WINNIPEG — Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger is not ruling out more government money for the Canadian Museum For Human Rights.
Selinger said museum organizers have approached all levels of government for more cash, but have been told to first try to raise as much money as possible in the private sector. He would not say whether the province is open to putting up more money if private funds cannot be raised.
“We want the museum to be successful here in Manitoba,” the premier in a yearend interview with The Canadian Press.
“We’re very please that the museum has been designated here in Manitoba and that it is going ahead and we want them to be successful and we are going to support them to do that, but we would like them to continue with their fundraising arrangements.”
The museum is slated to open in 2013, and will be Canada’s first national museum outside of the Ottawa region.
Its exhibits will be intended to tell the story of human rights in Canada and will include displays on First Nations rights and the Holocaust. Other programming was being developed in a series of cross-Canada focus groups and meetings throughout 2010.
Fundraising in earnest for the project began in 2003 with a $30-million federal grant from the then-government of Liberal Jean Chretien.
Since then, the three levels of government have committed $160 million in construction costs, and the federal government has also agreed to cover operating expenses estimated at $21 million a year.
Organizers have raised $125 million in private donations, but announced in early December they need another $25 million to complete the building.
The museum has been criticized for a ballooning construction budget, which has risen from an original estimate of $260 million to $310 million.
It has also been embarrassed by stories that its budget has failed to account for municipal taxes and inflationary increases on utilities such as heat and power. It was the long-held dream of the late Israel (Izzy) Asper, a businessman and media mogul who started pushing the project a decade ago.