Whoever thought that establishing a Canadian Museum of Human Rights would be so hard? Chances are that Gail Asper didn’t years ago when she began to funnel her late father’s dream of a testament to the too-often misunderstood notion of human rights into reality.

Sure, there have been the constant obstacles of fundraising and attaining enough long-term financial commitment from three levels of government to finance the – at present – $310 million project. Sure, there have also undoubtedly been countless politicians, bureaucrats and potential private-funding partners who have scratched their heads collectively at the peculiar decision to house the first national museum in decades in Winnipeg.

Of course Winnipeggers are simply happy to be recognized by that distant land of political power, content the museum will magically “revitalize downtown” in much the same way that the MTS Centre promised the same pipe-dream earlier this decade.
Yet, the foundational reason for creating the first national museum outside of Ottawa has, at the very least, always seemed unimpeachable. After all, is not everyone for human rights?

Minority and marginalized groups and individuals appeal consistently to the more progressive sections of documents such as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the United Nations’ rights declarations as legal basis for their rights to be protected by representatives and citizens of the state. Staid defenders of long-entrenched civil and political rights regularly repeat the moral superiority of these “first wave” rights over the rights of gays and lesbians, women and countless other progressives – which to many of the old guard only represent societal decay and a grandiose affront to their prior ability to offend and legislate marginalization at will.

Even racists and misogynists reap the benefits, consistently brandishing the dual tablets of freedom of speech and freedom of religion to reinforce their repulsive convictions and their ability to disseminate them.

What is important to note here is that none of the evocations of “human rights” as pretext for protection from discrimination is necessarily a bad thing. Censorship, oppression and violence are the inevitable outcomes of societies based upon the fear of, rather than the ability to, engage in controversial behaviour.

What is instead worrying is that the controversy surrounding the appointment of former provincial Progressive Conservative leader Stuart Murray as the first director of the museum has demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of the museum’s potential role as a catalyst for rights debate.

“ What constitutes a human right and what does not?

The gist of the contentious debate arose from Murray’s decision, while PC leader, to vote against the furthering of adoption and other familial rights to gay and lesbian couples introduced by the Doer government. Like a well seasoned political actor, Murray has side-stepped any responsibility in his previous wish to deny these rights to homosexuals, insisting instead that it was a caucus decision. He has refrained from commenting on whether or not he would vote in a similar fashion today, deprived of his party’s shackles.

But those who criticize Murray’s appointment fail to comprehend that a museum which is to be based upon ever changing understandings of legal, social and political principles is certain to create controversy. The trajectory of debate around human rights always involves those who advocate and those who resist.

Human rights are nothing in and of themselves. They require legally recognized support and enforcement in order to be anything other than abstractions.

It is within the context of a national museum where these principles may be learned about and debated; an accessible place in comparison to courtrooms and rights commissions, which mainly draw the attentions of the elite and highly-engaged.
Instead of an affront to those who have come to criticize the decision, Murray’s appointment probably had more to do with placating conservative commentators worried that a human rights museum would inevitably, in the words of conservative group R.E.A.L Women of Canada, “serve as a powerful tool to champion the left-wing interpretation of human rights.”

Yet the controversy and debate surrounding Murray’s directorship is exactly what should be expected – indeed needed – from a national museum based upon what is essentially a museum devoted to the history of a debate. Namely, what constitutes a human right and what does not?

It is this opportunity to foster controversial debate that should truly cause Winnipeggers’ excitement.

Andrew Tod is a University of Winnipeg student.

Published in Volume 64, Number 5 of The Uniter (October 1, 2009)