The victims of communism under leaders such as Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc. number in the tens of millions. The Toronto Star, however, is convinced that the previous government wanted to erect a memorial to those murdered for purely opportunistic reasons, and is therefore applauding the new government's plans to scale back/downsize/play down plans for the monument (my bolds):
The Ottawa memorial was a favourite of the Harper government, which paved the way for a private group to erect a jarringly intrusive structure right next door to the Supreme Court of Canada building, just west of Parliament on Wellington St.
It wasn’t the right design and it certainly wasn’t the right place. It smacked of political opportunism as the Conservatives curried favour among the Polish and Ukrainian communities, in particular, which understandably hold bitter memories of their nations’ suffering under communism.
Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly says the government is also cutting its financial support for the project in half, to a maximum of $1.5 million, ensuring the memorial will have a more human scale.
This is a deft move. The memorial now stands a good chance of adding to the national capital instead of becoming a needlessly divisive symbol.
You know that Trudeau and the Star are giving communism a break because it is seen as a leftist movement (hence the misbegotten idea that memorializing its victims--who vastly outnumber the victims of the Nazis--in the way that the Harper government wanted to would be "needlessly divisive"; that line about the memorial having "a more human scale" is also a dead giveaway--and a huge insult to those who were murdered on a massive scale, one that was hardly "human," by evil, vindictive, power-crazed totalitarians).
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