Afghan War Memorial & Victoria Cross Memorial | Proposed

[rocketphish]

The battle over the long-awaited National Monument to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan
A Montreal-based design team won the juried competition to create the monument, but lost the commission when the federal government awarded the contract to a team from Alberta.

Randy Boswell, Ottawa Citizen
Published Nov 07, 2023 • Last updated 5 hours ago • 3 minute read

On the cusp of Remembrance Day, an ugly battle over the long-awaited National Monument to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan is set to take place Tuesday on Parliament Hill.

Two members of the Montreal-based design team that won the juried competition to create the monument — but lost the commission when the federal government overruled the jury in June — are set to appear at the House Committee on Veterans Affairs and demand a reversal of the decision amid accusations that the process was “unfair” and “undemocratic.”

Former Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour, an advisor to the design team that won—then lost—the chance to deliver the $3-million project, told this newspaper on Monday that federal officials chose to “cheat” the winning Team Daoust submission by ignoring their own rules in awarding the design contract to a Team Stimson submission from Alberta.

“I think there should be a lot of concern about the integrity of procurement processes by the federal government,” said Arbour.

The memorial is earmarked for a high-profile site directly across Booth Street from the Canadian War Museum and near the National Holocaust Monument. Its unveiling is now delayed until 2027, officials revealed at a Veterans Affairs committee meeting last week.

But the design chosen to commemorate Canada’s mission in Afghanistan, jointly announced in June by the federal ministers of Veterans Affairs and Canadian Heritage, touched off a war of words over the selection process, the role of expert juries in awarding public commissions, and the nature of commemorative art itself.

Veterans Affairs Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor came under fire from Bloc Québécois and Conservative members of the Veterans Affairs committee last week for the way the commission was awarded and the additional years of delay now expected before the memorial is built.

Although the appointed jury decided two years ago that the Team Daoust concept for the monument was the best of five finalists, Veterans Affairs went on to conduct a survey of veterans and the general public that department officials say showed the Team Stimson concept was solidly preferred.

The jury received those survey results but decided that the Team Daoust submission was still the superior design.

Petitpas Taylor stated at last week’s committee hearing that the survey responses from Canadian veterans — especially those who served in Afghanistan — were the most important factor in awarding the commission to Team Stimson.

The Team Stimson design, led by Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation artist Adrian Stimson from southern Alberta, draws on “elements of healing from the concept of the Medicine Wheel,” including walls inscribed with the names of Canadian military personnel who died in Afghanistan and a “circular, sacred space of safety, a ‘home base’ of reflection, memory and contemplation.” The central feature is a stone circle with four bronze flak jackets and helmets draped on crosses, “utilitarian yet poignant reminders of protection.”

The Team Daoust design; led by Montreal architecture and urban design firm Daoust Lestage, Quebec City artist Luca Fortin and their strategic advisor Arbour; featured a contemplative space around two large walls erected at angles to create framed views of the Peace Tower to the east and Canadian War Museum to the west.

It was Arbour, according to team leader Renée Daoust, who helped inspire the design by referencing the famous line from Canadian poet-musician Leonard Cohen’s song Anthem: “There is a crack, a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.”

Daoust said that she and Fortin will appear before the committee on Tuesday and insist that the government revisit the decision. “We want to get our project back, because we did win.

“My wish would be to find an elegant solution without resorting to the courts.”

Daoust indicated that she would be willing to discuss with government officials, the National Capital Commission and the members of Team Stimson a compromise that incorporates elements of the two designs.

Arbour said the controversy has created an uproar among artists and urban design specialists over the trumping of a jury’s decision by government officials. “It’s more than disagreement with the design team.”

Between 2001 and 2014, more than 40,000 members of the Canadian Armed Forces served and 158 Canadian soldiers died in Afghanistan.

“Thousands of other veterans of the war were wounded physically and psychologically, leading to additional deaths by suicide,” states the Canadian War Museum.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...in-afghanistan

[rocketphish]

House committee denounces government's move to overturn Afghanistan monument decision

Randy Boswell, Ottawa Citizen
Published Nov 07, 2023 • 3 minute read

A House of Commons committee has voted to denounce the Liberal government’s overturning of a juried competition for the design of the long-awaited National Monument to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan.

Conservative, Bloc Québécois and NDP members of the Veterans Affairs committee united to overcome efforts by Liberal MPs to block the denunciation of the monument selection process and to launch a deeper probe into what one Conservative MP decried as a “government management scandal.”

The memorial, to be constructed at a high-profile site near the Canadian War Museum and the National Holocaust Monument on LeBreton Flats, is years behind schedule after an initial controversy over its location and a more recent delay in the selection of a design for the $3-million project. Now it won’t be unveiled until 2027, government officials recently revealed.

In June, nearly two years after a government-appointed jury chose a commemoration concept proposed by Quebec-based designers Team Daoust, then-heritage minister Pablo Rodriguez and then-Veterans Affairs minister Lawrence MacAulay announced the government was rejecting the jury’s choice and awarding the commission to Alberta-based designers Team Stimson.

The decision, the government said, was based on the results of an online survey of veterans and other members of the public who preferred the Stimson design over the Daoust concept. Critics have called the survey “unscientific” and insisted that online polling should never trump an expert jury when choosing the design of a national commemoration as important as the Afghanistan monument.

The overturning of the jury’s decision has created a firestorm in the public art community and prompted Team Daoust representatives — including former Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour, an adviser on the proposal — to condemn the “unfair” and “undemocratic” outcome of the competition, and to accuse the government of “cheating” to get the result it wanted.

Expert witnesses from the country’s cultural sector testified at the House committee on Tuesday, slamming the Liberal government’s handling of the monument competition and warning that the country’s reputation has taken a blow in the global arts community.

Université de Montréal professor Jean-Pierre Chupin, Canada Research Chair in Architecture, Competitions and Mediations of Excellence, told the committee that the uproar over the planned monument represents “a turning point in the history of competitions in Canada” and that “there is no precedent” for the kind of government “interference” that took place to overrule the jury.

The vote by the Veterans Affairs committee to condemn the decision and review the selection process compels the government to produce “unredacted documents” related to the monument competition no later than Nov. 17. The motion specifically states that the committee “denounces the government’s about-face and lack of respect for the rules in deciding not to award the design of the commemorative monument” to Team Daoust, “which won the competition conducted by a team of experts set up by the Liberal government itself.”

The committee has also called on Rodriguez and MacAulay to appear as witnesses at a hearing on the monument design decision and process no later than the end of November.

Veterans Affairs Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor came under fierce opposition fire at last week’s meeting of the committee, but insisted that that the survey responses from Canadian veterans — especially those who served in Afghanistan — were the most important factor in awarding the commission to Team Stimson.

The Team Stimson design, led by Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation artist Adrian Stimson from southern Alberta, draws on “elements of healing from the concept of the Medicine Wheel,” including walls inscribed with the names of Canadian military personnel who died in Afghanistan and a “circular, sacred space of safety, a ‘home base’ of reflection, memory and contemplation.” The central feature is a stone circle with four bronze flak jackets and helmets draped on crosses, “utilitarian yet poignant reminders of protection.”

The Team Daoust design, led by Montreal architecture and urban design firm Daoust Lestage, Quebec City artist Luca Fortin and their strategic adviser Arbour, features a contemplative space around two large walls erected at angles to create framed views of the Peace Tower to the east and the Canadian War Museum to the west.

Between 2001 and 2014, more than 40,000 members of the Canadian Armed Forces served and 158 Canadian soldiers died in Afghanistan.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...ument-decision

[J.OT13]

What a mess.

[rocketphish]

Winners of Afghan war memorial design competition claim they were 'cheated' by Ottawa, threaten legal action
Architect Renée Daoust claims her team lost $3.5 million contract to politics

Daniel Leblanc · CBC News
Posted: Apr 04, 2024 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 8 hours ago

Architect Renée Daoust and her team say they're considering a lawsuit to get what they argue is rightfully theirs: the $3.5 million contract to design and build a monument in Ottawa to commemorate Canada's mission in Afghanistan.

Last June, Daoust and her team learned that they had won the jury-based competition but would not be getting the contract to build the monument.

Since then, the team has worked on winning support in the cultural sector, done rounds of media interviews, appeared before a parliamentary committee and tried to put pressure on the government.

One member of the team, former Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour, even raised the topic directly with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during a private phone call.

Now, the Daoust team is looking at taking Ottawa to court, either to obtain the contract or to receive more in compensation than the $34,200 the federal government offered it last year.

"This is not the route that we wanted to take. We might be taking a look at it again because it's taking so much time," Daoust said in an interview at the Montreal offices of Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker.

"There is a great number of people who were cheated as part of this project."

While she acknowledges a legal battle with the federal government would be "David against Goliath," Daoust said her company may have no other option because Ottawa is refusing to enter into any meaningful dialogue.

Daoust said she is seeking justice for her team — Arbour and artist Luca Fortin — because the contracting process was influenced by politics.

"We're very concerned because it does create a precedent, a very dangerous precedent for Canada in terms of competitions, public art competitions, architectural competitions and so on," she said. "There was political interference, so we don't want this to happen again."

More than 40,000 Canadians served in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014 — mostly military personnel but also some government and humanitarian workers. Of those, 158 Canadian military personnel and seven civilians died during the conflict.

The Daoust team won a jury competition in 2021 that was supposed to choose the design team for the monument. But on the morning of June 19, 2023, the federal government informed the Daoust team that it would not be getting the contract.

A few hours later, at a press conference, the government announced that another team, led by western Indigenous artist Adrian Stimson, had offered the winning design.

Ottawa explained its decision by citing an online survey, conducted in 2021, that found that Stimson's design was the favourite among members of the armed forces, military veterans and their families.

The Bloc Québécois and the Conservative Party of Canada have criticized Ottawa's decision in the House of Commons.

Working behind the scenes, Liberal MP Joël Lightbound also tried and failed to change the government's decision. He is now publicly supporting the Daoust team, saying there is a "procedural flaw" in the federal process.

Lightbound said that while he is confident his government is simply seeking to respect the wishes of veterans, the current situation is untenable.

"The road to hell sometimes is paved with good intentions and I think that in the process of trying to achieve that good intention, that good goal, the process has not been respectful of the rules that were established by the government itself," said the Liberal MP for the Quebec City riding of Louis-Hébert.

"From the moment the jury makes its decision and that those were the rules, for me, it goes without saying that it must be honoured."

According to documents released to a parliamentary committee, the government ignored its own legal advice in giving the contract to the Stimson team.

The documents say lawyers told the government it had just two options: awarding the contract to the Daoust team or cancelling the competition.

Minister of Veterans Affairs Ginette Petitpas Taylor told Radio-Canada that the consultation conducted by her government in 2021 did not constitute a "scientific survey."

She said she has heard clearly from members of the military community who want to see the Stimson project move forward.

"Overwhelmingly, they responded that for them, the Stimson concept really represented the loss, the sacrifice and the courage of the men and women that served in Afghanistan," said Petitpas Taylor.

She said the government wants the design finalized by next year.

"We really want to make sure that the construction of this monument is done in a timely fashion. The veterans have indicated they've been waiting a long time and they certainly want to have an opportunity to have an area to be able to reflect on the mission with their kids, their grandchildren," she added.

Stimson, now working to finalize the design of his monument, said he didn't wish to comment on the controversy surrounding the selection process.

Arbour called the federal process to choose the final design "un-Canadian."

"Rather than have a Canadian government 20 years down the line apologize for having dishonoured the people they wanted to honour by having a process that is not an adequate process ... they should reverse the decision," she said.

The former Supreme Court justice said she recently schooled Prime Minister Trudeau on the contract process during a private call.

"I said it's very important to follow the rules. When you have a procurement process for the expenditure of Canadian taxpayers money, the expectation is you follow the rules," she said.

She said she believes the government could compromise by letting the Daoust team build on the memorial site while paying the Stimson team to build elsewhere.

"If veterans want to have another monument that more reflects their contribution to this mission, Canada is a big country and they can build another monument elsewhere," she said.

"But here, rather than tainting this monument with an undemocratic process where the rules were not followed, which will always, I find, harm the honour of those we want to honour, they should correct that. We have time."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/afg...mson-1.7162311

[J.OT13]

This could have been easily avoidable.