Canada announces agreement to protect Juno Beach site from condo development – October 7, 2022

At a news conference in Ottawa, Lawrence MacAulay (minister of veterans affairs and the associate minister of national defence) announces the Canadian and French governments have reached an agreement to buy land near the Juno Beach site in France to protect it from a proposed condo development. Canada will contribute nearly $4 million and will negotiate a 99-year lease to protect the historic site from any future development. Several local French municipalities will also contribute investments. The minister is joined by Dean Oliver (acting vice-president and director general of the Canadian War Museum), Michel Miraillet (France's ambassador designate to Canada), retired Brigadier General Ernie Beno (director of the Juno Beach Centre Association), Marie Eve Vaillancourt (exhibitions and development manager for the Juno Beach Centre), and Emmanuel Dubourg (Liberal MP for Bourassa, Quebec). More than 14,000 Canadian soldiers stormed Juno Beach on June 6, 1944, to help liberate occupied France from Germany during the Second World War. There were 359 Canadian deaths at Juno Beach.