Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for this invitation to appear before you.
My name is François Le Moine, and I am a lawyer specializing in art law and president of the Association littéraire et artistique internationale for Canada; I teach art and cultural heritage law at the Université de Montréal, and I am co‑chair of Montreal's Commission permanente de l'art public de Culture.
I am appearing as an individual with no partisan agenda. I simply want to state, together with Jean-Pierre Chupin and Francyne Lord, first, the fact that the jury competition system is the best guarantee of high-quality public art for future generations, and, second, the reasons why the government was in fact bound by the rules that it itself had established.
I have submitted a document entitled, “Design Competition—Request for Proposals, Submission Requirements”. The competition rules state on page 10 that it is up to the jury to select the winning design, based on the combined scores of the jury and the assessments of the technical committee. It also states on page 2 of that document that the contract will be awarded to the winning team.
Under the rules of this competition, the government simply did not have the necessary leeway to award the contract to a team that had not been selected. It is the jury that makes the decision, not a minister.
If the withdrawal from Afghanistan altered the situation to the point where the competition was no longer suitable for the purpose of honouring our veterans, the only solution available to the government was to cancel the competition and organize another.
The composition of the jury has already been discussed. That composition shows that all the necessary competencies were at the table for the jury to make an informed decision. The jury also took into consideration the consultation conducted of the Department of Veterans Affairs, which had a legitimate place within the process. That is doubtless the reason why no scientific survey was organized, because that inquiry was done for advisory, not decision-making reasons.
In addition to being the party that was supposed to make the decision based on established practices and competition rules, the jury was representative of the mission and had the time to assess all the relevant factors.
Its decision was disregarded.
Thank you.