Government change could threaten local projects
The outcome of the election could decide the city’s future landmarks
When the Conservative government took over in 2006, work on the National Portrait Gallery was stopped, though $11.4 million in public funds had been burned and years of planning completed.
In the next six years, according to government records, another $1.1 million was spent just to ensure the old U.S. embassy on Wellington Street didn’t rot and fall over.
The point being: new governments are not afraid to throw the baby out with the bathwater, expense be damned, when it ain’t their baby.
Should we get a new federal government next week, there are two or three local projects that will almost certainly get a relook, a reboot, or a death sentence. It’s political life: there’s always another baby to be made, victory producing so many willing fathers.
With a new sheriff in town, the Memorial to the Victims of Communism is, surely, on death row. With the odd exception, people don’t like the site, are not much taken with the design, and were never persuaded by the original premise. In other words, why, why now, why this, why there?
Many candidates, save Conservatives, have made great hay opposing the project and the National Capital Commission leaves the impression it isn’t keen either, spending ample energy downsizing the scale so the accordion-shaped tribute doesn’t overpower its surroundings.
Just as the taxpayer share of the monument has jumped to an expected $4.2 million, site decontamination has been delayed and the final design is not expected to return to the NCC before its November board meetings. In other words, there are many ways to go sideways, if not right off a cliff.
In May, Veterans Affairs Minister Erin O’Toole announced the feds were planning two new military memorials — to the Afghanistan mission and Victoria Cross recipients — to be placed at Richmond Landing, behind the National Archives building on Wellington Street.
They were part of a new Military Memorial Route, to begin at the Cartier Drill Hall and end at the Canadian War Museum.
Hardly anyone knew a thing about the memorials or the route. Afghan vets, in particular, were upset there had been little consultation about the location, half-expecting the memorial was headed to another site. It is a touchy subject: 40,000 men and women served in the 12-year mission, and 158 died.
(A general observation about how Liberal governments treated the capital versus the Harper period: the Libs talked, the Tories told. Under Liberal supervision, we often saw issues discussed to death to achieve little — LeBreton Flats — while the Conservatives tended to just “announce” major change as a starting point for discussion.)
The Military Memorial route, one part of a three-phase plan, was supposed to undergo a round of public consultation. We’re told it’s still in the “stakeholder” phase and should go to the public soon. Veterans Affairs, meanwhile, says a design competition for the two memorials is in the planning stages.
Well, call me skeptical, but I doubt the monument to the Afghan mission ends up on Richmond Landing. It’s just the wrong location. The next set of MPs might agree; they’ll certainly want a look.
Speaking of “telling,” we arrive at John Baird, the former MP, cabinet minister and NCC master. He just announced one day that the Civic campus of the Ottawa Hospital would be getting 60 acres of the Central Experimental Farm for a new home across Carling Avenue.
There had been strong opposition to the plan inside government; magically, it evaporated.
As Elizabeth Payne has reported on our pages, there has yet to be any public consultation on two huge public investments and policy changes: $2.5 billion in possible spending for the new hospital and the handing over of historic research lands, sacrificing decades-old scientific data.
A year after Baird’s sudden announcement, still no public airing.
Well, it doesn’t take much to imagine that a government of a different stripe is going to revisit this issue, as building is years and years away, and any transfer of land can easily be reversed.
Seriously, how much creativity was brought to the search? For $2.5 billion, you could buy Ruskin Street, or chunks of real estate on Carling Avenue, and just expand on the same site, backwards and sideways, and up and underground. Must they really have the farm?
To say nothing of the state of 24 Sussex Drive. Would a new government finally decide that, after decades of leaks and drafts, drips and Band-Aids, it’s finally time to properly repair the prime minister’s official residence?
We shall see. We get a new House next week: there might be new brooms in every room.
We never take voters for granted in my party. That’s not our approach. — Conservative Leader Stephen Harper