(Ottawa) Veterans Affairs Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor defended tooth and nail Thursday the Trudeau government’s decision to award the design contract for the National Monument to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan at the last minute to a group that had not been retained by the jury responsible for studying the proposals.
Faced with sustained questions from the Conservative Party and the Bloc Québécois, Mr.me Petitpas Taylor said on several occasions that the veterans’ opinions should be “the deciding factor” regardless of the jury’s findings. The majority of the approximately 12,000 veterans who participated in an online survey favored another proposal.
“The contribution of veterans and people connected to the mission had to be the deciding factor in choosing the design concept,” said the minister, who was invited to explain this controversial decision before the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs in company of the Minister of Heritage, Pascale St-Onge.
The jury in question had selected the project of the Daoust team, made up of the artist Luca Fortin, from Quebec, the architectural firm Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker, from Montreal, and Louise Arbor, former high commissioner of United Nations for Human Rights, to carry out this project estimated at approximately 3 million dollars. This selection was made in fall 2021 following a design competition launched in 2019.
Gold, The Press revealed in August that M’s predecessorme Petitpas Taylor, Lawrence MacAulay, had ruled out the jury’s choice and announced in June that another group had been selected for the design of the monument. In doing so, the minister flouted the rules of a competition that he himself had established.
The government therefore accepted the proposal from the Stimson team, which is made up of visual artist Adrian Stimson, an Armed Forces veteran and member of the Siksika Nation of Alberta, from the MBTW Landscape Architects Group, from Toronto , and LeuWebb Projects, public art coordinator, also from the Queen City.
Artists specializing in public art and experts have expressed their dismay and anger at this “aberrant” decision by the federal government. Many artists have launched a call for mobilization to force the Trudeau government to reverse this decision.
During the committee meeting, conservative MP Pierre Paul-Hus criticized the two ministers for having dismissed out of hand the work of a jury of experts who had included in its analysis the results of the consultation of former fighters before accepting the proposal from the Daoust team.
According to him, the Trudeau government preferred to rely on a “phony” poll which has no scientific value, according to the assessment of the Léger polling firm, instead of respecting the work of an independent jury.
For his part, Bloc Québécois MP Luc Désilets sharply criticized the Trudeau government’s decision not to respect the rules of the competition and the jury’s decision. “I would tell you that you can never, ever be wrong when you listen to veterans. But we can make mistakes when we use them. Because you used veterans with a poll like that,” argued the Bloc MP.