NCC cagey on memorial vote

A leading Ottawa architect has accused the National Capital Commission of trying to keep the public in the dark about an impending vote by its board of trustees on the design of the controversial Memorial to the Victims of Communism.

Barry Padolsky, who strongly opposes the planned memorial’s prominent location on Wellington Street, said Ottawa-Vanier MP Mauril Bélanger told him design approval for the memorial will “definitely” be on the board’s agenda when it holds its next public meeting Thursday.

Despite that, an NCC official said Friday the agenda for the board meeting had not yet been finalized and wouldn’t confirm whether the memorial’s design would be considered. “There appears to be some motivation by the NCC to minimize the public awareness of this event,” Padolsky said in an email to memorial opponents.

Agendas for NCC board meetings are typically posted on the agency’s website on the Friday before meetings. But spokesman Jean Wolff said the agenda for Thursday’s meeting won’t be made public until Monday.

“I will not confirm any items on the agenda beyond approving minutes of the last meeting and the regular report from (CEO Mark Kristmanson),” he said. “The others have not been finalized at this moment.”

Wolff wouldn’t elaborate on the reasons for the delay, saying it has happened “many times” that board agendas aren’t posted until the Monday before meetings.

“Staff work on a lot of things quite diligently,” he said. “Sometimes it takes longer than other times to finalize that an item is ready for presentation to the board. It happens.”

Wolff denied that the NCC is trying to conceal the possibility that the board could sign off on the memorial’s design on Thursday, saying that public meetings of the board are advertised months in advance.

The NCC advertised the board meeting, which runs from 8:30 a.m. to 2:15 p.m., in the June 17 Citizen and other local media. But the ad made no mention of any items on the agenda.

Ottawa Centre MP Paul Dewar said the whole way the memorial has been handled is “fraught with secrecy and a lack of transparency.”

Given the level of public concern about the project, posting an agenda a mere three days before the board meeting “is not sufficient,” Dewar said. “This is an issue that’s been on the radar for quite a while.”

If the board does consider the memorial’s design Thursday, Dewar wants the trustees to halt the project immediately.

“Due process has not been followed. It’s been circumvented,” Dewar said. “This was a deal done by ministers within cabinet without consultation.

“There’s only one decision for the board to make, and that is to reject this application entirely and tell them to go back to the drawing board.”

While the NCC board could certainly do that, it might not make any difference. The National Capital Act gives cabinet the authority to overrule the NCC on changes to the use of public lands or “buildings or other work” erected on them.

Catherine McKenna, the Liberal candidate in Ottawa Centre, also expressed concern about the NCC’s lack of transparency on the memorial.

“There are a lot of people in Ottawa Centre who are very concerned about this issue, and we cannot get a straight answer.”

McKenna sent an email to the NCC on June 10, asking whether the memorial would be on the agenda at Thursday’s board meeting.

She also gave notice of her intent to ask a question at the NCC’s annual general meeting Thursday evening about NCC consultations with the public about the memorial.

She finally got a response from an NCC staffer nine days later, saying the agenda had not yet been finalized.

The staffer also pointed out that the Department of Canadian Heritage, not the NCC, is the project leader for the memorial and, as such, is responsible for consultations and communications about the project.

However, the NCC still must approve the memorial’s design before it can proceed.

The NCC has been doing its best to distance itself from the memorial project, referring almost all questions to Canadian Heritage, which assumed responsibility for commemorations from the NCC in 2013.

The NCC’s advisory committee on planning, design and realty considered the memorial’s design at an in-camera meeting in April and recommended some changes, according to Padolsky.

The memorial was originally supposed to be built this year, but the timetable has slipped. Canadian Heritage expects a groundbreaking this year, but the memorial’s main elements won’t be completed until next year.