(Ottawa) Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office intervened at least twice in 2022 to review options available to the federal government to assign the draft National Memorial to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan to a group that had not been selected by a panel of experts .
Published at 1:18 am. Updated at 5:00 am.
The story so far
- August 2019: The federal government launches a competition to design a memorial to commemorate Canada’s deployment in Afghanistan.
- June 2023: The jury’s decision is rejected by the Minister of Veterans Affairs. In a survey, the minister selected another group whose concept was well received.
- December 2023: Documents obtained from the Bloc Québécois show that the Prime Minister’s Office was involved in this affair.
Documents obtained by the Bloc Québécois under the Access to Information Act and provided to La Presse show that an initial meeting was held on May 31, 2022 with an envoy from the Prime Minister’s Office to discuss the matter, approximately six Months after a jury selected the project submitted by the Daoust team from Quebec.
IMAGE PROVIDED BY DAOUST LESTAGE LIZOTTE STECKER
Concept of the monument designed by the competition’s winning Quebec team, the Daoust team
IMAGE PROVIDED BY DAOUST LESTAGE LIZOTTE STECKER
Aerial view of the concept of the competition’s winning Quebec team, the Daoust team
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The name of the employee in the Prime Minister’s Office was removed from the declassified documents on the grounds that it contained personal information. However, the identities of other participants at this meeting, particularly those from the Privy Council Office, the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Department of Veterans Affairs, were revealed.
In these approximately 300 pages of documents submitted to the Bloc Québécois, we lift the veil for the first time on the intervention of the Prime Minister’s Office in this matter. He was apparently keenly interested in the issue, which plunged the Trudeau government into controversy after La Presse revealed that it had violated competition rules by awarding the $3 million design contract to a group other than Daoust last June. team had awarded.
In these documents we find evidence that the Prime Minister’s Office played a role in this matter. He even put pressure on him to confirm his options and exclude the jury’s decision.
Luc Désilets, Bloc Québécois MP
“That was my assumption from the beginning of this case. We now have the proof,” added Bloc MP Luc Désilets.
Given the apparent discomfort of officials at the Department of Canadian Heritage in opposing the panel’s decision and that department’s slowness in supporting the government’s controversial decision to target a different concept, the Prime Minister’s Office requested in July An update in 2022.
“I come back to the news about the Afghanistan memorial. Has anything new happened at the ADM level since the meeting? [sous-ministres adjoints] which took place between AC [Anciens Combattants] and PCH [Patrimoine canadien] last week ? The CPM [cabinet du premier ministre] asks us if things are progressing,” wrote Alyssa Phillips of the Privy Council Office in an email to a colleague at the Department of Canadian Heritage on July 14, 2022.
The Prime Minister’s Office had not responded to La Presse’s requests for comment on these documents at the time of writing on Sunday.
A survey that changes everything
Recall that at the end of a design competition launched in 2019, a jury selected the Daoust team, made up of the artist Luca Fortin from Quebec, the architectural firm Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker from Montreal and Louise Arbour, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, to carry out this project.
In a memo to then Minister of Canadian Heritage Pablo Rodriguez dated November 24, 2021, we mentioned the idea of announcing the jury’s decision in December 2021.
But as of early 2022, after a survey of veterans, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Privy Council Office have floated the possibility of awarding the contract to another team despite the jury’s decision.
Officials at the Ministry of Canadian Heritage then stressed that the federal government could take legal action and not just face criticism if it pursued this path. In the months that followed, the Justice Department issued legal opinions explaining the consequences of awarding the contract to another group.
Ultimately, then-Veterans Affairs Minister Lawrence MacAulay informed the winners on June 19, two hours before the official announcement, that the Canadian government had decided “after careful consideration” to select the concept developed by another team, the Stimson team . This team included visual artist Adrian Stimson, an armed forces veteran and member of the Siksika First Nation in Alberta, the MBTW landscape architecture group from Toronto and public art coordinators LeuWebb Projects, also from the Queen City.
PHOTO SEAN KILPATRICK, CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVE
Visual artist Adrian Stimson holds a picture of his team’s concept
IMAGE PROVIDED BY THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA
Stimson team concept
IMAGE PROVIDED BY THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA
The Stimson team concept. The memorial will be erected in Ottawa on the LeBreton Flats.
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The Department of Veterans Affairs, now led by Ginette Petitpas Taylor following a cabinet reshuffle last July, justified the decision by saying the Stimson team’s design concept was the one that best reflected comments made by veterans, their families and others other participants in the mission in Afghanistan, according to a survey of the five finalist design projects.
Echoes
Since La Presse revealed in August that the Trudeau government had broken its own rules with this move, it has been heavily criticized by opposition parties, artists and environmental experts. The affair was even reported in some foreign magazines.
The same documents show that the Department of Veterans Affairs expected journalists to ask questions about the role of the Prime Minister’s Office in a series of questions and answers suggested by officials.
“Has the CPM participated in this matter? What was discussed with the CPM? », we ask in a question.
“The Government of Canada has made this decision,” is the only answer.
Appearing before the Veterans Affairs Committee on October 31, Veterans Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor gave exactly this answer when Bloc MP Luc Désilets asked her about the role of the Prime Minister’s Office.