Parliamentary Precinct

[ajldub]

Dear Scott,
Welcome to our Ottawa thread. Federally funded cultural institutions, as I am sure you are aware, are spread out across the country. For the most part, they are where they are for some connection to that place - the Museum of Anthropology in BC houses that province's collection of Haida works, the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough is where canoes have been manufactured for over a century, and the new Mountie museum in Saskatchewan is where the mounties are headquartered. Sometimes cities such as Winnipeg put together a pitch for a museum like the Human Rights museum and the feds pay for it. The Portrait Gallery was slated for Ottawa, the capital of Canada where people have slugged out the future of the country for almost 150 years. $11 million was spent on a location, and then Harper tried to move it out to Calgary so it could be on the ground floor of an oil company's headquarters. Moving these portraits to Calgary will cost an extra $2 million in maintenance fees of the portraits which are owned by Archives Canada. Then he realizes the whole EnCana plan won't go over so well with the press so he creates a 'tax-saving scheme' of some kind which basically downshifts federal cultural spending to cities and denies the extra expense of displaying these paintings outside Ottawa. The opinion of people in Ottawa is not that we are entitled to all of Canada's cultural treasures, it is that this particular project was supposed to happen in our city and now we are rightly disappointed that it is likely being porkbarrelled away to Calgary. How anybody from Calgary can suggest this is anything more is laughable, and even more laughable is that Albertans used to be most vocal when Quebec politicians did this in their own ridings and now that Alberta has its big day in the sun look what they go and do. If you guys want a federal cultural institution go and cook one up yourselves like Winnipeg did. I don't know, museum of the CPR or something. But honestly, this belongs in Ottawa and it's pretty undisputable.