House of Commons, Why do the Conservatives want to politicize history?

Changes to the Cana­dian Museum of Civilization

Octo­ber 16th, 2012

Mr. Louis Pla­m­on­don (Bas-Richelieu—Nicolet—Bécancour, BQ):

Mr. Speaker, the Con­ser­v­a­tives def­i­nitely love his­tory, espe­cially when it can be altered to suit their inter­pre­ta­tion. Why bother with real­ity when sym­bols will do?

The Con­ser­v­a­tives are spend­ing tens of mil­lions of dol­lars to cel­e­brate a war that took place 200 years ago—they are exag­ger­at­ing its impor­tance, espe­cially to francophones—and now they are chang­ing the man­date and the name of one of the top muse­ums, located in Que­bec, in order to glo­rify the Con­ser­v­a­tive ver­sion of the Cana­dian identity.

Why do the Con­ser­v­a­tives want to politi­cize history?

Hon. James Moore (Min­is­ter of Cana­dian Her­itage and Offi­cial Lan­guages, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, that is absolutely not the case. We are work­ing with the museum. It makes deci­sions about its pro­gram­ming inde­pen­dent of the government.

Marie Lalonde, a leader in Canada’s muse­ums com­mu­nity, said that, “in part­ner­ship with this new museum, local muse­ums will be able to offer their vis­i­tors dis­tinc­tive exhibits and ini­tia­tives that would oth­er­wise not be available.”

Our sup­port today for this new project will help all muse­ums across Canada, includ­ing Que­bec muse­ums. It is unfor­tu­nate that the Bloc Québé­cois con­tin­ues to be against Quebec.