have been brought forward by OC Transpo over the course of the past few months. In some instance, I believe this is a result of our collaborative approach that we've taken throughout the audit in which we have communicated issues as far back as the beginning of the year to enable staff to start proactively working on corrective actions. We have with us this morning David Cooper who is a subject matter expert in transit service planning, infrastructure delivery, and policy leveraging his work at Transit Link. For those who aren't familiar, that's uh Metro Vancouver's transit system. Calgary Transit as well as the city of Toronto. David had participated in all elements of our audit. He'll be happy to help us answer questions that you may have at the end of the presentation. I will now pass the presentation over to Deputy Auditor General Joanne Gorenstein as well as audit manager Corey Corey Richardson to walk you through the results of our audit. Merciu. >> Good morning. OC Transfer operates a multimodal system that includes rail, conventional bus and paratransfo services. The bus network currently has more than a 100 routes across the city. At the planning stage, routes are designed using customer travel patterns, wrership data, budgetary constraints, and transit service standards and guidelines such as service frequency. Service changes occurred quarterly to address seasonal demand and community growth, aiming to align capacity with demand on busy routes, reduce capacity on underused services, and expand coverage when funding allows, all in line with service standards and guidelines. The scheduling stage then incorporates these changes to produce schedules for each route. Next slide, please. The objective of this audit was to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of OC Transfer's bus service planning and scheduling process. Specifically, the audit examined the governance and operational processes for conventional bus route planning and scheduling related to the implementation of new ways to bus, which was effective April 27th, 2025 and beyond. Given the current bus operating environment, our audit also included related areas which support the audit objective, including future fleet planning for the achievement of service expectations. As part of our audit, we benchmarked OC Transfer bus planning and scheduling processes against other leading Canadian Transit agencies, including Toronto Transit Commission, Translink, and Edmonton Transit Service. Next slide, please. Before we get into our first finding, we wanted to present some background on how on how bus routes are scheduled. Scheduling is continuous and cyclical with four service bookings each year. Because of the size and complexity of Ottawa's transit system, schedule changes usually require 6 months of lead time before they can be implemented for customers. Just for context, a route is a numbered service that follows a specific path around the city, while a trip is one instance of a route. A block is a full day's work for a bus made up of several trips and deadheads done by the same vehicle. I will explain deadheading in a minute. A scheduled runtime is the estimated time a bus will take to complete its inservice trip. This is denoted by the green solid arrows in the diagram on the screen. As part of the overall route, other elements are scheduled as well. Deadheading is when a bus travels without passengers to or from the garage or between trips or routes. These are denoted by the gray arrows. Recovery time, denoted by the shaded boxes, is built into the schedule between trips to act as a buffer for unforeseen circumstances to keep buses on schedule. Minimum recovery time is built into the collective agreement with bus operators. Finally, interlining also denoted on this diagram occurs when there are multiple routes serviced on the same block. We will now present the findings related to bus scheduling. Next slide, please. The audit found that run times were last comprehensively updated as part of the planning for new ways to bus using data collected in 2023. However, due to delays in launching new ways to bus in 2025, run times have become inaccurate as traffic traffic patterns have changed. In reviewing the fall 2025 service booking, we found that on average, 29% of weekday routes longer than 30 minutes had scheduled run times that varied by 10% or more than actual run times as depicted on the graph on the slide. While OC Transfer has processes to identify routes with runtime issues, limited operational resources have impacted the number and type of adjustments that can be made. Even with recent runtime adjustments made through the spring 2026 service change, there are currently 35 routes with deviations of over 10% from their run times. In addition, factors such as deadheading, recovery time, and interlining built into the schedule have impacted bus reliability. For example, while we understand that updates are ongoing, the current deadhead time may not be appropriately scheduled. If delays occur when deadheading, this can impact the next trip, further impacting reliability. Additionally, we found that while transit agencies typically build in a 10 to 20% recovery time into the schedule to act as a buffer, 14% of blocks had less than 10% recovery, while a third of blocks had more than 30% recovery built in. In addition, some trips had less than 5% recovery time, which is a requirement in the collective agreement. This can impact start times of the next trip on the block of work. Lastly, in the most recent service booking, 90% of blocks had interlining. While interlining itself does not impact run times and is a strategy to efficiently manage limited resources, if a bus bus is running late on one route, that delay can neg negatively impact downstream trips on other routes. In the end, consistent runtime gaps have impacted the ability for OC Transit to deliver consistent and reliable service at target levels, especially during peak periods, which has ultimately impacted writers trust in the system. I will now pass the presentation over to Corey for the remainder of the findings. Next slide, please. Uh, thanks Joanne. Uh, the second finding is related to fleet and operator availability. So in the planning to new ways to bus, fleet availability was not considered a primary constraint. As a result, the redesign did not directly assess whether sufficient resources would be available to operate the redesign network. While 540 buses were needed to deliver the service when new ways to bus was uh launched in spring 2025, trips were already removed from the schedule to reduce this number to 524 due to the bus shortages. However, during this period and until about mid-March this year, the actual bus availability uh typically fell below 500. While the issues experienced with the delays in receiving and onboarding the zero mission buses were unexpected, uh the fleet data from 2003 or 2023 through March 2026 as uh shown on this the the graph on the slide here show there's been historical shortages during periods of high demand. As noted in our audit, about 15% of total scheduled buses during peak times are used for school service routes. Uh because school routes are treated as the highest priority for addressing trip cancellations, buses are at times reassigned from other routes during peak periods to ensure school trips are delivered. While this approach supports delivery for for schools, it can come at the expense of other routes during unplanned service disruptions. Lastly, based on uh OC transport data for resource projections, there is a current bus operator gap that is not expected to be resolved until January 2027. This can further impact service delivery. Uh, next slide, please. The next findings relate to service standards. So, service standards are a critical tool used in service planning that is informed by a transit agency's vision and goals. When multiple priorities must be balanced within operating constraints, clear service standards provide a technical rationale for service changes and adjustments. The ought found that there's no clear definition of what priorities and trade-offs should be in the design and delivery of the transit network. This can result in planning decisions that may not be aligned with the overall strategic goals and funding constraints. Further, I have noted that while service standards are typically reviewed and updated every 5 to 10 years, OC Transpose last consolidated service standards and policies were published in 2005. Although while some foundational principles still remain relevant, the city and the transit network have undergone significant changes and subsequent updates have not yet been consolidated. Once service standards are established, transit agencies are expected to evaluate services using defined performance measures and must understand what data is required and how to collect this data in order to assess compliance to the service standards. OC transfer's approach to monitoring uh the existing standards is not always consistent. For example, the last fullsome analysis related to service coverage standard was completed in 2014 and at which time the target was not being met. Further performance where performance falls short of established service expectations such as reliability targets. Management has confirmed that no analysis has been conducted to determine the level of resources needed to fully meet these service expectations. Without this, management cannot provide a clear picture of the resource requirements needed to meet the service standards. Let's go to the next slide, please. The next finding relates to service planning decisions which are not always guided by planning principles and technical analysis. For example, the E1 route which operates parallel to the LRT line one serves as a supplemental rail alternative in addition to the R1 that is in place during unexpected rail disruptions. This route is inconsistent with the approach of new ways to bus which emphasizes taking advantage of the LRT network. The estimated operating cost of this route is 1.3 million annually and requires buses during peak service hours. Further, other transit agencies reviewed as part of the audit have established annual processes to transparently evaluate major service change proposals. This includes documenting the rationale for these changes as well as explaining why certain proposals are not pursued. However, OC Transport no longer has a similar process in place which can lead to inefficient use of limited operating funds. Also, despite management's delegated authority, operational decisions such as bus stop optimization will not proceed until endorsement from award counselor is received. While councilors should be informed and consulted, requiring endorsement for actions already within the city's delegated authority has the potential to delay or halt the implementation of improvements to to address reliability. Our last finding is related to long-term fleet planning. So, uh, a bus fleet plan is a long-term strategy that guides how OC Transpo procures and replaces its buses over time to support the current and future delivery. Although continuous improvements have been made to refine OC Transpose's bus plan, such as reflecting delays in the estimated delivery timelines and deployment of the zero emission buses, the auto found key areas where the current bus fleet plan could benefit. For example, there remains a risk that the replacement ratio of a replacement ratio of greater than one one may ultimately be required given the range limitations of the zero emission buses. Other transit transit agencies reviewed as part of our audit have adopted a higher replacement ratios ranging from uh 5 to 15% contingency to address these range limitations. Next slide, please. >> Thank you, Corey and Joanne. Um, in summary, given current operational realities, OC Transo has not been able to reliably deliver its scheduled bus service. The evolving transit pattern and post-pandemic landscape, delays in both LRT lines openings, and the delivery of zero emissions buses, as well as reduced fleet availability, are challenging the planning and scheduling process. Although strategies to improve performance trends are underway, the audit identified several areas where historical decisions have impacted the effectiveness of bus planning and scheduling. New ways to bus was an opportunity to reset the bus network. However, specific foundational pieces were missing, including the establishment of a clear order of priorities given that the network would not be able to address all needs, as well as updated service standards to articulate specific expectations for service levels going forward. Furthermore, we highlight in our report the need for decision-making to be based on sound technical analysis and aligned with established priorities. This will ensure that management can demonstrate the best use of the limited resources. Given the upcoming LRT line one extension openings expected in the near term, OC Transpo has the opportunity to establish clear priorities to deliver and consolidate realistic service standards and consistently measure performance against those standards. Chair, this concludes our presentation. We'd be happy to take any questions members and and counselors have at this time. Merci. >> Thank you very much. We'll just uh move to our three delegations first and then we'll have questions for you I'm sure. Our first delegation is Noah Vineberg and I think he is online. >> Hi Noah. We're ready whenever five minutes you have. >> Good morning. Thank you >> chair committee members. The information delivered today is not new. We have been bringing this data forward for years. My predecessor brought it forward. I brought it forward. And we sat across from man this management team, the one before it, and the ones before that, and we laid it out. We were told that we were wrong. We were told that it was a shortage of bus operators, leaving out the lack of bus procurement, ignoring the people that deliver the service, proper updates and analysis, and any semblance of transparency. Just disguised cutting of service with flashy PowerPoint presentations, colorful taglines like route optimization and new ways to bus. It was never a shortage of operators. And let me say what that excuse really was. It was misleading. It was wrong. And it was insulting. Every time someone stood up and blamed a shortage of drivers, they were pointing at the people who showed up every single day to serve this city. Our members committed to this work. To put the failure on their backs was offensive, and they felt it. The workers showed up, the workers delivered, and the system was built to fail them. Yet they carried it anyway. Our members took the public's anger in person online for decisions they've made never made and had no power to stop. Years of no transparency and years of misinformation put that anger on the wrong people and none of it had to happen. The misleading phrase shortage of operators should never again be used to cover a failure to schedule, to plan or to choose a cut service. I thank this committee. I thank the auditor general for the work behind the findings. We pushed for this audit for a long time and we needed it. It has finally been delivered. But the responsibility does not stop at management. The direction of this service was given and came from the front line. Excuse me, above the front line. the cuts and the way the work was manipulated, the meddling within operations that was set up by people with control over the mandate. Management chose the road, but they were pointed in a direction, and this audit lays that out. We must be honest about what it shows. We're pleased with much of what the findings have shown. They support what we have spent months and years trying to show. We believe the fix when we see it, but the record is public now, and that will matter as we move forward. give us a schedule that's actually possible and ATU279 will give you the service you absolutely deserve. Thank you, Meli. Thank you, Noah. Um, we have questions from uh members of committee and council and just a reminder everyone to try to ask a question and stay on the audit. All right, councelor Carr. >> Yeah, thanks very much uh Noah. I'm sure um after all your representations at committee uh seeing the results of the audit um will be very important to you and your members uh I know you've talked about the challenges with scheduling for a long time and and brought them to our attention. Um I I want to make sure to keep uh my comments to do with the audit in you you talked about you mentioned specifically in your dedic in your delegation sorry um about the fact that it was never about an operator shortage but the audit does mention about operator shortages um do you believe that right now uh that we can undertake the recommendations without additional operators? Do you believe that there's, you know, there's obviously turnover of operators, but do you believe um that we can implement changes without like I I'm trying to think of how to phrase this question like I know you said it was never about an operator shortage, but there are gaps that we see here. Um can it be addressed without addressing the number of operators? No, I think you always have to keep the number of operators with respect and you have to account for attrition. You have to account for the lack of retention which is building and you have to account for the natural cycle that we go through and I think at the previous transit commission um Miss Pazan presented that uh the numbers they showed is a projection. Um I think they're on top of what they will need to continue forward. They have to be very mindful of retention throughout. Can we do it with the exact amount of operators that we have today? Yeah, we've been keeping this system alive for 20 plus years because they put in the overtime and they put in the extra work to help. And that's not just for financial. There's pride here. So, can it be done? Yes. Is it wise to go that route? No. I think we need to be mindful of what we have, make sure that the conditions are good to retain the people that we have and treat them properly while we attract new. And I think all of that needs to come in to perspective. And I do I really am encouraged to see that we're talking about real numbers, real facts now and getting to a point where the runtime will be possible to deliver. >> Yeah, that's great. Okay, so I just want to make sure you're you're very confident in the recommendations. There's nothing you think was missed. You were you think the recommendations are going in the right direction and do you have confidence that the management will implement them? I have confidence that now that it's on public record and people are aware of things that there will be more accountability in delivering that. And I also find Mr. Lir's perspective refreshing in the sense that he wants to go in this aggre this direction and he's a little aggressive in his approach in saying that this is the way it has to be and it's not something we've seen before. This this is there's a bit of a standing up to council and commission at this point and I think that's long overdue. Okay, that's what I wanted to know. Noah, thank you very much for your dedication and for always representing your members well. You've done a great job in standing up for them, uh, particularly on the scheduling issue. Um, and appreciate you coming out today. >> I appreciate it. Thank you. >> Thank you, councelor Leaper. >> Thank you very much. And, uh, thank you, Noah, for the presentation today. U, there are a few things in your presentation that I think will be subject for a different discussion. The retention issue is something you've come back to a couple of times now, but that won't be the subject of uh of today's meeting. And you're absolutely right. Uh the audit has, you know, there's not a lot that's new here. I think riders know it um uh in their bones in terms of the failure of new ways to bus to deliver a more reliable service. But I did want to come to a point in your presentation at which you said uh that the system was set up to fail the operators. Uh and I'm just wondering if you can put a bit more meat on those bones. uh what kinds of examples can you raise with respect to how uh the schedules run realistic >> when you plan a route to run from A to B using Google Maps and not accounting for the fact that it is a bus and that it stops for people and some people need that ramp put out and you want to be able to deliver a good service and allow that person to have a seat. You want to be able to give a few seconds to get that person that's running for the bus. If you want to be able to do those things which are natural part of public service and you don't account for those in the time frame and then you don't put a cushion at the end of that trip to recover from all of those variables that may or may not occur, you create a cascading failure system that doesn't improve throughout the day unless there's a cancellation or a removal of a trip or more. Do you think the recommendations from the auditor general that have been um accepted by staff will successfully address those unrealistic schedules? If we're honest about taking the information, if we're honest about sharing the responsibility with the people that deliver it and using the information that's provided by the operators as to what is and what isn't realistic, I do believe there's an opportunity to get where we clearly are stating we want to do together. >> What role should we as elected officials play in that? quite honestly, let the professionals do their job and maybe not make minute changes to satisfy constituents on a regular basis. >> Okay. Uh Noah, thank you very much as always. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, councelor Gower. >> Thanks, Chair. Uh thanks, Noah, for delegating today. Um you spoke a lot in your remarks about driver shortage. It is part of the some of the findings in the audit. I just I want to I want you to clarify for me because um certainly we've talked a lot about driver shortage at council, at committee, in the media, all over the place. When I think of driver shortage, I never think that the blame is going on the operators themselves. To me, the driver shortage issue is a structural issue, a management issue, a recruiting issue. Are are I I'd like you to clarify. Are you hearing from counselors that it's the the blame is being put on drivers? Are you hearing that from management? Because I've always heard it. Okay. >> Our people are hearing it from the public. We're hearing it from people that are using our system. We're hearing it online in particular. >> But this really needs to be clarified. And I appreciate you bringing this up. The term driver shortage implies that we are not h we don't have bodies. It implies that people are either calling in sick. It implies that we're not there to provide the service. And that has always been the angst of that phrase. It has driven me nuts from driver to VP to now president. I know my predecessor used to fight hard to get this point across. It is not that we are missing people and we are absolutely not missing people willing to work. What they call driver shortage is when they need to cancel a trip because they poorly planned it and they couldn't make it so that that recovery time allowed the next trip and they cancel it. They say it's cuz the driver wasn't available. That goes as driver shortage. And that is an excuse. It's a scapegoat. And every single transit commission that the previous GM laid that out, it drove our people crazy. It is unfair. It is misleading. and it wasn't what was happening. If they cannot plan for the federal mandated break, if they cannot plan for the variables that an operator sees in their day-to-day, that failure is on them. It can't be operator shortage. It's management failure. That's what it was. That's the reality. And thankfully, this audit finally points it out. >> Okay. Thank you for clarifying that, Noah. Thanks, Chair. >> Yeah. And thank you, Councelor Galler and Noah for making that clear for all of us. It was super helpful. Uh, councelor Tierney. >> Great. Uh, thank you, Chair, and thank you, Noah, for your delegation today. Um, I've watched uh over many years of being on uh council and transit committee the entire time I've been on council, many GMs. Uh, I agree with you. I think uh there's a lot of challenges we've seen. Is it would it be ordinary that a lot of decisions that were made by management and council like technology changes and buses not actually being there, you would actually see multiple operators waiting to drive a bus that frankly never even showed up and you guys took blame for that? >> Yes. the the public reads operator shortage as though the system's being abused or the often times it would come out near a long weekend and we'd hear that nonsense about oh yeah they're they're they're taking advantage of the system and the reality wasn't that we had the systems built to have spare operators. The spare operators cover for those one-offs and those anecdotal moments when somebody needs to cover that's there. The spare is there. the systems built properly for that. To to imply that it's failing because of a shortage is often misleading. It it it's insulting and I I alluded to that in my speech and and I truly believe it. It's it always came as an insult to us. We have operators that enjoy running a spare board so that they can do different work every day and meet different people. The the contingencies are in place. the manipulation of the wording and the manipulation of the coding to be able to say that it's because they of a shortage. No, it was poor planning and it really always falls to that. >> Great. And thank you and that's where I was going. I think you you probably seen I've been quite vocal about some of the decisions that have been made especially on technology that hasn't arrived for example buses and you guys get blamed even though it's the things that you have to drive to be able to do your function. So uh thank you for that. Um, you also did note, and I completely concur, uh, that, uh, previous GMs may have not have included the operators to the degree that I'm seeing right out of the gate. I'm hearing from operators that live in my ward that are quite pleased with the new go. This is the first time I've really seen this uh, ever where operators are part of the discussion uh, to give realworld examples to management uh, and with this GM. Is that a fair statement? and and hopefully this continues cuz I see this actually helping uh solve the issue and give back to people the uh transit they deserve. It's a fair statement that we've turned a corner. Absolutely. Uh we recognized it in bargaining. We were able to get some language that enables us to have a little bit more of a say at the table if you will. And with that under choice watch it was instrumental towards moving this that management team that replaced Renee was very instrumental in moving in this direction and uh any concern I had of Mr. Liry coming in and flipping that is alleviated. He has been very welcoming and he has pushed for things to move a little quicker than in the past which is again really refreshing and I think we're in the right direction. I'm ne I I will say it once again. I am cautiously optimistic. However, things are moving in the right direction. And to be honest, the the tone from management at this point laying it out frankly is refreshing to hear at council. It's refreshing to hear at commission and it is very refreshing to deal with. >> Great. Thank you. Leadership drive results and thank you for your leadership and Mr. Lee's leadership and the continued work together. I appreciate that. >> I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Noah. There are no further questions. Uh, it will go to the Oh, sorry. Wait a second. >> Okay. No, we're good. Thanks a lot, Noah. Sorry, computer. >> Thank you very much. >> All right, we'll move to the next. >> Happy Junth. >> Happy Junth. >> Oh, Council Carr, you have to get with the program. Okay. Um, you have to be cool to know that. Um, so our next delegation back to audit committee uh is uh Michael Wright. Michael, you have five minutes whenever you're ready. >> Thank you, chair, and happy June 18th as well. Um, thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak at today's uh audit committee. I'm Michael Wright of a resident of the city. Overall, I'm pleased to see this audit and the contents of it. It's been a long time coming. How as echoed by the previous delegate. However, there are a few things I notice it's missing and would simply like to put that on the record such as the ridership figures on page five go back to the 2019 period. But there's also under the fleet section, there's a failure to mention the loss of the fleet over the span from 2019 through 2023. namely where we retired like 175 Orion hybrid buses and the 74 8000 series double deckers which I brought up when I delegated at the uh November 24th uh 2025 transit commission at the budget there and also uh the mention there's a mention of the E1 service which I would just like to offer a few comments on which uh personally one thing I would like to see in my long term is for example extending a 200 series connection routes back downtown. But that also plays into this audit cuz we would need a you know to have a solid transit service plan in order to accomplish that like as per recommendation six. But uh and we would need the buses to run that but we can't do that without a plan. So overall I am pleased to see the contents of this uh audit and uh cuz in my opinion O trans does have the base foundations to be a amazing system if it wants to be and I feel we're going definitely going down the right path for it cuz don't forget if you go back in time to 1987 we actually won a award by the American Public Transit Association for being the best public transit system in North America or best large public transit system in North America. And I feel if we follow these recommendations by the auditor general, we can maybe once again be a award-winning system. So I would like to wrap it up by thanking the auditor general and her team for conducting this audit. That concludes my uh delegation. >> Thank you very much, Michael. Questions for the delegate? I don't see any. Michael, thank you for coming today. >> Thank you, chair. >> All right. And our final delegate is AJ Ramachandran. He's just going to get to the microphone here. All right, AJ, whenever you have time, whenever you're ready. >> Hello. >> Hi, I'm AJ from Better Transit Ottawa. A couple of months ago, we created a website that uses OC Transpose GPS data and published schedules to show cancellations, on-time performance, and scheduling inefficiencies. I've been going to every transit committee and showing our findings for the past year now. We're very happy to see that many of our findings are now confirmed in this excellent report. One of our tools is the block explorer. The block explorer shows how buses move throughout the day and how a delay on one route will cause cascading delays throughout the entire network because high use of interlining. A block is a schedule one bus takes throughout the day and interlining is when one bus performs multiple different routes throughout the day. Interlining can cause a delay on one route and cause the next route to start late. The new ways to bus network changes were claimed to have improved this scheduling practice, but as demonstrated by our block explorer, the reality wasn't or this really was not the case. This report found that 48% of blocks have more than three roots on a block and 11% of blocks have six or more roots. That means if there is a delay on only one of those six routes, every other route in our network is now affected. Quote, "In January 2026, start times were late 37% of the time with 24% starting over 10 minutes late." End quote. Late start times means delays in earlier trips are causing cascading delays throughout the day. The report also found that 14% of blocks have less than 10% of inservice recovery time. This means there isn't even any room for error from unplanned delays. OC Transfer needs to take a serious look at this scheduling practice if they want any hope of improving the reliability of the network. Another important finding in this report is how there are most likely not enough replacement electric buses ordered. The report describes how we are only ordering buses at a 1:1 ratio which cannot work when the buses have battery life constraints. Other agencies plan to order 5 to 15% more buses to account for this. But what this report doesn't mention is that there's also going to be a capacity issue. We will most likely need even more than 15% more buses as we are replacing highcapacity articulated and double-decker buses with lower capacity buses. Replacing them 1:1 is in almost halfing in capacity. OC Transfer needs to make a future-looking plan on the future of our bus fleet. Overall, while it is great to see all these findings laid out in a report, the real challenge will be implementing the suggestions. We need to see real changes come out of this and at an expedient pace. OC Transpo is clearly experiencing a lot of challenges, but things can get better and there are now instructions on how to do this. I hope everyone at OC Transpo and on city council takes these recommendations seriously and we can have a functional transit system again. Thanks. >> Thanks, AJ. Uh, Councelor Leaper, >> thank you very much and thank you AJ for the work that you and um your your volunteer colleagues have been doing. It's a it's a it's a real addition. the and thank you as well for continuing to bring up the bus capacity issue. Uh that is an iceberg that I think is looming uh that we're going to need to deal with. I did want to ask you um about something else that was in the AG's report which is the service the lack of a service standard. Um and I I'm I'm going to ask the uh the auditor general as well in a bit about what sort of options we have. But what in your view would an appropriate service standard look like and how might that influence the bus schedules? Well, a service standard is going to have to be like who gets access to the buses. That's like 400 meters, 800 meters for buses that are in what times of the day. And then we're going to have to see some um on-time performance stats for those buses as well. And right now it's it's very confusing. I think the report mentions that there were service standards defined in 2005 in a report that can't even be found anymore on the internet, which is is very confusing. So I hope to see some more specific service standards so that OC transfer actually knows what to do because right now they they don't know how to balance between service reliability and coverage because if you increase coverage you might have less reliability because you are uh not as conservative in how you plan things out. >> Yeah, the um service coverage standard is something that was uh raised by the auditor general in the presentation. There's not a lot of discussion of that in the uh report itself, but as far as I can tell, we're uh not even pretending to adhere to any standard that we might have had at one point. New ways to bus has meant uh much longer walks to bus stops uh for uh for folks. That seems to be in contravention of a service standard that we had at one point, but there's been no rigorous exploration of that. And I hope that as we um follow up on the AG's recommendations to create service standards that service coverage is something that we take a rigorous look at. Uh thanks for your presentation today. >> Thanks >> and councelor Kit. >> Thank you chair. Uh no questions just a comment. Um, I have a very unreliable route in my ward that we've been tackling that I'll reference later today, but um, we actually used your on-time performance calculator uh, to sort of stress test some of the assumptions that we were making and and sort of use that to help make changes to Route 30. So, I just wanted to acknowledge your work on that uh, and thank you for doing that. >> Thanks. >> Thank you very much. We don't have any further questions. Okay. So, now we have questions for the office of the auditor general. Counselor Carr. Uh thank you very much. Uh first of all, um can't uh give you enough appreciation for the um the work that was done on this. uh as a member of transit committee um this is absolutely excellent to have this level of uh oversight um and for us to follow through on on transit committee as well. uh often times uh we see governance by outrage at that committee and this uh instead of uh you know strategic direction and this provides uh wonderful recommendations um on runtime adjustments, deadhead travel, recovery times, allocations of bus and operators, bus fleet plan, all these amazing things we should be talking about. I do um I assume that while you were doing the work that and and working with transit that you came up with uh suggestions for future audit items uh of OC transport. Would that be correct? >> Chair through you. Thank you for the question, counselor. Um, there is an endless list that we have from an audit perspective and I'm very happy to say that even our new general manager has shared areas that he would like to see some additional insights in. So, >> excellent. Perfect. Thank you. Um, I just want to confirm I did get asked there was you didn't look at paratranspo at all in this audit. Correct. Schedule >> chair that is correct. this was already I guess I would say a beast of a scope for us to undertake and we wanted to do so as expeditiously as possible. So paratransport was scoped out. >> Okay. Thank you very much. Um the fleet plan is something that I've asked about the past several uh transit committee meetings. I was always surprised that we didn't have one given that the previous council made a lot of decisions for example on the ebuses not putting the on street panagramraphs on knowing that only 57% of the routes could be delivered by this uh continuing to order double-decker buses even though they um had a meantime failure that was not very good good uh and as well uh manufacturers defect. You noted in the report that a healthy fleet has 80% of um buses available for use. Where did that statistic come from? uh through the h through the chair a 20% spare ratio is pretty much a industry standard and what we found was um that's generally the rule of thumb transport was looking at one of the things that we did take a bit bit of a deeper dive on is that there's a lot of differential fleet you have from zero mission buses double-deckers higher capacity articulated buses new diesels and things like that and obviously over time you may want to look at differential uh spare ratios depending on vehicle availability with that being a much greater area of concern here, but typically a 20% spare ratio is being looked at. I would suggest from other agencies that be revisit especially on the zero emission buses just because of differing um technology maturity uh range and upstream infrastructure components that you need to be mindful of in your in your garages for charging uh capacity and things like that. But um 20%'s pretty typical. >> Okay, thanks. I just wanted to source for that. Now, it it I wasn't clear in the report. It looked like there was evidence of a fleet strategy. Um, what sort of a fleet strategy, fleet plan did you find in OC Transpo? Like how much detail was in it in light of all of these challenges that have been raised? >> Thank you for the question through the chair. Um, we did see a document that was a strategy. It was a highle document. Um and that's why we did flag some of the things that we did in terms of the level of detail of some of the assumptions and then interdependencies associated with that. But we are cognizant that additional work is being uh developed by management uh to more wholesomely develop this and I believe bring this back to uh transit committee. >> Okay. Thanks. So it was very high level. Okay. Um obviously the the new ways to bus is of extreme interest. was something that saved $10 million in operating costs, but we know that there was a lot of cost in terms of the contractor that was hired. All the signs had to be changed, all the communications materials. Um, and so that saved $10 million of what I understand for busing is takes 419 million of the 95 million budget. Did you see any evidence that the intent was to make sure that all of the routes were on time or that there was any adjustment between the 2023 times that were used and the 2025 launch? Was there any attempt at all to change any of those uh to match the new patterns in in traffic or anything else or there was no evidence whatsoever that anything was adjusted in the in the lag? >> Thank you for the question. That was a lot of qu I'm going to try to make sure I get all the components. But I do think in the crux of your question, we did see evidence that between uh for like for the design based on 2023 was started in 2023, they were definitely addressing the uh run times. I think but again the data was based on 2023 so then when we got to 2025 um things had changed and again there's a lead time required for um to put into the schedules and that was part of the problem but I guess maybe just to add to that from the point of when they had u put together the schedules in anticipation of an earlier launch of new ways to bus um there was no level setting between that period and when they actually did go live if that is what you were asking. Yeah, perfect. That that uh that's excellent. But it seems to me that there's no shortage of data that is available. Um you had lots of data on bus scheduling, operator availability, you have OC transport has a wealth of data. Is that correct? >> I would say when it comes to the on-time performance of buses, absolutely. Obviously the GPS's are available and there's a process in which operators can also bring forward um feedback uh with regards to how the routes routes are actually being executed. Look to my team to see if there's anything else they'd like to add. >> Yeah, thanks. I just might add that for new ways to bus there were some changes in routes and trips. So the data when they were level setting this wouldn't have been available. So when that versus when it was implemented is I think one of the root causes of of some of the runtime issues. Okay, thanks. And you mentioned the operator feedback that is provided through their the process. Did you look at whether there was any evidence that that was uh taken into account and adjusted? >> Yeah, thanks Sher. So we looked at the uh SIR service improvement reports I think since new ways to bus and so those were being flagged by operators on the runtime issues and there was some uptake in for the winter and then a little bit more in the spring. So >> Okay, thank you. Um, with respect to the, you know, the $10 million new ways to bus, you pointed out the Route 105 and the E1 shuttle, which collectively is, you know, $5 million to operate these two. Um, were there other routes that you saw that had no evidence for, you know, no substantiation of why they were online or these just the two most flagrant uh, examples? >> Chair, I would say that um, that section you see a few varying examples. They are examples. There are more that uh elements that we have seen, but they're examples in which we didn't see any sort of sound technical analysis for the decision-m. We're not saying they're right. We're not saying they're wrong. We're saying we don't know why they were selected over others considering the resource constraints that OC Transpo is currently facing. >> Okay. So it's the the lack of substantiation for why these routes were established and and this is something that really is underscores the overall issue. >> Thank you for the question. Just for a clarification I think with the route 105 that again and we focus on service changes post new ways to bus as well as part of this audit. So that's why that one was identified. >> Okay. Thank you very much. Um there was also you you mentioned about counselor input um in terms of like bus stops and route changes and that sort of thing but there wasn't a specific recommendation um to that effect. Is there anything that you would recommend about counselor involvement in some of these decisions? Chair, I would say as always, counselor involvement is important. We're talking about wanting to have analysis to support the decision-making and counselor input is a very pivotal aspect into that overall analysis. What we're trying to get at with that area and that recommendation is decisions need to be made holistically. When they're made oneoffs and individually, it can erode the efficiency of the system. And I I look to David perhaps maybe he can add a little bit more to what occurs when we start making too many one-off decisions that aren't properly supported >> um through the chair. So to add on to the um auditor general's uh commentary every agency would typically go to an elected official the counselors to get input on things at a very local level. That is definitely a standard fair. I think the challenge from the discussions we had with management uh was that um counselor feedback was was seen as pretty a veto frankly um and that's not something that we see in other agencies in my time at Calgary Transit or my time at Translink um typically um you know counselors would be engaged but through delegated authorities sometimes things would be changed if there are feedback from the counselors postimplementation of that it would be revisited typically ly um and obviously monitoring done from that. I think the challenge is when we look at a route uh many of these routes span several wards and if we don't apply either service standards or delegated authority sometimes together we start having a mismatch of how we're deploying service across the system. So you have upstream and downstream impacts from let's say stop spacing sometimes from a traffic operational perspective sometimes uh running time implications. So, but uh to to have um counselors uh give feedback on specific stop locations to prevent them from being moved or removed is is actually quite atypical. >> Okay. Thank you. Appreciate hearing that um that feedback. Very valuable for us. Um we heard a delegation earlier and we've seen mention in a report about this whole notion of operator availability and we've been highly focused on um in in discussions at transit always about the availability of operators mechanics. We've heard about these challenges they pose to the fleet. While it wasn't discussed in your audit, you did spend a lot of time um with OC Transpo. Did you see any indication of staffing challenges within the areas that do the fleet that do do the planning schedule planning? Look, we've heard that there's lots of data available. Um, we focused on operator and mechanic shortages in our conversations, but did you see any evidence that perhaps those areas that are undertaking those plan planning that are supposed to be adhering to service standards, all of these, that maybe there's a staffing issue there? chair. I guess I'll start off and I'll look to my team. I'm sure everyone at this table could add uh add to it. Um obviously uh you know we talk about operator shortages. We don't need to go into detail about mechanic shortages because that's a very well-known uh item. When it comes to the scheduling aspect, I think David would speak to the fact that there's a lot of limited resources out there with regards to uh scheduling uh expertise. Um, but I look to my team to um to add to that. >> I would be remiss not through the chair. I'd be remiss not to talk about we talked about data beforehand in terms of how much data we're getting from a service reliability perspective. It we need people to process that data. We need people to uh report on KPIs. one of uh there's a several different pieces of resourcing that has been flagged to our attention that I also have concerns about um in terms of going to rootbased KPIs which I think would help a lot of uh the issues we see on the system that's a massive resource draw that uh that management will need to speak to if they can do uh scheduling is very specialized um I think one of the challenges that was definitely flagged to us and I've seen from other agencies is that we can't do continuous runtime improvement analysis all the time you have to prioritize is that because it's very labor intensive work even from processing the data and then in introducing it into your six-month window of time for your scheduling process and I think that's been one of the biggest challenges is I think generally transit agencies are very hesitant to ask for resources in terms of kind of the backend uh for that and I think that is an area that requires some attention in terms of getting those scheduling resources if a scheduler comes online now it takes up to two years to fully train them in terms terms of uh the nuances of the collective bargaining agreement in terms of the nuances of your operating rules in terms of nuances of a whole bunch of different technical pieces and and we know that OC transfer is relying on a third party consultant to provide them that are experts in this particular field but the in-house ability to process the data and do the scheduling is an industry-wide issue in terms of getting the expertise but it is a resource issue here. >> Okay, thank you. that is uh extremely interesting and uh and valuable to us. Um in terms of uh you know there there was an observation in the report about um just the different variables that have to be considered and um sort of the lack of uh ability to it seems with within OC Transpo they have all these different priorities. They're looking at, you know, the customers are looking at the buses and then they they don't always have council direction. In what areas do you think that council needs to give better direction in order to improve on the issues in in the report? Like where can council do better? What can we do better? >> Chair, thank you very much for the question, counselor. I think we really highlighted it's really important for council to set those priorities. um staff can only do so much uh and when everything is a priority becomes really difficult to determine what's what come what's number one and with the resource constraints that's even greater. So establishing those priorities and establishing what standards you want to see I would say is the most critical. I look to my team to see if there's anything else they'd like to add but those are the those are the key elements. >> I think you summarized it very well. Okay, I'm probably out of time, so I'll let somebody else go. Thank you very much. Very valuable, uh, insight and answers. >> Thank you. Uh, Vice Chair Hubley, >> thank you very much, Madam Chair. Uh, I want to start off by thanking the auditor general and her team for this audit. Uh, I can say that when I first saw it, uh, it's what people have been saying since new ways the bus first came to life. Uh and it's nice to see it acknowledged here that it was uh more of a cutting exercise than an improvement to the service provided. There's um it affected people's daily commutes to work and to home right from the start and hasn't gotten better. So, I hope that with this audit and it now being on the table that there was issues with that initiative that we can move past that and and hopefully I I'm uh encouraged by the the new GM uh uh Mr. Lir's uh view of the whole thing and and his ideas about what he's going to do to fix this. I I'm very optimistic that he's got some good solutions there for us. I appreciate in your audit that and if you want to confirm there's no single problem here. It's a combination and an accumulation of decisions that is led us to this point. Would that be correct >> chair through you? Yes. U vice chair that would be correct. This is a system level issue. all inputs from as we mentioned operators, buses, cost decisions, uh inputs such as your run times. It's it's a spread issue including all the way back to fleet planning uh from 15 years ago. Uh and and the continued uh aspect of of that element up until today. So, it is a widespread um impacting issue of multiple past decisions. >> Thank you. um to to touch on what council car mentioned about the uh the comments in there about counselor input. I I think it needs to be recognized that when counselors such as myself or councelor car or anybody around this table contacts OC transport about issues, it's it's not because I personally have identified this issue and want to fix it. It's residents that we represent and that's why we're here. We're not here to represent city staff. We're here to represent uh uh our residents and make sure that staff at OC Transport and other departments know what the community feels about the services being provided and and sometimes there's some great ideas that come out of that. So, I think that needs to be recognized that this is not Yeah, I know there's some examples of individual counselors. I don't want to hide that that there's issues with individuals that have done some things in the past that you know I'm sure the chair would wrap their knuckles if she had caught them. But uh the the point is the majority of the people around the council table are trying to work with those transport to solve these issues. And so any attempt to limit counselors being able to provide that input I think we have to resist that strongly. We as a council have to resist that strongly. >> Chair, absolutely. I want to ensure that it's clear that we're not saying that there shouldn't be any sort of counselor involvement or input. On the contrary, we actually highlight in our report that there used to be a very transparent process about seeking input, an actual formal process where it would be sought and would be taken into consideration when uh schedules are reviewed and and amended. And I think that's it. It's it's a critical piece that that we'd like to see reinstated and and put in the public eye. So we are not stating in any way whatsoever. We are just highlighting in some instances that again decisions that end up being made need to be based off of sound analysis to ensure that you're not continuing with these one-off decisions that erodess the efficiency of the system. I give an example. Yourself and the chair have adjoining wards. If there was a route that you knew a couple of your constituents wouldn't be happy with, but councelor Curry is really in favor with and you tell staff not to go forward and they don't go forward, that doesn't necessarily mean it's the right decision for the city. So, what we're trying to say at the end of the day is that you need to take everybody's inputs into consideration to ensure that that overall decision that's made is going to be the best for the network as a whole. >> I support that. And for the record, councelor Curry and I haven't disagreed on anything yet and I am knocking on wood to make sure it stays that way because we're getting great things done together and I appreciate her help of everything. >> Fantastic. And just to add that was a fictitious example. >> Yeah. Don't don't start trouble. Okay. >> Okay. I also I think uh chair if I could I want to take a minute and acknowledge uh Noah's comments too. I I hope that nobody ever thought it was the fault of drivers that uh uh things were the challenges with the shortages this winter and everything. I always interpreted those comments as uh it was resourcing that we just didn't have enough mechanics, drivers, and for a while there we just didn't have enough buses to staff all the routes. I thought you outlined that very very good in your report. So, a bit surprised to hear that today. But I think as we're acknowledging I think we all acknowledge that no one's blaming drivers in this thing or or mechanics or anybody. I think we should also acknowledge that uh OC Transport staff have worked miracles with what we as a council have given them to work with. uh the the day-to-day challenges. I know um you know when residents call me that there's a problem with the a route. I'm quick to get a hold of OC Transport. We have the the the input process to to put things through and stuff, but we always get a response and it's usually a very detailed response. It's not a a brush off by any means. Uh and and I really appreciate that. So I think I don't want to lose track of that today here too as we point out that there's some problems with the system. It's it's not there's no individuals that caused this. Okay. Can we agree on that? >> Uh thank you for the comment through the chair. I think I we would echo that nothing through our audit came through that there was any blame to operators. It's truly a management challenge uh structural. So I would echo that. I also would want to say I hope I'm not speaking out of turn but as part of our audit when we did we spent a lot of time with OC Transo and people are very proud to work for OC Transfo and are willing to help and are looking to do whatever it takes to improve and continue to provide the service to residents of of Ottawa. So, I hope I'm it's okay to say and I and I will say that I I I do hope and I think you picked up on the nuance that that both I think uh the delegate delegate as well yourself picked up on is that the word shortages often can be caused by the actual runtime issues and not not a lack of a person. >> Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much. >> Thank you for those helpful comments, councelor Hill. Thank you very much uh Madame Chair and I I do want to again pick kind of at this scab here that's on page 26 uh under recommendation 10 that speaks to the delegated authority and perhaps uh either leading mobility or um the auditor's office can speak to the concept that counselor endorsement can create challenges when making decisions toward meeting service standards. And I acknowledge the comment about one-off decisions, which is not in this report. I acknowledge the comment about, you know, a perception of a veto, which is not in this report. Um, and neither of those are accounted for in the recommendation. And so my principal concern here is if management agrees with recommendation 10, which does not specifically spell out anything as it pertains to delegated authority or counselor involvement, are we inadvertently creating a situation where we are in fact reducing counselor involvement in these decisions? And and that's not spelled out clearly. So, I would like to hear an answer, but I I'm not confident that if we go forward accepting this report and management's response that this isn't going to be interpreted as anything other than noting that operational decisions such as adjusting bus stop placement or consolidating stops with the aim of improving transit reliability or transit times in practice will not proceed until endorsement from the counselor is obtained. I don't know why we would want to move into that direction. I've heard that we aren't trying to do that, but that's not what this text says. And I can tell you from my perspective that's not correct. This is not correct. So on multiple times I've had meetings with OC Transpo about stops, route planning, and I can cite numerous examples. I have parking restrictions on one of my streets now that I did not want as a result of changes from new ways to bus. I was asked in advance is this is this is this consent with the counselor. I said no I do not consent to that. We had some conversations and that parking restriction went in anyway. I did not have a veto. I spoke to staff about minor modifications and changes to new ways to bus on several routes. Some of them were taken into consideration and actioned. Some of them were not. I did not have a veto, but I was part of an engaged consultation with staff and I felt listened to. My residents felt listened to. I remember about 3 years ago, Pat and I had a very contentious meeting with residents on a street who did not want the changes to happen. those changes happened. At the same time, I had my residents voices heard when I represented that I have a low-income uh apartment with people who disproportionately have environmental sensitivities and some accessibility issues, requesting changes to new ways to bus such that the stop would support them and their ability to get to the bus without having to cross the road in an unsafe location. That change was made. So, I think I'd like to hear a response because I know you've answered this question somewhat already, but I think between now and council, it would probably be nice to see some language that actually articulates precisely in recommendation 10 what is being recommended because the text on page 26 clearly spells out concerns regarding counselor engagement, vetoing, slowing the process. But I don't believe that a that's a problem. I don't think that's an issue and in the one-off cases where maybe it has happened, that's an exception. That's not the rule. That would be my comment. >> Chair, I will reiterate that the purpose of that section is to highlight examples where we noted that decisions were made that weren't supported by technical analysis. Full stop. That is what we were highlighting. I'll reiterate the fact that we outline and I I I just stated that council involvement, counselor involvement and input is crucial. At no way, no way, shape or form did we say anywhere in the report that we believe that that should be removed. We are trying to highlight the fact that decisions need to be made soundly. Full stop. That is what we are trying to get at. Our recommendation is going to the root of that. We want to see decisions m made based off of sound analysis. That is what we are looking for. That is the overall purpose of that overall recommendation. The examples that councelor Hill provided is him providing input. He indicated there's instances where he amendments were made and instances where they wouldn't. That to me is an example where staff took the input and made a decision based off of additional factors as well as what the counselor has provided. That is what we are looking for. So we're not stating that that shouldn't happen. We're saying that that is what should happen. However, if staff say with all the information we have, this isn't the right way to go and somehow the decision is different, we struggle to understand how that is the best use of resources, the limited resources if we don't have any evidence to support it. And that is essentially what we are trying to get at in that finding area as well as the recommendation. Again, the recommendation is to ensure that decisions are made on sound technical analysis so that we are not making decisions that slowly erode the efficiency of the bus network. Councelor, I want to make sure that it answers your question. >> To be frank, it doesn't because the text does not support what you are saying. But between now and council, I will talk perhaps with yourself or my colleagues to determine how I can feel comfortable that what we are ultimately going to approve does not curtail or restrict counselor involvement because the text here on page 26 clearly says that there are examples where counselor's engagement has been a negative. And I understand that there are one-offs and I understand there are exceptions, but we're not talking about exceptions. We're talking about the rule. And as a rule, I don't think there is a problem to be fixed here because we do not have we do not have the authority. We do not have a veto. There is delegated authority and counselors are part of the process. So, I don't know that this is necessary and I think we should probably spell that out if we're talking about negative impacts to counselor involvement with transit planning. Again, chair, I'd like to reiterate that we are not asking for counselor involvement to change in any way. And the piece I perhaps maybe is important for me to emphasize, the piece that council approves is our recommendations. And our recommendation specifically speaks only to is ensuring that there's a set of criteria to consistently and transparently evaluate proposed service changes. That is what we are trying to get to with this. I'm looking to the deputy auditor general. She may have something to add. >> I I think you said it. Thank you to the chair. But that truly is and it's not just we did cite one example and and that's fair. We cite cited other examples above in the section as well where in it truly changes. We did not see a wholesome analysis of all the inputs to ultimately get to the decision and that's all we're asking that and as a council I would imagine you would want to see that as well. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. >> Thank you uh councelor Kits. >> Thank you madam chair. Um first of all thank you for this great work. Um this audit is very validating. It uh confirms what riders and operators uh knew long before it was written. Um and we all know I think that you know we're looking at reliability. That's not a luxury uh when it comes to to public transit. It's the foundation. Um so this this work that you've done is going to I think um really help us in the next phase of our transit uh discussions. Most of my questions are going to be for staff, but because we have a subject matter expert, uh, we need to take advantage of that. Um, one of the issues that the audit highlights that operating data was collected in 2023, but then new ways to bus wasn't implemented until 2025. Um, so as a result, a lot of the assumptions that were underpinning the schedules were already uh outdated before they were ever put into operation. I actually think this issue of using old data is is systemic and um crosscuts more than just transit. I think we repeatedly rely on outdated data to make major decisions that don't necessarily reflect the reality by the time um the projects are implemented. And for your your benefit, I represent a very fast growing community. Um where traffic patterns can change dramatically. 2 years feels like a lifetime in terms of of how things can change when um new homes are coming online, when roads are getting more congested, let alone a couple of months. Um and and you had said in response to to councelor Carr that sixmon delay in service adjustment is a challenge that every municipality is dealing with. Um you mentioned that here it's partially a resource issue but what is the breast practice like how do we close the gap between the data that informs our assumptions not falling out of pace with the lived experience what what are other municipalities doing to close that gap >> chair I'll start off by saying I think that's one of the aspects effects that we're trying to get at is that there was an opportunity to level set. So to review some of those inputs once new ways to bus was delayed. Obviously that data would have been a lot more accurate had they had launched the previous year. Uh but I'll look to David to speak to perhaps some of the best practices in the industry. >> Um through the chair I'll go through maybe an example of a peer agency first. So Edmonton did a significant bus network redesign back in 2021 and they did one back also in 1997. Uh they seem to do one every 25 years. Um the one of the things that was quite interesting and they were one of the peer agencies uh for this audit was that there's always room for improvement and when they put the new system in they had to use data during really the acute stages of the pandemic but also historical data from pre- pandemic to build the schedules and then stitch them together. I was the um the consultant project manager for the launch of Winnipeg's new bus network and was very intimately involved and that some of the inputs uh are pretty solid in terms of some of your existing run times and some of them you may have to do some road testing or some data collection to do that. We will never hit perfection um in terms of there will always be the ability to have to review the run times and and to do those those tweaks. When Edmonton did the evaluation of their bus network redesign in 2022, they did a report out about 10 months after and a lot of that was based on on-time performance because they actually had too much time in the schedule for a lot of the services and ro and conditions were changing. I think the challenge with the timeline of what occurred here in Ottawa is that we had a lot of fluidity in terms of return to work, in terms of transportation patterns. There was always going to be a room for for change. there's there's no way to get to perfection. It's more how do we take the data we we can get when we get it and how do we respond to it. The six months is pretty typical for pre-planning as schedule change. Are there opportunities to look at ways to work with um your labor partners to look at ways to possibly compress that a little bit? Possibly. That's a conversation to have with them. But there will never there will never be perfection. So there will always be new data points that come in and and I'll leave it to management to answer uh you know when they want to use when they can use certain data points for those types of things but it's always an iterative process. >> Thank you very much for that. I find that very helpful. Um and just I guess one more question on that same vein forward-looking is is AI a solution that some people are using to or some municipalities are using to close that gap you get you know sort of you were saying it was a resource issue um AI leveraged tools to um get that real time data aggregated more quickly. I've had conversations with some larger agencies of how they want to leverage AI in terms of taking the service performance data to do some reporting and um at the end of the day I think it's still relatively new. >> Um that's something that well you know you go to a conference now it's kind of the thing that people start really talking about. I I don't think we've stress tested, but something that could be looked at. But I think at the end of the day, you still have a resource problem in terms of of taking that data and then implementing it through your internal processes. And that's something that that you will need to look at holistically with management. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you, uh, Councelor Kavanagh. >> Thank you very much, uh, Chair. Uh, I'm just getting caught up. I was out uh with an announcement this morning. So, um anyway, but uh really appreciate all the work that's been done and um the report was uh really good to to see. Um and as has already been said, it it says a lot of things that we know um from our own residents. Um, I remember getting a presentation on new ways to bus at an open house that I was having and um, it it was not reading the room of what people wanted at all. It was telling them what um, they were planning to do um, and it it was a bit of a disconnect and I felt very sorry for the presenter um, because um, they were they just weren't feeling that that uh, this new ways to bus was going to answer their concerns. Um and um that was sort of a pattern that we've had. Um and um I was interested in the fact that there was some duplication like with the LRT and this is something I'm wondering about because I'm uh this well I'll ask uh staff about this but the duplication um idea is um something I'm wondering about when we get to stage two and um we've got so many bus routes. So, um, so, um, I I'm going to ask the expert about that because with stage two coming up, um, is this is this a good lessons learned because, uh, we we still have those duplications and, uh, chances are it's going to be even more, uh, more so when, uh, we we launch stage two sections. >> I I guess I thank you for the question through the chair. I guess I will pass it over to our expert. But I I think um you know what we have learned through the audit is that a level of sort of redundancy or duplication and an introduction or an initiation of a of a new route new the LRT extension or the LRT uh obviously makes sense but then eventually that gets phased out um with reliance uh on on the main uh core uh route. So but I'll pass it to David. Oh or Natalie >> I'll just add to that before going over to David. So, as Joanne mentioned, the level of redundancy um is not uncommon. Uh but that's also in a well functioning um bus network or overall transit network. I think it's really important for us to understand the current resource constraints that the city is under when we're looking at these types of redundancies. David, if you'd like to add >> uh through the chair, maybe to echo a couple of points. Typically, you would put an underlying or overlay service along the rapid transit quarter when you first open it. And then it, you know, through your burn-in period, you would after having a certain amount of, let's say, months um of satisfactory service, you would you would take that service out. I am very aware of the challenges with the LRT system. Uh the industry is very aware of some of the challenges, but also the opportunities with the LRT system. Um it's you know typically you would have uh underlying service along a rapid transit corridor during certain use cases that are a bit different. In Toronto there's local services that do parallel the subway service to provide an accessible service where the station spacing let's say is every two kilometers. So there are pockets of of access that you want to catch. You know Young Street north of Egllington's a really good example of that. Um there's uh Cami Street in Vancouver is an example of that where we have a much lower frequency type service. Um Edmonton runs a parallel service the LRT during nighttime uh for the last couple hours of service just so that there is an extension of service till 3 in the morning for certain customers. But um to have a service there as an additional option for residents, I understand why that occurred. But in light of the challenges of providing your daily commitment of service and having two routes that are duplicating LRT service, that is something that was definitely flagged as something that uh of an area of of interest and focus of the audit. >> Okay. I appreciate it. um uh um in terms of counselor involvement um that you've pointed out, I find mostly it's it's positive to to be involved and sometimes we do have input that and it's not it's actually a misnomer to say it's counselor involvement. It's our residents um views that are reflected through the counselor. I think that's a better way to say it because uh we we hear from our residents and um we're passing that on and it's really hard to get that you know on the ground uh knowledge sometimes. Um one example I have is the positioning of a a bus stop where I know a large number of from a social housing community use that bus stop and if you move it further away that's more problematic for them. So, we worked on that together and things like that. Um, though I recognize the their issues. Uh, and I appreciate the efforts to speed it up. But, um, I I really appreciate the the analysis of the new ways to bus. I think we have lots of lessons learned and like I said with the um, this is a very helpful document as we go forward with stage two and we have all this change to do. Um I'm still not quite sure um what counts as upto-date data and how we get it. Um it's one thing to say, well they're using outdated. What is the best way to get data? Um um such a complex system. >> Thank you for the question. I want to make sure I understand if we're talking about sort of runtime data. Um again I do think obviously that as challenge although OC tro does get a lot of data. Um it's just as I think our subject matter expert pointed out that it's being able to process that and the amount of time and the lead time to uh put that into the schedule. But I don't know if you would add to that any anymore with that. I I think the good news story is you do have data and you have a lot of it and uh we just really don't want to underscore um the the resources that you need to put it into your processes. I do want to speak to the counselor involvement. It is very standard practice to get counselor involvement on the on the components of the transit system including stops and service levels and routing changes. at no point any agency you know agencies do that and is a very key input the delegated authority that is uh uh here is is very standard fair across the industry I think our the concern was more along the lines of if we don't have service standards that we can measure to that we could demonstrate and and show the analysis and the input from decision makers on this which is vitally important um service standards being like stop spacing if we can document the analysis of why or why not certain things are happening let's say from a bus stop level because I think that's an area of interest and documenting that as as part of that and maybe if there's a variation of it uh or really good reason uh the counselor provided one as an example for a social housing uh part at the end of the day it's more about documenting that so we have a full picture so that also council as a whole sees um you know upstream and downstream impacts on a particular route that also may affect other parts of the city as well. So the delegate authority is pretty standard fair. No one here is questioning the importance of counselor involvement. It's more having it documented as part of that decision-m process. >> Thank you. Um just to give a good example of working together. Um we complained about uh Route 11. It's a milk run route that goes through three of our wards and u they came back with an analysis of what it would cost to speed it up. Um I appreciated that. That's there's a good example where um we had to initiate asking that you know why is this bus um always problematic and it's because it has to go through slow streets and we got good data um but it costs there was cost involved of course because uh it meant improving the streets as well. So um I just wanted to say that there are positive things. This, like I said, this is a very good uh document going forward because we have so much change coming. Um I'm just, you know, I've got seven new stations coming to my ward and um it it's going to be overwhelming the changes that'll be needed. So hopefully this guides um the management on on those decisions and uh we can have a better system. Thank you. >> Thank you, Councelor Leaper. Thank you very much, chair. Um, and I'll just uh reiterate what you've heard from a number of counselors and delegations, which is uh the audit is very welcome. Writers feel seen. Um, we undertook a a cost cutting exercise for what I think is a relatively small amount of money at $10 million in the context of the larger OC transport operational budget. We cut 70 uh,000 operation hours. uh the uh frequency of roots suffered, the coverage of roots suffered and we didn't get the reliability improvements that we were hoping to achieve from the exercise. Um writers already knew that but your audit is significant validation for them. Um I do have a few questions with respect to uh some of the specifics in the report. Service standards is something that you've mentioned a couple of times. uh there is not a ton of color in the recommendations as to uh what kinds of choices council might make in terms of the standards that we would capture and the priorities that we might have. I think about things like you know frequency or um uh cost savings as a priority or you know the the the the biggest cost savings we can get for a certain route. What are the different priorities that you as our auditor general recommend we should be looking at when we're establishing service standards? chair through you. Thank you for the question, counselor. Uh we are vague for a reason that is for council to determine what the right standards are that they want to see OC transpo meet. Uh that being said, I will look to to David if you'd like to talk about some of the more common ones. But again, I do just want to caveat that we're not prescriptive for a reason because we could be establishing a metric that council is not looking to uh to get to. So >> I think it would be helpful though for us to understand, you know, what that universe of potential is. So one of the things uh one of the reasons why this became a recommendation is that there are a number of different existing inputs right now in terms of decision-m and you know there are several ships at sea or several islands happening right now and what we're trying to really portray the importance of is having a centralized document outlining council's expectations for the transit service but also service standards speak to or having consolidated service standards service standards also speak to almost like your contract contract to your customers. You know, it outlines how do we measure the impact to our customers? How do we demonstrate how we want to grow out the trans systems and how do we make decisions? And um I don't want to list an exhaustive like table of contents, but many transit systems will have things such as stop spacing, which I think would help part of the the conversation we've had with um uh previous examples with uh councelor input that there's conversation about minimum frequency standards. There's conversations about productivity standards, there's conversations about how do you measure the impact to customers, uh equity, um we have a lot of differing policies that are actually quite helpful here at the city of Ottawa. It's about how do we consolidate them and make sure that they're uh fit for purpose for the transit system. We have you're you're experiencing one of the biggest transit transformations in North America right now and this is the best time to take uh to look at what service you want to provide and how do you want to measure that. But I think for me as as the professional in the room, it's the it's the contract with council in a lot of ways, but also your customers and and how do we spell those decisions? You have a lot of this already. It's how do you put them into one spot? You know, we have service standards from 2005. We have a 5-year roadmap. We have budget direction from council. Um we have new ways to bus. And it's very hard to evaluate and assess these decisions when they're not consolidated in one spot. That that that also demonstrates council's role and interest and your position as governors and overseers of the transit system. And that's something that we think is uh important to do as as an exercise that requires deep involvement from all of you at this table. >> Thank you for all of that. Um when I take a look at the impact of new ways to bus in my ward uh you know in some cases residents have lost access to a bus route and are having to walk 300 400 500 meters further in order to get to a bus stop. For other folks, the impact has been the loss of uh frequency on on the weekends, so they can't move around as much. And and I think you're right in your recommendation to ask us to contemplate what the service standards would be, what our priorities would be uh so that we can better understand if we are going to uh impact customers with with um uh with those impacts that we have at least a clear story to tell about uh why we've made the choices that we have. I am just wondering uh with respect to the data. There's some really good data in here obviously around the reliability numbers. We've seen some of that. Better transit Ottawa's got some amazing numbers and I suspect that we can uh uh uh get numbers very quickly from them. They are they are uh absolutely brilliant at what they do. But did you take a look at all around um geographies or time of day when it came to reliability to make your decision or sorry form your recommendations? Uh thanks chair. So we we definitely did look at at times throughout the day. I don't think it informed our recommendations directly, but it definitely informed our analysis and I think the I guess the thesis being that PM peak is definitely the biggest struggle. >> Okay, that's uh that's important. Uh finally I've been asked by some residents uh with respect to you know they they they absolutely welcome the the universal recommendations that you've made to us um or to to the management of OC transpo u how will this be followed up on >> chair as always we have a follow-up process that we are going to implement so you see um action and and estimated completion dates we will follow up with management understanding what uh actions have been implemented and we follow up on those. So, you will either see uh a status update through our semiannual follow-up report or if there is um a lag in progress, you will see a more formal follow-up report from us. >> Fantastic. Thank you very much for all of that. Thank you, Chair. >> Thank you, uh Councelor Johnson. >> Thank you very much, Chair, and uh thank you for the opportunity to participate today on, you know, what is, as many have said, a very important report to residents. I think that many residents will look at this and go, "Well, I could have told you that. Uh, in fact, I did tell you that." And so, you know, although sometimes at transit committee, we can categorize uh resident feedback as people living in their basement, we here have a report that demonstrates a a lot of evidence, a lot of carefully thought out evidence for how residents are experiencing OC Transo right now. So I do hope that we will take um the seriousness of the matter to all other committees that discuss transportation and transit and um and be able to uh approach the recommendations um cohesively. Um so a couple things. Yeah, generally I think what is most interesting to me with this report is the governance aspect, right? The recommendations in this report are focusing on uh transparency, accountability, um and uh good governance. Um I think we want to um demonstrate to customers that we're not just throwing good money after bad, but that we're making careful decisions. So I have a couple questions for clarification before we move to questions of staff. Um, so the first would be on page 17, you're talking about the spare ratio recommendation. And so can I just have a comment to suggest that other municipalities have taken a different approach to a spare ratio. Um, this was not new news, but OC Transpo was doing something different in your estimation, >> chair, I'll start to answer that question. I'm sure the team would like to add. Yes, we are highlighting that. Um so I I think you're you speaking about the spare ratio but we're talking I think a little bit more specifically to the zero emissions buses um particular element where no I don't think it is news um if I go back to our first agile audit of the zero emissions buses we um were having discussions with management about the rangeability of those particular buses and the need to um overall review uh whether or not a 1:1 ratio would be appro would be appropriate. So to me this isn't news and I'm sure to David this isn't news either. Um but I think Joanne will speak a little bit more to the spare ratio piece. >> Thank you and thank you for the question. So yeah we we have flagged in this report that besides the zero emission bus uh uh ratio is that um there is the opportunity to have spare ratios by fleet type. Right now OC transfer doesn't do that. it was a suggestion that others do this um one to for OC transport take a look at I don't know if David you would add to that >> uh through the chair just to echo it's it's mostly on the zero mission buses half your fleet's going to be the zero mission buses as of next year and um obviously we'll we'll learn a lot about the service performance of those vehicles and other agencies are are being very cautious in their approach in terms of how those vehicles interact with their particular blocks some of them some of them uh get reblocked Sometimes in lining gets revisited, sometimes um a number of different schedule parameters do. So, but then on the back end too, uh to look at just kind of overall vehicle health and with them being 354 out of your 704 buses, it's something that we think that you need to uh closely monitor as they mature. >> Okay. Thank you. So we'll ask staff sort of what the uh pressure on that ratio is and whether it's resource related. Um I think page 19 is uh really quite juicy. Um so page 19 is when you're talking about the um uh the priorities and st service standards relationships. Um so clear priorities to guide trade-off decisions. Very important when it comes to governance to be able to describe to your public why you're making the trade-offs that you are. And certainly you know as a counselor and as my colleagues will know you know these trade-offs can sometimes be excruciating for us to make decisions about. Um so can you describe can you help me to understand you know the idea of um based on current budget direction there is no clear definition of what the priorities and tradeoffs should be in the design and delivery of the transit network. Can you help us to understand h how how that has um unfolded or what um uh sort of what comes first in that? Do does does the does uh OC transpo identify a vulnerability uh and then it goes into the budget or does the budget direction come first and then they respond with the way that they're designing their their uh service? So, chair, I I I think counselor, I'll go to the first element that you mentioned. When we start talking about priorities and and and setting those particular elements, you're right, they're very difficult trade-offs. How do you tell someone that, you know, you're I'm going to determine, council's determined that reliability is our number one priority. So, that might mean that the coverage reach due to resource constraints isn't going to be as as as vast. it means that that you might have to walk further. Like these are really difficult decisions that council does have to kind of establish from a priority perspective. So I would say that is really what we're trying to get at and I look to my team to um add to that. >> Thank you. I I I mean I think that's uh the auditor general explained it well. We were we are just flagging that there have been different priorities over time. Um and it does become uh challenging for management to sort of navigate and decide which ones are and it it is the council's decision. Um and ultimately it's these trade-offs that will actually decide the service standards which will actually decide the route design. >> I think one of the most important parts of this report sorry through the chair one of the most important parts of this report is actually on this page. Um we know there's a runtime issue here. This is also something that's always iterative and and continuous improvement with all transit agencies, but fixing your runtime issue has significant trade-offs. And there was a report that came to uh to transit committee in September 2025 that said, you know, we don't have uh management uh said that they don't have direction in terms of reliability versus the frequency. And maybe I'll I'll I'll let management ex elaborate more on that. Um one of the things that to fix run time fixing runtime is not free and um to fix runtime to maintain a frequency standard is additional operating hours or a degradation of your frequency to use the existing resources and that's a significant trade-off conversation. Um there was definitely a conversation about that at transit committee and I think that's one of the things that is a pain point for all transit agencies. We've seen some that have have walked away from their their service standards in a lot of ways from a budgetary pressure to erode the frequency to fit with the existing operator and fleet complement you have. But one of the key uh questions and and right now runtime is obviously an area of focus and and uh management is is working through that on some of the more critical uh components of that. But I want to be mindful there is a trade-off. investments in runtime includes more buses and more staff potentially or it's a reduction in service. There's no there's significant uh conversation that needs to be had either way and that's something that we do want to flag as part of this process >> and maybe just add to a very long answered question. We do provide an example of uh where I think the city might be faced with a trade-off and that is the skull routes. So, a few years ago when OC Transpo had spare buses in the midst of a pandemic, um the city agreed to start assisting the province with school routes. I think we highlight in our report that that requires 81 articulated buses to um actually perform and my understanding is within the year that's about the number of articulated buses the city is going to have on hand. So, that is a a trade-off that at some point I think council is going to be faced with as to is school routes something that the city can actually uh continue to perform. Again, not for us to comment on, but an another example of where um those priorities are going to be really important. >> Okay, thank you for the for the detailed answer. Uh it definitely helps to paint a picture. uh you know thinking about one of the routes that was cut for college ward uh the 50 uh you know residents are expected to walk a great deal further now um but then they also suffer through transfers that are unreliable and you know instead of having that long winding route and that was a conversation I think many of us had when it came to new ways to bus um and and to be able to be fully versed in what those trade-offs are and what the end goal is in terms of reliability uh would have would be helpful you know as counselors. So certainly appreciate that. And so finally on page 24 you're talking about service standards and sort of measurement um the KPIs that that will be used to communicate. I know that we have had some changing KPIs at transit committee even up until you know the last couple of meetings that they're they're moving. Is it your recommendation to pause or suspend the existing KPIs or is it a a modified approach over time? How what what like is there is there harm in the way that OC transpo is currently measuring uh its success and and what would you recommend moving forward? >> Thank you for the question through the chair. I think we obviously acknowledge in this report that there is a lot being measured um and there is uh and KPIs that are are being reported on. I think the connection we're making in this report and the recommendations from this is really once the priorities and the service standards are established and uh you know established and formalized that the there be formal uh monitoring and reporting of those KPIs against the service standards so you actually know where you are in in light of them because right now because again some of the service standards are are kind of outdated or in different places it it is hard to actually measure against those So just to be clear, there's no current harm in the way that uh OC transpose is reporting out on its KPIs between now and when it changes. No, >> I would I through the chair um information is is useful and reporting of of any indicators is an important. So yes, there's no harm. >> Thank you, chair. >> Thank you, councelor Gower. >> Thank you, chair. Um thank you to the auditor general and your team for this report. Uh it is extremely important and um David Cooper, it's nice to see you and I'm glad that you've been involved in this as well. Um a lot of the questions I had were already asked and I think this has been a really really good discussion because the report goes into great detail about what is going on and what needs to change in the future. And I'm really hoping today through the questions that we've just had and and to staff we get more into why. And I think we are starting to get a better idea of why. Yes, budget constraints, resource constraints, policy ambiguity. Um, but the one I've really been interested in in as we've t been talking here is the the organizational maturity and capacity around the planning and scheduling function. And I'm wondering why that wasn't a specific recommendation. Like did you consider a recommendation 11 to have a real focus on the development of that in-house capacity for planning and scheduling or the use of of technology? It seems like a missing piece in your recommendations. Wonder if you could comment on that. >> Thank you for the question. That's a that's a fair point. It's not again it's been mentioned here that uh it's not that it wasn't noted in our in our audit and and some of the um technology challenges the reliance on third parties. Um I I think you know we were really quite focused on on the outputs of all this but and also recognizing that some of these challenges are are industrywide um and not necessarily easy to to tackle. So it's a fair point but that's that's how we've uh chose to address. I don't know if Nelly you >> I I think I'd just add that while I think management has acknowledged that gap they are using consultants uh where required. So I think that's really important and when it when you speak to tools and technology there is uh system upgrades that are occurring as well. So I think that's uh important to emphasize. So we knew that things were being act actioned from a management perspective and as Joanne just mentioned we understand the realities of the industry. So when we issue recommendations, we really do want them to be as feasible to implement as possible. So I think that was probably one of the aspects we also took into consideration. >> Okay. Thank you. Yeah, that's fair. And I'll probably ask staff about it as well. I think it's something um we're going to have to look to staff to keep us updated at transit committee because all of the a lot of the actions in the recommendation will depend on having that capacity, having that data, having the analytics to plan. So um I think we have to understand from staff maybe not today but as we go forward um how they are maturing the scheduling planning function so that um we we can continue to improve and and get the reliability. Um thank you >> thank you councelor Tierney. >> Great thank you chair and thank you again uh to ag uh I want to thank uh thank everybody for uh the questions. I think there was some concern about oh council shouldn't have any any input and that's clear you're nodding no that is not the case. Uh but I think uh uh I think one of the things that you've highlighted and I actually completely support uh is do you find that counselors use the term direction too often and I think that's something that bogs down staff on a regular basis. I would prefer and I do it at my committee is I like to see motions. direction is far too easy to use and it adds to the burden of staff and jumbles what the full city council uh is actually looking for there. I I find it's too blurred. Would would you based on what I'm seeing here is is there's a lot of direction that happens on a regular basis. Would keeping things in motion keep it consistent. So it's a city staff policy versus individual one-offs. >> Chair. Well, we're probably going a little off of the report here. I I would say what we like the examples that we're referencing in the report are much more informal from uh from that direction perspective that you're speaking about. But it is obviously you if I if I step back and just speak as auditor general and not about the report. It is much more transparent if these types of uh requests are coming forward at a committee or a council meeting. That way every counselor is understanding what's being requested and where exceptions to a process might be being made. I I I think it is the most transparent way and that way council as a whole is making that decision. So and and that is where that authority lies. There's delegated authority that's provided to the general manager and then if council is looking for something different they have the authority to do that as council as a whole. >> Yeah. And you recognize the difference between when a counselor says, "Oh, I want to give direction to staff." versus a motion that comes together and is fully debated versus an individual oneoff. Correct. >> Absolutely. Is a complete difference and and again the emphasis on that there's there's two points is that transparent level and then again goes to the fact that you are asking council as a whole to make a decision as opposed to one individual >> one individual which is what happens unfortunately with direction. So I actually much prefer seeing some strength around that. The other thing in regards to looking at um council's uh counselors having the opportunity to speak to something construction. You're talking outside of a con. Are you talking about construction as well? Because we've had to deal with this in the east end of the city. If we're giving cart blanch to city staff and it's perceived as interference uh when counselors especially groups of us in the east end that get together and say you know we got tailgate slamming we got hole ramming we got all these things you yeah I know it's a real concern where overnight if if we were to say cart blanch to staff don't worry about everything just close the roads all the time and keep constructing uh don't worry about the impact acts in the community. You're not saying that, correct? That is not what you're saying by saying you should turn everything over to to city staff. There is a level of input that does take place to ensure that the constituents are respected. Chair, I would say the question's not in relation to the report, but if I were to try to bring it back to the report, what we are trying to state in this piece is uh if we're talking about uh item 3 if I've got it correct, um is we are trying to highlight again the importance of uh counselor input and feedback and for staff to take that in with their analysis when decisions are being made. Um no, we are not saying that counselors should have no input. That is not what we are saying. >> Perfect. And thanks for the clarity and thanks for councelor Hill. I think he also had a concern about that between now and council. I think that I don't have a vote here, but certainly before we get to council, I'm sure that will come up. But thank you for your report. I think it really highlights the one-off scenarios where counselors get in there and do something and it just adds to the burden of workload and why I always question direction versus actual motion. So, thank you for that. >> Thank you very much. All right, we'll now move to questions of staff. And so I would ask then staff we'll give a couple minutes for you to get organized. No I think to come to the front because otherwise I can't see you and also people are speaking to your you know to no one. >> All right we'll give you a couple minutes to set up. All right. Y'all set? >> Wow. >> You good? Okay. So, first questions for staff. Councelor Carr. All right. Welcome to audit committee. Uh are you guys ready? Yes. Okay. Uh my um first question uh is um first of all, Mr. Larry, did you know about this audit when you accepted this job >> through the chair? No, I did not. >> So you were not aware that this audit was being undertaken? >> I was made aware when I came. >> Okay. Excellent. Um I guess that was a good move on the uh city manager's uh part. All right. So welcome to audit committee and uh welcome to uh the recommendations. So we we have heard today um confidence from ATU 279 um in your leadership and heard that around the table. Um I you know we're hearing disappointment uh that some of these foundational documents that should have been in place uh a a fleet plan was only available at the highest level. We have transit service and fair policy manual. Um transit system management policies that hadn't been updated since 2005 at transit committee. We've talked about uh the KPIs that we need. Um you know there's a lot of work to be done. My question is you know how can we assure I mean there's transit committee oversight. Um the the auditor general has said there's more audits to be done, but how can you ensure as an organization that you're tracking on these things? Like do you have an internal audit capacity within the team? Uh do you have an evaluation capacity within the team that's that's tracking all of these foundational documents um and and guiding the work that you're doing? >> Uh through the chair, if I could um if it would be okay, could I answer that question as as I make a statement? who would kind of be part of it if that would be okay. >> That's fine. I didn't really ask you, you know, your first debut here. If you wanted to say anything, but potentially if you do that and then answer uh member council car's questions, that'd be great. >> Perfect. Thank you very much. First, I'd like to take this opportunity to uh thank the auditor general for her and her team's work. It's very good work. And we do appreciate the findings as they do validate what I would say are the actions of the customer first action plan and the feedback that we've received from counselors, our customers and our union partners. Um these findings complement the 10 action items that the OC Transpo is now working on. As we presented to transit committee last week, work has already begun as part of a customer first action plan to improve service reliability. Providing service that customers can depend on comes with having a fleet that is reliable, schedules that are attainable, and a workforce that is sustainable. I'm very pleased to tell this committee the committee last week about the work we have underway and to improve all three of these factors. We are focusing our fleet maintenance on shifting away from reactive repairs to preventive actions to ensure buses are ready when we need them. We have preventive maintenance campaigns planned for this summer to be ready for the fall and return for those returning to work and school. We're also continuing to onboard new electric buses every day. And we're excited that the fleet continues to arrive and we have 132 now in service. I'd also say that I'm very grateful for the opportunity to be sitting here today in the time frame as the general manager of OC Transpo recognizing that the city's investment of close to a billion dollars into this bus fleet with new vehicles coming in, infrastructure and charging systems. Um we will be bringing forward a fleet plan in early 2027 as well as a capital investment plan. another a number of plans as we look to address uh the growth of OC transfer in the writership as the auditor audit outlines our schedules don't reflect current traffic conditions work to address these began early this year and as we discussed at transit committee we've already begun adding times to the schedules to seven routes and we've seen significant improvements to reliability adjustments are now made for this summer as well as the September where we'll have 30 routes adjusted Those 30 routes uh schedule improvements will provide more consistent and reliable service to 50% of our bus customers. This fall, we're going to continue to review and analyze all routes based on current travel patterns, customer and counselor feedback, and make adjustments to schedules to deliver the service that we advertise. I'd let you know that we're better leveraging the technology to support improvements to our planning, monitoring, and reporting on the service we provide. Now, this data will help us better refine our roots and schedules to continue to drive improvements to our customer experience. Now, as I said at the beginning, reliability, reliable service requires realistic schedules, the right number of operators, and dependable vehicles. As discussed at transit committee, this is why our customer first action plan addresses all these three areas in parallel to the together these improve what will make service reliable for our customers. We're going to continue to provide updates to committee as well as council in 2027 on the success of these measures that we are implementing. I'd also like to say that this audit validates the actions that we have underway at OC and we appreciate the work that's been done in this report. I'd like to once again thank the audit and our staff for this report and the information that's been brought forward. I also think it's important to uh thank say thank you to the president of the union uh Noah for the work that he has done working with us on this customer first action plan to make a difference for this city of Ottawa and the transit service. Um so I hope uh thank you for the opportunity to make that opening statement. >> You remember her question now. >> Give me the card. I appreciate that. >> We won't start the clock. Give your >> We're going to We start the clock. >> No, we're not. We're just not going to keep it running. >> Uh point of No. >> Um Yeah. No, I I think u my question was basically um >> I think so. >> You know, you've outlined a lot of the foundational documents, the pieces that need to be done. We've seen from the audit that there have been significant gaps, documents not updated since 2005. you you've been fortunate to have uh a first experience with the auditor general so soon in your in your tenure which because she's done excellent work here and I think really probably helped you set the priorities and so my question was really you know within your shop do you see the need for perhaps like an internal audit area evaluation area is that something um you know we're going to have a chat about resources I'm sure as these questions continue but do you see an opportunity to have a little bit more oversight capacity within your own team >> uh through the chair. Um I've had discussions with the uh the auditor general about additional artists that she may be able to perform for us. Um I think with me coming in just it gives the ability to just move a little bit faster than typically we have in this industry. This is my fourth transit system. Nothing I've found here is surprising. I've seen it at my previous three and that's why you're seeing the actions we're taking just moving a lot faster than a transit system typically would. >> Nothing you've seen here is surprising. Absolutely nothing. >> Nothing. Okay. >> Not even councelor car >> point of something. Okay. Um, >> sorry. Do you think it's fair that the new ways to bus is couched primarily as a cost cutting exercise? And I ask that because you know this is $10 million exercise. Sorry, $10 million savings. There was significant resources that were put in into this activity. It took a number of years. Um if I remember correctly, I think it removed 45 routes, introduced 18 and modified uh 63. So that that's significant. But we have an audit in front of us that basically says this was primarily cost cutting. And so it's in stark, you know, you've got the stark comparison about two routes, Route 105 and E1 that are $5 million collectively. Um you know, adding those two in. So, we've had new ways to bus in for a significant period of time. You got lots of feedback from counselors, from residents. There's some points of failure. I will acknowledge that there are some advantages. My routes 46 and 41, just as an example, are are really wellliked, but overall, we've heard a lot of negative feedback. Do you think it's fair to say it was cost cutting primarily >> through the chair? In in all honesty, I don't. But I think that you know when they opened the rail systems and they started doing the new way to bust it was to have a feeder system and having a number of discussions with yourselves as well as many customers out there sometimes that feeder system takes a little bit longer for travel and we're looking at new ways of doing things uh in the very near future of taking people more directly rather than having to take one or two buses to get to a rail system. So I think it was a a good foundation. Um would have done the same very similar thing myself. But now we're at a time, you know, coming out of COVID with all the changes that we had, the working from home, people coming back. It's now time to reassess it and look at doing things a little differently. >> Yes. And you've highlighted that you're already making some changes to some of the key routes and that there'll be more routes reviewed. We're seeing in Ottawa changes already with um more people expected to return to the office. Uh we talked about that at the last transit commission. and you've been working with the the federal government. Do you believe that there's going to be enough changes that will be made in time to regain some of the customers that have been lost? Like do you think that you can work quickly enough on this >> through the chair? I do. You know, I mentioned earlier that 30 routes alone account for about 51% of all bus ridership. So, we're we're targeting that making a difference right away. This summer, we're actually reduced some service to get a real good bus maintenance program underway on some of the fundamental things that we're having problems with our 60oot buses. But we're going to get on to that and we have some staffing uh being hired right now and we we're going to be changing some of the routes ourselves making sure we provide more service than we've had previously. So I I believe we're going to be ready and it's a it's going to be beneficial to those returning to sir to uh OC transport as a means of travel. >> Okay. Our next budget is not going to be done till February. Budget 2027. Uh right now transit occupies 17% of the city budget. It's $95 million. We talked about how new ways to bus uh saved operating cost of $10 million. We talk a lot about the financials. When will you be able to will you be able to make all of these changes for this year within your existing budget >> through the chair? That is the intention. It'll take probably a year to start revising all of them. As as the DG said, you know, we have a uh we do it seasonally four times a year. So, every quarter we're going to start ch changing and making those adjustments as the travel patterns come back. What I've asked staff to do now is we you know you know perfection is the failure of progress. Make the changes now right they may not be perfect but we have to add the appropriate amount of time right to be provide much more reliable service to our customers. >> But are you confident right now that there are sign there are sufficient resources in order to make these changes. We talked about staffing challenges with respect to operators mechanics. We addressed a question with the auditor general with respect to your scheduling and planning staff. you have enough resources to make changes as quickly as you can and and have sufficient staff to do it within the existing budget framework. Ye yes I do and yes we do through the CHS we do the uh you we're aware that we are heavily relying on overtime and that's part of a reason we're we're making this big push for additional uh hiring but yes for the fall we have the uh the staffing and the vehicles available. >> Okay, thank you. Within the um within the audit there was mention of a few peripheral items that haven't really been discussed yet. One was on the school routes. Um it was mentioned about the school routes routes take up a lot of um uh they're not they're not ones that are adjusted typically and they have a huge resource constraint at peak times. You mentioned that this is your fourth transit system. Do you have any early observations on um how we operate those school routes and the amount of resources that they take up during uh peak times when we're we're struggling to maintain service on some of our key routes? Any early recommendations? >> Uh yes, Drew. The chair staff have had a number of conversations more recently and we're actually having 20 buses brought back into service, right? That'll allow us to reallocate them to our service as the school board takes over the uh the the taking children to school. >> Sorry, can you repeat that? So, the school board is going to can Sorry, I didn't quite understand. >> That's correct. the uh the school board will assume responsibility for routes that allow 20 buses to come back to OC transpose so that we can put them back in to our own service to accommodate the capacity needs. >> So you've already had those conversations and they've already found 20 routes that will be put back into service. >> That's correct. Staff have had those conversations. >> Okay. Well, that's good news. Um the report highlighted route 105 and the E1 is perhaps redundant routes that are not typical in other transit systems. Will you be uh re-examining these routes or providing rationale to council on why you would be keeping these routes >> through the chair? I would let you know that it's not uncommon to have parallel bus routes on rail systems. I've had it in many two other properties that have had rail systems. So I would I would say that this part of the question though is yes, we will be reassessing when we do a a holistic review of the all the routes uh going into 2027 so we can give a report to committee and council on what possible changes would recommend. Okay, thank you. There was also a mention um within the um audit just about transit priority measures and needing to introduce those. Uh what are your plans there? Um, madame chair, we continue to work forward uh work on transit priority measures, tactical smaller ones and and the larger ones as uh with the larger ones as outlined in the transportation master plan. The smaller ones working on the uh the uh the resources that are approved annually in the budget, including the additional resources that were approved by council just uh two weeks ago. >> Okay, thanks. And I got a last question here, so I'm going to shove this one in. Um, it was also talked about the importance of including stakeholder feedback uh when we're looking at the routes. How do you see that we can improve public consultation? And I I asked that because there doesn't seem to be um I I see ways in which we could improve and make people more aware. Uh for example, when we were just in Edmonton for FCM, there's sandwich boards at bus stops advising on the input. these uh those big signs with colored letters. I don't know what they're called. Signs um that advise on consultations. Do you see ways in which we can you know we've lost a lot of uh faith in the system by customers. Do you see ways in which stakeholder consultation can be improved in light of this audit and the improvements that need to be taken >> through the chair? Yes, we do. We've uh we've made the commitment. I believe I brought it to made a statement last week. We intend to do workshops for the public as well as our employees internally to talk about the customer first action plan, all the initiatives we have underway and get feedback from the public as well. And we committed to the uh counselor at the committee that uh every all the counselors would be notified once the schedule is established and where we're going to have these plans. >> Okay, thanks. I'm getting cut off. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Thank you for those great questions, Councelor Carr. Uh Councelor Kavanagh. >> Yeah, thank you very much. Um yeah, there was a lot of questions and uh very good ones. Appreciate it. Um this was a very good report and I think it's very timely and um I appreciate your statement um um Rick about um you know just acknowledging it and um and what we need to do going forward. Um I I am concerned about what we will be doing going forward especially when we've got um the stage 2 LRT coming online. Um it's yeah we we're optimistic it's going to be within the next year um both both directions. Um and um I just want to know how you're going to involve counselors. Um there was some concern that you know we shouldn't be too involved. We shouldn't be overly involved but I think we do have a lot of um input and of course uh public consultation is important when we're talking about uh revamping the routes that uh that would feed into these stations. through the chair. We've made the uh the commitment to the committee as well as the the city um to share the information on the possible changes to the routes that would be whether they're feeder routes or they would be express routes that we're looking forward to in the future. There'll be more information coming uh it'll be publicly made and we having discussions of it this summer when we have the workshops. >> Okay, great. Um I I think that there's a concern out there that um the priority um especially with uh this report and new ways to bus um that the priority was cost cutting and not about service and I think this made the public very cynical and um when they when they saw that and I just want to know are we prioritizing um service because that was something they felt was sacrificed um you know in terms of frequencies of buses that are well used. Um, and of course the reliability. So, uh, we just want to make sure that it's not all about cost cutting, it's about service through the chair. I can assure you it's not about cost cutting. It is about service at OC Transpo. You know, there was very difficult scheduling through CO as you can imagine and with the people working from home and then coming back to work and and the concept of what the traffic patterns would be. Um, it's not it's I appreciate the his team talking. It's not an easy job to do when you're setting these schedules, but we'll start coming into the fall with a lot more time built into the schedules to accommodate reliability. >> Thank you. I think one from my residents um probably the biggest thing wasn't necessarily the pandemic, but the the change of having this uh stage one LRT meant that their routes were cut in half, that they no longer had a bus down, you know, to their work, usually downtown. Um that they had to get off and on a train. And um it took longer and um so any inefficiencies such as the bus not coming on time um or um you know and trying to get on to trains uh made their their trips longer. This is the overwhelming u reaction I get. So, I just wanted to um know how we're going to make the uh transition smoother because that is probably the the biggest uh complaint I get um about uh the transition times and um and how they can be improved because this is um this would mean write better writership um and um you know more revenue of course >> through the chair the commitment of OC transpose we intend through these these adjustments and the schedule is to provide what we advertise. Uh the customers know many times we haven't been doing that. It's not uncommon in the industry to fall behind especially coming through COVID but we will provide what we advertise uh going in the field with the help of yourselves and and customers as we design these schedules. We're also I'll let you know that we're also looking at doing work a little differently. Uh having a set number of buses set aside as run as directors because we know where the challenges are and the control center needs a few buses whether it's five or eight buses set aside to plug in gaps right to assure customers we're there when we say we're going to be there. >> Okay. Thank you. Um one of the analysis that was taken on um by OC Transpo um when we you know made comments about the fact that this bus is always late was the route 11 and um uh an analysis was taken took place and um it wasn't uh just about the availability of the bus but it was also about traffic patterns and how they could be fixed and this means working with our public works team. um there's cost involved, but it would mean um more efficiencies. And I just want to know of your commitment to um uh working with public works on uh such u changes that would help bus routes be faster >> through the chair. I I can commit to you that we're having those discussions now with all work that we're doing, whether it's a diversions or or schedules and running the routes. the uh it just so happens that for me for first first two months here the route 11 was my route to get to and from my uh my living quarters. So I I'm very familiar with that area and the challenges happening. So we are working on it. >> Okay. Well, thank you. I know my colleagues have lots of questions too. Thank you. >> Thank you, Councelor Hill. >> Uh thank you very much, Madam Chair. Uh thank you for your opening comments, uh Mr. Liry. I appreciate uh those. Certainly when new ways to bus was initially brought forward um I raised my concerns about the issue of reliability. That principally was the issue that I spoke regularly about. I talked about concerns about rel reliability in the corridor between Tunny's pasture and fall which has been inconsistent. Um I raised concerns about the lost 75 direct to Gatnau which caused folks from having one ride to essentially four three transfers added uh in some cases adding 30 40 minutes to their transit to which we needed to extend the transfer window in order to deal with that and we also lost the direct line to Beayshore. My concern is I think validated through the the auditor general's report. I appreciate the concerns that she raised in those as it pertains to service reliability and I also acknowledge your uh efforts as it pertains to your 10-point plan and how you have been uh addressing these to date and how you're going to continue to address those. What I'd specifically like to know is how do you how do you feel and address the comments that were brought forward by our union president as it pertains to the transit operators, the perception that the transit operators have and from the functionality of that relationship between management and the union which what I heard today uh is that it was somewhat fractured in the past and certainly that's not a functional model to go forward on H if we want to see these service improvements because at the end of the day I share your perspective on the customer first and the need to make sure that we're providing that reliable service that safe service and I'd like to know how that relationship between you and the union is going to go forward in order to support that. >> Councelor Hill would you say that's a part of this audit? >> Well, given the fact that we're talking about reliability on the new ways to bus, I think it is. >> All right. Relationships are not though. But I'm wondering if the general manager has a comment on reliability as >> related to speak to that. There was the first delegate and the first delegate raised that issue. So that's why I'm >> but we're speaking to the audit itself, right? And what's on this agenda? >> I think that's relevant >> and I'm saying it has to be related to the audit and the agenda. So I think you can do that. >> I can do that >> and bring it into the audit. Thank you. >> Through this year I can do that. I've had uh significant consultation with many frontline employees, customers as well as the union when it comes to reliability. So their input has been incredibly helpful uh through this process. The union had a document for instance that they brought to me sat down right away. I've committed to transparency with the union yourselves and our customers going forward so that um everybody has feels they have input and that we take their input seriously and make the adjustments that are necessary. So I'm very grateful and that's why I said in my in my state closing statement, thank Noah for his help on this. We share everything. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Uh, councelor Kits. >> Thank you, Chair. Um, Rick, I have a lot of faith in you. Uh, I'm glad you're here. I think you have, you know, been brought in as a pinch hitter to to get us out of this mess. Um, I believe that. Um, and I think today would transit riders are likely having very mixed feelings because there's an element of frustration. This is what they've been saying. Uh, there's an element of being validated by, you know, what's now in black and white. Um but there there should be some optimism um that you know we have a 10-point plan. We are on the eve of launching uh stage two. Um I think we all hope for a better day. Um but I I do think in order to look forward we we do also need to understand how we got here. Um, and I'm going to use a very specific local example, which I tend to do, but I'm using it because I think it's not reflective of a local problem. It's it's a system problem that has been um further exposed by by this audit. So, um, Route 30 riders have been living the audit uh for months. In in the fall, uh, 33% of afternoon trips uh arrived on schedule. To me, that's transit roulette if only one in three uh buses are arriving on time. And OC Transo acknowledged there were roots with Route 30, there were challenges with Route 30. Um, but speaking to counselor intervention, it really did take intervention by myself, from the mayor's office, you know, fueled by residents resident complaints to act. So is there a reliability threshold that compels OC transpo to adjust a route? Does that happen through the chair? What we've committed to transit committee is to bring new KPIs, key performance individ uh that reflect the customer's writership. I tell you though, I would say to you that the being here today, I'm very fortunate because the foundation established by council, right, with the investments, I'm just piecing this together with with the great staff that we have here. >> Yeah, I appreciate that, you know, you you just arrived. Um, and it's encouraging to hear that will happen going forward, but it really did it did feel like there was no mechanism to identify or correct a failing route before it became a crisis. So, I do think that's important context as we move forward. Um, I don't I don't think riders should need their counselor and auditor general's report to uh get a bus schedule aligned. Um, and on new ways to bus, you know, reading the audit did feel it felt like we were being we had been sold a fake bill of goods. Um, it has been operating for more than a year. Was there a review on the OC transpose side to measure whether it achieved intended objectives >> um through the chair? I think OC Transpo was reporting the information they had uh which was supported by council. You know, when you talk about the reliability of the fleet and only a third showing up on time, we're recognizing that. You know, it wasn't just one variable though. It's the schedules. It's also the reliability of the fleet. Unfortunately, we have the the new vehicles coming in and we've we've retired some of the older vehicles um that were having that input impact. So, I think it was just a lot of it was timing to be honest with you. The the buses coming in a little later than they originally had planned for. >> Mhm. Yeah, there was definitely a perfect storm happening. Um and I I do think, you know, I I don't think it's necessarily fair to ask you about why things happen the way they happened in the past. Um but it it did feel like we redesigned the network before um updating the rule book based on the fact that the service standards uh were rooted in policies dating back to 2005. Um I don't think we should have undertaken a citywide network redesign before um updating modern service standards. Um so you know I I will just say I I don't feel like the trade-offs were clearly articulated um to council on new ways to bus. Uh I don't feel like uh complete analysis of reliability risks um were presented or that we were ever really formally advised that the scheduled service being presented could not reliably be delivered um without the I mean it happened over time. Then we started to hear about the availability of buses and the operators and the actual traffic conditions. Um but uh you know this obviously will now become a critical budget decision. But I am very happy to hear that we're not waiting for the budget that this that you know your your 10-point plan has already been implemented and we are already you know going to see changes um to the network. So thank you very much. >> Thank you. Um councelor Gower. >> Thank you chair. Um I guess I wanted to follow up on what I had asked the auditor's team just around organizational capacity for scheduling and planning. Can you elaborate a bit on what you have underway? What you have planned to augment your capabilities in that area? Uh, madame chair, the the uh specialist staff we have who work on planning and scheduling uh are are great people dedicated to the work with a lot of experience, a lot of qualifications. There's always a a turnover as people come uh to the end of their career as people take on other challenges and we work hard to bring in new people of equal quality to to carry on with the work. Um, as the auditor general mentioned, there's a there's a time required to bring bring people in and get them up to speed. And uh, one of the characteristics of being here in Ottawa is that we don't have more than one neighboring transit system. So we really need to travel to other locations to gain um knowledge and context and uh to reflect on experience that's coming from other places than just uh just uh the processes that we've always followed. Um there are some uh specialist very very particular aspects of theuling work where we're beefing up our our staff complement. There are some very specific um aspects that we can also very uh well shop out to uh to international vendors who can uh do some of that analysis um much more rapidly with their their math and their computers than than we could do ourselves. Um and we'll we just continue that work. What about on the data analysis technology augmentation? Uh are there any near-term or longerterm plans around increasing that capacity? >> Uh we've got a a good staff who who work on that. We've got uh computer systems that just keep getting more and more amazing to uh analyze and report out on the um on the massive amounts of data, what conclusions we get from the massive amounts of data that we collect. I would say that what we're learning to spend more time on and that we're spending a lot of time on right now is um structuring how we analyze and what we do with the analysis that we get from the the massive amounts of data. So our our where we're growing right now is not in collecting the data, not in doing the analysis, but in making sure that it's plugged into our um day-to-day, hour to hour and and minute-to-minute management of the system. >> Okay. Well, it is I do think it's an important area and I like to encourage you to bring forward updates as appropriate to transit committee in that aspect. Um and the other thing I wanted to touch on was uh there are two recommendations. We've spoken a lot about them. Recommendation six and seven which are around prioritizing transit objectives and updating and consolidating service standards. Uh as other counselors have mentioned, this is really fundamental to any kind of route planning exercise going forward. The timelines to bring that back to council are 2028, Q1 2028 and Q3 2028. Is there any way that that work could be accelerated even a a half year earlier? Um yeah, could you comment on that? >> U Madam Chair, the dates we've uh given are the dates that are the time that we think it takes to do that work, do that work well, and do all of the other work that we're responsible for at the same time. um to make a commitment to do it earlier would uh imply that we're going to give that work some of that work absolute priority over some of the operational matters that are going to come up. responding to uh changes in travel pattern, responding to changes in ridership level, responding to road conditions, responding to growth of the city and getting ready for the opening of the rail lines. We have to do our strategic work meshed in with all of all of that work. >> Yeah. Okay. I appreciate that. There are a lot of a lot of organizational priorities. So maybe if you could comment on this. Um I suspect that the major transformational projects around light rail around electrification around the pandemic and the return to work like that's been one major challenge after another frozo has that taken the focus away from the bus system like has I'd like I'd like you to comment on how much that has affected the organizational capacity to stay on top of buses when your attention has been on other important issues. >> Um through the chair, you know, I think the um to answer that, it's not an easy answer. Um you know, again, I'm going to say, you know, in the last 5 years, traffic patterns have changed significantly. So, trying to stay on top of how you would schedule um a to zed, it's it's a lot more difficult than people would believe. Uh so, I give the staff a lot of credit for what they we have done. Yes, I would say there's no doubt that you know a lot of focus has been on rail. Um but having come here and seen the uh budget approvals for the infrastructure, the charging, the new vehicles. Um you know I you know do we wish in hindsight could it have been done two or three years earlier? Most likely. Um, but for today I'm looking forward saying, you know, over the next 6 months, you're going to see a significant improvement. And then about a year, just over a year from now, you'll have a fleet of 400 new buses out of the 705. And we're going to or 74. And then we overhauled some of the other buses. We're going to this this group has set the stage for real good service in the very near future. >> Okay. Thank you, Chair. >> Thank you, Councelor Leaper. >> Thank you very much. Um so I want to come back to the uh the service standards discussion as a number of counselors have. Um and I I heard your comment Mr. Liry uh one that I agree with entirely that OC transpose focus is going to be on delivering the service that we advertise. Uh you know the the bus is supposed to come at 12:20. The bus will be there at 12:20 or 12:21 somewhere around there. Um but we've talked um this morning in the context of the auditor's report about a number of other potential service standards to which we might adhere. Uh there's been discussion about things like uh overall travel time. Uh distance to stops has come up a few times this morning. You know, how far are people walking? We we we've heard from residents um who's who's got who have significantly further to get to a stop as a result of new ways to bus and frequency. uh frequency is um uh really important to a lot of us. To what extent will your new service standards that you're hoping to start reporting on and that you're going to be in front of um uh front of us with in 2027 include those kinds of service standards as well? Cuz I hear the very laser focused probably appropriately so um reliability discussion but I am looking for OC transport to to be very cognizant of all these other things that we need to provide as well >> through the chair. I think what you're going to hear a lot from me talking about over the course of the next weeks, next month, few months is going to be matching capacity to demand. As we get reliability together, we have to get a better understanding of where the demand is and then the reliability of service so we can see where we need to put additional vehicles. For me, that's critical. And then then what we also do in working with Pat and his team is do some comparisons of other transit systems of what their policies and procedures are when it comes to setting up, you know, walking distances. For instance, I believe we're in the 400 range. Uh where I came from in Toronto was the 400 400 walking meter walking range. Um we're going to take a look at all that the frequencies. I'm more of a person that believes matching capacity to demand the guarantee and frequencies in all areas. All right? Because if there's nobody there, I don't like to provide that service. Um and those are the discussions we'll continue to have with committee going forward. Um and I don't want to overcommit what we can do, but I want to make sure that everybody has a good understanding of the items that we're looking at. the so it sounds like it's going to be some time before OC transport is able to focus on I just I I hear the 400 meter number with respect to to walking distance to a stop um and new ways to bus uh significantly increased walking distance as well above that and unfortunately no one in OC transport was able to tell me what is the new average distance um uh to a stop as a result of losing routes for example uh I would hope that in responding to the art of general's um uh recommendation to to develop service standards uh that we're not going to lose sight of, you know, those other priorities and please engage council as soon as you can in those discussions. I know we're in a crisis right now uh and we need to uh match the service to the number of operators and buses that we have and that's going to be the focus for a while, but we need to look beyond just stabilizing the system. uh and the auditor general's uh recommendations are going to be critical to improving the service so it becomes a first choice rather than a last. Uh may I also just say uh councelor kits um transit roulette and living the audit are going to be my two new favorite hashtags. Thank you for those. Thank you everyone. >> Thank you councelor Johnson. >> Thank you chair and uh thank you to staff for answering everyone's questions today. Uh, I'd like to echo some of my council colleagues in suggesting that there is optimism here because we continue to lay bare uh what we need and so we can be discouraged. Uh, but we're not in the business of being discouraged as city councilors. We're in the business of solving problems as well as uh staff. So, I'm looking forward to working together to get there. Um, I would suggest that, you know, the the trains coming online are an opportunity to stick the landing for the bus routes. Um, because obviously things will have to be recalibrated and from what I remember, New Ways to Bus was positioned to me as a recalibration when um, uh, the South Line came on. So there was a relationship between that train coming online and and resource allocation across the rest of the uh city. Um what I would like to know is you know the timing of these recommendations obviously there is a lot of good stuff in here for how we govern bus decision making around the online of the east and west lines. Can you give me some asurances or details about sort of as you suggested that the the timeline for seeing some of these improvements come on? I would hate for those moments to be missed. Um can you comment on that uh through the chair? So my my understanding of the question then it would be that you know when we're opening the uh the east extension for instance where would we be how would we be modifying the bus routes in that area? I just want to make sure I understand. >> Yes, that's right. So the new ways to bus in 2023 was you know in part obviously as described in this exercise as a a cost savings uh approach as well as a redistribution of resources. I want to know when we get these other routes online or when we get these other trains online that we're going to be following the recommendations of this report as we adjust bus service in those areas. >> Uh Madame Chair, I'll I'll start by by saying that um we were asked to do three things in the bus route review that led to uh what was labeled new ways to bus. We were asked to uh revise the route network to be up to date with current travel patterns which were much more community focused and less downtown oriented than they had been pre- pandemic. We were asked to uh realign all parts of the transit network to take full advantage of the speed and capacity of the O train lines and we were asked to save $10 million and none of those took precedence over the other. We were we were directed to and we did achieve all three of those. But uh what the timing was for the implementation to knit in the bus routes to the opening of O train lines two and four to the south. There remains work to be done to knit the bus routes in in the east when the east extension of line one opens and to the west when the west extension of lines one and three open. We've had good discussions um with the counselors in the east about the the uh changes that we were planning that we have been planning for the east. Uh we will because uh the line's not yet opened, we'll be refreshing those um conversations with counselors and also putting the same uh proposals through the the workshop process that Mr. Larry's mentioned earlier and then we will repeat the same for the extension to the west. I've said at uh transit commission before that we think we'll be um talking to councilors on the west and southwest parts of the the city about the potential changes in their area around the end of this year, beginning of next year. >> Okay, very good. Um so uh in the report it sort of talks about how it it was felt that the consultation period for new ways to bus was shorter than could have been desired. you're not you're you're you're taking some of that advice and and looking at that in the lens of bringing some of these changes to roots online for uh east and west then >> yes we'll we're'll uh engage with uh counselors throughout the process as we've done before and we'll uh we'll bring uh customers and any other stakeholders in through this workshop process as well. >> Okay, very good. Um so yes I I I I maintain you know that uh more information is is better uh obviously for decision- making but also for uh building trust with our uh customers and our residents which I think unfortunately has been lost. when I read in the report, you know, that we're having to that that the recommendation is to build clear service standards that relate to a customer experience and report out on those uh KPIs that reflect those service standards. To me, that seems like um strategic planning 101. And I I it disappoints me that we've got away from that. And I think residents have felt that because they they come to transit committee and they hear how everything is is going well. Um but then their lived experience is that they they are actually having some real consequences to not being able to get around their city in the way that they need to to take care of their families and to have a good quality of life. Um so what I would like to hear from from Mr. Liry is, you know, moving forward, what can we count on in light of some of these recommendations that I think really get to the core of a culture of sort of silence or or um maybe a little bit of rosecolored glasses when it comes to OC? Like, how are you going to be able to talk to us differently about what you need, what's not working, and um what solutions are in front of you? because I I I have been concerned since being elected that that has not been allowed to happen. So, how are you going to do this differently in light of the audit recommendations? >> Through the chair, um the history of myself is that I'm just transparent with all those that I work with and make sure that they uh elected officials know what they need to know to make decisions based on where the finances can be invested. That's what I do and that's uh my my success in my business has just been doing that. This is a great organization. There's a lot of investment. Uh right now I'm just piecing together a lot of the work, the good work that's already been been done and having it be able to give you the assurance that there's a future. Uh the outlook is very positive here. >> Okay. Very good. I I certainly would agree that that we have a lot of folks in OC Transpo that care deeply. My concern has remained that they haven't been able to speak openly about what they need to deliver that excellence that you describe. So I do expect in light of this audit that we will see a different type of culture come through uh with senior leadership and with uh council and committee members. Thank you very much chair. If I may, I just to add to that, it's also making sure that we demonstrate the customer experience and the KPIs that we're going to be presenting to the committee um can be seen as alarming at times and that's what council and and the committee need to see um to ask the proper questions to asssure that proper funding is is placed where it's necessary and that's the transparency that I will be bringing to this organization. it more supports what many of the employee many of the the management know but sometimes you have to be able to I'm going to say sell it and and ensure council elected officials that you know what they need to invest in. >> Thank you. >> Great. Thank you uh councelor Kavanagh. >> Yeah. Thank you very much uh and thanks again Rick for answering these questions. Um, one other factor, it's not in the report, but this is a major factor in in the planning of efficient routes, and that is the return to work and the federal government's role. And I'm I'm thinking about in my own ward DND campus um where people aren't taking transit because it's not working for them and they're supplying them with parking and um and I just wanted to know how that's taken into consideration with the return to work u a return to office rather um and uh uh that that's a huge factor as well and hopefully um they'll support us but I just want to know what those conversations um are like right now >> and can we make sure we're dealing with one of the recommendations that maybe you can apply that to because we do want to try to this report and I'm I'm actually talking to uh G the general manager right now councelor Kavanagh >> okay >> through the chair I can assure you that uh the planning for September is all about reliability matching capacity demand and making sure that we take uh those that are returning to work um to the destination that they they they choose We will be working very closely with the city right now uh on all elements of of return to work as well as the federal government uh getting information exactly from them on where they would like to see what routes and what they would like to see for differences as well. So we're working on reliability of this service with all our partners at this point. There'll be more coming out this summer on uh on what will be presented for the fall. >> Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you chair. >> Thank you. All right. So, the report recommendation is that the audit committee receive the audit report and recommend that council consider and approve the recommendations. Is this uh motion carried? >> Is it >> carried or received? >> Carried. Is this motion carried? >> Carried. >> Carried. Thank you. Okay, we have one other uh follow-up audit and then we will have a break before we move into in camera. It just makes sort of a natural sense. I see people taking their own little breaks. Anyways, uh item 5.2 2 for the follow-up report on the review of the job evaluation process. Okay. Okay. This is not going to be as exciting. Nobody cares. Uh, our next presentation is related to the results of the of our follow-up of the review of job evaluation processes. Although we do not normally issue a standalone report of our follow-up work, we felt it was important to highlight to committee the results given that these recommendations were issued in 2022. Next slide, please. Job evaluation or J establishes the relative value or worth of jobs within an organization. The value of a job is based on an objective, consistent, and rational measurement of job content and requirements. J is used to provide the basis for an equitable and defensible pay structure, particularly in determining equal pay for work of equal equal or comparable value. In June 2022, our office conducted the review of job evaluation processes. The scope of this review was limited to the creation and reclassification of management and professional exempt or MPE jobs. The review report highlighted the need to streng strengthen the governance and control mechanisms within the job evaluation function to ensure it supports objectivity and independence while adhering to job evaluation principles and best practices. This included processes related to to and the composition of the rating committee which is responsible for ensuring internal equity, corporate consistency and compliance with applicable labor laws. We recently completed the follow-up of the recommendations issued from the report. Of the nine issued, seven recommendations were assessed as partially complete as there were elements of management's committed actions that remain incomplete and continue to pres present a risk to the city. We will focus the next slides on those assessed as partially complete. Next slide, please. One of the recommendations issued was to formalize the quality assurance or QA process to ensure that it can it is consistently performed and submitted to the rating committee. Based on our follow-up, we learned that a procedure was developed to formalize the quality assurance process, including addressing feedback before submission to the rating committee. However, based on our review of a sample of job files, we did not consistently see evidence of the quality assurance review and associated resolution of the feedback. As a result, we could not assess whether this process had been fully implemented, particularly as it relates to the review and disposition of the job evaluation specialists feedback and how they were incorporated into the job documentation package provided to the rating committee. The next set of recommendations were related to the rating committee itself. The review found that the MP rating committee process was not as robust as it was designed to be and that opportunities existed to update membership to support the rating committee responsibilities and process. As part of our follow-up, we learned that the the rating committee procedure was finalized in December 2025, which formalized the process to support the committee's role and consensus-based decision-making. Based on our limited sample testing, we saw evidence that key elements of the documented process were implemented. However, we learned that the rating committee had been on hiatus since Q2 2025 and therefore could not test whether the rating committee process had been applied consistently and according to the established process. Since our review, the membership of the writing committee has undergone various changes which included at times a roster of members to draw upon and gender representation. Going forward, we understand that the membership will comprise of four members. While this proposed composition does provide significant context and knowledge of MPE jobs across the city, the membership does not have any identifi identified alternates and does not achieve gender balance as it is currently represented by three males and one female. I will now pass the presentation on to audit principal Riaakana for the remainder of the follow-up results. Next slide, please. >> Thanks, Joanne. We issued a recommendation to establish a standard to ensure that every interim rated job, which are jobs that are assigned a rating by a job evaluation staff member on their initial review is presented to the rating committee within a specified time period. Based on our follow-up, a service standard was established whereby the finalized job documentation must be presented to the rating committee within 90 calendar days of an interim rating for a final rating decision. With the rating committee on hiatus since Q2 of 2025, interim rated jobs are not being evaluated and the service standard is not being met. As a result, at the time of the of drafting this report, there were 19 interim rated jobs since 2025 that have not been final rated. Another recommendation issued was to establish a process and criteria for the treatment of exceptions, which are jobs that are directed and do not get submitted to the rating committee, including defining who has the authority to approve exceptions and under what circumstances. Based on our follow-up, we noted that both the current job evaluation policy and job evaluation procedure do not include any guidance on the process and criteria for the treatment of exceptions. Next slide, please. The review found that directed jobs included jobs within human resources with no process in place for additional oversight or challenge. We issued a recommendation to develop and implement a process for the creation and reclassification of human resources jobs that facilitates an independent review and approval process. Our follow-up confirmed that a procedure was issued in December 2025 which required all new and reclassified HR jobs to be evaluated by the rating committee. Since the rating committee's hiatus, HR jobs are interim rated and have not been evaluated by the rating committee. As such, we were not able to verify that all key elements of the job evaluation process for HR jobs have been fully implemented. The last recommendation issued was to develop and implement a race a riskbased process whereby all MP jobs are independently and periodically reviewed every 5 to 10 years to help ensure that job duties and job descriptions are accurate and aligned to ensure pay equity and proper spending of taxpayer dollars. Based on our follow-up, we noted that a formal procedure was developed in 2023 to guide this periodic review process. However, this is not yet commenced. Next slide, please. This concludes our presentation. You will note in the report that as outlined in management's updates, progress has been made to address the gaps identified. We have not validated these actions, but we'll do so once management confirms completion of these recommendations. We would be happy to take any questions committee members may have related to this follow-up report. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Questions for the office of the auditor general >> on the audit. >> Wow. >> I don't see any questions. All right. Who would who would be the staff member that's going to take uh questions if if I do go to staff? >> The person in the back. >> Okay. We do have a member of staff here to answer questions. So, are there questions of staff for this audit? Okay, there don't seem to be any questions on this. Um, the motion itself is that the audit committee recommend that council receive this report. Is this motion carried? >> Received or carried. >> Carried. Carried. >> Carried. Thank you. All right. So, I'm going to look to Vice Chair Hubley to read out the motion so that we can move into in camera. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, be it resolved that in accordance with the procedure bylaw, uh, the audit committee resolve in camera pursuant to subsection 131A, the security of the property of the city based upon the rationale set out in the respective legal implications sections of the report titled Office of the Auditor General Audit of Cyber Security Critical Infrastructure and that the Office of the Auditor General follow-up report number two, audit of cyber security. These reports will not be reported out on. Thank you, Madam Chair. >> So, just for any members of the public who are watching, we are now going to be taking a break and moving to an inc camera session that will not be publicized, but we will come back in public to uh actually vote on motions in public. All right. So, we will see you probably in about I don't know. We don't know how long the in camera meeting will go. So, I guess I don't know how long that will be. You'll have to just keep watching. All right. See you. Audio test. Audio test. Check one, two. Check one, two. >> Okay, I'm told we have quorum. So, if everybody's uh okay, we'll get started here. Okay, for those uh for the benefit of those joining us online, uh the audit committee just met in camera to consider two reports submitted by the office of the auditor general. Item 6.1 was the office of the auditor general audit of cyber security critical infrastructure and 6.2 2 was office of the audio general follow-up report on um audit of cyber security. These matters will not be reported out as they relate to subsection 131A which is the security of the property of the city. During the inc camera session, no votes were taken other than procedural motions and/or directions to staff. So we'll go back to uh 6.1 which as previously mentioned is the office of the auditor general audit of cyber security critical infrastructure. Does the audit committee receive the audit report and recommend that council consider and approve the recommendations? Gary >> Garrett >> Garrett office of uh the auditor general follow-up uh report number two audit of cyber security. Uh the recommendation is that the audit committee receive the follow-up report and recommend that council consider and approve the recommendation. Is that car? >> Okay. Thank you uh everybody. Believe that's it. Is there any notices of motions, >> chair? >> Yep. >> Will I be able to have a a quick moment to speak? >> Pardon me. >> Will I be able to have a quick moment to speak as we had discussed? >> Absolutely. Sure. Uh go ahead. Uh uh General, >> thank you very much. Uh I appreciate you indulging me. A couple weeks ago, I shared with members of council the news of the upcoming departure of Joanne, our fabulous deputy auditor general. And I'd be remissed if I didn't say a couple of words during her last meeting with us here today. So for those of you who aren't aware, Joanne joined the city in 2001, just shortly after my tenure as auditor general commenced. Since then, Joanne's been a key member of our team, working on significant audits such as, and I won't list them all, but obviously multiple lens down point 2.0 0 redevelopment audits, supportive housing, the development application review audit, affordable housing, the city's response to the convoy protest, amongst many others. Most of you know that I felt like I won the lottery when I saw Joann's candidacy was presented to me early on, and I did obviously continue to feel like that throughout the course of her five years here with the city. So, well, Joanne will be greatly missed. Uh, I'm very happy to hear and to state that uh taxpayers will continue to reap the benefit of her expertise just from a provincial lens. So, she will be joining the provincial uh office of the auditor general's office as assistant auditor general. So, I just hope that you join me in wishing Joanne all the best and continued success. Thank you, Joan. >> Congratulations. Y >> thank you uh Joanne for your service to our city and uh as the AG said best wishes in your new position >> and I don't know how you're going to do it without her. >> That's why I'm looking for two deputies. >> Okay. Um so notices of motion there was none. Uh anybody have inquiries? No. Okay. Um, other business. Oh, this is where you were supposed to speak, by the way. Okay. Uh, so no other business. And, uh, so we're at a join adjoinment. Uh, adjournment. Sorry. We need a motion to adjourn. >> No. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. Thank you everybody.