A ‘shadow on justice’? Please.
The federal government’s plan to construct a Memorial to the Victims of Communism near the Supreme Court of Canada building in Ottawa is raising the ire of some Canadians. Most recently, 17 past presidents of the Canadian Bar Association (CBA) signed their name to a letter expressing their “deep concern” over the decision “to install a permanent political message on the very doorstep of the highest court in the land.”
As practicing lawyers, we have the utmost respect for the CBA and for the individuals who have served the organization as president. However, we take issue with their position regarding this proposed monument.
First and foremost, the memorial to the victims of communism will not be placed on the “very doorstep” of the Supreme Court building or even in front of the building. It will be erected just north of Wellington Street to the southwest of the Supreme Court building and across the street from the Department of Justice building. Its presence will not cast a “shadow” over the “majestic stairs” of the courthouse, as the former presidents claim, and there is no reason to suppose that anyone will confuse this monument as being an extension of the Supreme Court.
Moreover, while the memorial to the victims of communism may be “political” in the broadest sense of the term, it does not convey a partisan political message. It does not even condemn Marxism as a political philosophy. It simply recognizes a grim historical reality: that millions of individuals perished or suffered needlessly at the hands of communist regimes, from the Soviet Union’s gulag, to Maoist China’s Cultural Revolution, to the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge’s Cambodia, and beyond. North Korea, which has carried the flag of communism into the 21st century, remains arguably the most repressive regime on the planet. To characterize the acknowledgment of this human suffering as a “political message” has the effect of delegitimizing the victims of communist regimes by suggesting that these atrocities are a matter of political opinion, not historical fact.
Even if this monument is interpreted in political terms and is somehow identified with the Supreme Court, the proper response is “so what?” Our entire constitutional order — including, but certainly not limited to, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — rests upon a “political” philosophy that favours democracy, human dignity and the rule of law, the very antithesis of communism as practised. And while Parliament may be the “custodian of the nation’s freedom,” as John Diefenbaker once said, it is the Supreme Court that represents this country’s last defence against totalitarian tyranny. It is therefore entirely fitting that a monument dedicated to the victims of political regimes that stamped out individual rights would be located near the institution charged with upholding those rights in Canada.
To read the letter penned by the former CBA presidents, one could be forgiven for thinking that a monument has never before been constructed in close proximity to a courthouse. In fact, there are monuments in front of courthouses across this country, some of which commemorate Canada’s role in military conflicts. One example that will be familiar to many Torontonians is the Old City Hall Cenotaph, which proudly stands on the steps of Old City Hall and commemorates those soldiers who gave their lives for Canada in the two World Wars and the Korean War. The Old City Hall Cenotaph could be construed as “political,” and yet there is no suggestion that it, or any other war memorial near a courthouse, constitutes a “state-imposed message” that places “justice under a shadow.”
Last year, the federal government pledged to construct a National Holocaust Monument in Ottawa. The monument will be located across the street from the Canadian War Museum, but it is highly doubtful that anyone would raise a fuss if the proposed site were moved one kilometre away, to a location near the Supreme Court. And indeed, it is all but inconceivable that the Holocaust monument would ever be described as a stateimposed political message.
We have to wonder why a monument to the victims of communism should be treated any differently.