Hearings in the long-awaited inquiry into the procurement and construction of Winnipeg’s police headquarters are scheduled to start Tuesday, with testimony from city officials who were involved in the troubled project.
Witness testimony is expected to begin with City of Winnipeg procurement official Barb D’Avignon and finance official Jason Ruby. The provincial inquiry intends to bring public scrutiny “to something that has been on the minds of the citizens of Winnipeg for multiple years,” legal counsel Heather Leonoff said in an interview prior to the hearings.
The saga dates back to February 2008, when the Winnipeg Police Service started looking into moving its headquarters from the now-demolished Public Safety Building on Princess Street to a former Canada Post office tower and warehouse complex on Graham Avenue.
City council approved the purchase and renovation project the following year, at a budget of $135 million. By the time the police service moved into the building in 2016, the cost had ballooned to $214 million due to construction delays, change orders and flood damage.
The project ended up subject to a pair of civil lawsuits initiated by the city, two external audits and a five-year RCMP fraud and forgery investigation that began with a raid on the offices of project contractor Caspian Construction.
While that investigation wrapped up in 2019 without any charges, the documents Mounties unearthed led the city to sue Caspian principal Armik Babakhanians and former city CAO Phil Sheegl — who was later found by the courts to have accepted a $327,200 bribe from Babakhanians to show favour to Caspian in the police headquarters tendering process. Both later paid money to the city in either damages or settlement money.
Following the inquiry’s first day, testimony is expected to continue Wednesday with contracts expert Eleanor Andres and Sean Barnes of PCL Construction, which was among the large construction companies that lost out on the police HQ work to Caspian.
Sam Katz, who served as Winnipeg’s mayor from 2006 to 2014, is expected to testify Thursday and possibly Friday. While he wasn’t a party to the Sheegl lawsuit and is not accused of wrongdoing, an appeal court justice said in 2023 the former mayor can be considered a material witness and “received precisely half the money” paid to Sheegl by Babakhanians.
Sheegl and Babakhanians are scheduled to appear as inquiry witnesses next week.
Those who testify will be compelled to answer questions asked of them, though nothing they say can be used against them for the purposes of a civil lawsuit or criminal court case.
Instead, the focus will be on helping the public understand what happened, inquiry counsel Leonoff said.
“People are giving their versions,” she said. “And it’s up to the commissioner to decide how it all fits together and what’s truth … or what should be ignored.”
The province selected labour lawyer Garth Smorang as commissioner for the inquiry, which was initially requested by a Winnipeg city council led by then-mayor Brian Bowman in 2017.
The inquiry is scheduled to continue until June, examining the circumstances surrounding the project and determining which measures are needed to restore public confidence in the city’s ability to build large, publicly funded projects.
