The outdoor skating rink built on Parliament Hill for $5.6 million as part of Canada 150 celebrations was criticized for being open only three weeks in December. (Bruce Campion-Smith/Toronto) Star

As the government scrambled to control PR damage from a $5.6-million hockey rink on Parliament Hill that was to open for just over three weeks in December 2017, Canadian Heritage coached an Ottawa Senators executive on how to apply for $2.5 million more in federal funding to extend skating into February, documents show.

The executive, head of strategic development for the Senators Hockey Club, was acting in his capacity as secretary for the Ottawa International Hockey Festival (OIHF) when a political storm erupted over the 2017 Canada 150 grant to the group as part of Confederation celebrations.

The OIHF was founded by the Ottawa Senators and a minor hockey association in 1999 to sponsor an annual December youth tournament in the capital, and it had won a bid for the Canada 150 money to mount the unprecedented Hill rink spectacle while the minor hockey tournament also took place in 2017.

But the event provoked an unexpected backlash across the country after the price tag was revealed, along with a schedule that mixed professional hockey celebrations with limited public access, and that shut it down on Dec. 31, after a Dec. 7 launch.

On Nov. 23, only six days after the senior executive director of the government’s Canada 150 Secretariat wrote House of Commons Speaker Geoff Regan and Senate Speaker George Furey to propose a one-day extension to include New Year’s Day, the government announced it would request an extension to Feb. 28.

The price tag for the extension eventually came to $2.5 million, taking the total cost for the hockey rink to $8.1 million, and further fuelling criticism by opposition MPs and small rural communities across the country that can afford only unheated steel hockey arenas or open-air rinks.

Canadian Heritage emails and attached documents obtained by iPolitics through a request under the Access to Information Act reveal that the department had no idea at the time how much the extension would cost, but it still rushed the OIHF to quickly come up with plans and costing that would keep the rink going for two extra months.

“For us to get the ball rolling on the rink extension, I will need you to submit a formal request,” Scott Wallace, acting director of the Heritage department’s Canada 150 grants and contribution programs, said in an email to the Ottawa Senators executive serving as the OIHF secretary, Geoff Publow.

“This is quite simple,” Wallace wrote. “Please complete, sign and return the form attached,” he wrote. “You DO NOT (capitalized in the email) have to fill out the entire form again.”

Wallace explained other requirements, and cited documents that were not required again following the initial OIHF application for the original Canada 150 grant, and suggested wording for the first sentence of the second application.

“I will also need a detailed budget, just like you provided with the first proposal,” Wallace wrote. “We need to get this step done asap. Upon receipt of your formal proposal, we will conduct an assessment. Assuming everything looks fine, a Recommendation for Approval (RAF) will come next. We both need a decision sooner than later on the RAF, so we are not stuck negotiating a new contribution over Christmas.”

By Dec. 20, the department and the OIHF, headquartered in the Ottawa Senators Hockey Club building at 1000 Palladium Drive, were close to finalizing the grant approval.

“Just left you a vm (voicemail). I could use a similar clarification on a couple of the other expenditures please,” Wallace wrote that day.

A breakdown of the $2.5 million included in that email was redacted by the Heritage department’s access to information branch.

“Thanks again for turning this around so fast,” Wallace said when he began the exchange earlier in the day.

“Thanks again to you and OIHF for making the rink such a wonderful bookend to Canada 150,” Wallace wrote to Publow two days later. “Everyone I speak with who has gone raves about their experience. Merry Christmas to you and yours!”

Another Heritage department official emailed Publow on the same day with an attached copy of the approval letter from then-Heritage minister Mélanie Joly, along with an amendment to the earlier contribution agreement for Publow to sign, and a cash-flow budget reflecting the full award of $8.1 million for Publow to sign and return.

“Once we receive the signed documents, we will process an advance payment to cover expenditures in the new year,” wrote Patrice Bélanger, chief of project, policies and programs for the department.

The letter to the Senate and Commons Speakers was included among 252 pages of documents the Heritage department’s access to information branch released under the iPolitics request. Nearly every page contained redactions, including email addresses from the Ottawa Senator executive and one other Senator executive who also took part in the OIHF organizing.

In most cases, more text was redacted in the documents than what was left alone.

iPolitics requested the 150 rink information in January 2018, and a final response, approved by Joly’s office, was sent electronically just before Christmas last month, on Dec. 21, after Parliament had adjourned for the holidays and winter recess.