An Ottawa memorial to those who suffered under communism is going to be best remembered as an overpriced, unloved political boondoggle that almost ended up honouring a bunch of Nazis.
The Memorial to the Victims of Communism is now so tainted and tarnished that the Trudeau Liberals appear to have thrown up their hands in despair.
It was originally supposed to include the names of 550 people who had suffered under communist regimes, but — not surprisingly — the government blanched when it was pointed out that more than half the names had links to the Nazis or were connected to fascist organizations.
After delaying the unveiling of the memorial for a year, it is now set to go ahead on Dec. 12 — without any names on it at all. “At the time of the unveiling, there will be no names on the monument’s wall,” Charles Thibault-Béland, a spokesman for Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge, told the Ottawa Citizen.
So it’s less a memorial to victims and more of a shrine to government incompetence.
Someone should have put a stake through the heart of this pungent project long ago, but that would have required someone to take responsibility, a trait with which the Trudeau government is unfamiliar.
In many respects, the debacle over the memorial is a microcosm of government in Canada under the Liberals.
The idea for the memorial came about in 2007, when the Conservatives were in power, and should have been ready a decade ago. But is anyone truly surprised that the government can’t act in a timely manner?
Under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the federal bureaucracy has grown 43 per cent — from 257,034 people in 2015, to 367,772 today. And yet, people are no better served by Ottawa’s inscrutable bureaucracy than before. As the Union of Taxation Employees noted in September, taxpayers are waiting an average of more than three hours to speak to someone at the Canada Revenue Agency.
The memorial was originally costed at $1.5 million, with the money coming from private funds. It has now ballooned to $7.5 million, with $6 million coming from the taxpayer. It’s a waste of millions of dollars, but that’s a drop in the bucket for the Trudeau Liberals.
Parliament, for example, is currently at an impasse because the Conservatives want to get to the bottom of the $1-billion “green slush fund.” A scathing auditor general’s report into the scandal-plagued Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) found contracts given out that were ineligible, clear cases of conflicts of interest and severe governance issues. Things were so bad, the government shut down SDTC on the day the auditor’s report came out.
The Liberals claim to be good stewards of the public purse, but if that’s true, why won’t they table a fall economic statement? Perhaps because Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux already revealed in an analysis in October that the government has blown its promise to keep the deficit below $40 billion, estimating that it reached $46.8 billion in 2023-24.
If only the Liberals listened to people — but they don’t. An Ekos poll from 2015 revealed that 77 per cent of people were opposed to the memorial, and when asked to describe it, the top words were “unnecessary” and “wasteful.”
But the last thing Trudeau wants is to listen to polls — especially now. According to polling projections by 338 Canada, the Liberals would be decimated if a federal election were held today, with the Conservatives winning a comfortable majority of 229 seats.
Delays, wasteful spending, lack of clear oversight, a failure to listen and an outcome that pleases no one — just another day at the office for Justin Trudeau.
However, the level of incompetence over the memorial is staggering. Of the 550 names that were supposed to go on the memorial, the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center recommended more than half be removed because of links to the Nazis or other fascists. The Ottawa Citizen reported that government officials had already identified some names of people who served with the Waffen SS.
The paper also reported that federal officials in other departments warned Canadian Heritage of the danger of causing international embarrassment if Nazis were included on the memorial. Laughably, Canadian Heritage says it is not putting names on the memorial yet, as it continues to do “its due diligence to ensure all aspects of the memorial remain compatible with Canadian values on democracy and human rights.”
What due diligence? This whole fiasco has been a masterclass in carelessness — careless planning, careless execution, careless spending and very, very careless with history.
National Post