A monumental stubbornness

Tory plot to plunk memorial in front of court backfires

Jason Kenney’s ethnic outreach strategy is deemed such a roaring success, the British Conservatives have been unabashed about swallowing it holusbolus.

But the buyer may want to beware. The desire to squeeze out every last vote from minority groups has sometimes blinded the Harper Conservatives to problems that have come back to haunt them. Kenney is said to have been vocal in winning a Senate appointment for Don Meredith on the basis he would be a powerful Conservative voice in the Toronto Jamaican community. Those votes never materialized and Meredith has since been dumped from the Conservative Senate caucus over allegations of a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old girl.

More serious for the Conservative re-election campaign is the deluge of bad publicity that has accompanied the government’s stubborn insistence on locating a new Victims of Communism monument in front of the Supreme Court in Ottawa. The decision to build this monstrous concrete carbuncle in the middle of the parliamentary precinct is opposed by just about everyone in the city, apart from Pierre Poilievre, the government’s regional minister. Arraigned against him is the City of Ottawa, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, veterans groups, architects, the opposition parties and large numbers of the voting public, judging by the press coverage.

Kenney’s stubby fingerprints are all over this one too. Back in 2012, he and then-foreign affairs minister John Baird sent a letter to then-public works minister Rona Ambrose asking her to approve the site on Wellington Street for the monument. The calc ulation was the prime location would play well with the eight million Canadians from former communist countries, thus aiding efforts to liberate more Poles and Ukrainians of their votes.

The effort has backfired spectacularly. The National Capital Commission held a public meeting Thursday, since it is nominally obliged to approve the design and decontamination of the site. The NCC has been wobbly on the project and at an in-camera meeting in April, its advisory committee on design, planning and realty said it could not recommend the location.

However, this is a government that does not play well with others. The Tories have made clear that the proponent of the project is the federal Heritage Department and that the National Capital Act allows them to overrule the NCC. Just to make sure the message registered, the government appointed five new NCC board members ahead of the meeting, including a former Ontario Progressive Conservative politician.

In the end, the board waved through the decontamination approval, which allows the project to move to the next stage. However, the board said the monument will be only half as tall as originally envisioned and occupy 37 per cent of the prime piece of land instead of 60 per cent.

Paul Dewar, the local NDP MP, called the move to shuffle the NCC board patronage politics. “These people were put on the board to do the work of the Conservative party,” he said. “This was done through backroom politics. It was done without consultation and due process. The only people consulted were Conservative ministers.”

The ridiculous thing about this is that nobody opposes the project in principle. Most reasonable people, one suspects, are fine with a memorial to those who had their lives ruined by totalitarian despotism. Had the proposal stayed with its original site — the Garden of the Provinces, further up Wellington Street — it would not have proven controversial.

But the current location — and the way the project has been rammed through — has upset people. The Tories might normally anticipate winning six of the nine seats in the Ottawa area. This spat will not help those hopes come to fruition.

The Conservatives have responded to this near-universal condemnation with typical vindictiveness. Stacking the NCC board with its supporters is being viewed as the ultimate invitation for critics to indulge in sex and travel.

That might work when those critics are a noisy minority of effete elites; it’s less effective when it’s just about everyone on the bus to Tunney’s Pasture.

Kenney’s strategy may resonate with the Ukrainians in Etobicoke Centre. It can be said with some certainty it is not working in Ottawa Centre.

The ridiculous thing about this is that nobody opposes the project in principle