Burning Canada’s Libraries and Other Monumental Errors

Abstract

Democracy depends on the maintenance of archives, which allow future generations to reevaluate the nation’s past and future. The Harper government’s systematic war on data and democracy has been carried out through the closure of libraries and archives, as well as the enclosure of the data commons by private interests. This destructive form of memory commemorates even as it obliterates the foundations of remembrance, threatening the possibility of any future dialogue.