The owner of the Ottawa parking garage where a large section came crashing down just over a year ago says it plans to rebuild and reopen the facility — though it remains unclear what caused the collapse, and the company is not sharing details about past inspections of the property.

No one died or was injured when a top corner of the multi-level lot privately owned by Great West Life Realty Advisors (GWLRA) gave out one Thursday last winter, in what the City of Ottawa called a “pancake collapse.”

“I keep thinking how incredible it was that nobody got hurt,” says Ariel Troster, the city councillor for that area of the downtown.

The garage at 170 Slater St. had been emptied of people after someone called 911 the day before to report what engineers quickly confirmed were signs of imminent collapse.

Just under 12 hours after that call, the dramatic plunge was captured on video:

Though GWLRA can’t predict when the garage might reopen, it expects the restructuring work to begin in “the near future.”

The building will undergo a comprehensive engineering assessment to make sure it’s safe for people to use again, a company spokesperson said via email.

“This is in addition to the annual inspection that all our properties undergo by qualified engineers to ensure safety and proper maintenance,” the spokesperson wrote.  

The company is not saying what issues prior inspections of 170 Slater St. turned up, if any. Nor is it answering why the investigation into the cause of the collapse remains open, or clarifying whose responsibility it was to monitor the garage’s snow load.

“As our insurer’s investigation is ongoing, it would be premature for us to speculate on the role [the snow] may have played in the incident,” GWLRA said via email.

Determining the precise cause of what happened is GWLRA’s responsibility, according to the City of Ottawa.

The lack of complete answers is “incredibly frustrating,” Troster said.

“From a health and safety perspective, I think it’s really important for the public to know what happened,” she said.

Without those answers, “I don’t have a lot of confidence in this particular structure reopening,” Troster added.

‘Heavy snow load’

GWLRA declined to be interviewed for this story.

A spokesperson for GWLRA, a real estate-focused subsidiary of insurance giant Canada Life Assurance Company, said via email that the company manages parking garages across the country, and that the 170 Slater St. location is the only “standalone” one GWLRA has in Ottawa.

The block-deep garage stretches north-south from Slater Street to Laurier Avenue W. The demolition last year of a highrise immediately west of it gave an ever better idea of the garage’s size.

At 4:47 a.m. on Feb. 26, 2025, the garage’s northwest corner caved in and part of the upper wall fell from the building’s west side.

A daytime aerial photo taken by Ottawa Fire Services (OFS) later that morning “pretty clearly” shows what Chris Roney, a Kingston-based structural engineer, describes as a large amount of snow piled on the roof.

“In my experience as a structural engineer, both reviewing and dealing with parking structures in the past and investigating past failures in other instances, it’s pretty rare that a parking garage structure would be designed for that kind of [snow] piling,” Roney said.

CBC asked GWLRA if its garage was designed for snow piling and the company declined to answer that, too.

According to the fire department, a user of the garage who happened to have “knowledge of building construction” called 911 at 4:55 p.m. on Feb. 25 — the day before the collapse — to report damage to a column on one of the garage’s pillars.

Another garage user who parked on the level immediately below the roof snapped the photo above.

OFS confirmed the cement columns reinforcing the upper roof were cracked and broken, noting on social media that the garage had “a heavy snow load” on its top level.

Engineers feared a looming collapse, and the City of Ottawa ordered the site immediately evacuated and secured.

Eleven hours and 52 minutes after the 911 call, the garage’s northwest corner came tumbling down in what GWLRA called “a concerning incident.”

“We will be engaging with the relevant parties to investigate the cause of this incident,” the company said at the time.

‘It left a mark,’ truck owner says

François Ste-Marie of Ottawa is one of the dozens of garage users whose vehicle was stuck inside the wreckage for weeks. He’d parked his red truck there on the morning of Feb. 25, then returned to find police safeguarding the area that evening.

Not having his truck was inconvenient, he says, but the collapse also made him apprehensive for a while about the idea of entering a parking garage.

“It definitely stung and it left a mark,” Ste-Marie said of the experience, which, even after he got his truck back, stretched on for weeks more as he dealt with his body shop and car insurer.

Asked if he would use the 170 Slater parking garage again should it reopen, Ste-Marie was clear: “Definitely not.”

Ste-Marie now parks his truck on the street and takes the LRT the rest of the way to work — a more complicated commute, but one that grants him peace of mind.

“When I drop off my vehicle [in] the morning and come back to pick it up the the same night, I won’t find it trapped,” he said.

No inspections required after occupancy

After the collapse, the city’s building code services department conducted a safety assessment of the garage. It also noticed the “significant concentration” of snow.

Based on their observations, “localized overloading”— which the city described as “weight being unevenly concentrated in a specific part of a structure” — was identified as a likely contributing factor to the collapse, the city told CBC.

Removing snow from the garage when the building was in operation was GWLRA’s responsiblity, the city added.

But the city — which has five parking garages of its own, including two that are even older than 170 Slater — reviewed its own snow removal practices after the collapse. It found that having contractors remove snow regularly and after every significant snowfall remains appropriate for ensuring the safety of the facilities.

February 2025 was an especially snowy time in Ottawa. Just over 109 centimetres fell on the city that month, more than double the 48.3 centimetres that fell this past February, and nearly double the average monthly total of 56 centimetres for the previous five Februaries, according to Environment Canada.

On Feb. 16, 2025, 10 days before the collapse, the city received more than 30 centimetres of snow. The city then got 2.1 millimetres of rain on Feb. 25, the day the cracking at the garage was discovered.

Based on the footage of the building after the collapse, which shows “a lot of snow” on what’s left of the roof, “I’d be more surprised if that was not considered a factor,” said Roney, the structural engineer in Kingston.

An appendix to standards referenced in the Ontario Building Code strongly discourages snow piling, but it’s not a mandatory rule, Roney said.

In 1988, recognizing that buildings built before then were more prone to deterioration from de-icing salt and other chemicals brought in by vehicles and snow, those standards began calling for new construction materials to make buildings more resilient, he added.

The building permit for the garage at 170 Slater was issued in September 1987 and construction took place in 1989, according to the city. GWLRA acquired the building in 2003.

GWLRA says it gets contractors to remove snow regularly, while the city says its bylaw and regulatory services department did not receive any complaints about snow accumulation at the garage before the collapse.

‘We need to know what went wrong’

GWLRA says its Ottawa garage was inspected every year by qualified engineers to ensure safety and proper maintenance, and that the company consistently made the investments necessary to address any recommendations arising from those inspections.

Asked to outline any concerns those inspections uncovered, GWLRA instead wrote that a property like 170 Slater would require yearly investments to ensure safety, and that “any recommendations made by our engineers were acted upon promptly following each annual inspection.”

Those inspections were carried out even though they’re not required under the Ontario Building Code. Roney said there are still no requirements in Ontario to inspect buildings after they are occupied, nor are there any provincewide minimum maintenance standards.

CBC asked the province if it’s contemplating any changes and did not hear back by deadline.

Roney said advocates have called on the provincial government to change that “significant gap” for years, especially after the roof of a parking garage in Elliot Lake, Ont., collapsed in 2012, killing two people and injuring over a dozen others.

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The City of Ottawa says its building code services department inspects buildings and structures when there are “substantive concerns” about safety or compliance, but that it does not conduct routine or proactive inspections unless there are complaints or service requests.

GWLRA says it regularly audits the service providers it uses to maintain properties, but declined to say if audits turned up any performance concerns at 170 Slater.

“We need to know what [caused the collapse] … and the fact that we don’t know that is pretty frightening to me,” said Troster, the city councillor.

In 2024, the city’s planning department signed off on a GWLRA plan for a pair of mixed-use towers at the site. That plan called for the demolition of the parking garage.

GWLRA says the larger redevelopment project remains in the early planning stages and there is no timeline for when it will proceed, “or if it will proceed at all,” as it keeps tabs on market conditions.

In the meantime, the company has maintained security at the site to guard against trespassers “for safety reasons.”

“We have worked closely and collaboratively with city officials since the incident occurred and appreciate their support in helping secure the site as quickly as possible,” GWLRA added.

“We have provided detailed engineering assessments, shared technical reports as they have become available, and remain in regular communication with city staff. We are committed to maintaining an open line of communication and working closely with city officials as we rebuild the parking lot in accordance with the highest safety standards and all applicable building codes.” 

Troster says she knows there’s a lack of parking in downtown Ottawa and that people are commuting by vehicle because “transit is experiencing some challenges right now.” 

But the city doesn’t need another downtown parking lot, she said.

“That’s not part of the official plan. The goal is for this site to be developed and for that parking to be underground, and I’d like to see that development up and moving.”