OC Transpo’s hiring practices came under scrutiny after the City of Ottawa’s auditor general found management positions that were filled by hand-picked candidates who bypassed the competition process and some who didn’t meet minimum education or experience qualifications.
In several cases, OC Transpo’s hiring policy contraventions were “very blatantly obvious,” auditor general Nathalie Gougeon told the audit committee on Tuesday, March 31.
The
auditor general
‘s office launched the investigation into OC Transpo’s hiring practices after receiving a number of complaints through the city’s fraud and waste hotline.
The investigation focused on hotline complaints about “specific recruitment and staffing actions,” according to the report, with
OC Transpo
bypassing formal hiring processes to appoint “personally selected” candidates and appointing managers who were “lacking the necessary qualifications.”
The auditor general investigated recruitment and staffing practices from 2021 to 2025 for OC Transpo superintendents, program managers, managers and directors. The audit did not look into hiring practices for unionized employees like bus and train operators or mechanics.
OC Transpo had 234 management and “professional exempt” non-union positions in 2025, which accounted for about six per cent of its workforce.
Ten candidates were appointed to vacant positions where OC Transpo contravened policy that dictated permanent and temporary vacancies of more than 12 months should be posted for competition, the audit found.
“We also noted that seven of these 10 appointees did not meet the education or experience requirements outlined in the job description,” Deputy Auditor General Joanne Gorenstein told the committee.
In those cases, “more competent and qualified candidates may have been identified to fill the position if a competition had been held,” Gorenstein said.
“While there may be circumstances where appointments are the most effective course of action, they reduce the fairness and transparency of staffing practices and may negatively impact employee retention,” she told the committee.
The audit also identified concerns with several positions that were filled through the competition process.
Investigators found four cases where candidates were screened into a competition and selected for a management position “without meeting the minimum requirements for education or experience identified in the job description.”
In those cases, the hiring manager failed to document their rationale to support the hiring decision.
“While, as a general rule, candidates can replace one year of education with one year of experience or vice versa, in these instances, neither the education nor the experience level of the position was met,” Gorenstein said. “Or the reduction in education or experience was not offset by a corresponding increase in the other factor.”
Gougeon said the gaps between education and experience equivalencies in many cases were “too far to even be justifiable.”
OC Transpo management accepted three recommendations from the auditor general to ensure all job vacancies exceeding 12 months were posted for competition, to improve the formal documentation of recruitment and staffing decisions and to conduct periodic reviews of education and experience requirements for non-union positions to ensure they remain current.
“It’s really concerning,” said Coun. Glen Gower, who chairs the transit committee. “I’m glad that OC Transpo accepted the recommendations. I think it’s something that we’re going to have to check in on as a council, and maybe even the Auditor General … 18 months from now and make sure that what was agreed to by management is actually carried through on.
“I hope it’s not something that’s happening throughout the city as well,” Gower said. “If it’s happening in one department, is it happening elsewhere? It raises some questions there.”
Of 302 total complaints to the City of Ottawa’s fraud and waste hotline in 2025, nearly one-third (90) fell within the transit services department, with public works accounting for 25 complaints (eight per cent) and emergency and protective services accounting for 19 complaints (six per cent).
Transit services also accounted for 42 per cent of the 328 total complaints received through the fraud and waste hotline in 2024.
Former general manager Renée Amilcar oversaw OC Transpo from 2021
until her departure in July 2025
.
Troy Charter has since served as interim general manager and the city
announced the appointment of former Toronto Transit Commission CEO Rick Leary
to the post on March 27.
During the audit, OC Transpo management told investigators that the former general manager “worked with human resources to reinforce the expectation that competitions be held and directed that a human resource representative be included as a member of the hiring panel for management and professional exempt competitions.”
Charter defended the “great team” within OC Transpo’s management and told the committee that the people in charge of hiring “do value the competition process.”
Charter said 55 of the 57 open positions in 2025 were staffed through the competition process.
“But there are circumstances where appointments make sense, where it’s hard to fill positions externally (with) the people that truly meet the stated qualifications, but knowing that you have staff internally that have the knowledge, the in-house built experience, but may not meet, for example, the educational aspect,” Charter said.
“Ultimately, when we explore appointments, it could be service continuity, could be a morale issue, a desire to promote from within. But what we’re really looking at is making sure that we’ve got the right person for the job,” Charter said.
He said management was working with human resources staff to update education and experience requirements and to “better define” the applicants’ equivalencies.
He acknowledged OC Transpo “needs to do a better job” of documenting hiring decisions and indicating where there were equivalencies between the education and experience of an applicant.
Gougeon said many of the cases went far beyond a lack of documentation.
“When it came to candidates not meeting the requirements, there was no documentation for how they tried to determine equivalency, but in many of these cases the equivalencies were too far to even be justifiable,” Gougeon said.
“If we’ve reported on it, it’s because some of these were very blatantly obvious,” she said. “These individuals did not meet either the education or experience requirements and neither could compensate for the other.”
