Pressure continues to try to shed light on shared responsibilities in the controversial decision to memorialize the Canadian mission in Afghanistan.
Bloc MP Luc Desilets tabled a motion on Tuesday afternoon for the House of Commons Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs to subpoena key figures from the Liberal government. He wants explanations on the decision to overturn the jury’s choice for this place of memory and in particular on the involvement of the Prime Minister’s office.
The motion seeks to summon the Clerk of the Privy Council, John Hannaford, as well as Deputy Clerk Nathalie Drouin. The Bloc also wishes to hear Pablo Rodriguez and Lawrence MacAuley who respectively headed the departments of Heritage and Veterans Affairs at the time of the decision unveiled last June and now at the center of a national controversy. The ministers have already refused to testify after a similar subpoena passed in November.
The new motion will be debated at the next parliamentary committee meeting next week. She is calling for extended special sessions that could be held on February 13.
The controversy surrounding the monument planned to commemorate Canada’s military and humanitarian mission in Afghanistan (2011-2014) has continued for months. The jury of professionals for the competition launched by Ottawa in 2019 selected the proposal from the team of the Montreal architectural firm Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker, the artist-architect Luca Fortin and the jurist Louise Arbor.
The Department of Veterans Affairs Canada rejected this decision in favor of the project submitted by veteran artist Adrien Stimson and the MBTW Group, a Toronto firm. The about-face unveiled last June was based on the preferences of the public, veterans and their loved ones expressed during an online public consultation. The approach was criticized as unscientific by the polling firm Léger.
Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor, who testified Tuesday before the Standing Committee on budgetary issues, was again questioned about ultimate responsibility for the monument that will be erected in Ottawa. MP Desilets cited recently obtained documents showing that the Prime Minister’s office had taken an interest in the matter. He asked why Justin Trudeau’s office was interested in a file with a mini-budget of $3 million.
“The final decision for the monument was made by the Department of Veterans Affairs,” replied Minister Petitspas Taylor. Assistant Deputy Minister Amy Meunier confirmed that the Prime Minister’s Office had followed discussions around the competition but said she was not aware of his intervention in the final decision.
The Bloc member returned to the charge to denounce the consultation which justified the change of winner. He cited a letter from Justice Arbor emphasizing that if all of the approximately 10,000 participants in the consultation on the monument were veterans, which would be very surprising, they would still count very little among the group of 460,000 veterans. from the country.
“You are using veterans,” said MP Desilets. You are tarnishing veterans. The monument will be there for a hundred years and I am afraid that people will talk about it as a monument of shame. »
The minister repeated once again that “the process, the poll, the opinion are very important” and that “veterans say that the monument represented bravery. » She opposed the figures of Mme Arbor the 40,000 veterans of the Afghanistan campaign.
Testifying before the same committee a month ago, architect Renée Daoust, winner of the competition, spoke of “total injustice” and “cheating”.