REST OF CANADA WEIGHS IN ON PROPOSED MONUMENT

Poll finds more than three-quarters don’t like memorial in its current form

One of the myths Conservatives like to perpetuate about the proposed Memorial to the Victims of Communism is about how popular the idea is, how the opposition against it is driven by Ottawa institutional types and doesn’t reflect the feelings of real people.

“There are millions of Canadians who want this memorial built,” Nepean-Carleton MP Pierre Poilievre told the Citizen in an interview late last month.

“Their voices are underreported,” continued the senior cabinet minister responsible for the national capital region. “That is a perfect example of the disconnect between institutional Ottawa and real Ottawa. I believe that the thousands of people in the city who have their family origins in countries formerly oppressed by communism want this monument.”

No doubt there are people who believe not just in the idea of this memorial, but the way it’s designed, and the proposed site next to the Supreme Court on land that for decades has been reserved for a new federal court building.

But how (I asked Poilievre at the time of the interview) could he know that millions of Canadians support the monument? He said that no one ever told him that “downtown Ottawa needs another government building in which to house lawyers” — that’s Poilievre’s way of describing a federal court — to which I countered that comments directed my way on the subject were overwhelmingly against the plans as they currently stood.

If only there were a way to decide this he-said-she-said argument, some sort of apparatus to gauge the public opinion on something of such lasting importance on the future of planning for the heart of our capital.

Enter Frank Graves of EKOS Research. His firm, together with iPolitics.ca, conducted a randomized online poll of more than 2,100 people across the country earlier this month. Respondents were asked whether they’d heard of the Memorial for the Victims of Communism (most hadn’t, at least outside of the National Capital Region) and were then shown four artists’ renderings of the plans.

When they were asked, “All things considered, to what extent do you support or oppose this memorial in its current form?” more than three-quarters said they opposed or strongly opposed the proposed memorial. Of the 340 people surveyed in the national capital region, 83 per cent were against the project as currently designed.

(To see a full list of questions that respondents were asked, as well as the images they were shown, visit the Citizen’s City Hall blog.)

“I don’t present this as a rigorous public engagement,” said Graves of the poll results, but rather a “relatively casual introduction” of a project to a public that hasn’t seen it before.

And it’s true. The poll doesn’t get into the controversy about the location. Nor does the poll discuss in any way the political and somewhat secretive manoeuvrings behind this project. For example, no one seems to know how it is that the memorial, backed by the charitable group Tribute to Liberty, was moved from its originally planned location at the Garden of the Provinces to the current prime piece of real estate next to the Supreme Court.

But this fairly simple survey, which begins by asking respondents to think about whether they are proud or embarrassed by their capital, is the closest thing we’ve had to any public consultation on this monumental change in development plans for the Judicial Precinct.

And when the public was consulted in this tiniest of ways, Canadians overwhelmingly responded with a resounding, “What the hell?”

This is not to say that we should decide designs for monuments or public art by referendum. But, as Graves pointed out, “it’s worthwhile that the public have a seat at the table and have an input ... it’s only reasonable to ask the denizens of the region and the citizens of the country what they think of this.”

Leaders in the Conservative government, who’ve pledged $3 million in public funds to this project, are naturally trying to cast the results of this poll as disrespect for the memory of the millions who perished at the hands of totalitarian communist regimes.

But questioning the design and location of the memorial isn’t the equivalent of saying one shouldn’t exist (although there are those who question the need to mark historical events that did not directly involve Canada). And yet, it is hard to see how Canadians will be able to engage in any sort of discussion about what they’d like to see built in the heart of the capital when their leaders continue only to engage in doublespeak.

It’s only reasonable to ask the denizens of the region and the citizens of the country what they think of this.