Mayor to communism memorial backers: ‘This project should be put on hold’ | Ottawa Citizen

Another welcome sign that times have changed following the election:

It’s “highly unlikely” the Memorial to the Victims of Communism will ever be built on the proposed site near the Supreme Court of Canada now that the federal Liberals have swept to power, Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson bluntly told the memorial’s backers when he met with them last week.

Watson has been an outspoken critic of the proposed monument’s location on Wellington Street and said Ludwik Klimkowski and Anna Dombrovska — officials from Tribute to Liberty, the charity behind the controversial memorial — clearly knew where he stood when the three met Friday in the mayor’s boardroom.

“I told them in very blunt terms that this project should be put on hold,” Watson said Monday in an interview with the Citizen. “We should have a proper consultation with the broader public, not just inside government, and seek greater consensus on where the monument should be placed.”

“I said, ‘I think you’re going to have to take a little water with your wine and come back with a scaled-back version at a different location that is more acceptable to the community.’”

The mayor says he noted there is virtually no public support for the site in question, and that those expressing concerns have ranged from Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin to members of Parliament and city councillors to renowned architects and community activists.

“I told them that continuing (to push) this site made them tone-deaf,” Watson said, adding there is some consensus that the Garden of the Provinces would be a more appropriate site. But even that location, west of the Supreme Court, would require the monument to be scaled back dramatically, he said.

The mayor says he questioned Klimkowski and Dombrovska on the funding arrangement for the monument, which he characterized as “very mysterious.”

Telling the public how much the project will cost and who is funding it would go a long way to ease the public’s concerns, Watson said.

Despite the presence of eight million people in Canada with links to former or current communist regimes around the world, Tribute to Liberty has struggled to raise its $1.26-million share of the memorial’s $5.5-million cost.

Documents released to the Citizen under access to information in August showed the federal government will pay $4.2 million of the cost — far more than the $3 million it had previously disclosed.

By putting their eggs all in one basket, and using their political connections to run roughshod over any criticism and opposition, the memorial sponsors have only themselves to blame. Noteworthy that the Holocaust memorial attracted little to no controversy.

Source: Mayor to communism memorial backers: ‘This project should be put on hold’ | Ottawa Citizen