VICTORIA - An offer from Ontario to find a new home for a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald has been declined by the city of Victoria.

Mayor Lisa Helps says the city is carefully storing the statue of Canada's first prime minister after recently removing it from the grounds at city hall.

She says in a text that the city is continuing to discuss the best place to locate the statue with First Nations and the community.

The statue of Macdonald, who represented Victoria in Parliament from 1878 to 1882, was removed as part of the reconciliation process with the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations.

Helps and several Victoria councillors began discussions last year to remove the statue in light of Macdonald's role in the creation of the residential school system that displaced thousands of Indigenous youth.

A temporary plaque placed where the statue was removed was vandalized less than a day after it was installed.