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A day after Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cabinet was sworn in at Rideau Hall, newly appointed Minister for Canadian Heritage Mélanie Joly was named as the minister responsible for the National Capital Commission and its troublesome political files.

With a board of political appointees, the NCC has often been a lightning rod for controversy, most recently when it approved a plan to build the Memorial to the Victims of Communism on a site west of the Supreme Court of Canada.

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NCC chair Russell Mills has said the board had “no choice” but to agree to allow the memorial to be built on the contested site because two Conservative cabinet ministers had already announced it as the location.

Under former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, the minister responsible for the NCC has been a local politician — Lawrence Cannon, John Baird and Pierre Poilievre were the last three to have the job — but naming a capital-area minister is a recent convention. There is nothing in the National Capital Act that requires a local minister be given the job, only that it be a member of cabinet.