November 20, 2008
Edmonton Journal
Todd Babiuk
Portrait of a prime minister with no use for Edmonton Even without its own money at risk, federal government couldn’t abide notion of a national gallery in Canada’s forgotten city
Today, Liberal Senator Larry Grafstein will introduce a private member’s bill to build the Portrait Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.
In the spirit of co-operation and bipartisanship, someversion or spirit of the bill will probably pass, either formally or informally. The insulting saga of the proposed gallery, andwhatit says about politics in Edmonton, in Alberta and in Canada, will soon come to an end.
The original site of the gallery was to be in the old U.S. embassy, not far from the Parliament Buildings. Under Jean Chretien, the federal government spent millions renovating the property.
Then, in 2006, whenthe Conservatives under Stephen Harper won a minority government, they halted progress onthe building and struck a deal with EnCana, which would include the Portrait Gallery of Canada in its spectacular newhighrise in downtown Calgary.
This backroom deal was a terrible political miscalculation. It enraged people in Ottawa and embarrassed Calgarians, who were looking for all that fairness and transparency Canada’s new government had been promising.
So the Conservatives made a foolish —: They opened the bidding process to nine cities and designed a request for proposals that asked for privatesector leadership, financial security and assurances that the many thousands of paintings and photographs in the collection would be properly handled.
Of the four bids, two were from Edmonton. The other two, from Calgary and Ottawa, were led by municipal governments. Only Qualico and Dub Architects from Edmonton followed the rules. As Mayor Stephen Mandel said in October: “If it’s done in a fair and equitable way, without any political interference, we should be getting a portrait gallery. Our applications are the only ones that fit the criteria.”
Yet after six months of silence, Heritage Minister James Moore announced late on Friday, Nov. 7, that the process had cometo a conclusion. There would be no Portrait Gallery of Canada, not now.
“In this time of global economic uncertainty, it is important that the federal government continue to manageits affairs prudently and pragmatically,” Moore said in a prepared statement.
None of the proposals met the government’s requirements, he said. But Canadians wouldstill see the remarkable collection, through touring exhibitions.
Noonewithanyfamiliarity with the request for proposals or with politics believed a word of it.
Mandel was shocked. Alberta Culture Minister Lindsay Blackett was outraged.
Anyone whoknowsanything about the cost of transporting art across the country was amused.
Ken Cantor of Qualico and Gene Dub of DubArchitects had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and had put up $1 million for the right to be considered. They were just as upset, but looked forward to speaking with the federal government.
So far, there still hasn’t been any meaningful communication with the applicants. “There was a short note,” Dubsaid Wednesday. “But it was a form letter. I think I read something in the newspaper from the minister about transparency. That’s as close as I’ve come to the individual information they say they’ve given us.”
Like Dub, Cantor has the $1 million back, but no explanation.
“If they want to turn around and be honest and say, ‘You know what, we just don’t want to do this,’ well, that’s fine. But this silence, pretending it had something to dowith money, it’s just salt in the wound.”
The Alberta government was putting up $40 million. Qualico and Dub Architects were planning to put up the two buildings anyway. It would have been, as Dub has written in The Journal, “a $50-million gift to the government of Canada for the honour of having the National Portrait Gallery in Edmonton.”
For Cantor, the economic justification makes nosense. “First, it’s too expensive, even though we’re fitting the bill out here. Then, the prime minister walks out of a first ministers conference and says we have to gear up more infrastructure investment to get us through a recession. Which is it?”
There is only one conclusion that makes any sense: The Harper Conservatives could not abide a Portrait Gallery of Canada in Edmonton, Alta.
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