ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[darts]

That really isn't true.

All the other major Ion reports, even controversial ones, like the mode selection, the route selection, the station placement/naming, have all come out beforehand. Unless there is a very good reason for the release of the report to be delayed, e.g. revealing a pending land acquisition, it is really undemocratic too. The Friday to Tuesday window is at least some time for the public to ensure that their councillor knows their views on the report before the vote happens. That they would change their practice now would suggest that it is REALLY bad news, but I hope not.

Regardless of when the report comes out I am expecting mix of good and bad news. The good being being more testing and public events, the bad being a delay in launch.

I hadn't seen that Twitter post until after you mentioned it so that must mean the report is being received in the in-camera portion of the meeting (note that item one on the agenda is "Motion to Reconvene into Open Session") or that report wasn't finished in time to be posted with the rest of the agenda items and is awaiting final details to be firmed up (imagine the nightmare the person who has to schedule Trudeau and Ford to get on the same train to take credit during the opening is going through!).

Also, I noticed this in the finance agenda:

It has been true for most of the previous ION Vehicle updates that they were not on the media release agenda until the morning of the meeting. It has been that way because the local media has, with every vehicle progress report, spun the contents in a negative light. Better to release it the day of than let it percolate in the media cycle for the Friday - Tuesday period. As for the contents, I don't expect any delays. We have 6 (soon to be 7-9) vehicles with equipment installed here, once 511 is done debugging the systems it's full steam ahead with equipment testing and everything will start falling into place quite rapidly. 505, 507 & 509 have been doing operator training (in both daylight and nighttime conditions) and simulated burn-in testing for the past couple of weeks as well in preparation for the ramp-up of testing. 

As for Ford, he has no place being at the opening. His government had no role in funding ION and him being there would be another classic case of the government of the day taking credit for the hard work of a previous government.

So its better to not give citizens the few days to review the report and give feedback to their government representatives? You sound like you support the strategy of not giving people information in a timely manner.