By Hilary White and Steve Jalsevac
TORONTO, January 26, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – For some time the Aspers, Canada’s most powerful media family, have been planning an exorbitant, $311 million museum to promote the ideology of the Pierre Trudeau/Liberal Party Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Paul Martin government had pledged $100 million of taxpayer money towards the project. During the election Martin extolled the Charter as the main justification for his abortion and same-sex ‘marriage’ policies. Now, Canadians have learned the newly elected Conservative government has agreed to honour Martin’s $100 million commitment.
On Saturday, Gail Asper, the museum’s campaign chairwoman, told the National Post that they were awaiting the outcome of the federal election to decide the next step in their fundraising project. The Edmonton Journal reported last Friday that Stephen Harper has pledged his support for the Museum. This may be due to the fact that Brian Mulroney, the socially liberal former Progressive Conservative PM, is on the Museum’s decidedly liberal advisory board.
A Conservative party spokesman told LifeSiteNews.com yesterday that the Conservatives will be honouring Martin’s $100 million written funding promise for the questionable project. Additional verbal agreements, however, and ongoing support for the museum are open to re-examination, said the spokesman.
Asper is also the chairman of the Asper Foundation that has pledged $20 million for the project, which its promoters say will cost $15 million a year to operate. The museum was backed by the Liberal party whose political ideology it represents and will promote.
The museum, described in a previous LifeSiteNews.com Special Report as “the temple of Canada’s new state ideology,” is planned as a monument to Pierre Trudeau and the Liberal Party’s dream of a “New Canada” under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Most Conservatives are aware of the damage to Canada’s democratic principles and erosion of freedoms that have followed from the Charter. Consequently, the new Conservative government’s willingness to throw such a huge sum of money into the museum is causing head scratching. TheyÂhave been expected to be stronglyÂadverse to using taxpayer funds for such exorbitant, self-serving liberal projects.
The chief effect of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was to remove political power from elected parliamentarians and place it into the hands of courts that can overturn and demand the implementation of laws based solely on a private interpretation of “rights”.
The Human Rights Museum project is just the first shot of many demands conservative analysts are expecting from Liberal-supporting bodies. Opposition from entrenched special interest groups, costly pet leftist projects like the Aspers’ museum and provincial governments accustomed to a cozy relationship with the federal Liberals will do everything possible to obstruct the Conservatives efforts at reform.
Read LifeSiteNews.com Special Report on the Museum of Human Rights:
Winnipeg’s Museum For Human Rights: Canada’s $300 Million Temple of Ideology
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/jul/050701a.html