QUEER ONTARIO RELEASES ITS PRIDE TORONTO EVALUATION REPORT

Requests meeting with Pride Toronto in light of its current questionable mechanisms

Toronto, ON – May 16, 2011 – Queer Ontario has just released its Pride Toronto Evaluation Report
featuring 94 recommendations designed to clean up and democratize Pride Toronto’s governance and
planning processes, as promised in our boycott of the Community Advisory Panel back in August of
2010. Based on the feedback Queer Ontario received from an internal qualitative survey we
conducted in January – a copy of which has been appended to the report – these recommendations
address a number of critical concerns that were brought forward by our respondents: from the
organization’s failure to live up to its terms of reference and its inability to protect the needs and
interests of its constituent communities; to the micromanagerial and censorial way in which it has
been organizing the Pride Festival.

Indeed, there is a need and urgency for the Queer Ontario Report given that it provides a number of
counter-points to the recommendations set out in the report produced by the Community Advisory
Panel (CAP). For while we commend many of the recommendations put forward by the CAP in its
report – a number of which were congruent with ours – we also feel it houses some rather troubling
ones that compromise the expressive freedoms of Toronto’s LGBTQ communities. These include:

1. The Anti-Discrimination Policy (Recommendation 115)

While fine in principle, the requirement to have Pride marchers and parade participants sign
Pride Toronto’s anti-discrimination policy needs to be interrogated on two fronts. On the
one hand, as an attempt by Pride Toronto to curtail unfavourable political, sexual, or artistic
expression, especially since its anti-discrimination policy differs so widely from that of the
City of Toronto. And secondly, as a measure of how much Pride Toronto is trying to
appease its ‘allies’ – individuals and groups that should in theory be 100% accepting,
understanding, and supportive of the Pride Festival and everything it stands for.

2. The CAP Implementation / Policy Advisory Committee (Recommendation 26)

While we welcome the formation of a Policy Advisory Committee, which will help Pride
Toronto develop new policies to become a more efficient and responsive organization, we
question how effective this Committee will be if its mandate is also to properly implement
all the CAP’s recommendations. Indeed, we can only hope the Committee members have
the acuity to apprehend problematic recommendations given that no public process was put
in place to nominate, debate, or elect its members – just like Community Advisory Panel in
September of 2010, and the Dispute Resolution Panel in April of 2011.

3. The Dispute Resolution Process (Recommendation 129-131)

Lastly: we cannot help but notice that the principles of the Ethics Committee that was
formed and later rescinded by Pride Toronto in 2010 are being revived in the Dispute
Resolution Process. Although instead of making the review process one that is administered
by Pride Toronto, before the Parade, and mandatory for all participants, the Dispute
Resolution Process now transfers the regulatory powers onto a body of legal experts, after
the parade, and only once a community group has filed a complaint against another. So
much for ‘building community’.

Of course, were the Pride Toronto Board more personally engaged with its constituent
communities and more knowledgeable about who does or does not comprise Toronto’s
‘LGBTQ community’ (and why), such a Resolution Process would not be necessary in the

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 first place. Pride Toronto’s ability to confidently and articulately defend a group’s
participation in the Parade would suffice in these trying cases.

Since these three mechanisms represent a threat to the freedom of speech and the freedom of
expression Toronto’s LGBTQ communities have fought so long to secure – a history that Pride
Toronto should be conscious of given its commitment to ‘build upon’ and ‘celebrate’ the history of
Toronto’s LGBTQ communities – we are calling on Pride Toronto to halt its ‘wholesale’
implementation of the CAP recommendations and to continue its dialogue with Toronto’s LGBTQ
communities. Not only to receive more systematic feedback on the CAP Report and the consultation
process that begot it, but to also receive and consider other recommendations which were not included
in the CAP Report – be it because of the unconsultative way in which the Community Advisory Panel
was struck; or the corporatist, political, or class biases of its members.

We call on Pride Toronto, then, to revisit its own mission statement which still remains committed to
celebrating all of Toronto’s LGBTQ communities, regardless of their identities, politics, or
expressions. After all, a mission to celebrate the diversity of Toronto’s LGBTQ community includes a
commitment to unapologetically encourage the display of all kinds of LGBTQ expression – from the
fun and the frivolous to the ‘political’, the ‘controversial,’ and the ‘shocking.’ Especially if one of
Pride Toronto’s values is to celebrate its constituent communities with “provocative, racy, and
outrageous events.”

Indeed, it is time for Pride Toronto to reverse the resentful and community-phobic approach it has
been using to guide the organization over the last five years, and to begin a more responsive, and
respectful, era of Pride-community relations.

The public is welcome to provide feedback and commentary on the Queer Ontario Report via the
Queer Ontario website, and are encouraged to share their own concerns and recommendations with
the Pride Toronto Board, directly.

-30-

* Queer Ontario Boycotts Pride Community Consultations due to Flawed Process

http://queerontario.org/2010/08/30/queer-ontario-boycotts-pride-community-consultations-due-to-
flawed-advisory-panel-process/#more-972

Queer Ontario is a provincially based network of individuals who are members of the gender and
sexually diverse populations and their allies committed to liberationist and sex positive principles
that focus on questioning, challenging and seeking reform to social norms and laws that regulate
queer people. Queer Ontario engages in public education, political action, promoting access and
diversity and coalition building.

Interviews:
Nick Mulé
Chairperson,
Queer Ontario
416.926.9135
nickm@look.ca