• The first step was to stop the creation of this national recognition of the people of Canada.
• The second step involved the denial of Ottawa as National Capital. This was accomplished by offering up the portrait gallery to the highest commercial bidder - anywhere in the land.
• The third step was to cancel the evidently partisan “anywhere but Ottawa” plan by putting everything on hold since there was an unexpected Canadian reaction to the manipulation of its national identity and soul by a political party.
• The final step was to eliminate the very idea of neutral governance by ruling the whole idea of a National Portrait Gallery irrelevant to the present political will. And so the concept of a National Gallery of Canada is quietly erased from the future - its status returned to the nothing position of being a non-important, unseen and unheard section of a department of the Archives of Canada.

Such is the fate of any entity (especially the arts) which, though often times under-estimated, always threatens political parties incapable of differentiating between rule via partisan ideals and governance by an elected body of representatives who care more for the country than their political assignations. When a people has no sense of the past unless it can be “revised”, no sense of the national present unless it meets the immediate identity needs of political affiliation and no sense of the future as it is irrelevant to present ideologies - such a country is setting itself up for destruction.

When national pride is not part of the ethos of a body elected to govern, the damage done to that country may not be immediately known. But, shockingly, not more than 10 years after common sense and “national” dedication return to the institutions of governance - that damage will be more than evident - if it is not already too late. . .