Canada Worries About Offending The Communists
Canada Worries About Offending The Communists
A bit windy, but some good stuff in there, too.
Or, if you prefer a printier version, here's one from Ken Libbin, in Canada's Nat Post:
Plans for a monument on Parliament Hill to honour the estimated 100 million or so innocent men, women and children killed at the hands of Communist regimes around the world, on the other hand, have hit a snag, with the NCC worried that a "Memorial to the Victims of Totalitarian Communism" risks giving offence to communists.At a public meeting last week in Ottawa, members of the NCC's board approved the plans for a monument "in principle," allowing that the submitted application for the memorial "largely meets" the commission's criteria for a public exhibit on capital land. But several members expressed concern the name was too provocative, and should be revised to eliminate any mention of communism.
"I was unsettled by this name, and other members of the committee agreed with me," Hélène Grand-Maître, one commission member, said at the public approval hearing. "We should make sure that we are politically correct in this designation.... I feel this name should be changed."
Board member Adel Ayad noted that people who identify as communists might "not like" the memorial. "It's not communism itself that we should be fighting here. It is rather totalitarianism we are against in any form."
One commissioner questioned whether Canadians could even legitimately point fingers at the brutality of Stalin or Pol Pot, given that our own federal government had put Japanese-Canadians in internment camps during the Second World War.
Um...would now be a good time to mention that Stalin murdered tens of millions?
Thanks, RobertW
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