In its July/August Reality newsletter, REAL Women of Canada warned that the $300 million Human Rights Museum project in Winnipeg, Manitoba “is a mess” because it has “established a biased and duplicitous Content Advisory Committee to determine which displays will be installed in the museum.” REAL Women also warned that content advisory committee “is mainly comprised of feminist/homosexual activists and their supporters.”
REAL Women says that while the Advisory Committee “is supposed to be comprised of “human rights experts, scholars and specialists,” but 11 of the 16 committee members are radical activists including Jennifer Breakspear, a gay rights activist, Mary Eberts, co-founder of the Women’s Education Legal and Action Fund, Diana Majury, former co-chair of LEAF’s national legal committee, and Ken Norman, a member of the executive committee of the board of directors of the now defunct Court Challenges Program. The article states: “It is the same old, same old, left wing activists promoting themselves and their own agenda.”
Canadian taxpayers have provided nearly $100 million for the construction of the Human Rights Museum and $22 million for operating costs of the yet-to-be opened institution. The Conservative government has honoured the commitment of the previous federal Liberal government to provide federal taxpayer dollars to the museum.
The Reality article warns Canadians about the Trudeaupean vision of the museum and radical agenda of many members of the Content Advisory Committee: “Clearly, it is to serve as a propaganda device to promote and affirm feminist/homosexual ideology and a left-wing interpretation of human rights as ‘progress’ in Canada.” REAL Women warns that this vision of “progress” includes “abortion on demand, lesbian/homosexual rights and benefits, pay equity, affirmative action and the denigration of men.”
The content advisory committee began a series of public consultations in May that will continue through January 2010. REAL Women met with members of the committee on June 11 for a 30-minute private consultation and listed three areas that should be included in the museum: the rights of the unborn, the rights of non-conformist family-oriented women and girls who don’t adhere to radical feminist ideologies, the rights of men who have been marginalized while feminist special interest groups have taken center stage in Canadian policy. As REAL Women stated: “Defenders of these rights experience intolerance and discrimination.”
The recommendations were ignored in the public plenary summation later that same day. When committee member David Matas suggested it is a difficult task to “accurately or fairly reflect conflicting or opposing” points of view, REAL Women insisted the Human Rights Museum “must try to present the diversity of views in Canada.”
