Portrait of incompetence

This is an interest piece out today's Post -- it does seem pretty clear that Edmonton's bids should have been accepted but now no bids win.

Portrait of incompetence

National Post Published: Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Late Friday afternoon, the nationwide competition to build a permanent exhibition space for the Portrait Gallery of Canada was cancelled, by means of a brusque e-mail to bidders, without a winner being declared. Heritage Minister James Moore noted that "In this time of global economic instability, it is important that the federal government continue to manage its own affairs prudently and pragmatically."

How quickly things can change in just a few days. At the First Ministers' conference on Monday, just three days later, the premiers and Prime Minister Stephen Harper emerged nodding with agreement over the need to speed up federally funded infrastructure projects like roads and bridges. We're going to build and pave our way back to prosperity -- prudence and pragmatism be damned. If there was an effort to reconcile this with Friday's statement, we haven't heard it.
In a saner country, the creation of a new National Portrait Gallery might have been at the forefront of a pre-recessionary public-works orgy. The timing worked out perfectly for the Harper Conservatives, almost down to the day. But Canada is not an easy place to govern. The plan for a permanent gallery fell victim to political squabbling and regional backbiting, and may not get back onto the agenda for a long time to come.

The thoroughly depressing history of the project has been covered exhaustively -- but here is a capsule summary. Sheila Copps' original 2001 brainwave for a permanent centre at the old U. S. embassy in Ottawa ran headlong into cost overruns, belt-tightening in the national capital district and a new Liberal regime that was none too keen on building an expensive legacy for its leading critic. Paul Martin's government vacillated, and when it was ousted by the Conservatives, they seized upon the opportunity, first engaging in backdoor negotiations to find room for the gallery in downtown Calgary, and then opening the whole thing up to private-public bids from major cities across the country.

Edmonton threw a spanner in the works by coming up with not one but two bids that would have been extremely easy on the public purse; this led to the deadline being quietly extended so that Calgary could improve the terms of its proposed deal. Meanwhile, Ottawa's partisans put on a full-court press, arguing chauvinistically that the right place for a national gallery could not possibly be anywhere but the national capital. These master logicians told an ostensibly pretty story about the Portrait Gallery serving as a locus of educational tours of the capital, but failed ever to mention the real truth -- that in downtown Ottawa the building would probably remain a poor cousin to Parliament Hill, the National Gallery, the Museum of Civilization and other competing sites. The nation's capital Ottawa may be, but not many schools can afford to send children on the week-long field trips that the city perhaps deserves.

The argument that a National Portrait Gallery was exactly the sort of institution that should not be located outside Ottawa was always weaker than its opposite -- namely, the idea that some great national institutions can very well flourish in great Canadian cities that are not Ottawa. The main practical problem might be that the national Library and Archives, which is currently storing the contents of the portrait gallery's collection in climate-controlled conditions out of public view, are in nearby Gatineau; building an exhibition space anywhere else would lead to inevitable transport costs. But wasn't this understood before the bidding process began? And how does it benefit us to retain the system we have now, whereby small parts of the permanent collection are shunted about occasionally and the rest remains out of view to everyone but a few researchers and employees?

One way or another, there should be a much fuller accounting than the government has chosen to give us so far. We offer this advice for its own good, because right now, Ottawa is asking why the last seven years have been wasted, Calgary is wondering why Mr. Harper couldn't deliver the goods and Edmonton is simply dumbstruck. And the austerity excuse obviously won't wash. When building stopped on the original embassy site in Ottawa, the architects learned of it by showing up for work one morning and seeing that the "Future Site Of The National Portrait Gallery" posters had been torn down; since then, it seems, little has been gained in the progress toward transparency.

Story: http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=952386