Three reasons why Winnipeg’s Human Rights Museum is doomed to failure

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg has become the great naked emperor of public life in this country. Most intelligent people know that the project is a bad idea. Yet no one wants to be seen as opposing “human rights” -- let alone remembrance of the Holocaust. So the construction crews are still working, funded in part by $100-million in government money. They are building the Mirabel Airport of Canadian museums -- a white elephant that will do nothing to further human rights or honor Israel Asper and the other well-intentioned worthies who put this project in motion.

There are three reasons the museum is doomed.

The first is that people go to museums to learn about things and events -- slavery, the U.S. Civil War, the Holocaust, pre-contact aboriginal civilizations -- not abstract concepts like “human rights.” Just as people won’t go to a “museum of due process,” or a “museum of checks and balances,” or “a museum of rule of law,” or a “museum of civil liberties,” or a “museum of universal health care,” they won’t go to a museum of human rights.

Secondly, there is the political question: Either the collection in the museum will be an authoritative reflection of the human-rights abuses known to humanity, or it will not be. If it is not to be regarded as authoritative, then why build the thing? But if it is regarded as authoritative, as the organizers presumably hope, then why would anyone be surprised to see Canada’s Ukrainians and other groups campaign aggressively to get more floor space for their own suffering -- picking ugly fights with other, more well-represented groups in the process?

This embarrassing ethnic war in miniature was the most predictable thing imaginable. Yet the museum’s organizers seemed genuinely surprised by it, apparently on the belief that the rest of Canada’s minority groups would be fine with a museum of human rights that separated the world’s genocides into the categories of “The Jewish Holocaust” and “Other.”

Canadian minority groups routinely joust with one another over who is the most victimized: Tamils, Blacks, Muslims, Jews, Ukrainians, Greeks, Macedonians, gays, women -- you name it. I see it every day as a newspaper editor. We live in a victim-ocracy. It’s part of the politically correct era. Then someone announces they are going to build a museum that officially tallies up the radical extremes of human victimhood -- but in so doing will focus primarily on the suffering of one group as a sort of model for all other forms of suffering. Sound like a good idea?

Third issue: Quality and scale. There are two world-class Holocaust museums in existence. One is at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. The other is in Washington, D.C. These museums have been great successes because they focus narrowly on one historical event, and don’t pretend to be a clearinghouse for every massacre the world has seen -- from Hutus butchering Tutsis, to Turks starving Armenians. But just as importantly, they are located in two of the greatest museum cities in the world -- both cities that, unlike Winnipeg, annually attract literally millions of knowledge-hungry tourists from around the world.

Since it opened in 1993, the United States Holocaust Museum has averaged about 1.5-million visitors per year. I’d be surprised if Winnipeg’s museum could attract a 10th that number. Manitoba is a great place to visit. But most international visitors are more interested in hunting, fishing and other outdoor pursuits than dragging their children to “interactive” museum exhibits about the Chinese Massacre of 1871 or Canada’s own Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

This week, the Museum for Human Rights got a new interim chair, following the abrupt resignation of the incumbent. The museum’s opening date has been pushed back from 2013, and construction tenders are being suspended because cost overruns have pushed the project over-budget. It now looks like the thing will cost something like a third of a billion dollars to build, with another $20-million-plus per year to operate. To its credit, the Canadian government has said it won’t be kicking in any more money, so there is a real possibility that much of the museum will sit in half-constructed limbo while Ukrainians and Jews continue their bickering for years on end.

Somewhere down the line, taxpayers will have to clean up this mess. The only blessing is that Israel Asper -- bless his fine intentions -- won’t be around to see his dream turned into a convention center and casino a few years after it opens.

National Post
[email protected]