NCC says no vote on design until after election
Critics of the Victims of Communism site welcome delay, hope for change
Did the federal government just blink?
According to a letter from Mark Kristmanson, chief executive of the National Capital Commission, the final design of the Memorial to the Victims of Communism won’t come before the NCC board for approval until its meeting in mid-November.
The delay in NCC approval almost certainly means no work on the monument site will proceed until after the Oct. 19 federal election.
The board had been expected to deal with the controversial memorial’s design approval at its next scheduled meeting on Sept. 6.
On June 25, when the NCC board approved decontamination of soil on the memorial site on Wellington Street near the Supreme Court, Kristmanson even suggested the board might hold a special meeting in August to vote on the design.
Kristmanson eliminated both scenarios in his Aug. 5 letter, sent to people who had corresponded with the NCC about the memorial project.
The letter explains the NCC’s role in the project, which is being led by Canadian Heritage and is slated to go on a 5,000-squaremetre site owned by Public Works and Government Services Canada.
The kicker comes in the secondlast sentence: “Canadian Heritage has continued its work developing the final design, which will be submitted to the NCC for its approval in due course, but not before its November board meeting,” Kristmanson writes.
Opponents of the prime Wellington Street site chosen by the government for the memorial reacted with pleasure Thursday to the news.
“We consider this to be very good news,” said Ottawa architect Barry Padolsky, one of four Federal Court applicants challenging the NCC board’s decision to allow decontamination work on the site before approving the memorial’s design.
Padolsky called it “a very good day for the capital and this campaign that we’ve managed to postpone any design approval until after the election.”
So far, decontamination work has not proceeded on the site, likely because of the court challenge by Padolsky and his associates.
“This gives me reason to be cautiously optimistic that nothing will happen between now and the election, on the site,” he said.
The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, one of the other parties to the legal action, welcomed the news of the delay in a statement.
“The RAIC hopes that no excavation on the site will commence before the November NCC board meeting,” said president-elect Allan Teramura.
“We continue to ask the government of Canada to consider a more appropriate location for this memorial,” he said.
Ottawa Centre New Democrat Paul Dewar, one of many Ottawaarea politicians who have called for the memorial to be moved to another site, was also pleased by the news.
“This was something we had been pushing for,” he said. “This was the short-term strategy, to have this project delayed until after an election.”
Though explanations for the delay weren’t forthcoming, Dewar and Padolsky both suggested that the Conservative government wants to avoid making the memorial an issue during the current federal election campaign.
Polls have shown the memorial has little support among members of the Canadian public, and is especially unpopular in Ottawa, where the Conservatives are facing strong challenges in at least two ridings they now hold.
“I would hope they’ve got the message that this was an arbitrary decision on a site which is not suited to the memorial, and that they have the wisdom to think there might be some political consequences in those ridings,” Padolsky said.
“It’s obviously an advantage to put it on the back burner so they don’t have anything visible on the site that would continue to inflame people’s reaction against the memorial.”
The delay means the outcome of the federal election will likely determine the fate of the memorial project.
If the Conservatives are reelected, it will almost certainly be built on the current site. But both the NDP and the Liberals have pledged to shift it to another location following public consultations.
The site chosen for the monument has sparked much of the opposition to it. It has long been reserved for a new home for the Federal Court of Canada in the long-term vision and plan for the parliamentary and judicial precincts.
Indeed, the NCC’s own advisory committee on planning, design and realty, which has reviewed three versions of the memorial design and made 10 recommendations for revisions, has consistently opposed the chosen site.
The committee reiterated its opposition at its last meeting, in May. “The committee does not support and cannot recommend the location of the Memorial to Victims of Communism or any monument on this site,” the minutes state.
In addition, many people believe the memorial’s prominent location is inappropriate because it recognizes crimes by foreign regimes against their own people, rather than events in Canada’s own history.
Supporters argue that the memorial deserves prominence because eight million Canadians can trace their heritage to countries where communist regimes were or still are in place.