LIBERALS PICK NEW HOME FOR LONG-AWAITED WAR MEMORIAL

The federal Liberal government has chosen a new location for a memorial honouring Canada’s mission in Afghanistan, hopefully bringing to an end years of political wrangling and plodding decision-making over the monument’s future.

The National Capital Commission received the request from Canadian Heritage last Friday to approve land use for a location between Vimy Place and the Ottawa River pathway, just west of the Canadian War Museum.

This is but the first step of the monument-approval rigmarole, which means the National Memorial to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan will almost certainly not be complete in time for Canada 150, as previously planned.

The land use must still be approved by the NCC’s board of directors and a host of bureaucratic boxes must be checked off before shovels can be put in the ground, or, for that matter, drawings even revealed.

But given the shaky history of the project, a federal government-approved location is at least a starting point.

For the Liberals, the Afghanistan war memorial is a fraught project, a Tory project, meaning there’s been a strange and unhealthy skepticism regarding its virtues. Last March, the Grits were considering scrapping the memorial altogether as part of an apparent effort to shed the image of Canadians as warriors, which the Conservatives had been trying to create, in favour of the more Liberal (and liberal) view of Canada as a nation of peacekeepers.

In May 2014, then-Veterans Affairs minister Julian Fantino first announced the project; his successor, Erin O’Toole, reannounced it a year later.

Then, once the Liberals took power, briefing notes for inbound Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly said there would be a national design competition in the fall of 2015, with the final unveiling to happen in 2017.

Around the same time, the NCC and Veterans Affairs Canada had signed off on the Richmond Landing site, near the Mill St. Brew Pub and Portage Bridge, and near the Royal Canadian Navy Monument. But some veterans advocates had concerns they weren’t consulted thoroughly enough, and others had problems with the site’s location and accessibility.

“I felt very isolated on my mobility scooter,” Michael Blais, head of Canadian Veterans Advocacy, said last week. “Even to go to pay respects, particularly if you were a family member who lost someone in the Afghanistan war, the atmosphere was not conducive to what the monument is supposed to represent.”

Hence, back to the reviewing board.

“In 2016 when initially briefed on the plans for the Memorial, I determined that further consultation within the Veteran community was needed,” said Veterans Affairs Minister Kent Hehr in an emailed statement Tuesday.

The statement indicated an official announcement was forthcoming, upon approval of the site.

The National War Memorial has been rededicated for the veterans of Canada’s longest war, but there’s no stand-alone memorial for the 158 Canadian soldiers who were killed in Afghanistan, and the more than 40,000 who served. The new site selected is the location preferred by veterans groups when they were consulted last October, Hehr’s statement said.

The NCC’s review will occur in the coming months. After that, there will be a design competition, said Veterans Affairs. No timeline has been released for the project. In 2015, the budget was set for $5 million.

John Brassard, the Conservatives’ Veterans Affairs critic, said the key for him was that the memorial actually gets done — and he’d like to see a timeline.

“It should have, by rights, been done by now,” Brassard said Wednesday. “Any memorial for Afghanistan, in whatever location it is, has to be a memorial of prominence.”

Blais said he heartily approves of the new site suggested by the Liberals.

“Woo, I like that,” exclaimed Blais, when told of the location.

“There’s an element of security there, there’s parking there ... the atmosphere’s more conducive for a memorial.” Not a bad endorsement. Too bad it took so long to get here — and too bad it’s likely to take some time to get finished.

Afghanistan, and its veterans, mustn’t become Canada’s forgotten war.