Last week, local Ottawa artist and author Andrew King got to thinking about where all the rubble from the Centre Block construction site has gone.

“Does anyone know where they are dumping 270,000 cubic meters of solid bedrock after digging it out of Parliament Hill for their bunker? I have some thoughts…” he mused on X on July 29.

While King hypothesized the bedrock was being trucked out to Richmond, Ont., based on a “growing mountain” he’s witnessed on Eagleson Road—“Like [a] huge mountain that looks to be equal to the amount blasted out of Parliament Hill”—Heard on the Hill contacted the media relations team at Public Services and Procurement Canada for a more concrete answer.

The $4.5- to $5-billion Centre Block rehabilitation project includes the construction of a new underground Parliament Welcome Centre, excavation for which is now complete and involved the removal of approximately 40,000 truckloads of bedrock, according to PSPC. The pit for the welcome centre is roughly 23-metres deep, and the complex itself is set to add roughly 32,000 square metres of new space. 

This past April, further excavations under the Centre Block building itself got underway. That dig will similarly reach a depth of 23-metres, and is needed both to connect the 100-year-old building with the new welcome centre complex, and to install base-isolation seismic upgrades. As of June, PSPC indicated roughly 950 cubic metres, or 190 truckloads, of bedrock had been hauled out so far. The department has previously estimated roughly 100,000 cubic metres will be excavated from underneath Centre Block overall. 

According to PSPC, rock from the currently ongoing excavations under Centre Block isn’t going to waste.  

“The excavated rock is transported by the contractor to an off-site facility, where it’s crushed into granular material. That material is then stockpiled for future reuse, typically in construction projects such as road building or raising grades beneath new structures,” said PSPC spokesperson Michèle LaRose by email on Aug. 6

While LaRose didn’t elaborate on the exact location of this “off-site facility” other than it’s “25 kilometres east of downtown Ottawa,” she did confirm that it’s “privately owned by a subcontractor. Public Services and Procurement Canada is not involved in the operations at the site.” 

Ottawa city councillor Kavanagh completes her seventh Iron Distance race: ‘it was exhausting’

Ottawa City Councillor Theresa Kavanagh completed the Ironman race in Ottawa last weekend.

“I am taking some down time. I left the office early and am just wandering around,” she told HOH by phone on Aug. 5, one day after completing a gruelling triathlon of a 3.9 kilometre swim, 180.2 kilometre bike ride, and running a full 42.2 kilometre marathon for a total of 226.3 kilometres which she did in 15 hours and 52 minutes.

“The worst thing is when you sit too long. If you sit too long, it’s harder to get up,” she laughed.

First elected to Ottawa City Hall in 2018, Kavanagh is a former longtime NDP Hill staffer who hosted running clinics which many clerks and parliamentarians like then-Liberal MP Kirsty Duncan and then-sergeant-at-arms Kevin Vickers joined, she recalls.

“I wanted to pass on the love of running to others,” she said, noting her first foray into the sport was attending a five-kilometre running workshop for women.

Kavanagh, 67, is no rookie to pushing herself to the limit.

“To be accurate, it’s my seventh Iron Distance. Ironman is a trademark. So this would be my third ‘trade mark’ Ironman race, and there are other races that have the same distance,” she explained, recalling prior to this year, the last Iron Distance she did was in 2013 in Kentucky.

“It was really difficult and I thought ‘Okay, I’m done. That’s it. Maybe I will do 70.3 [miles] or something’—which is the half Iron. I am very comfortable with that. But when Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe announced that they were doing Ironman in Ottawa, and not only that, they were going to do the swim in the place where I swim, that’s practically my back yard—Britannia Beach—I thought, ‘I’m going to have to do it, damn it!’

Training wise, Kavanagh managed to squeeze in very early morning and late-night workouts, including a swimming course to improve her confidence. “It was exhausting,” she admits. “I think I could have done a lot better if I was a retired person.”

When asked for her tips for people mulling their own exercise goals, “start small,” Kavanagh advised. “It’s possible to move up the scale, but you’ve got to do it one step at a time.”

“Everything is an accomplishment.”

As for her next goal, Kavanagh says she’s done with full Iron Distances for real this time, and will pare down to the 70.3 mile (113.1 kilometre)-competition.

Summa promotes two former Hill staffers

Summa Strategies announced two promotions last week: Carlene Variyan has joined the partnership team, while Josie Sabatino has been elevated to vice-president. 

Sabatino is a former Conservative staffer who was press secretary to then-leader Erin O’Toole. She’s been with Summa for the past three years, and is a columnist in The Hill Times.Variyan is a former senior staffer to then-Liberal cabinet ministers Ralph Goodale and Ken Dryden, and acted as a national campaign spokesperson through several federal elections. “The title is new but the mission stays the same” Variayan posted on LinkedIn on Aug. 5.

Two new faces at Canadian Media Fund

The Canadian Coalition for Cultural Expression has appointed Caroline Dignard and Heidi Bonnell to the board of the Canada Media Fund, it announced on July 31. Dignard and Bonnell succeed Alison Clayton and René Guimond who have retired from the board.

Until recently vice president of legal affairs and chief privacy officer at Cogeco Connexion, Dignard is a strategic legal executive with more than two decades of experience in Canada’s telecommunications industry.

Bonnell has held senior roles in both federal and provincial governments, with her latest role being Rogers Communications’ vice president of government affairs.

Pew Research find Canadians have historically low view of U.S.

Findings from a recent Pew Research Centre survey show that Canadians’ views of the United States and its president are (checks notes) very low.

The survey of 1,024 Canadian adults was conducted between Feb. 19 to April 15, 2025—around the time of Mark Carney taking the political stage in this country, and U.S. President Donald Trump announced his first tariffs against our nation.

“About a third of Canadians (34 per cent) have a favorable opinion of the United States today. This is down 20 percentage points since last year,” reads an article on the Pew Centre’s website. “Favourable views of the U.S. are now at their lowest point since we started asking this question in 2002, tied only with the 35 per cent who had a favorable view of the U.S. in 2020, the final full year of Trump’s first term.”

Breaking it down across Canada’s political spectrum, “Those on the ideological left (17 per cent) are less likely than those in the center (32 per cent) or on the right (52 per cent) to view the U.S. favourably. However, across all ideological groups, the share of Canadians with a favourable view of the U.S. has dropped by about 15 percentage points or more since last year.”

cleadlay@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times