Communism memorial site not finalized: MP

OTTAWA • Throughout the controversy over the proposed Memorial to the Victims of Communism, opponents have focused on its prominent location and its destructive impact on the Long Term Vision and Plan for the parliamentary and judicial precincts.

But according to Conservative MP Royal Galipeau, who has represented Ottawa-Vanier since 2006, the site has yet to be finalized.

“It’s nowhere right now,” Galipeau said. “It’s planned to be on Wellington Street between the Library and Archives and the justice building. There’s a lot of wiggle room there.”

Galipeau confirmed he has privately urged the government to locate the memorial a bit farther west on Wellington, on a site closer to Library and Archives Canada — an idea he had not shared publicly.

“Since I don’t sit on the opposition side of the house,” he said, “I generally don’t make my recommendations to the government by way of the media. I work in a way to bring results.”

Galipeau’s comments followed a call to the Ottawa Citizen from Ludwik Klimkowski, the chair of Tribute to Liberty, the charity that proposed the monument and is raising money for it.

Stressing that he was not speaking for the government, Klimkowski floated the “purely hypothetical” idea of leaving the memorial where it is and designating the more westerly site eyed by Galipeau for a future Federal Court building.

The current Long Term Vision and Plan calls for the Federal Court building to be built on the 5,000-square-metre site on Wellington Street the government has publicly earmarked for the memorial.

Lyette Fortin, who was director of architecture strategic planning for the House of Commons until 2012, said shifting the Federal Court building to the more westerly site would still be inconsistent with the principles of the Long Term Vision and Plan.

“You don’t just say, ‘Let’s put it there.’ There was a study done on commemoration sites and they identified the most appropriate sites for commemoration. And that wasn’t one of them.”