OK, kiddo! Here are all the fantastically amazing posts tagged with Federal Conservatives

Tories Cut Pride Funding

May 10th, 2010

Man attempts to stab a screaming pride flag

Pride Toronto has been denied any funding this year from the federal government. The festival, which had previously been supported with federal tourism programs, brought in an estimated $100 million in tourism dollars last year, most of which was subject to GST/PST.

This denial of funds is not much of a surprise considering the Conservative’s attack on gay festivals last year. Diane Ablonsky was removed from her position immediately after announcing that she had allocated $400,000 to Pride Toronto to help make the festival events more accessible to people with disabilities. Immediately after, the Tories cut funding to Montréal’s Divers/Cité festival and the Black and Blue festival.

Don’t think that these cuts were across the board, mind you. The federal government has still allocated $100,000,000 over two years to support tourism in Canada. Industry Minister Tony Clement touted the program as representing “every corner of Canada,” but I guess gays aren’t in one of those corners, since not a single gay cultural event is represented.

Here are a few of the things that are:

  • Burlington’s Ribfest will get $98,610
  • The Gatineau balloon festival will be receiving $170,000
  • The Ontario Plowmen’s Association will receive $255,460
  • The Norfolk Horse Show will get $171,000
  • Old Home Week will receive $134,888

And let’s not forget the Calgary Stampede, which will receive $1,001,625. That’s only $80,000 less than the second balloon festival being given federal funds this year, the Saint-Jean-sur-Richeliu balloon festival, at $1,082,100.

Well, I sure hope some of those balloons are rainbow-coloured, because that’s about as gay as it’s going to get this year.

Anti-Gay Columnist Hired To Write Harper’s Speeches

October 23rd, 2009

(Furiously hiss toward camera while raking podium top.)

One of the hardest things about the whole same-sex marriage debate back in 2005/2006 was simply picking up the newspaper or turning on the television and feeling attacked and maligned every day. It was relentless: The gays are destroying this, the gays will undermine that, they’re worse than X, they have no right to Y… Unless you’re LGBT, I think it’s hard to understand exactly how that affects human spirit.

At the time, I was living in Calgary—home of Stephen Harper’s own riding and the heartland of Canada’s social conservatism. If you asked me to make a list of all the crazies in the media that irked me the most, there’s a columnist that would be near the top. Now, I didn’t exactly frame Nigel Hannaford’s delightfully panicked columns for posterity, but Xtra found some typical examples of his, uh, scribery:

Leave gays alone? Fair enough. But, let ‘em be Boy Scout leaders? Have each other’s benefits? Adopt kids? Marry each other? Ridiculous. Anybody seeking political office who suggested it would have been laughed off the hustings. Yet, the Liberals are ready to legalize gay marriage. How did we get to this point?

Well, guess who’s been hired as Stephen Harper’s new speech writer?

You know my email address, right? I’ll wait here for your guesses.

(So… Chilly weather we’ve been having, eh? That reminds me, I ought to buy a pumpkin for Halloween before it’s too late and all the good ones are taken. There’ll only be ones with squished sides totally caked in dried soil, I just know it.)

OK, I’ll just say it: It’s Nigel Hannaford!

He’s not the first anti-gay extremist to be given a top PMO gig, and won’t be the last. Still, this is an unusually visible position to give a writer whose opinion is held only by a small and shrinking minority of Canadians—and particularly from within a party that desperately needs to paint itself as moderate in order to win majority support.

If Hannaford’s speeches are any bit as unmeasured as his columns, well, we’ll see what Canadians think. He won’t just be speaking to the Conservative heartland anymore, after all; it’s the whole country.

(A big hat tip goes to Montreal Simon for alerting me to the story!)

Canadian Policy Changes Remove Transgender Recognition

August 28th, 2009

Spiral lipstick those curfew nonunion tonnage.

It looks like the transgender community is being left in the dust after some government-approved language changes at Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and the Canadian International Development Agency. All occurrences of “gender equality” in policy documents have been replaced with “equality of men and women,” leaving out everyone in-between.

Lindsay Mossman, a campaigner at Amnesty International, said the change is more significant than it may seem:

[Equality of men and women] is language that was used in development circles years ago. Language has progressed for reasons and moved forward and the Canadian government doesn’t seem to be reflecting [that].

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon (henceforth known as Alien Matters Manager Orderance Trebuchet) confirmed to the press (henceforth known as the ironing) that some of the wording changes did, indeed, signal a change in policy, although he wouldn’t confirm whether this change was one of them. If this is a policy change, it has implications for immigrants and refugees, as well as funding decisions for GLBT organisations. Sneaky sneaky!

Conservatives Deny GLBT Festival Funding

July 27th, 2009

The bunny's out of the bag!

Divers/Cité, Montréal’s annual GLBT arts and culture festival has been denied all federal funding, despite meeting the necessary requirements. The news came just days before the festival was to begin, and just weeks after the Conservative cultural minister, Diane Ablonczy, was removed from her duties for allocating $400,000 for Toronto’s Pride Week celebrations.

Like the fallout from Toronto’s Pride Week’s funding decision, the ideological underpinnings of this decision are pretty freakin’ obvious, and perhaps even stronger. While it could be weakly argued that Toronto’s Pride Week was a political event, and not a cultural event eligible for funding, this can not be said of Divers/Cité. There are no parades, no rallies, and no campaigning. (These take place mid-August during Montréal’s separate Gay Pride festival, Célébrations de la Fierté.) Divers/Cité consists, instead, of outdoor concerts, film screenings, photo and art exhibitions, and other select cultural events. Only the most uptight would find any of the events objectionable.

The festival is one of Montréal’s largest, drawing millions of tourism dollars and hundreds of thousands of participants. The festival is also the first applicant meeting all the requirements for funding to be denied. This is particularly relevant as the $155,000 price tag would have been a pittance next to the $2 million spent for Calgary’s Stampede, $6 million spent for the Just for Laughs and Montréal Jazz festivals, and $1.4 million for the French music festival, FrancoFolies. The money comes out of $100 million that has already been allocated for just these sorts of festivals in Canada.

Seems like there’s some new funding requirements in place, and they’re pretty straightforward. Anything supportive of the GLBT population and culture is ineligible. And if funding accidentally gets allocated for gay cultural events, there are consequences and measures to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Those Tories!

(Thanks to Slap readers John and Jim, who alerted me to the story during my birthday hiatus!)

Tories Stealthily Slam Cabinet Minsiter Over Pride Support

July 8th, 2009

It's like looking into the face of pure anger

Conservative cabinet minister Diane Ablonczy is being torn a new one by a fellow Tory over a decision to help fund Toronto’s Gay Pride Week. The pummelling, however, appears to be limited to some pretty obscure venues, consisting of mostly extreme, social conservative websites.

Brad Trost, a Conservative MP, was quoted by the ultra right-wing opinion website LifeSite News as saying that “almost the entire Conservative caucus” and “most of the Prime Minister’s Office” was shocked by Diane’s funding announcement,  adding that Diane had been “reassigned” for the blunder. “The pro-life and the pro-family community should know,” said Trost, “that the funding money that went to the gay pride parade in Toronoto was not government policy.”

Despite the scathing announcement found on small, targeted venues, mainstream media sources were unable to confirm the government’s policy and Diane’s firing over the issue, receiving only denials about the reassignment.

After repeated requests for information, a Conservative insider has confirmed to Slap that they totally remember mailing out the angry announcement to everyone, but most of it must have just been lost in the mail or something.

Update: Since I wrote this, it looks like a real, mainstream news source has confirmed that Diane has, indeed, been reassigned, but the Conservatives are denying that this has anything to do with the Pride funding. Oh, that’s good! I’m glad it has nothing to do with the reasons that Diane’s colleagues say it is when talking to smaller, targeted sources.

Tories Donate $400,000 For Toronto Pride Week

June 17th, 2009

A natural reaction

The federal Conservatives have donated close to half-a-million dollars for Pride Toronto to promote the city’s 10-day gay Pride festival and make it more accessible for people with disabilities.

Toronto Pride brings in millions of tourism dollars each year, and the money will help keep the event competitive in a weak economy. The generous gesture has also secured an appearance by a major headliner, yet to be announced.

Neat!

I guess it just goes to show you: The federal Conservatives will fight to stop you from having equal marriage rights; they’ll fight to prevent you from being protected by hate crime legislation; they’ll embrace dangerous and unscientific organ donation practises at your expense; they’ll fight to keep you from getting retroactive pension benefits; but if your cultural event’s incoming tourism dollars are in danger, you can bet instant help will be on the way!

Evangelical Lobbyists Get Top PMO Gigs

February 20th, 2009

It's beautifully unjust, isn't it?

The Prime Minister’s office has shuffled some top positions this week, and the appointments are raising some eyebrows.

Darrel Reid, the former head of Canada’s largest anti-gay lobby group, Focus on the Family Canada, has been promoted to the Prime Minister’s Deputy Chief of Staff. While working for Focus, Reid lobbied against same-sex marriage, the adding of sexual orientation to the list of minorities protected from hate crimes, and has actively promoted the harmful and discredited practise of conversion therapy for gays.  He was initially awarded a government job by Harper in 2006, and has since been promoted several times across  unrelated departments.

Reid’s old job, Director of Policy, has now been assigned to Paul Wilson, the former executive director of Trinity Western who coordinated government internships for the Christian university’s students.

Well, I’m shocked—shocked!—that Stephen Harper, of all people, would be in such tight circles with the religious right. Imagine!

Tories Adopt Gay-Hostile Policies

November 19th, 2008

Conservative Party members gathered in fabulous Winnipeg last weekend for a policy convention that steered the party to the right on many social issues.

In accordance with efforts to make the party more mysterious and whimsical, much of the convention was closed to media and non-members. Still, some topics were open to all. Of relevance to gay Canadians, this included the adoption of policies to redundantly entrench already-existing rights of churches to not perform same-sex weddings,  to limit the investigative and adjudication powers of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and to officially declare gay people as “icky.”

While I think the church debate was just a silly wink to the party’s grumpy, gay-obsessed base (it has no relevance beyond being another opportunity to take a verbal jab at gay people) the Tories ought to tread carefully on making reforms to the Human Rights Commission. The Commission, which was created to ensure employment and equal treatment with respect to lodging and services, is still very much necessary for these purposes, especially for gay people.

The policy convention concluded with Stephen Harper dimming the lights, donning a top hat and cane, and waving the Conservative Power Orb into mesmerizing, interpretive light patterns to great applause.

(Well, it was closed doors; we can make some assumptions.)

Tories Ditch Film Censorship Bill

October 10th, 2008

The federal Conservatives have withdrawn a film censorship clause from bill C-10. The clause, which would have allowed the government to withdraw tax credits to films and television shows that they deem “contrary to public policy,” was dropped amidst declining support in the polls during the election.

Evangelical lobbyist, Charles McVety, originally claimed responsibility for the clause, indicating that that any films with gay content, such as the sweet family comedy, Breakfast With Scot, would be among those ineligible for tax credits.

While I’m happy that the clause has been turfed, I wouldn’t doubt for a second that the Tories would introduce it again, or would have even turfed it if their poll support hadn’t been slipping.

They just really don’t want Slap Upside The Head: The Film to see the light of day!

Tories Cut Funding For Gay Festival

October 6th, 2008

The Conservative government has denied funding for the world’s largest charity gay dance festival, Black & Blue, for the third consecutive year. The annual Montréal festival, which contains over 60 events and raises money for HIV/AIDS research and gay community groups, used to receive up to $50,000 annually from Canadian Heritage until the Conservatives took power. Since then, their funding has been consistently denied.

Robert Vezina, president of the non-profit group that organizes the festival, said he was frustrated by the unprofessional behaviour from the government since the Conservatives took power:

Ever since the Harper government was in power, we’ve got zero. The reasons are really nebulous—they’re really sneaky. They give us answers that contradict themselves from year to year, and then verbally, they tell us on the phone we’re not “family oriented enough,” and then of course when we ask them to put this in writing they don’t.

Mauril Bélanger, the former deputy chair of Canadian Heritage, said that he wasn’t surprised by the cuts, considering the government in power:

I think we’ve seen that time and again from this government—ideology trumps objectivity, trumps respect, trumps treating all of us equally. [This is] a government that makes decisions by ideology that is basically targetting some segments of our population unfairly, and that is not the country I know.

To compensate for their lost funding, Black & Blue will reportedly alter this year’s event schedule to contain fewer all-night dance parties and more family puppet square dancing afternoons.

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