Unwanted honour: Victoria given wasteful spending award for Johnson St. Bridge

Victoria’s Johnson Street Bridge replacement has been handed a Teddy, a wasteful spending 'award,' by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Feb. 22, 2017. (CTV Vancouver Island)

Victoria’s over-budget and behind schedule Johnson Street Bridge replacement has been awarded a dubious distinction by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

The advocacy group held its 19th annual Teddy Waste Awards in Ottawa Wednesday, which it says celebrate “the best of the worst in government waste from the past year.”

Categories are divided into federal, provincial and municipal projects as well as a “Lifetime Achievement Teddy,” and winners are “honoured” with a pig-shaped trophy.

The blue bridge replacement took home this year’s Municipal Teddy Award for going $42-million over its initial projected budget, and for being three years behind schedule with completion expected later this year.

“It’s just a hundred metres long, a distance that Usain Bolt could run in a flash, but the not-so-sane dolts at Victoria City Hall are spending more than $100-million and more than a decade to rebuild it,” said CTF Federal Director Aaron Wudrick.

In Victoria, CTF B.C. spokesman Jordan Bateman said the bridge replacement could be one of the most expensive stretches of road in all of North America, comparing it to a costly highway improvement project for the Kicking Horse Canyon.

“This is $105-million for 100 metres of bridge. I know there’s a few other lanes around it, but it’s certainly comparable to the Kicking Horse Canyon, which I guess will give it a run for its money as most expensive,” said Bateman.

The bridge was proposed in 2009 by a Victoria city council headed by then-mayor Dean Fortin. When current mayor Lisa Helps took office as a councillor in 2011, she spoke up against the project.

“Victoria’s a cautionary tale. There are things you can learn from Victoria in how not to build a bridge project, some of which, frankly, Lisa Helps flagged at the very beginning of this process and has now inherited as mayor.”

He said lessons learned include the need for better real-time financial disclosure, making sure contracts made outside of Canada take culture and standards into consideration and writing better contracts in general.

“So if you’re outsourcing the risk that the company is taking on the risk, not taxpayers themselves,” said Bateman.

On Wednesday, Helps said she understood why the city received the award, but vowed it would never repeat the same mistakes.

“I’ve said this before: It’s not a good project, I didn’t support it when I was a councillor,” she said. “Going forward, bike lanes, Crystal Pool, fire hall, we’ve taken a completely different approach to all those projects so we won’t see this happen again in the city.”

She said key changes made at City Hall include a new senior administration, a new cost-estimating policy, a project management framework and having estimates for large-scale projects checked by third parties.

“We’ve changed fundamentally the way we do business at the city in this term of council,” she said. “I think the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is right to call us out on this one.”

Helps said if the CTF gives her the pig-shaped Teddy, she’ll put it on her desk as a tongue-in-cheek reminder that the city has turned a corner on how it handles projects.

The City of Victoria was also nominated in the municipal category last year for spending $10,000 on installing an interactive “musical” stairwell in a downtown parkade.

Canada Revenue Agency took home a federal Teddy for paying an employee $538,000 for moving expenses, while Ontario’s provincial government was awarded a Teddy for spending more than $39-million on electric vehicle subsidies over six years.