General

Monument to Bureaucracy

So for about three years now Jason Kenney has been championing this proposal to build in Ottawa a monument to the victims of communism. But some members of the committee debating the issue worried that it would offend the countless Canadians who identify as communists. So the title was changed to “the victims of totalitarian communism.” That’s when the committee really put their brains to work:

Board member Adel Ayad said the name was troubling for its “very tight definition” and for the presence of the word “communism” in the title, as Canada has a communist party.

“It’s not communism itself that we should be fighting here. It is rather totalitarianism we are against in any form,” he said.

Richard Jennings suggested replacing “totalitarian communism” with the phrase “oppressive regimes.”

Some also suggested that the monument should focus more on Canada as a refuge for victims of oppressive regimes.

The criticism that the monument’s focus is too narrow came as a surprise to Zuzana Hahn of the Open Book Group, who points out that the monument represents people from three of the world’s seven continents.

Cassandra Drudi has the details here. If we’re lucky, Colleague O’Malley will weigh in.

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