Faced with ongoing questions from the Conservative Party and the Bloc Québécois, Mr^Me Petitpas Taylor said multiple times that veterans’ opinions should be “the deciding factor,” regardless of the jury’s findings. The majority of the roughly 12,000 veterans who took part in an online survey supported a different proposal.

“The contribution of veterans and people associated with the mission had to be the deciding factor in the choice of the design concept,” said the minister, who was invited to present this controversial decision before the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs, accompanied by the Minister of Cultural Heritage to explain, Pascale St-Onge.

The responsible jury had selected the project of the Daoust team, made up of the artist Luca Fortin from Quebec, the architectural firm Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker from Montreal and Louise Arbor, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. The implementation of this project is estimated at about 3 million Dollars estimated. This selection was made in fall 2021 following a design competition launched in 2019.

Gold, The press revealed in August that Ms.’s predecessor^Me Petitpas Taylor, Lawrence MacAulay, had ruled out the jury’s choice and announced in June that another group had been chosen to design the monument. In doing so, the minister disregarded the rules of a competition that he himself had set up.

The government therefore accepted the proposal from the Stimson team, made up of visual artist Adrian Stimson, an armed forces veteran and member of the Siksika Nation of Alberta, of Toronto-based MBTW Landscape Architects Group and LeuWebb Projects, public art Coordinator, also from the Queen City.

Artists and experts specializing in public art have expressed their dismay and anger at this “deviant” decision by the federal government. Many artists have launched a mobilization call to force the Trudeau government to reverse this decision.

During the committee meeting, Conservative MP Pierre Paul-Hus criticized the two ministers for completely ignoring the work of a jury of experts who had included in their analysis the results of the survey of former combatants before adopting the Daoust team’s proposal had .

According to him, the Trudeau government preferred to rely on a “false” survey, which the Léger polling institute said had no scientific value, rather than respecting the work of an independent jury.

For his part, Bloc Québécois MP Luc Désilets sharply criticized the Trudeau government’s decision not to respect the competition rules and the jury’s decision. “I would tell you that you can never go wrong when you listen to veterans. But we can make mistakes when we use them. Because veterans were used in a survey like this,” argued the Bloc MP.