Matthew Cutler: Foresights for Human Rights

Stuart Murray  0:00  
This podcast was recorded on the ancestral lands, on treaty one territory, the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe Cree Oji, Cree Dakota and the Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the matthi nation.

Amanda Logan (Voiceover)  0:19  
This is humans on rights, a podcast advocating for the education of human rights. Here's your host, Stuart Murray,

Stuart Murray  0:31  
what does the intersection of public opinion and human rights have in common? Polling data can reveal powerful insights about societal values, priorities and even prejudices. But how do these numbers influence the fight for equality, freedom and justice? The Canadian Museum for Human Rights released its 2024 four sites for Human Rights Report shedding light on both progress and challenges in the Human Rights landscape across Canada, joining me today on humans on rights to discuss the findings of this national survey is Matthew Cutler, the Vice President of exhibitions at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Matthew, welcome to humans on rights.

Matthew Cutler  1:16  
Glad to be here. Thanks, Stuart,

Stuart Murray  1:18  
you know, I know you, but I'd like our listeners to know a little bit more about you, your journey that has found you in some very interesting spots and ultimately landing up as one of the leaders of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Tell us a little bit about you and what got you interested in this issue of human rights, and how did you find yourself working here in Winnipeg?

Matthew Cutler  1:41  
It's a great question, and it's a journey that really shapes my my museum work. I grew up in Southern Ontario, Stuart, and very early on in my life, my mother was was smart enough to get me involved in the scouting movement. I was a beaver, skipped Cub Scouts, but a beaver a scout and a venture, and this was in the the late 90s, for the most part, at a time when youth engagement and youth involvement was really popular. I think organizations were trying to figure out how to get young people involved in in the work of of leading, specifically youth led organizations. And so I was a Regional Youth Commissioner for Scouts Canada, in my adolescents and teens started to work with the World Bank and the UN on youth engagement theory, quite young, and was appointed to the Board of Governors of Scotch County at the age of 18. So I was, as a young person, really involved in thinking about, how do we bring young people to the table to make decisions that affect them? That idea that I know you've spoken about a lot on the podcast, nothing about us, without us. And so that's where my journey in human rights started. And there's always been a through line of human rights storytelling and social capital, but it zigzags from there. So I had a an experience of an incidence of homophobia in my high school when I was a young person that really helped me to understand systems of power and privilege, how hard it was to advance one's own human rights when you face a violation and and so that shifted my attention from from youth leadership and youth rights, children's rights, to the to us LGBT community. And I founded my first right seeking organization out Niagara in 2003 and from there, worked in children's mental health in parks and public realm, to us LGBT activism all the way through to my last job in Toronto, which was working on CO governance and indigenous place, keeping in the parks and public realm space. How do we how do we get folks involved in designing and making spaces that are meant for them? But I came to Manitoba in 2019 to work in the provincial public service, and from there, found myself working on COVID response in my second year, and also vaccine hesitancy before heading over to the museum and and that was a pretty formative moment for me, because it also forced me, apropos of our conversation today, to think about how other people think, and to think about what we needed to do in order to learn together, to grow together, so that we might achieve societal goals together. We as a province were one of the most we were the lowest in terms of routine vaccination, so children's vaccination, flu vaccination, Manitobans were getting those vaccines far less often than other Canadians, and we were faced with a pandemic and a need to vaccinate very quickly, a population that wasn't used to vaccines as much as others and and that really drew my attention to the work of opinion researchers, behavioral psychologists and others who could help inform the way that we make our decisions in relationship to rights and governments and public services. So So that brings me to the museum. I've been at the museum now for about. Two and a half years and had the opportunity to bring together all of those experiences, my passion for human rights, my interest in in belonging and community, which museums do so well and and my interest in how we use storytelling and and our knowledge of humans to be able to accomplish those goals.

Stuart Murray  5:18  
So you know, when we look at what it is that the Canadian Museum for Human Rights has done on this four sites for human rights, kind of their preliminary report for 2024 that is a fairly bold move for a national museum to sort of say, look, let's take the temperature of the Human Rights landscape in Canada. What was the progenitor to make that happen. Matt,

Matthew Cutler  5:41  
well, I think the origin of this research goes back to your days at the museum, and earlier, a decision was made for this to be a Museum for Human Rights, not of human rights. And so if we were of human rights, we would be able to choose the stories that we want to tell, we'd be able to pick niche stories that that were interesting, perhaps, or maybe ones that got people through the door, but we wouldn't have to worry about whether those stories were inspiring action for people, whether they were helping transform people's perspectives. But the decision to make this a Museum for Human Rights, a museum that was actually trying to create a world where everyone values human rights and takes responsibility to promote the respect and dignity of everyone. Meant that we had to be scientific about being a museum. We had to think about what are the stories that will actually help people grow in their human rights journey. And to do that, we need to know what people think about now. We need to know what they care about now. We need to know their perspectives. We need to be able to meet them where they're at in that journey, so that the content we bring forward has a better chance of actually affecting the change that we're looking for.

Stuart Murray  6:50  
So Matt, just on that. Let's talk a little bit about the methodology. I don't want to spend a lot of times kind of technical, but you know, for a national museum situated in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, to do a Canadian wide kind of outreach on human rights landscape that has kind of complications to it. So tell us a bit about the methodology that allowed you to ultimately come out with this foresights for human rights document when

Matthew Cutler  7:20  
we began this project a couple years ago, we reached out to probe a fantastic group of researchers here in Winnipeg, and Curtis and Mary Agnes have been partners for us in that work all along and and we asked, What might this look like, and we actually looked to tools like the Edelman Trust Barometer And the the the reconciliation barometer that that comes out of the National Center, and the U of M and and Ryan Moran was really involved in early days there. We were looking for ways that other people were measuring and taking stock and monitoring over the long term. And so what we what we embarked upon two years ago was an annual national survey that was a representative sample of Canadians. So we gather from 2500 Canadians across the country. We use a digital panel that has been prepared by a third party company that's that's representative and diverse across the country and and we use opinion research and statistic modeling systems to to gather up, first of all, the most representative sample we can, and then second of all, to weight those responses according to the demographic and geographic realities of the country. So this is similar methodology to what any of the polls you might hear in the news from a pollster uses. And we've we've done it in such a way that we can with some confidence, digital panels don't have the same reliability or statistical value of a random phone call the way we might have done it a decade ago, but 19 times out of 20, we're about 2% off of reality, excuse me, using the methodology that we use if it had been a random sample. And so we have a we have a good confidence that we're getting a view across Canada, and we can start to drill down on demographic groups or regional groups as well as we do that work,

Stuart Murray  9:08  
before we get into sort of some of the findings, we won't have time to go through all of them, because there's a lot of detail here. But just from the perspective of Matthew Cutler, from your your perspective as a Canadian, and also as your perspective for somebody who is a leader, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights Did anything surprise you in some of these results.

Matthew Cutler  9:28  
You know, I think what the most hopeful or optimistic surprise for us was in the data around Canadians view of our collective responsibilities. So there's there's a lot for us to wonder about and to be curious about. In this data, there are areas for us to be concerned and to go deeper. But above it all, this one response that 74% of Canadians believe that everyone has a responsibility to care for the people around them, for the people in their community, is the one that I think it's higher than I expected it to be at the. Time given economic realities and some of the other pressures we see in the in the data, but that Canadians, for the most part, still strongly believe that we need to take care of each other, I think is a good starting point for us in this conversation when I

Stuart Murray  10:13  
went through the report. And by the way, I'll make sure that this is available to the public. Obviously, Matt, you just go to the website Canadian Museum for Human Rights. And which is a great website, by the way, lots of robust material there, but you can download the the foresight for human rights document, which is, which is great. I think one of the challenges I was just going to kind of ask you, as you look at finding out data from Canadians, you know, a lot of times it seems when you do polling results, just generally speaking, a lot of survey questions don't ask what I think people might call intrusive personal questions about sexuality, race, religion or ethnicity. As an example in this survey, is that something you really wanted to understand and know, so you really wanted to get a sense of of who some of these 2500 Canadians that you were speaking to

Matthew Cutler  11:06  
were absolutely so at the beginning of a survey of this nature, we ask the questions that we need to ask to make sure we get the right sample. So if we've decided that we need to have a certain percentage of people from a province or a certain percentage from a demographic group, we'll ask it at the front end, but we will also ask a number of demographic questions at the end to help us understand who's answered those questions, and we answer them at the end to your point about intrusion, in part, because if you answer them at the front it might turn people away, or it might color the way they answer the questions. And so we try to keep those personal questions to the end unless they're absolutely now necessary for the sample building and and that allows us to start to play with do people with one lived experience feel differently than people from another. Now with 2500 in the large sample, it means that our sample for some of the demographics is quite small, so your reliability gets lower. But the goal would be that we could then do secondary research if we saw an interesting finding, and that's why we've called this the preliminary report. If we find something that makes us wonder, or we're curious about something, or there's a standout number that we really want to go deeper on, we can commission further research and go deeper with that demographic. And we might not do it with a survey. We might do it with a focus group, finding other methodology to get deeper. This is this is the baseline of the work that we're going to do and and there's a reason why we didn't release this report last year the first time we did the data. So we did the survey in 2003 and again in oh four. We wanted to make sure that we had some reliability, some consistency, a couple data points to play with before we started talking publicly about it, but, but now we'll look for ways to go deeper, to bring in other people's research, to triangulate that data. Other research might disagree with this, and others might corroborate it. And so so we're starting to build a larger and larger knowledge base to use in our territorial practice with this program.

Stuart Murray  13:01  
And I mean to think, the number one point that you make, which is so valid, is that you did this a year ago, 2023 you know, at some juncture you need a little bit of runway to start looking at seeing, are there some trends here? And so over two years, you've, you've, you've put that into the report so people can look and see what you found in 2023 what you're finding in 2024 Matthew, one of the things that you just said, which I just find so encouraging, but I got to tell you, I'd love to get a little bit more sort of data, or go a little bit deeper on the fact that 7074 I think percent of Canadians, you said, feel that they have responsibility to neighbors and for the well being. And again, my words, I don't want to make sure that I don't misrepresent what you say, but you know, that's like three quarters, three out of four Canadians feeling that way. I just, you know, kind of want to do a temperature check and say, you know, when you go into social media, when you look at what's happening in the news today, I sometimes wonder, you know, how does that square with what what is going on in the world? Because, well, in Canada, I would say, because to me, I love that number, Matthew. I think it's so encouraging. But I'm just wondering if there's something underlying that, an undertone that may not sort of see some of the things that are happening because, you know, you see anti semitism on the rise. You see, you know, a lot of issues that are coming out. You know, even on this podcast, I've done conversations with teachers, or, you know, small libraries across southern Manitoba, who are starting to feel a lot of pressure about what kinds of books they have in their library. IE, are there books on transgender people, you know? And those kinds of conversations start to bring to me, Matthew, a sense that there is a bit of a underlying current that is happening that we need to be very, very mindful of. Well,

Matthew Cutler  14:58  
I think being mindful of. It is, is absolutely necessary. Cass Sunstein, in his book about how change happens, talks about the fact that we rarely see change movements on the surface. These are things that people hold to themselves or in quiet conversations, and that when a change happens, we can look at the US election. You know, many people were surprised at what happened in that election, but, but those undercurrents were always there. And if you had the right data and could have tapped into the right knowledge, you probably would have known it was a it was going to go in this direction. And so that's in many ways why we did the research. It. It's very easy social service organizations, human rights organizations, for all of us to be biased by what we see in front of us every day. We know that social media and traditional media to a much lesser extent, but all media we consume is biased in some form, in terms of the stories they select, the angles that they tell. And so we were looking for a way to see a different part of the picture. And and, you know, I think that this plays out in a fascinating way, if you look at the data that personal attitudes on human rights. So this was a, this was a To what extent do you do agree question, a liker style question, and we said everyone has a responsibility to look after the rights of others in their community. And so with 74% that said that they strongly agree or agree with that statement, now it's a statement that stands alone. So it's easy to agree with there's a but or until that you could add to that right and and oftentimes that but or until is the moment where it comes up against the comfort that I experience in my life, the rights that I experience. And so when you ask the question as a standalone 74% but if we expanded that and said, everyone is responsible to do that, even if it means they have to sacrifice in their day to day life, even if it means they have to change something about the way that they live, we would see a different response. And so although it is optimistic, it's it needs to be considered against all the other data and and I think to your point about social media. Just to add one more on that, you know, we asked Who do people trust? Where do you go for information on these issues? And only 5% of respondents say they trust social media a lot. 25% said they trusted a little so. So you're looking at 70% on the other side of people who have zero trust in the social media landscape to get human rights information, and that's a good example of a, why that shouldn't be our place to go to figure out what's going on in the world, but B, how we're using this data so so that's helped us to reinforce that we need to do a review of the museum social media. We need to decide if that's the right place for us to be sharing stories, and if so, which ones we share there. That's been a data point that's really helped us to drive conversations about the way we share stories in the museum. Because if folks don't trust that space, but they trust museums, what does that look like for us in terms of our storytelling practice?

Stuart Murray  17:54  
You know, Matt, one of the things that I will always remember in my time at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights is, you know, as we were trying to bring in the notion of being very digitally enhanced, so that we could be, you know, very flexible, that you could pivot when things were happening in the world you weren't sort of, you know, looking at sort of a model or some sort of a, you know, sort of something that you couldn't change out. You could change out and swap out a lot of digital technology. But I think the underlying that, and I think you're saying this, Matt, is that one of the biggest things to never, ever, ever forget, was the most important part of learning is through a conversation. And you know that, I think is is so endemic in trying to sort of advance this conversation about human rights, because that is something that I've sometimes feel that we're getting less and less and and, you know, your comment about social media, I think is very appropriate, because, you know, there's not a lot to be learned on social media. I mean, the answer is, quite frankly, there's a ton to be learned. But what's the value of it? You know, what are you what's your takeaway from it? So I think for you, in your capacity to be looking at how the Canadian Museum for Human Rights starts to continually, I shouldn't say, starts, but, but continually advance that conversation around human rights. I think is going to be fascinating to to see how, how you move that forward. Because I think you are a physical building placed in the center of Canada, your reach is not only national, it's global. And so you know that's going to be a fabulous opportunity to to look at what that what that looks forward to, any any thoughts, thoughts you want to share on what that might look like.

Matthew Cutler  19:34  
You're right. Studio. We we've got, we've got this beautiful building that welcomes hundreds of 1000s of visitors a year and increasingly we're thinking about that as the center point of our storytelling practice, in some ways, a laboratory where we can test out stories and test out experiences with the folks who know us best and who have the time to be in those conversations with us, but with our strategic focus on. National reach. We just online reaching every 2 million Canadians a year. Witness blanket.ca is a fantastic example of a digital exhibit that in its first year, digital exhibition, in its first year, reached over a million teachers and students. And so we have a real opportunity to help shape people's perspectives and the the research tells us that museums are amongst the most trusted outlets for information when it comes to human rights. So folks trust teachers and professors. They trust human rights and advocacy organizations, outlets like yours, in terms of folks who are trying to talk about human rights specifically, and they trust museums on these topics. And so the stories we choose and the way we tell our stories is going to be really important to shaping people's understanding of the quote, unquote truth, the the facts around these issues, but what we know on the other side. So the the number one issue in Canadian Human Rights for folks today we we bring some numbers together, is around freedom of speech, cancel culture, people's ability to to say what they think about. 14% of folks identified free speech or cancel culture as their number one issue. In Canada, we also have this response, a number of responses that were about equity and fairness, for all and when, when people are highlighting issues of equity and fairness. Of all, I see these as connected. I see this as connected to the pushback we're seeing in the US around Dei. I think what folks are saying is that this idea that everyone is free and equal in dignity and rights has to mean everyone and we all have to feel like we're part of that conversation, and that for learning to happen. We need to be able to feel safe, to share what we think we shouldn't be afraid, to talk openly about what we what we know. And those are the 220. 7% of the responses about the top issue in Canada today were in that area. And so now we've said human rights organizations, museums and teachers are trusted. We know people are struggling with feeling like they're part of the conversation and that they can say what they want to say. And then we've got this other data point that that isn't in the preliminary report, but is in the research data that says that folks struggle to feel safe at places like museums to have conversations about these issues. They're not sure if they can say what they truly believe in that space without being shamed or having having something happen to them, or some sort of reaction, response, cancel culture, that sort of thing. But where they do trust people is with their friends and family. That's where they feel the safest to have those conversations. And so if visitors and Canadians can access our resources and bring them into their relationships and conversations with people who trust them to have an honest conversation. I think that's where the magic lies. It's in those interpersonal conversations informed by the knowledge that we gather from your podcast, from the museum, from our classroom, that will that will help to move these things forward.

Stuart Murray  23:00  
Yeah, no. Well said, Matthew, I when I looked at some of the findings through the through the document for sites on for human rights, that for is very, very appropriate, I thought it was interesting when, you know, again, when you look at some of the items that appeared on that, and I'm referring to page six, the right to safe, adequate health care and the right to safe and affordable housing. You know, again, it's so difficult, Matthew, you know, for I think when you look at some of these findings, I mean, the reality is, the most organizations that do polling today, and because we've just come through a massive, behemoth election south of the border, are political parties, and so, you know, they're asking things that try to sort of shape and look at how policy can make attractive to voters, to sort of see what it is that they what they want to to put them into power. But when you see, for example, the right to adequate health care, the right to safe and affordable housing. I don't think there's any way that you look at this and say that your findings are saying they're not important. I mean, it has to be put into a context, which I think in the narrative here. You've done that, but perhaps you could just sort of share with our listeners the importance of right to health care and the right to homes and affordable housing. But perhaps why that might not have shifted, or why that might categorically looked at sort of more lower down on your scale.

Matthew Cutler  24:32  
Well, I think that this, this is probably one of the most critical domestic findings in in the research last year, those issues around affordability and economics were our number one response at the domestic level, when you bring them together and and that was quite surprising to us. I think economic rights are not often talked about in Canada as human rights, this right to economic dignity, which is enshrined in a number of international legal. Conventions that Canada is a party to don't come up in our conversations because they're not one of those enumerated rights that we think of from the charter. They're not necessarily the list in your provincial Human Rights Code, but but we do know that Canada has agreed through these international legal instruments that economic dignity to be free from poverty, to be able to eat, to have shelter, to have access to water, that that we understand these to be human rights, but Canadians rarely would list them at the top. And so when that first came up last year, we thought this is something to pay attention to. And this year, it came up as the second highest when you put those things together and and so I'm thinking about, you know, 11% of of our respondents named housing and homelessness as the number one domestic human rights issue. I'm combining that with incoming inequality, poverty and affordability, which was named by 4% this year, down from 8% last year. But, but how people represent these numbers shifts, and I think that their responses around newcomers and immigrants are connected to this, because inherent in the conversation over the last year in Canada around immigration has been a conversation about the housing crisis. People are talking about immigration in this country, specifically in relationship to affordability, housing, homelessness and our ability to to housing care for everyone here. And so it is still a significant response. It's about 20. 21% of all responses were about those issues and and we have to pay attention to that because so I'm a sociologist by by training, and I will always go back to Maslow's framework, which was adopted from the Siksika from the Blackfoot in Alberta, that tells us that if we don't feel like we belong in community, we can't be well fed, we can't be well cared for. It's tough for us to think about the higher potential. It's tough for us to imagine a stronger, more connected world, because we need to care for ourselves and our community, our immediate community, in that moment and so absolutely politicians are looking at this kind of data and wondering, what do I need to do on affordability and housing and homelessness to be a viable political leader in this country? But I think human rights organizations and folks who are defenders and upstanders for human rights also have to be taking this seriously, we will struggle to get people's attention on issues that aren't directly impacting their life, but they know are important if they are in crisis themselves, or if they're not able to meet their basic needs in their community. And so we all need to be engaged in a conversation about housing and affordability at this moment it, it will be the thing that makes it possible for us to talk about all those other rights movements that we've been dedicating ourselves to for so long. You know, one of

Stuart Murray  27:49  
the things when I was going through the research that you did only because, you know, it's one of these things that's sort of top of mind right now is in in there's a move, of course, to quote, unquote, I think it's called Make Poverty History in Manitoba. It's a very, very important movement. They've done a lot of good work in terms of trying to sort of create public opinion. And obviously it's up to our governments of the day to look at what policy that would make that appropriate. Did did that kind of find its way into conversations around homelessness, the issue around poverty, or is that something you referred to earlier, about elements that you want to extract and maybe do a deeper dive into

Matthew Cutler  28:31  
it's both, in our case. So we, for instance, are working on a digital exhibit, a web story about economic dignity right now, hoping you get that out in the next few weeks specifically, because this is an issue Canadians are talking about. So this is the this is the relationship between the research and our curatorial practice. These are topics now that we'll pay attention to. We will start to develop content online through public programming, potentially ultimately in exhibitions and education programs. But because we know people are talking about it, and they're curious about how human rights intersect with these issues, we're developing content to meet them in that moment, there is more we need to understand about this. And I think, you know, I'm curious always about how, how broad and nuanced Canadians understanding of the the intersectional nature of these issues are so, you know, we've we've heard a lot recently about temporary foreign workers, for example, in the country, and what that means for people's ability in this country to get jobs, to be housed, what that means for economic dignity. But there isn't often a big conversation about why these programs exist in the first place, and with the within the agricultural space, it was often because this was work that that resident Canadians and citizen Canadians weren't willing to take up, and yet, we expect to have lettuce and cucumbers and tomatoes on our dinner table every day. And so I think a systems perspective that allows. Us to understand that if we if we don't care about this, right, that we might not be able to enjoy the life that we do on the other side is also an important piece of it, but that's a that's a complex web that we live in, and making that simple enough for the average person to digest while they're also thinking about how to feed their kids and go to work and pay the bills is hard but, but I think there's something there about helping folks to see the interconnected nature of it that is important. And in Manitoba, because we we live our lives in a province that has more indigenous folks than anywhere else in the country, and so many of us are working to decolonize our our own minds and hearts, our lives and our communities. I think we have really good models for that, right? We We understand, you know, being bad is in from a Anishinaabe perspective or wakoto in from a Cree perspective, that the good life, that our life together, requires a recognition of our connectedness and so, so there's an opportunity, I think, to start to go deeper in this with folks, but but your earlier comment that happens in conversation, and it happens when we're really in life together. And so where to do that? It's not going to be on social media and it's not going to be on the evening news. It is going to be in those relationships that we hold day to day in our lives, together in this place,

Stuart Murray  31:20  
Matthew, let's talk a little bit about some of the findings. Just particularly I thought censorship, inequality, racism and anti semitism were top concerns in Canada. If you want to take all four of them, censorship, inequality, racism and anti semitism, maybe break it down and just sort of share what it is the survey told you, and just share your thoughts on it. So this particular

Matthew Cutler  31:42  
question talk human rights issues in Canada was a free form question, so very early on in the survey, we asked people to identify what they think the most important human rights issue is today in Canada, we asked that question as well, what's the most important human rights issue in the world right after, and this is before we've asked any other questions. So we try not to bias their perspective or feed them. If you've asked the question about gender rights or to assess your T rights, it might change how people respond. And so the first questions we ask are open ended. What's the top issue? Interestingly, on a worldwide level, the number one issue was war and violence, and it was that generic. So So lower down on the rank, you might see the Russia, Ukraine war. You might see Israel Gaza, but most people have a perspective of world's rights that is more generic and broad. And so they they say there's a lot of war and violence in the world, and that's that's about where it stops at the domestic level, as you pointed out, censorship, freedom of speech, equality and fairness for all, anti semitism, prejudice, racism, all of these are about how we treat each other, right, and what's acceptable And and I think that there's a tension here. This is an area where we want to go a bit deeper in focus groups, because one person might say censorship, and we think we saw this coming through the pandemic, that freedom of speech and censorship was about people's right to stand outside of the majority or the norm and be okay to do that, to be honest about how they feel. In other cases, we see censorship and freedom or equality and fairness being about minoritarian rights, a small group of people wanting their piece of the pie. And so we have to go deeper on these ones. But I think, I think all of this speaks to this moment we're in in our human rights work. I was reflecting on this not too long ago, I think, leading into the pandemic, we had been involved in a lot of rights movements that were very black and white. I think we had, we had really started to believe that the world could be separated between good guys and bad guys. You were either in support of Black Lives Matter, or you were a white supremacist. You were in support of queer and trans rights, or you're homophobic and transphobic, we really drew a line and said, which side are you on? And there was a side for good folks who understood human rights, and there were, there was a side for folks who didn't through the pandemic. We saw, you know, at a front row seat for this, and we saw people try and apply that binary to the to the pandemic experience, right? If you didn't follow the orders and wear a mask and do everything that, in our case, Dr russon, but in other parts of the country, you know, Dr Henry, Dr Tam and others, if you didn't do what had been established as the right thing, you must be a bad person. But as the pandemic continued and continues today in some form, but as we move through those early years together, we started to realize there were competing rights that people might choose not to follow the rules, because they are so lonely that if they did follow the rules, they might, they might not continue to survive. There were folks who needed to break the rules in order. To make enough money to put food on the table for their kids. There was, there were competing rights dynamics where it wasn't easy enough to just say who's on the right side and the wrong side. And so I think we're now in a space where lots of folks are starting to complicate that binary and say, there are competing rights here, housing newcomers, my sense of dignity, my lifestyle, are all at play in a rights conversation and and if we can't dwell in that nuance, it's going to be very hard to move forward. And a lot of these first responses for me, the censorship, equality and fairness for all I think, are about people saying, I want I need to see where I fit into this. I need to feel safe to be a part of it. And really it goes back to that first statement of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, and that our goal is that everyone comes together in that space and experiences that dignity. And people need to see themselves in there for that to work

Stuart Murray  35:59  
on the anti semitism finding. Would you say that that is a response to what's happening with Hamas in Israel? Would you say that that's part of that? Or do you, would you say there's other elements around anti semitism that that you're finding showed,

Matthew Cutler  36:15  
it's a great question, sir. You know, we didn't go deep, and I, I look to our colleagues at at, CJ and B'nai B'rith and others who monitor really closely antiSemitism in the country, for the expertise in this space, I think there's a there's a few things happening. There's no question that that these phenomena are on the rise. I think people have been given permission to give voice to perspectives that they had rightly thought they had to keep to themselves for a while, and so we're seeing on the surface now more and more perspectives that probably always existed, but just weren't, weren't openly shared. I also think you know that folks are becoming more attuned. This is one of the the interesting findings in the research for us around our upstander framework and personal encounters. We we have a finding here that says that in 2023 about 50 or 25% of people had experienced a human rights violation in Canada where their rights were harmed or restricted. So 25% of folks said yes, once or more than once, I've had this experience that went up to 31% in 2024 and so there's two ways to read that data. One is that six there's been 6% more violation happening in the last year, or that 6% more people are able to recognize it when it happens to them. And it's probably a mix of both of those things, but we also see this in the upstander index. So our museum has a framework that we use called the upstander framework. We believe that if people can recognize injustice, if they know the tools that they have at their disposal, their personal strengths and gifts, that they can then be upstanders when the moment arises right so you need to be able to recognize injustice, know your skills, and then be an upstander. And and we use that to create an index. Through the research, we bring together a bunch of answers of a number of questions to figure out who, who is showing up as a high up standard, a low up standard, or who doesn't have that upstander framework in their life right now? And and the number of high up standards has grown from 19% in 2023 to 28% in 2024 so a 9% increase. So those two data points together, people are are more likely to be an upstander today, and they're more likely to have experienced a violation. They somewhat go together because it it means that perhaps people are recognizing injustice in their lives a little more actively. Yes, there's probably also an increase, but they're also able to see it and and that's a good thing, because to be an upstander, you have to be able to recognize when it's happening to you and to people in your life as well. So so I do think you know, all of the data suggests that anti semitism and racism and Islamophobia and others are on the rise in this country, and we're noticing that people can recognize it better than they ever have before, and that means that they're better equipped to respond to it when it happens than ever before.

Stuart Murray  39:11  
You've done a nice job of sort of segueing into into the report on the up standards index. Can you just sort of share with with those listening? I mean, I we know what bystanders are. Just what's your definition of an upstander?

Matthew Cutler  39:24  
So the word upstander came from the US Ambassador to the UN and she, she started to use this upstander word, the more common word in the Human Rights world is to talk about human rights defenders. But, but the idea of defenders, I think, falls short for lots of folks. It's this idea that there are human rights and they need to be protected by us. We need to defend people from violation and human rights from from folks who might want to dismantle or undo them. But the upstander term is far more powerful from our perspective, because it it talks about what we can do every. Day in our life, it talks about us, individually and collectively, as being upstanders. So you, you readily point to bystanders as sort of the the comparison or the contrast. There, there are folks who can recognize injustice, but but will stand by and watch while it happens, whereas upstanders, because they not only can recognize it, but they they know what to do, and they have the community and the support around them that they will stand up. And I think that community and support piece is really important. When we did some audience research about Canadians preparing for a rebrand of the museum, we noticed that there were a lot of folks who were empathetic to human rights, but they weren't taking action. And one of the questions people asked is, maybe they're just not empowered. Maybe they don't know what to do. Our research shows that lots of folks actually know what to do. They know how to report to a commission or report to the police where necessary. They know how to resolve human rights issues when they're required to do so, but that doesn't mean that they will necessarily do it. And so when we talk about up standards, it's not just that you not just that you know where to go, who to call, you know how to step in and intervene, but also that you have the the social capital, the community around you, the support around you, that you feel safe to do it, and that that step is really important, right? Because folks often when they're bystanders, are bystanders because they don't know if they will be okay if they stand up right. They see someone's rights being violated, and they worry. They worry that stepping in. Some folks won't do it because they don't think it's necessary, or they don't feel called to it. But many people, I think there's something that they might lose if they if they stood up. And so being an upstander is about knowing the skills and tools, and that includes knowing that you've got a community of other human rights upstanders around you who are going to stand behind you and and support you in that work.

Stuart Murray  41:52  
And that's a great way to position some of the challenges, but looking at some of the optimism, because I do think that through the conversations that that the Canadian Museum for Human Rights has had, certainly at my time there, certainly as you're looking at sort of the new focus and where you're taking the Canadian Museum for Human Rights with the team there, Matthew this, this notion of upstanders, I think we spend a lot of time, as we should, explaining some of the challenges that we have had as a country, as a nation, and some of our our darker moments, but I don't think we should ever not lose sight of the fact that there are those champions out there. And again, I I use that word, and I'm prepared to sort of have it redacted Matthew, because I think a lot of times people say no champions. I sure that's the right word. You know, maybe upstanders should be that new go to word that is more of a generic sort of positive impact, where people can be known as upstanders, and it's not about, you know, sort of defenders champions. I mean, maybe those are yesterday's words. So my point is, is that we need to spend a lot of time exploring and giving platform to the people who are making a difference, who are taking the position that they're not accepting what they've seen in the past, particularly it could be around anti anti semitism or racism or homophobia, people are starting to take action on that, and I think to have that dialog and out there let people understand. Because, you know, I think two things on that, Matthew, one is, I think we need to shine a big, sexy spotlight on people that are doing that. Because I think, for the second thing is that some people sort of say, I don't quite know what my my toolbox should be to do that. Give me some sense of how I can do that inside, I'd like to do it. I'm just not sure how. So the upstander program, I think, is a great way to do that.

Matthew Cutler  43:36  
I agree. And I think that, you know, there's two pieces that come up for me as you were talking Stuart, that one is, is that our work around upstander so we certainly highlight those incredible folks who did whose lives brought them to a place where they could do really remarkable things. So we will still talk about Malala Yousafzai, or we will talk about the folks like Greta Thunberg, who are leading in big ways that none of us could even imagine having stepped into but but one of the things that we do, even as we tell those stories, is help people understand how accessible that that work can be, that you know, Malala just wanted to go to school and wanted to ensure that She and people like her could learn and schools. And so although her story has become this massive, international, important example for us in the Human Rights world, we often will bring it back down to why she's like us in the way that she did that work and the upstander program in schools, which is now in schools across the country, and we're just in a in a really significant expansion into Alberta to ensure that every, every classroom, or every school in Alberta has the upstander program thanks to a gift from Stu Clark. We're we base that on people. Finding out what they can do within their own lives. And so it's kind of like a science fair for human rights. They they investigate something that they care about in their community, and they work to take action on it through the development of an exhibition that they create in their classroom about that human rights story. And it it brings them into that space of understanding that even the biggest issues, racism, violence, war, that there's something we can do in our relationships, in our work, directly in our lives today, that will make a difference and and I think that's also that's the second piece for me about what you were saying that's really critical, is that when we developed our path forward 10 years out as a museum, looking at how we wanted to learn from the last 10 years and move forward. Our path forward says that we need to share stories that inspire action, host transformative experiences, model human rights practices in our work. But under all of that, at the center of all of that is the idea that we need to center relationships and and that piece around relationship, because of the data in this research that says that people trust people close to them, their friends and family, more than anyone else, where they feel safe, because we know that that's where people learn, but also because we know change is fractal. Change starts in ourselves. The change it happens in our relationships happens in our house and our family, happens in our neighborhood, and then happens nationally and globally, relationships are so, so critical to that and and relationships that allow us to be honest with each other are especially important. And I get the benefit of touring lots of diplomats and dignitaries through the museum quite regularly. It's amazing. You know, the the kinds of folks who make a point of coming to Winnipeg and coming to the museum because they want to engage in these conversations, is really lovely, but they're always struck by how willing Canadians are to talk about those tough moments as well as talking about how we're doing well. And I, you know, I, I highlight this, shine a big spotlight to use your language, because I do think it's the only way we continue to grow in the way Canadians always have, is if we're willing to both share and expose the points where we've done poorly, but to do it in a way that that still allows us to have hope and optimism and pride in who we are and move forward the moment that that conversation becomes binary, either we're too proud and too hopeful that we can't talk about the past and present the ways that we're falling short, or we're so caught up in the ways we're falling short that we can't also see the hope and optimism. I think we lose that essential piece of the learning relationship and the gross relationship that is inherent to who we are as Canadians.

Stuart Murray  47:43  
You know, if I was going to try to sum up our conversation, I couldn't do it any better than you just did. Matthew, thank you for sharing that. One of the things that we normally do on this podcast is, you know, ask sort of guests, experts like yourself, if there's any reading that you would suggest people look at, say, somebody, you know what, if people want to get more information about this, I mean, number one is, again, I want to make sure we highlight, and I'll do this in the Episode Notes of how to go down and download the four sites for Human Rights, which was the document at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Put out your 2023, 2024, findings. But Matthew, is there anything that you would sort of say to listeners? You know, here's some authors or books that people might want to check out.

Matthew Cutler  48:28  
I certainly think data is valuable. So I'd start with the foresight on Human Rights Report. The Center for Global pluralism has a great report on pluralism, as I mentioned, other organizations that work in this space or producing data, if you're curious about what other people think, and you want to make sure that you're not stuck in your own bias, right, your own view of the world. I would certainly encourage people to look for data and look for writing that disagrees with what you see, or at least pushes you outside of your normal bubble. I think secondarily, what I would say, whether it's from the podcast, from humanrights.ca or other trusted outlets, the number one thing that's come forward in this research is that if we're learning and growing ourselves, and we're willing to share that with people in our lives, we'll make the world a better place. And so I think at this stage, my encouragement is for folks to to build their knowledge base in areas maybe that they don't understand as well, or in areas that they want to make a change, and to not be afraid to share what they're learning and what they're curious about with people around them, because they they will have a profound impact on those folks who trust them and have a relationship with them, and so, so that's where I would be focusing my energy and time right now is building up my arsenal of of perspectives, of data, of knowledge about the past and present around human rights, and then talking about it as often as I can with people around me.

Stuart Murray  49:57  
Matthew, thank you for this. I do want to make sure. Sure that listeners know you're a little modest. You didn't say this at the beginning, but to the fact that you chair the board of the rainbow Resource Center, which is doing amazing work here. So congratulations on what you're doing there. And it's, it's, it's a great project to to undertake, and we are great work that you're doing as the vice president of the exhibition for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Thank you for taking the time to give us a bit of a sense of what is the impact of foresights for for human rights, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights document that you did, I assume you're going to think about doing another one a year from now, so you start to continue to get a little bit more data. Absolutely, I'm only saying that because I want to book you for this time next year, so I make sure you have you on the podcast. So thanks, Matthew, for your time. I really appreciate it, and congratulations on the great work you're doing

Matthew Cutler  50:50  
likewise. Thanks for having me, Stuart,

Matt Cundill  50:51  
thanks for listening to humans on rights. A transcript of this episode is available by clicking the link in the show notes of this episode. Humans on rights is recorded and hosted by Stuart Murray, social media marketing by Buffy Davie, music by Doug Edmond. For more, go to Human Rights hub.ca produced and distributed by the sound off media company you.