The Communist Party of Canada welcomes the growing outcry against the planned “Monument to the Victims of Communism” monument to be constructed in front of the Supreme Court of Canada Building, in Ottawa. This project has been criticized for many reasons, including the fact that millions of federal funds have been poured into this partisan, anti-communist monument in order to advance the electoral interests of the Harper Conservative government.
Our Party was among the very first to condemn this project when it first sought approval from the National Capital Commission back in 2009. In a letter to the NCC on October 1st of that year, we noted the following:
“We are writing on behalf of the members and supporters of the Communist Party of Canada to express our strong opposition to the proposal to erect a “Monument to the Victims of Totalitarian Communism” …, and to call on the [NCC] Board to reconsider your decision to grant approval for this proposal.
“In our considered view, the monument would constitute an unjust attack on the pride Canadian Communists feel for our pioneering contributions to Canada since 1921, such as fighting against fascism, organizing industrial workers into unions, initiating the movements to win Unemployment Insurance, public healthcare and other social programs, campaigning for peace and disarmament, fighting for the full national rights of Aboriginal peoples and Quebec, and in defending Canada’s sovereignty.
“This proposal smacks of the type of vicious anti-communism which plagued our country (among others) during much of the latter half of the last century. As you are no doubt aware, that sordid period of our history was marked by crude, unsubstantiated and unjust slanders and attacks on progressive-minded Canadians, and resulted in a wave of mass hysteria and witch-hunts, social ostracism, and great hardships, including imprisonment, for many of its victims.
“Most importantly, it had a ferocious ‘chilling effect’ on public discourse and sharply curtailed the freedom of expression and associated democratic rights of all Canadians. McCarthyism was ultimately relegated to the dustbin of history, and that is where it should remain.
“Given the political implications of this proposal – implications which go far beyond the National Capital Region, or Canada as a whole, for that matter – we feel it only proper and necessary to point out the wider international context of this particular project. In Europe, there is a concerted campaign to whip up a renewed atmosphere of anti-communism. This past July, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) adopted a resolution that equated fascism and communism – a most disgraceful attempt to rewrite the history of the 20th century.
“In several European countries, anti-democratic attacks have recently been launched against Communist parties and affiliated organizations. In the Czech Republic, there was an attempt to ban the KSM, the communist youth league, on such spurious grounds that the Czech Supreme Court ultimately had to overturn the prohibition. Similar politically-inspired attacks have taken place in Hungary, Latvia, Ukraine and elsewhere, without any legal or justifiable basis in any of these instances.
“This nefarious campaign has no evidentiary basis in any violations of the law, nor on historical truth or accuracy; rather, it is intended to once again intimidate and isolate progressive parties and movements and poison the free contention of ideas in these societies. The authors of the NCC monument proposal are no less ‘fast and loose’ with historical truth, when they claim that the monument in question would “honour the 100 million lives lost under Communist regimes”. This is a monstrous lie, as demonstrated in numerous objective historical studies. The 20 million Soviet citizens who perished during World War II, for example, died at the hands of the Nazi invasion, and in defending their national sovereignty, not at the hands of “Communist regimes”. This is a crude attempt to turn history on its head.
“In conclusion, our Party wishes to restate our fervent opposition to this monument proposal and calls on the Board of the NCC to reverse its decision and deny approval as soon as possible, before this process is permitted to advance any further.”