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National Portrait Gallery: 'It's pork barrel politics'
Documents and leaks to an Ottawa MP point to the gallery being built in Calgary, home to the Prime Minister's riding, and partly funded by EnCana
VAL ROSS
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Although an Ottawa home for the proposed National Portrait Gallery is already under way -- more than $9-million worth of work has been done on a magnificent Beaux Arts building on Wellington Street -- an Ottawa MP says the gallery will go to Calgary.
NDP MP Paul Dewar had made an access-to-information request for documents related to the portrait gallery. All but two sentences in the 42 pages he obtained were blacked out, but Dewar says they, and subsequent government leaks, indicate that gallery will be built in the city of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's home riding, partly funded by energy giant EnCana. "It's pork barrel politics," Dewar told The Globe and Mail. "And no one is denying it."
Calgary Centre-North MP Jim Prentice, Minister of Indian Affairs, who is said to be a major architect of the plan, could not be reached for comment. But Todd Hirsch, chief economist with the Calgary-based Canada West Foundation, observed that such projects could play a crucial role in that city's growth. "Calgary must have more arts. We cannot attract talent from London and Tokyo with fly fishing and the Stampede alone."
Yesterday, Alan Boras, EnCana's manager of media relations, declined to confirm the story. "The National Portrait Gallery is a federal institution, and if they announce it is coming to Calgary, we will all be interested," he said.
However, Boras did confirm that the new EnCana headquarters, being designed for downtown Calgary by noted British architect Norman Foster, has allocated 100,000 square feet "for use by a cultural, arts or science organization."
Since this past spring, he said, various arts institutions had been sending EnCana proposals for use of that space. He refused to say whether the gallery is among them, but according to Ottawa MP Dewar, EnCana has pledged $30-million to support the gallery.
At a press conference yesterday, Heritage Minister Bev Oda refused to confirm or deny the report. But she spoke of making part of the portrait gallery collection a travelling show and said that her government continues to look at the options "to make sure that our portrait gallery is accessible to as many Canadians as possible."
The gallery's two big problems have been funding and parentage. In 2000, when then heritage minister Sheila Copps announced the creation of a national portrait gallery to showcase everything from portraits of first nations chiefs to Bryan Adams's photos of pop stars, it was to open in 2005 in the renovated, expanded former U.S. embassy building at a cost of $22-million. But additional costs related to heritage preservation, the cleanup of oil drums that had been stored onsite, and the expense of installing the exhibitions boosted the bill to $45-million. The opening was delayed until 2007 or later.
When the new Conservative government came in this year, Oda told reporters: "This project, [Jean] Chrétien's government promised it, but neither Mr. Chrétien's government nor [Paul] Martin's government delivered it."
The Conservatives, looking to trim $2-billion from public spending, therefore felt under no obligation to go ahead. On July 7, the Harper government allowed tendered contracts for construction material to expire. Since then, despite repeated pleas and petitions, the project has drifted in limbo.
One of those to speak up for the gallery has been Sir Christopher Ondaatje, the Canadian millionaire. In the mid-1990s, he rescued the stalled expansion of England's National Portrait Gallery with a gift of £4-million ($9-million). Still a trustee of the NPG (which he boasts is more popular than any gallery in England except the Tate Modern), Ondaatje put the NPG's architect, Edward Jones, in touch with the Ottawa project and he worked with Teeple Architects of Toronto to design the Ottawa site.
Jones and Teeple may be out of pocket if the Ottawa site is abandoned. But the Harper government is said to have other plans for the Wellington Street building -- and, it now appears, other plans for the location of the portrait gallery.
The Australian, American and British portrait galleries have all been built with a large measure of private-sector support. And all have been popular. "Canada's private sector must take leadership," Ondaatje said, speaking from London. "Canada has been a nation of hit-and-run millionaires. In America, they stay put. Canada's [rich] must get involved. And this is a very good concept, a gallery of the people."
But Dewar continues to support the Ottawa site. "It's important for our national treasures to be housed in public space," he says. "Not in private domains."
