It’s pollster Jean-Marc Léger’s turn to take issue with the selection process for the memorial to the Canadian mission in Afghanistan.
According to his opinion developing nine problematic elements of the approach, the public consultation carried out in 2021 by Veterans Affairs Canada (ACC) does not respect the rules of statistical methods and turns out to be full of biases which distorted the results. However, the ministry used this consultative pretext to flout the jury’s choice and favor a supposedly more popular proposal.
“This consultation makes no sense: it does not represent the opinion of the population,” said the Duty Mr. Léger, contacted in Toronto. It’s an open book, it’s not a survey. This approach has no scientific value. »
In 2019, Ottawa launched a competition for the erection of a place of memory highlighting Canadian participation, from 2001 to 2014, in the international military-humanitarian intervention in Afghanistan. The jury of professionals selected the Montreal proposal developed by the artist Luca Fortin, the architectural firm Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker and the lawyer Louise Arbor. ACC announced in June 2022 that it would prefer one of the competing finalist projects, that of artist Adrian Stimson and the MBTW architectural group, from Toronto.
The reversal is based on the consultation conducted online. The Stimson concept “received up to 62% support across all questions [posées lors de la consultation populaire] says an email sent last week by Marc Lescoutre, VAC media relations.
The pollster’s examination, which criticizes this type of assertion, deemed to be artificial, was carried out at the request of MP Luc Desilets, of the Bloc Québécois. He questioned Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor (ACC) in the chamber on Monday about the major flaws in her justifying approach.
“I think we agree on the importance of listening to our veterans,” replied the minister. This is why the Department of Veterans Affairs conducted a survey. More than 10,000 Canadians [y] responded. The majority of them were veterans. The concept that was chosen was that of Team Stimson since, for them, it better represented the bravery, sacrifice and loss of veterans. »
MP Desilets repeats in an interview that talking about surveys, opinions or consultations does not change the mediocrity of the approach. “In all three cases, there is nothing scientific about what was produced,” he says.
From the point of view of survey science, it is, for example, unacceptable to carry out a consultation by means of an open link on a website where only visitors can express themselves and then to extrapolate the results to the the entire population. A standard approach would have worked in the opposite way: people representative of a population would have been selected, then invited individually to participate in the survey.
And what else? The sampling does not accurately represent the Canadian population. An example: 12.2% of respondents are French-speaking, while this group accounts for 22% of the population. Another example: residents of the capital represent a quarter of respondents, but only 3.2% of the country’s population. The mixing of reference groups adds bias, by pooling the responses of veterans and those of their relatives or ordinary civilians.
The Bloc therefore repeats that we must respect the jury’s choice and attribute the design of the monument to the Montreal team Fortin-Daoust-Arbour. The political party is firmly awaiting Ministers Ginette Petitpas Taylor (ACC) and Pascale St-Onge (Heritage), who will appear before the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs within approximately three weeks.
“Even if the survey mainly targeted the military, as ACC says, we cannot make a $3 million monument taking into account only people who experienced Afghanistan,” continues MP Desilets. This monument is intended for the entire population and visitors of Ottawa. It is a monument of international stature which must respect the opinion of experts. »
The Regroupement des Artistes en Arts Visuals wrote to the Minister of Canadian Heritage and launched a petition on September 6, now with more than 1,530 names out of a goal of 2,500. The text affirms that the decision not to respect the choice of the jury “is in no way justifiable and is in complete contradiction with the initial commitment”, in addition to raising concerns “about the credibility of the competition”.