The judicial inquiry will be carrying on into the fall, with a break in hearings over the summer.
Associate Chief Justice Frank Marrocco, the Commissioner for the Collingwood judicial inquiry into the 2012 share sale of Collus and subsequent spending of the sale proceeds, told the inquiry participants he expects to conclude the evidence and witness testimony for the first phase of the inquiry by the end of June.
The closing statements will follow from each participant and will be submitted in writing to be posted on the inquiry website for the public.
The first phase deals with just the sale of 50 per cent of Collus to PowerStream in 2012. The second phase looks at how decisions were made to spend the money obtained in the sale. The third phase is the Commissioner’s recommendations and conclusions resulting from the inquiry.
Marrocco said over the summer the inquiry team would prepare a second Foundation Document for phase two of the inquiry, which is a collection of documents and a chronology of events gathered by inquiry counsel and staff and put into a document to be used as evidence in the inquiry.
Marrocco said the hearings for part two of the inquiry would commence in September. He said sitting through the summer, while it was his preference, was not “sensible.”
“At the conclusion of that, there’s a part three,” said Marrocco. “It probably affects the town more than anyone else, which is designed around the conclusion of best practices.”
The third phase will include input from a panel of experts assembled by the inquiry and the conclusion recommending best practices will be written into a report and published.
“That will take a while, but we will do that as quickly as we can,” said Marrocco.
For the Collingwood judicial inquiry, there were more than 440,000 documents submitted as evidence to be sorted through.
“Trying to get some sense about what those documents say about part one and part two has not been a simple, straightforward process,” said Marrocco. “It has required a lot of work.”
The hearing continues today with a panel of witnesses including Michael Angemeer, Neil Freeman and Kristina Gaspar, each representing other bidders (Horizon, Hydro One, Veridian).
