Counsel for Hamilton’s Red Hill Valley Parkway Inquiry (RHVPI) says the process has become “slower and more complicated” than expected not only due to the coronavirus pandemic but the search for historical documents.
Attorney Robert Centa says there’s no doubt that much of the slow-down is attributed to the effects of COVID-19 limiting the collection of evidence due to office closings and meetings having to be conducted virtually.
However, the search for documents that date back more than a decade is also proving to be challenging, according to Centa.
“The fact that some of these questions around the construction and the paving go back a number of years, it’s always more difficult to collect documents that are a little more historical in nature,” Centa told Global News.
Centa says many of the documents the inquiry is seeking are “hard copies” that need to be converted into some kind of more usable format before being read.
So far, the inquiry has received about 74,000 documents from participants and other people who hold relevant technical information that Centa says will be reviewed with the help of design experts, analyzing everything from asphalt composition to construction methods.
“The commission has retained experts to help us understand some of the test data that’s been provided to help us understand some of the issues around the design and the building of the roadway, as well as some of the interaction between staff at city hall and some of the consultants that were involved,” Centa said.
The RHVPI, announced in April of 2019, was commissioned by the city of Hamilton and centers around a 2013 Tradewind Scientific report, which analyzed friction levels on the parkway and suggested some safety issues.
The audit recommended “remedial actions” and an investigation of the asphalt after friction values were discovered to be “below or well below” U.K. safety standards, which were used as a benchmark in the study.
The inquiry is expected to answer 24 specific questions posed by councillors in five general categories:
- Why the 2013 report on the Red Hill Valley Parkway (RHVP) and the Lincoln M. Alexander Parkway was not revealed to city council or the public
- Why testing from the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) on the RHVP in 2007 was not disclosed to city council or the public
- Whether the city or MTO conducted any other friction tests or general road safety reviews of the RHVP
- What the standards for friction testing in Ontario are
- Other than friction, what other factors contribute to motor vehicle accidents on the RHVP
The inquiry, under commissioner and justice Herman Wilton-Siegel, is then expected to undertake a second stage in the form of road safety recommendations in the interest of the public and government.
However, the inquiry is still far from answering those questions since it’s still sifting through documents to determine whether they are “helpful” or just not relevant to the probe, according to Centa.
The attorney says between the city and other participants there could be as many as three million documents involved, and he admits not all will be helpful in answering the 24 questions posed by the city.
“We’ve worked with the participants to try and come up with categories of documents and descriptions of documents that we think might help us answer those questions to try and provide a little more context and detail to the participants so that they can search their own records in a more fruitful way,” Centa said.
Before the pandemic, the inquiry expected to be listening to individuals affected by accidents on the parkway and other concerned citizens in early summer as part of the process. However, Centa says that will now likely be pushed back to late summer or fall at the earliest.
“We originally hoped to have the process up and running, right now,” Centa said. “That was something we had to think through because of the pandemic. What we had originally intended were in-person meetings with a lot of individuals who wanted to talk to us, and I don’t think that is a good way to proceed right now.”
During an update among inquiry facilitators in a virtual call on Tuesday morning, staff said it’s expected that a review of relevant documents will begin sometime around the end of July.