Locating the National Portrait Gallery in Ottawa would cost $2.5 million less per year than putting it in one of eight other cities qualified to bid for the museum, argues a leaked report from the City of Ottawa.

The money saved would be the annual cost of shipping items from their special Gatineau, Que., storage facility across the river from Ottawa to a location outside the National Capital Region, said a 10-page report dated Jan. 8, 2008.

The gallery was originally slated to open in Ottawa, but in November the federal government launched a request for proposals that would locate the gallery in Halifax, Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa-Gatineau, Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary or Vancouver. At the time, Public Works Minister Michael Fortier said the government wants to ensure maximum tax-dollar benefits by including the private sector in developing the gallery.

The City of Ottawa report, which is to be discussed by  city council's planning and environment committee Tuesday and by the council itself on Wednesday, includes several strategies the city could implement to improve its chances of securing the gallery. It recommends that:

• Ottawa Mayor Larry O'Brien lobby the government to delay the proposal deadline until the end of May. The federal government has already extended the deadline from mid-February until mid-April.
• The mayor write the federal government and local MPs, urging them to keep the portrait gallery in Ottawa as originally planned.
• The mayor ask the federal government to allow federally owned downtown buildings to be eligible to compete under a public-private partnership.
• The city launch a marketing campaign encouraging Ottawa residents to write their MPs about the gallery.

The report notes that the city currently has no municipally owned sites suitable for the museum but that at least three developers have expressed interest in submitting proposals. The report recommends that the city make all bids eligible for an exemption of approximately $430,000 in municipal development charges.

A property that had been sold by the city to a developer and earmarked for a new concert hall on Elgin Street would be a suitable site for the gallery, the report said. But the backers of the concert hall have been given until Feb. 28, 2008, to come up with enough funding for the concert hall, and the developer said it would not be appropriate to consider the site for the portrait gallery at this time.

The report said the proposed deadline extension would provide enough time for "a full range of competitive public-private partnership proposals to be submitted, including those that involve federally owned sites and buildings."

"In the absence of these federally owned sites, Ottawa is limited in its range of suitable sites and at a disadvantage to other competing cities where a larger selection of suitable sites in their core areas are in private sector ownership," the report added.

Ottawa, Calgary could share: councillor

Coun. Clive Doucet, who is on council's planning and environment committee, said the city is also open to sharing the gallery with a city such as Calgary.

"This is the one kind of museum I think which could be quite easily duplicated in two places with some sharing of exhibition," he told CBC. "Not a bad idea at all, but you have to have, I think, the museum located in Ottawa to start with because this is the national capital."

New Democrat MP Paul Dewar, who represents Ottawa Centre, said national portrait galleries in the U.K., France and the U.S. are all located in their respective national capitals, and he doesn't think Canada should break from that trend.

"I still believe that the portrait gallery should be in Ottawa and be financed by the federal government," he said.

The gallery was announced by the Liberal government in 2001, and was to open in 2005 in the historic former American embassy building across from Parliament Hill at an estimated cost of $22 million.

However, the project's cost grew to $45 million and its opening was delayed until at least 2007.

After the Harper government launched a project review in 2006, rumours began circulating that the gallery might move to Calgary.

The gallery's collection of portraits is currently housed out of public view in a climate-controlled Gatineau, Que., building operated by the national archives.

With files from the Canadian Press