Thursday July 12, 2007
What Kind of Human Rights Museum is This?
Reality, July/August 2007
National newsletter of REAL Women of Canada
Israel (Izzy) Asper, head of CanWest Global Communications Corporation, had a dream. It was to leave as his legacy, not just to his family, or to his country, but to the whole world, a museum on human rights so people all over the world could come for inspiration, education and instruction. This dream is to be realized in 2011.
However, there were a few problems with his dream. In the first place, as wealthy as he was personally, with his media empire, which included ownership of the National Post, the Vancouver Sun, the Ottawa Citizen, the Montreal Gazette etc., and Global TV; access to his well-funded Asper Family Foundation; and access to wealthy donors in the private sector, he still could not begin to raise the funds to cover the approximately $300 million building costs of the museum. As well, there were the further annual costs of approximately $22 million for the maintenance and staffing of the museum.
Mr. Asper died in 2003, but his family took on his dream: in particular, his daughter Gail Asper. In short order under Ms. Asper’s direction, the proposed human rights centre received the following grants:
Province of Manitoba – $40 million
City of Winnipeg – $20 million
Asper Foundation – $20 million
CIBC, Royal Bank, Bank of Montreal, Bank of Nova Scotia – $3.5 million
This funding was still not nearly enough to get the project off the ground. Fortunately for the dream, the Liberal government, accurately assessing the museum as reflecting its own liberal values, announced on April 15, 2005, that a grant for the museum, in the amount of $100 million, would be provided by the government. The sun seemed to be shining on the project – that is, until the January, 2006 federal election, when the Conservative government was elected to power. The Asper family and supporters of the museum held their collective breaths over whether the Conservative government would honour the Liberals’ pledge to the museum.
The problem with the museum is that it was mainly a shrine to former Liberal Prime Minister Trudeau and his Charter of Rights. That is, it was supposed to reflect the values set out in the Charter of Rights, which has been interpreted by Liberal-appointed judges to reflect the liberal views or philosophies of the judges and that of the Liberal party, rather than the views of the public.
Patrons of this museum are the feminist Governor-General Michaëlle Jean (See REALity, May June 2007, “Our Wayward Governor-General,” page 3) and John Harvard, Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba. In the latter’s former life, he was an outspoken left-wing Liberal MP from Winnipeg who traded his seat to allow the former homosexual Winnipeg Mayor, Glen Murray, to run in the June 2004 federal election (Mr. Murray was defeated) in return for his appointment in May 2004 as Lieutenant-Governor.
Further, to ensure that liberal values would prevail, the museum organizers identified, in addition to ethno-cultural and Jewish representatives, so-called “human rights experts”, including representatives of homosexual and feminist interests, who were to sit on the museum’s National Advisory Council. These representatives included:
* Constance Backhouse, hard-line feminist professor from the University of Ottawa, specializing in women’s studies. She is currently writing a book on sexual assault in Canada.
* Ken Norman, former member of the executive committee of the notoriously biased and discriminatory Court Challenges Program (now, thankfully, disbanded by the Harper government – See REALity November/December 2006, p.7 “Conservative Government Cuts Left-Wing Agencies”), Professor of Law, University of Saskatchewan.
* Beth Atcheson, chair of the legal arm of the feminist movement, LEAF (Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund).
* Lloyd Axworthy, known as “Pink Lloyd”, former Liberal Foreign Affairs Cabinet Minister under Prime Minister Chretien.
* Stephen Burri, president of the homosexual lobby group EGALE (Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere).
* Basil “Buzz” Hargrove, National President of the Canadian Autoworkers Union (CAW).
* Senator Mobina Jaffer, feminist lawyer, appointed to the Senate by Prime Minister Chretien. She was a member of the feminist only Canada Panel on Violence Against Women, and a former unsuccessful Liberal candidate, as well as president of the National Women’s Liberal Commission.
* Madame Justice Claire L’Heureux Dubé, retired feminist judge from the Supreme Court of Canada, founder and former member of the Board of Directors of the feminist organization CRIAW (Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women).
* Professor Kathleen Mahoney, hard-line feminist professor of law at the University of Calgary. She has published extensively on women’s rights and has served as legal counsel before the Supreme Court of Canada on the issue of hate propaganda and pornography from a feminist perspective.
* The Honourable Maurice F. Strong, well known, left-wing UN advisor, currently under investigation for his Oil-For-Food gambit in Iraq. He is also co-sponsor, with former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev, of the so-called “Earth Charter”, which includes, in its provisions, a right to abortion, environmentalism, and aboriginal traditions, etc. as basic international human rights.
* The Honourable John N. Turner, former Liberal Prime Minister.
* Tom Axworthy, political strategist and policy advisor for the Liberal party, former principal Secretary to Prime Minister Trudeau
* Alexandre Trudeau, son of the late Prime Minister Trudeau and a left-wing film producer of a laudatory film on President Castro of Cuba and an anti-American film on the Iraq invasion.
* Senator Noël Kinsella – Conservative Senator appointed in 1990 by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney – former Chairperson of the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission for 22 years. He tabled a bill in the Senate in 1996 to include sexual orientation in the federal Human Rights Act.
* Senator Jerahmiel Grafstein, appointed to the Senate by Prime Minister Trudeau in 1984.
* Senator Vivienne Poy, appointed to the Senate by Prime Minister Chretien. She is the sister-in-law of former Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson. Senator Poy tabled a bill in the Senate to change the words of our national anthem to remove the scandalous phrase “all our sons command”. Not surprisingly, the bill was not successful. (See REALity, September/October 2001, p. 10.)
Although these left-wing extremists predominate on the museum’s Advisory Council, there is a sprinkling of others, such as former red Tory Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and representatives from each of some Japanese, Ukrainian, Jewish, and francophone organizations.
These latter representatives, however, are all outnumbered by the left-wing, liberal activists who all bring to the Advisory Council their own special interests and agendas.
Many Violations of Human Rights:
The museum has two sections: the Hall of Fame and the Hall of Shame.
There are many violations of human rights in Canada to fill the Hall of Shame: these exhibits will, hopefully, serve as a reminder to future generations of past wrongs, never to be repeated. Examples include, the Chinese head tax passed in 1885; exclusion of all Chinese immigrants in 1947; refusal to allow a freighter with Sikh passengers to land in Canada in 1914; internment of Ukrainians, Italians and Japanese as enemy aliens; our treatment of Aboriginals; the refusal to allow Jews as immigrants, etc. The list is tragically long. On the other hand, the Hall of Fame will certainly be, according to Prime Minister Trudeau’s former principal secretary, Thomas Axworthy, a monument to Pierre Trudeau. Mr. Axworthy described Mr. Trudeau’s accomplishments in the Winnipeg Free Press, March 13, 2005, as follows:
[Prime Minister Trudeau] modernized divorce and reformed the Criminal Code in 1967 by removing prohibitions against homosexuality and abortion, passed the Official Languages Act in 1969, and is the father of the 1982 Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. …
In an article in the Ottawa Citizen (April 17, 2003), Izzy Asper is quoted as stating that his museum must:
… tell the dirty stories very clearly. And that relates to women, that relates to gays …
He goes on to say, however:
One is going to have to be very, very careful to prevent it from becoming a propaganda device for a particular political point of view.
Quite So.
The fact is that the museum is shaping up to be quite “a propaganda device”. The museum will be used as a powerful tool to champion the left-wing interpretation of human rights, such as abortion rights, feminism, homosexual rights, with some legitimate exhibits sprinkled here and there to give the museum an appearance of legitimacy. Also, if abortion and gay rights activists find themselves in the Hall of Fame, for furthering such so-called human rights advancements as unrestricted abortion and same-sex marriage, then, by default, will those who defend human life from conception to natural death be relegated to the Hall of Shame, since they do not support all the “human rights” defined by liberals?
The museum is also intended to be used as a centre of learning for police, military, political personnel and, above all, children, to combat the “forces of hate and oppression” which include all those who do not support the humanist ideology.
Conservative Prime Minister Harper Backs the Museum:
On April 20, 2007 Conservative Prime Minister Harper announced that this left-wing museum would be designated a “national” museum of Canada. He said that it would receive the $100 million originally promised by the former Liberal government. He also said that the federal government would assume full responsibility for the museum’s operating costs – possibly $22 million a year once it is opened.
With this federal funding, the museum must be transformed into a project that will recognize human rights from other than one left wing political perspective.
The selfless dedication of those protecting the lives of the unborn child, year after year, those struggling to protect the rights of the aged and ill against euthanasia and those defending the family and traditional marriage must not be dismissed as “bigots” and “extremists” unworthy of “noble” liberal ideals. In short, this controversial museum must not entrench the dubious values of left-wing interests.
To write to Prime Minister Harper and to Conservative MPs to insist that the Board of the Museum and its Advisory Council be changed to reflect the views of all Canadians:
The Right Honourable Stephen Harper
Office of the Prime Minister
Langevin Building, 80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A2
Fax: 613 941-6900
MP
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6
(No postage required if mailed within Canada)
Canadians may find their member of Parliament contact info at
https://www.lifesitenews.com/getinvolved/politics/canada/findyourmp.html