First new national museum created outside of National Capital Region

CCA Bul­letin 18/07

May 1, 2007

Just the Facts

The Prime Min­is­ter of Canada, the Right Hon­ourable Stephen Harper, was recently in Win­nipeg, Man­i­toba, to announce the des­ig­na­tion of Canada’s newest national museum, the Cana­dian Museum for Human Rights.

This project was cham­pi­oned by the late Israel Asper and his fam­ily has con­tin­ued to work for the cre­ation of this insti­tu­tion, which will be sit­u­ated at The Forks in Win­nipeg.  The com­mit­ment of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment has been reported to be $100 mil­lion in cap­i­tal costs, which must be matched by over $210 M pri­vate and cor­po­rate con­tri­bu­tions, as well as up to $22 mil­lion per year for oper­at­ing costs.

The cre­ation of Canada’s newest national museum is worth scru­ti­niz­ing from a num­ber of per­spec­tives.  It will be the first national museum located out­side of the National Cap­i­tal Area and the first to result from a private/public part­ner­ship.  The fed­eral gov­ern­ment is also enter­ing into a long-term fund­ing and own­er­ship part­ner­ship in bring­ing this new insti­tu­tion into creation.

There is no fur­ther infor­ma­tion about another rumoured private/public part­ner­ship that had been dis­cussed in the media ear­lier this year, which is the reported relo­ca­tion of the planned National Por­trait Gallery to Cal­gary, Alberta. The fate of this national insti­tu­tion remains uncer­tain at this time.

The muse­ums sec­tor has been await­ing the release of a new fed­eral muse­ums pol­icy for many months.  How­ever, the Prime Minister’s recent announce­ment in Win­nipeg would seem to indi­cate that the absence of a new fed­eral muse­ums pol­icy does not pre­clude the devel­op­ment of addi­tional national muse­ums under new types of financing.

Tell Me More…

The Prime Min­is­ter used the occa­sion to reaf­firm the com­mit­ment of Canada and Cana­di­ans to human rights.  He referred to the work of a for­mer Prime Min­is­ter, the Right Hon­ourable John Diefen­baker, in advanc­ing the con­cept and real­ity of human rights for all Canadians.

Inter­est­ingly enough, the Prime Min­is­ter also noted that, “The founders of our Con­fed­er­a­tion adopted a con­sti­tu­tion that enshrined lin­guis­tic, cul­tural, and reli­gious rights in our fed­er­al­ist sys­tem, along with the demo­c­ra­tic rights which are part and par­cel of respon­si­ble gov­ern­ment.” (our emphasis)

The full speech of the Prime Min­is­ter is well worth a read given that it artic­u­lates a con­tin­ued com­mit­ment on the part of the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment to pro­tect and pro­mote Cana­di­ans’ human and cul­tural rights, as enshrined in our Char­ter of Rights and Freedoms.

Muse­ums, arms’ length and free­dom of expression

Speak­ing of human rights and the free­dom of expres­sion, one of our national muse­ums was also recently on the mind of the Sen­ate of Canada.

Dis­cus­sions have been held around the text used by the Cana­dian War Museum to describe the Allies’ Strate­gic Bomb­ing Offen­sive in World War II in an exhi­bi­tion cur­rently on display.

At the heart of the debate is the sense of out­rage expressed by vet­er­ans and Sen­a­tor Romeo Dal­laire regard­ing the overview text of the exhi­bi­tion, which reads as fol­lows: “The value and moral­ity of the strate­gic bomber offen­sive against Ger­many remains bit­terly con­tested.  Bomber Command’s aim was to crush civil­ian morale and force Ger­many to sur­ren­der by destroy­ing its cities and indus­trial instal­la­tions.  Although Bomber Com­mand and Amer­i­can attacks left 600,000 Ger­mans dead and more than five mil­lion home­less, the raids resulted in only small reduc­tions in Ger­man war pro­duc­tion until late in the war.”

The text also includes this sober­ing pas­sage, “The RCAF con­tributed to a mas­sive and costly air offen­sive against Germany’s abil­ity to wage war. …Nearly 10,000 Cana­dian air­men died in the bomber offen­sive, almost three quar­ters of the RCAF’s total com­bat losses dur­ing the war.”

The Cana­dian War Museum is an adjunct of the Cana­dian Museum of Civ­i­liza­tion.  Its intent is to pro­vide a bal­anced his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive on Cana­dian involve­ment in wars through­out our national his­tory, a point made clearly in an op-ed writ­ten by Dr. Dean Oliver.

There is still a lot of raw emo­tion around this issue; how­ever, the abil­ity of cura­tors to present a bal­anced view­point can­not be com­pro­mised in the inter­ests of any par­tic­u­lar group, no mat­ter the indis­putable impor­tance and brav­ery of their con­tri­bu­tion to Cana­dian life and val­ues. The Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA) fully sup­ports the posi­tion of the Cana­dian Muse­ums Asso­ci­a­tion (CMA), as expressed in an April 26 press release:

Estab­lished as one of the cur­rent national muse­ums, the Cana­dian War Museum is an inde­pen­dent fed­eral insti­tu­tion oper­at­ing at arms length from the fed­eral gov­ern­ment.  We (the CMA) sup­port this inde­pen­dent role; it is impor­tant these national pub­licly funded insti­tu­tions be able to serve the pub­lic and carry out their man­date free of polit­i­cal interference.

The CCA is res­olute in its defence of the CMA’s prin­ci­ple of cura­to­r­ial free­dom in this and any other instance of pub­lic or polit­i­cal pres­sure on muse­o­log­i­cal and cul­tural institutions.