Museum of Human Rights Board Gambol

By Lubomyr Luciuk

I’ve noticed, over the years, how stories the government doesn’t want us to pay much attention to – and it doesn’t really matter which party is in charge – are released “after-hours”, usually toward the end of a week, before a long weekend being particularly useful for “burying” controversial or embarrassing news or, heaven forbid, anything that might become a political liability.

It happened again. Thursday afternoon (on August 28), the Honourable Jose Verner, Minister of Canadian Heritage, announced the names of eight people appointed to a Board of Trustees for the Canadian Museum of Human Rights. Located in Winnipeg, this is the first new national museum established in 40 years, the first of its kind located outside our capital. Perhaps we should all give a big “Hip hip hooray!”

Remarkably, 5 out of 8 of these newly-anointed trustees were also members of an Advisory Committee established by the very same Minister in October 2007, paid originally to give the government advice on the scope and contents of the proposed museum, and now conveniently being rewarded for taking charge of it.

The five repeat members are Arni Thorsteinson, Gail Asper, Bill Barkley, Vim Kochhar and the Honourable Constance Glube.  Having already served as chair of the Advisory Committee, Mr. Thorsteinson, a prominent Winnipeg businessman, will run the Board of Trustees. He brings experience to the role, having been active in the ‘National Advisory Council of the Canadian Museum of Human Rights.’ And only a few days ago he was recognized with the 2008 Negev Award for his ongoing support of Winnipeg’s Asper School of Business, where an ‘Arni C. Thorsteinson Exchange Program,” funded by the Gerald Schwartz and Heather Reisman Foundation, promotes student exchanges between Israel and Canada. This initiative was named in his honour because of his close connections with the University of Manitoba and Mr. Schwartz, a fellow Winnipegger whose Onex Corporation he invested in and of whose board of directors he remains a member. According to The Winnipeg Free Press, Mr. Thorsteinson also made significant investments in CanWest, one of Canada’s largest media corporations, itself founded through a partnership between the late Izzy Asper and Mr. Schwartz.  As such, Mr. Thorsteinson is no stranger to Gail Asper, who serves as a director of CanWest Global Communications, is a managing director of The Asper Foundation and is renowned as an advocate for this museum, a project her Dad thought up but did not live to see realised.

While these five are, without doubt, accomplished Canadians, their selection to the Board of Trustees of a purportedly national museum, funded largely from the public purse, should spark some questions. How is it that 5 of the original 8 members of the Advisory Committee got to be trustees? What pool of candidates was available to choose from, what selection criteria were used, and who made the final decision about who got to be a trustee? How representative of Canada’s multicultural population is a board that contains no Muslims, Sikhs, or Hindus yet somehow manages to include three Jews? Why are women under-represented when Madame Verner’s mandate is to promote gender equality, assuming that she takes her role as Minister responsible for the Status of Women seriously? And, pray tell, why would this government be pledging millions, annually, and in perpetuity, to a new facility while simultaneously announcing deep cuts to arts programs across the land?

Just the other day, hundreds rallied in Montral to protest how 14 federal arts funding programs, worth an estimated $45 million, are being cancelled or reduced. Ironically, their demonstration came soon after the Conference Board of Canada reported that cultural industries account for 7.4% of Canada’s gross domestic product, employing over a million Canadians. While, overall, 3.8% of Canada’s labour force is so employed, that number rises to 5.5% in Montral. So these cuts will hurt Quebec disproportionately. Not a bright move for a minority government.

When questioned about the decision to scrap the Prom-Art program, Anne Howland, communications director for Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson, explained: “The government committed to a more disciplined approach to managing its spending and focusing on programs that are our priorities, so more than anything, it’s a budgeting expenditure decision, and we feel Canadians want accountability for their tax dollars, and we’re following through on that commitment.”

She’s right. I want accountability. So how did these people get spots on an Advisory Council where they were paid by Ottawa to offer it advice on whether millions should be spent in support of a project that several of them were known lobbyists for? And how have some of them now managed to secure yet another round of sinecures on a Board of Trustees that will spend your dollars, and mine, on a museum whose purpose remains vague? Of course, even as you read this you probably realise that we won’t ever get answers. By the time this gets published, if it even does, it will be yesterday’s news. So join me in expressing admiration for the string-pullers who orchestrated this gambol, even as funding was hacked out of existing arts and museum programs. Doing what they just got away with took real chutzpah.

Nominated by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress to serve on the Board of Trustees of the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk was not selected, nor is he surprised.