Medals to mark Canada’s 150th were designed in Harper era - but Liberals mum on whether they will be used

Nationalpost.com
June 20, 2016
By Marie-Danielle Smith

Designs and plans for a commemorative medal celebrating Canada’s 150th anniversary of confederation were ready to go at least a year ago, the National Post has learned.

Even as the responsible department maintains there are currently “no plans,” many are calling on Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly - who remains mum on the status of the program - to dust off the previous government’s plans and keep up a tradition of civilian honours.

The Royal Canadian Legion and its provincial entities unanimously agreed to advocate that the government, if it cancelled the program, should change its mind, said Steven Clark, the director of administration at Dominion Command in Ottawa.

He said if the program was cancelled because of a “political decision,” that’s “absolutely the wrong reason.”

“Something as significant as the 150th anniversary of a country is really something that should transcend political parties,” he said.

The medals, he said, are “a simple yet dignified and honourable way for the country, for the government, to say thank you.”

A source close to the project described the favoured design, as of last September, as a circular silver medal with a Maple Leaf on the front and a royal cypher in the middle of the leaf. Surrounding the Maple Leaf was the text, “Confederation CANADA Confederation.”

The back of the medal featured the Canadian coat of arms and the dates 1867-2017. An attached ribbon would feature thick red stripes on the edges, with thin red stripes on white in the middle.

Designs for medal certificates were ready, too, as were draft regulations that would oversee the program and Letters Patent to be signed by the prime minister and the Queen.

Asked why plans were cancelled haven’t been approved, Joly was tight-lipped.

“We will be making sure to celebrate the hard-working Canadians that are in every community,” she said last week, and “we have a very new way of celebrating.”

During question period Wednesday, Conservative MP Peter Van Loan accused the government of jumping at “every chance to kill a proud tradition.”

“Why this ongoing Liberal war on history and tradition?” he said. Joly replied, “Canada 150 will be a great year, and we will celebrate, of course, history.”

A Canadian Heritage spokesman said there were no plans for a medal program.

The Canada 150 secretariat was working with the Privy Council Office, the governor general’s office and the Royal Canadian Mint on the medals.

At least two conference calls were held last summer, while a working group was struck last September just over a month before election day. Under the new government, high-level discussions were occurring as recently as this February, the source said, when the status of the program itself was discussed with the minister present.

“I think (the government) should be embarrassed” that plans aren’t going ahead, said Michael Jackson, a former chief of protocol for Saskatchewan. He was involved in the issuance of medals at the 125th anniversary of confederation in 1992.

“This is done in a very grassroots way,” he said. With only a small investment from the government, medals “extend recognition in our country to a wide range of citizens of all walks of life.”

Honours are nonpartisan, Jackson said. “Just because a previous government was planning things for Canada 150 doesn’t mean these plans should be scrapped. It’s not too late … Let’s just dust those plans off and get moving.”

Canada has a history of offering civilian honours with commemorative medals.

Most recently, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government issued the Queen’s diamond jubilee medal to 60,000 people in 2012.

Garry Toffoli, vice-chairman and executive director of the Royal Canadian Heritage Trust, said there’s an argument to be made that with only five years since the past medal, many of the Canadians deserving of commendation may already have one.

But it would be illegitimate, he said, to stop issuing medals just for the sake of doing something new. “It’s a Canadian tradition to have civilian medals,” said Toffoli.