The Ville-Marie borough is set to approve a controversial $3 million contract that would bring 12 public, automated toilets to downtown Montreal.
The contract, expected to be awarded at the Ville-Marie borough council meeting Tuesday night, has been heavily contested by official opposition party Projet Montréal — not for the idea itself, but for the company receiving the contract.
Atmosphäre Inc., a company specialized in designing urban public spaces, was the only bidder that responded to the public call for tenders.
Per Quebec’s business registry, the company shares the same Mirabel address and three administrators with Imagineo Inc., a company that specializes in building outdoor children’s playgrounds.
According to Projet Montréal, in 2014 and 2015, Imagineo’s former director was fined $210,000 and received a nine-month suspended prison sentence for helping Imagineo obtain tax refunds for fictitious expenses. He is also reported to have admitted to submitting fake bills and offering bribes for obtaining public contracts.
Atmosphäre Inc. couldn’t be reached for comment on Tuesday. The company’s website makes no mention of Imagineo, but shares the same phone number.
In February, Projet Montréal leader Valérie Plante called on the city to cancel the call for tenders and re-evaluate the contract, given the apparent ties to Imagineo.
The project has already faced several other setbacks. The Ville-Marie borough had first tried a similar pilot project in 2014, but it was cancelled after the only bidder didn’t meet city standards. The new contract was tabled for a previous borough council meeting this year before being postponed by Montreal and Ville-Marie borough Mayor Denis Coderre while the city looked into it.
In an email response Tuesday, Ville-Marie spokesperson Anik de Repentigny said the technical committee in charge of evaluating the bid asked for certain details from Atmosphäre Inc. She said the city was satisfied with the answers provided.
“The necessary verifications were made with the relevant parties and no anomalies were detected that would prevent the contract from being awarded,” de Repentigny wrote. “The city of Montreal wishes to offer its citizens and its many visitors safe and accessible sanitary facilities.”
The city says the toilets are a necessary step in cleaning up downtown streets, alleys and public spaces and would also satisfy different groups who have long been asking for more public toilets in Montreal, like the homeless and shop owners.
“Access to sanitary facilities in public places is, for a certain portion of the population, a source of concern, or even a recurring problem,” the city’s summary decision for the contract says.
Alexandre Paradis, the founder of homeless outreach group SOS Itinérance, said homeless advocacy groups have been asking for public toilets for years, but doubts that it was considered in the city’s decision.
“It’s just to accommodate tourists, and they’re going to be installed where the tourists are, not where the homeless are,” Paradis said. “And yes, it’s a need, but is it the most pressing need right now? That $3 million could have been used for social housing for the homeless instead.”
The project would include nine self-supporting toilets and three that would be built into existing infrastructure. The toilets are expected to be installed between this August and spring of 2019, but the city hasn’t specified where they will go in the Ville-Marie borough.