SOURCE: Wikipedia, captured 2020-08-13
Peter Munk, CC [Order of Canada] (November 8, 1927 -- March 28, 2018) was a Hungarian-born Canadian businessman, investor, and philanthropist. He was the founder and chief executive officer of a number of high-profile business ventures, including the hi-fi electronics company Clairtone, real estate company Trizec Properties, and Barrick Gold, the world's largest gold-mining corporation. The Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto and the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre at the Toronto General Hospital are named for him.
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In 1992, the Peter and Melanie Munk Charitable Foundation was founded. It has disbursed more than $300 million to a variety of organizations that work to improve the health, education and international reputation of Canadians. In a speech he delivered in September 2017, on announcing a $100 million donation to the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre at the Toronto General Hospital, Munk spoke of his philanthropy in the context of his gratitude to the country that saved his life: "You opened the door. You gave us everything," he added, referring to Canada as "paradise."
Munk was a major donor to the University of Toronto, his alma mater. Beginning with a gift of $35 million in 2010, the Munk Foundation enabled the establishment of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. In total, Munk gave $51 million to his alma mater. The Peter Munk Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management is named after him.
Peter Munk also made a substantial donation of $43 million to Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology to establish that university's Peter Munk Research Institute.
In 2016, Munk made a $5 million donation to the Fraser Institute, a think tank, to launch the Peter Munk Centre for Free Enterprise Education. As well, with a $12 million donation from Aurea Foundation, a sub-division of his primary charitable foundation, Peter Munk established the semi-annual Munk Debates in 2008.
See also this extensive list of Canadian nonprofit thinktanks and charitable foundations (all influencer organizations) co-funded by Peter Munk. Many of those same groups also received Koch family-linked funding -- see my Commentary in my Aurea Foundation file.
In 1997, Munk helped create the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre at the Toronto General Hospital with an initial donation of $6 million. In May 2006, he announced that he would donate another $37 million, at the time the largest gift ever made to a Canadian medical institution. In September 2017, he donated another $100 million. As well, Peter and Melanie Munk established University Health Network's first endowed chair for the cardiac program: the Melanie Munk Chair in Cardiovascular Surgery.
A 2009 contract [local copy (pdf)] between the Munk Foundation and the University of Toronto came under criticism due to the secrecy that shrouded its approval, and the fact that Munk's contribution of $35 million were conditional on $25 million contributions each by the federal government and the university. Coming at a time of downsizing and threats to the funding of other academic units, critics charge that these decisions are emblematic of the government's and the University's ceding of academic resource allocation decisions to the corporate sector.
According to Linda McQuaig's book, "The Trouble with Billionaires," Munk's donation to the University of Toronto came with strings attached to ensure that the school would "fit with the political views and sensitivities of Peter Munk." McQuaig writes that "according to Munk's written agreement with the university, the Munk donations will be paid over an extended time period, with much of the money to be paid years from now -- and subject to the Munk family's approval of the school. For that matter, the school's director will be required to report annually to a board appointed by Munk 'to discuss the programs, activities and initiatives of the School in greater detail.'"
University president David Naylor rejected personal attacks on donors as "a deplorable affront to the values of rational and respectful discourse that are supposed to characterize a university" and stated "I later served on the board of the University Health Network, in the years when Dr. Munk made two gifts exceeding $40 million to support the cardiovascular program at that hospital. There was not a single instance where Peter Munk interfered with the educational, research or clinical priorities of the institution."
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