Tories fast-track Aga Khan centre
By VAL ROSS
Thursday, February 1, 2007
Last month, Ottawa decided not to spend $400-million for a new Canada Museum of Science and Technology. The proposed $40-million Portrait Gallery of Canada is in limbo, as is top-up funding for many museums and galleries under construction. Yet Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Heritage Minister Bev Oda have been committed since October to give $30-million to the new Aga Khan Global Centre for Pluralism.
This project will transform an Ottawa heritage building into a non-denominational, non-profit conference centre, classrooms, theatre and exhibition hall, dedicated to fostering Canadian-style pluralism in developing countries.
The centre may well burnish Canada’s image — but it still has no architect, no design brief, no CEO. Early last month, the National Capital Commission and the Department of Public Works were confused as to which was responsible at the government end for the heritage building at 330 Sussex Dr. And no one’s sure how many people will use the new facility.
“We have no specific attendance figures or projections,” Khalil Shariff, CEO of the Aga Khan Foundation, admitted recently. “We’re still doing site planning.” Yet the federal money is earmarked for delivery this fiscal year.
The former Liberal government approved funds for this project. But it never delivered. Why, with so many cultural competitors for cash, did the Tories fast-track it?
The question is puzzling, especially when the centre’s happy position is contrasted with the fate of other needy museums and galleries. Charlie Angus, NDP Heritage critic, said that when John Baird was Treasury Board president, he “told museums and galleries to ‘stop looking to the federal government for support, you’re not on our play list.’ I don’t get this. . . .”
Part of the answer lies in this government’s strategy toward culture: An investment is no longer approved just because of a cultural project’s merits, but also because of the vigour of its private-sector backing — such as the very flush Aga Khan Development Network, which will operate the new pluralism centre. As Oda recently explained: “The reality is, we have to try to encourage private-sector participation in museums and galleries. There is appreciation by taxpayers when they’re not being supported by just taxpayers’ money.”
However, several other private-public museum and gallery initiatives across the country, including Toronto’s so-called Big Six “cultural build” projects, still haven’t got long-discussed federal top-up funding. “We’ve been back and forth with the Department of Finance, showing that our needs aren’t due to cost overruns but to changes in the scope of the projects,” said Charles Baillie, president of the Art Gallery of Ontario. “We’re optimistic. But we’re not much farther ahead.”
The Aga Khan’s pluralism project had one other factor in its favour: “The other factor is, we have a building on the ceremonial route in the national capital that he generously said he’d take over,” Oda said.
The building next door to the National Gallery was in danger of becoming an embarrassing eyesore. Located on a road used by heads of state travelling from Parliament to Rideau Hall, the 1904 building is designated a National Important Land Mass. This particular NILM (until 2004, it was Canada’s national war museum) is worth about $4-million — but it could require five times that amount to clean up asbestos and redo the ancient ventilation, wiring and plumbing.
Angus points out that a similar case could be made for investing cultural funds in the original Ottawa site of the proposed Portrait Gallery. It, too, is a heritage building in need of cleanup, located on the ceremonial route, directly across from the Parliament Buildings.
But one senior civil servant, who requested anonymity, explained that the Portrait Gallery’s problem is that it falls under the aegis of Library and Archives Canada. Not only has this agency little experience with big exhibitions — its head, Ian Wilson, an archivist by training, is preoccupied by the archives’ other urgent issues, such as storage space. Observers say he has not championed the gallery project with the vigour of, say, an Aga Khan.
The Centre for Pluralism was envisioned in 2000, says Shariff. His Highness visited Canada in 2004 and 2005, and he met with Harper in March, 2006. After a site was chosen everything fell into place. Said Sharriff, “It’s a fitting site. We’ll be converting a war museum to a foundation for peace.”
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