John Aquino walks into the Superior Court of Justice Courthouse, in Toronto, Nov. 12, 2024.Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail
A member of the executive committee overseeing bids for the redevelopment of Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital testified in court on Wednesday that he opposed awarding the lucrative contract to Bondfield Construction Co. Ltd.
Derrick Toigo, a former executive vice-president at Infrastructure Ontario and member of the four-person committee, was testifying at the criminal trial of Vas Georgiou, the former chief administrative officer of St. Michael’s, and John Aquino, the former president of Bondfield. They are each charged with two counts of fraud over $5,000 and have pleaded not guilty. The allegations against them have not been proved in court.
Mr. Toigo told the men’s trial that he didn’t believe Bondfield’s bid would have worked. His opposition posed a significant challenge for the bid because the process required unanimous approval and he was the committee’s lone dissenter.
“In order for the project to function properly, it would have required a massive redesign and significant increase in cost,” Mr. Toigo told Crown counsel Rachel Young.
The Crown’s case against Mr. Georgiou and Mr. Aquino focuses on their alleged undisclosed business connections, as well as their alleged secret communications throughout the bidding process for St. Michael’s, which Bondfield won in 2015.
The hospital invited Bondfield and competitors PCL Construction and EllisDon to bid on the redevelopment project back in 2013. After the contenders had submitted their bids the following year, complications arose because the executive team evaluating the proposals did not reach consensus, something that was mandatory before the project could proceed. Mr. Toigo was the lone dissenter on the team, which included Mr. Georgiou.
The solution to the impasse was to enlist third-party consultants to review the bidders’ submissions. After a few weeks of analysis and negotiations, evaluators, including Mr. Toigo, verbally reached consensus and St. Michael’s announced in January, 2015, that Bondfield had won the $300-million contract.
Mr. Toigo testified, however, that after the third-party reviews, his position did not in fact change. Ms. Young showed the court a document on Infrastructure Ontario letterhead, signed by the other three members of the executive committee, stating that Bondfield was “qualified to proceed to the next stage of the project.”
Mr. Toigo told the court that he could not agree “in good conscience” to sign off on the official document because the process for awarding the contract to Bondfield was “flawed.”
Under cross-examination by Alan Gold, lawyer for Mr. Aquino, Mr. Toigo said no one at Infrastructure Ontario gave him the document, which he said he saw for the first time on Wednesday. “I said I didn’t recall seeing the document,” Mr. Toigo said. “I wouldn’t have signed it anyway.”
Mr. Toigo outlined a number of concerns he had about Bondfield’s bid during questioning by Ms. Young. Bondfield submitted a work schedule, saying it would reach interim completion on building a new 17-storey patient care tower – the centrepiece of the project – in 34 months. EllisDon and PCL, by comparison, each said it would take them 40 months. Mr. Toigo said he didn’t know how Bondfield could reach that stage on such a complicated project in just under three years.
(The entire project, initially set for completion in 2019, is seven years behind schedule.)
Bondfield submitted a bid for $300-million – more than $200-million less than its rivals. Mr. Toigo said one way the company could reduce its costs is by shortening the time it takes for construction. Another way Bondfield reduced costs, he said, was by making changes to items that the hospital had specifically requested. For example, he said Bondfield’s bid cut the size of some inpatient rooms and also had support columns in the middle of rooms in the emergency department, which would impede the access of medical staff and equipment to patients.
In another example, Mr. Toigo said, Bondfield replaced concrete benches the hospital requested for its mental health unit with ones made of wood. The hospital wanted seats that could be anchored to the floor and not used as weapons by patients, he said.
During his cross-examination, Peter Brauti, lawyer for Mr. Georgiou, told Mr. Toigo, “You were not going to pass them, no matter what.” Mr. Toigo responded that there were significant issues that “should have been taken into account.”
Mr. Brauti also presented Mr. Toigo with evidence from other witnesses who testified that Mr. Toigo was aware of how much each company was proposing to charge when the executive committee was reviewing the bidders’ designs. The team members evaluating bidders’ technical and design submissions were not supposed to know about pricing because it could influence their scores.
Mr. Brauti said David Ho, the former chief procurement officer at Infrastructure Ontario, testified that Mr. Toigo became aware of pricing during the design evaluation stage. Mr. Toigo denied this, saying: “I did not have access to information I shouldn’t have had.”
Mr. Brauti then moved on to Daniel Douek, an Infrastructure Ontario executive who led the design subcommittee, and testified during the trial that Mr. Toigo instructed him to fail Bondfield’s design. “That is untrue,” Mr. Toigo said.
Mr. Brauti pressed on, saying Mr. Douek testified that Mr. Toigo knew about the discrepancies between the bidders’ prices. “I deny that,” Mr. Toigo responded.
Mr. Toigo agreed with Mr. Brauti that as he refused to budge over the impasse, things became more heated between him and Mr. Georgiou.
Special to The Globe and Mail