The Canadian Museum for Human Rights has come under scrutiny for, well, taking away individuals’ rights. The museum followed the Manitoba public health order and require full vaccination before entry. “Under the current public health orders, museums in the province can only admit visitors who have had two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine at least two weeks before their visit. Visitors must provide proof of that vaccination before entry” reports CBC News.
The museum’s CEO Isha Khan defended the decision with some very loose criteria. “The public health laws are a perfect example that there are restrictions on our freedoms, and as long as they’re temporary and there’s some justification behind them, we’re probably not venturing into the world of discrimination.”
Restrictions to freedoms are ok, “as long as they’re temporary” and that there is “some justification behind them?” Why even have freedoms at all if they can be justifiably taken away so easily and with such little criteria?
Khan doubled down on the decision in a statement on the museum’s Facebook page:
“Discrimination is defined in law as treating a person differently on the basis of some characteristic that goes to the root of who they are as a human being (where there is no reasonable cause to do so).”
“Those characteristics include age, ancestry, ethnic origin, sex, sexual orientation, religious belief, gender identity and disability,” she wrote. “We have to be careful about equating a choice not to get vaccinated with these protected characteristics when looking at what can be considered discriminatory.”
“There are real human rights issues, but we don’t want to conflate just treating groups differently … under the current restrictions as discrimination in the way that I think some want to” she added. So “just treating groups differently” is no longer discrimination?
