Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Minister of Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC), affirms that the preference given to a project other than the winning one in the competition for a future monument to the Canadian mission in Afghanistan is a government decision and not just a ministerial one.
Mme Petitpas Taylor made the statement late Thursday afternoon before the Commons Veterans Affairs Committee. Bloc MP Luc Désilets, who has been leading the critical charge in the House on the issue of the monument for weeks, asked the Liberal minister if the final decision for the monument, announced in June 2023, came from his office or that of the Prime Minister. minister.
“The decision comes from our government,” replied Mme Petitpas Taylor. She later added that to her knowledge, Prime Minister Trudeau’s office did not intervene in the decision. “I would say no,” replied the minister, adding that she would inquire on this point. “We made the decision to listen to the veterans,” she repeated as a leitmotif. For me, the priority is veterans. »
She has been running ACC for less than three months. It was therefore not under her leadership but under that of her predecessor Lawrence MacAulay that the controversial decision was taken, but she approved of it and defended it tooth and nail.
The future monument will be erected in Ottawa, on a site between parliament and the Minister of War. The project from the team of the architectural firm Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker, the artist Luca Fortin and the lawyer Louise Arbor was unanimously selected by the jury of professionals in the arts and military history. ACC, with the agreement of the Ministry of Heritage, preferred the Stimson team’s proposal following an online consultation in which more than 10,000 people participated.
The process, carried out from May 20 to June 9, 2020, asked for a decision on five projects in the running. That of the team surrounding Alberta Siksika Nation artist Adrian Stimson, himself a veteran, was clearly preferred.
The Bloc member explained three times that the consultation was bogus, unscientific, citing the analysis that his party commissioned from the Léger polling firm. He added that less than 50% of veterans responded to the questionnaire linked to a presentation of the projects consisting of a short video and a synthetic image while the jury had studied the application files in depth.
“I really appreciate artists,” said the minister. But at the end of the day you had to choose. […] I don’t believe that having a jury was a mistake and I don’t believe that having a consultation was a mistake, she said. We are talking about a memorial, a mission, a conflict and we absolutely must listen to our veterans. »
Bloc member Luc Désilets finally filed a notice of motion requesting that the Veterans Affairs committee invite representatives of the two artistic firms in the dispute to testify.