'This can't be the new normal': LGBTQ2S+ advocates call on all levels of government to address hate

Activists are calling on all levels of government to come together to stand against "an alarming rise" of anti-LGBTQ2S+ hate after a Pride month punctuated by an increased number of anti-LGBTQ2S+ protests and attacks.

In a Tuesday press conference in Ottawa, which featured speakers from several local and national LGBTQ2S+ organizations and Ottawa city councillors, advocates called for action that goes beyond words.

"Our queer spaces are under protest, online rhetoric that demonizes our community is on the rise, and I'm hearing from Pride organizers, drag performers and community leaders that they're receiving death threats and other heinous attacks on their identity and their very humanity," Fae Johnstone, president of LGBTQ2S+ advocacy group Momentum Canada, said.

They are asking for more collaboration between levels of government to fight against hate, and for LGBTQ2S+ organizations to be given more funding in order to properly support their communities.

The call comes a week after an assailant stabbed two students and a professor teaching a course on gender issues at the University of Waterloo, in what police say was a hate-motivated attack.

It also follows a string of incidents in Ottawa, including a protest outside of a public school in early June in which participants trampled Pride flags and criticized "gender ideology," and homophobic slurs were hurled at the victim during an assault and robbery last week, according to police.

"Across the country, we know that anti-2SLGBTQIA+ hate is on the rise, from hate-motivated attacks and the stabbing that we saw at the University of Waterloo last week, Pride flags being ripped apart and burned in Halifax in the spring, efforts to rollback inclusion for trans students in schools in New Brunswick," Toby Whitfield, executive director of Capitol Pride in Ottawa, said at the press conference.

"These acts, and especially those targeting events for children and families, are an effort to demonize queer and trans people and our culture."

• Read more: Rising hate casts pall over Pride, spotlights need for protest along with celebration

The organizations speaking at the press conference had a message for "every level of government," Whitfield said: "We need you to be in solidarity with us, with queer and trans people and communities across this country, and here in Ottawa.

"This cannot be our new normal."

Speaking on CTV Ottawa Morning Live on Tuesday ahead of the press conference, Johnstone said that while different levels of government have different roles, there's a part they could all play together.

"We'd like to see investment in community-based organizations and interventions to address misinformation and support people impacted by hate, and we'd also like to see a strong reflection of queer and trans communities in the upcoming national action plan on combating hate," she said.

"I think we need the federal government to use their convening power, because we're seeing this in every single part of the country, and we need a 'whole of government' and 'whole of society' response."

Johnstone knows from experience how swiftly anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ2S+ rhetoric can escalate to dangerous harassment and calls for violence.

She faced what she described as a "tsunami of death threats" after Tucker Carlson mentioned her in a segment prior to being let go from Fox News, she said in the press conference.

After she was featured as one of five women on a Hershey’s chocolate bar in a campaign for International Women's Day, she received so many threats that the chocolate company assigned security guards to protect her for a week.

"The degree of threats targeting me was so severe that they were worried that it would lead to an in-person altercation," she said.

She told CTV Ottawa many people "don't realize how targeted and personal that kind of hate is when it comes to a trans person. I had my old legal name leaked, I had pre-transition photos of me posted all over, I had horrifying caricatures and memes made about me."

Her worry is less for herself, she said, and more for those in the broader community who witnessed the hate aimed at her.

"What message does this send to other trans people who want to be in public life, who want to run for office, be on shows like yours today, and the risk is rising, and that is what scares me," she said.

PROTESTS, ATTACKS GROWING MORE COMMON

In early June, protestors showed up outside of an Ottawa school claiming that letting children know that transgender people exist amounted to 'indoctrination.' They were met with hundreds of counter-protestors who said they were there to ensure school remained safe for LGBTQ2S+ children. Five people were arrested in connection with the protest.

"It's very difficult to see the amount of hatred against trans kids, especially in front of a school," former Ottawa city councillor Catherine McKenney told CTV News Ottawa at the time.

A few weeks later, graffiti including anti-LGBTQ2S+ messaging was "found across a portable at Manor Park Public School," Whitfield said during Tuesday's press conference.

Ottawa city councillor Laine Johnson spoke at the press conference about an alleged hate-motivated attack occurring in her ward last week.

Three youth have been charged for their role in an assault and robbery, during which "hateful comments were uttered to the victim and with respect to members of 2SLGBTQQIA+ communities," police said.

Johnson said she was "heartbroken," to hear of the incident.

"I am not shocked, but I am … deeply concerned about what is being understood as being a new normal," she said.

"The mainstreaming of this hate should be of concern for all of us because, of course, anti-trans and anti-queer hate is what we see today, but this grows. This is a human rights issue that could affect any one of us or any one of our families. So we must pay attention."

Drag queen storytime at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa has seen protestors several times, including last week, who were outnumbered by community support each time.

Drag storytime events are public events in which drag performers read stories to children at libraries, community centres schools. The events are designed to be family-friendly, but that hasn't stopped protestors from raising their objections at events from Calgary to Halifax, claiming that drag is inappropriate for children.

One protestor who picketed outside a library in Parkhill, Ontario, in late April, told CTV News London that he didn't agree with "sexualizing the outfits that they're wearing while they're reading to kids." The man, 34-year-old Bubba Pollack, then admitted that he had never actually attended a drag queen storytime event. Pollack is now facing charges of criminal harassment connected to his anti-LGBTQ2S+ activism.

A disturbingly common theme in these incidents, according to LGBTQ2S+ activists, is the focus on children and education.

In New Brunsick, Premier Blaine Higgs has faced serious backlash, including from within his own party, for changes to an education policy that makes it so teachers cannot refer to a trans or non-binary student by the pronouns and name they ask for unless they have parental permission. He has framed the changes as bringing "parents back into the equation," but critics have accused him of carrying out a "personal agenda" unfairly targeting trans students.

Debbie Owusu-Akyeeah, executive director of the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity, said at the press conference that far-right activists are "using young people as that wedge issue." It's one of the reasons that the stabbing at the University of Waterloo was so distressing, she said.

Before the assailant stabbed the professor, he asked what the title and subject matter of the class was, police said last week. His purpose was to "target that subject matter of gender identity and gender expression," Waterloo Regional Police Chief Mark Crowell said.

The professor and one other student sustained serious, but not life-threatening injuries, while a third student sustained non-life-threatening injuries. Geovanny Villalba-Aleman, a 24-year-old who had previously graduated from the school, has been charged in connection with the stabbing.

On Wednesday, six days after the attack, the university said it would be continuing the gender studies course which was targeted.

In a statement released on Twitter Tuesday, University president Vivek Goel said while some may choose not to continue with the course "it is essential that it remain in place."

"A professor and two students were brutally stabbed, and an entire class was terrorized, simply because of the subject that was being taught."

Owusu-Akyeeah said that she felt deeply affected by the stabbing.

"As an individual, as someone who grew her activist wings within the student movement, who is the proud graduate of a woman and gender studies program at Carleton University, these conversations are important and school spaces are critical for us to have these conversations," she said. "Firstly, because historically, they didn't happen. Education was often that tool to determine who belonged in society and who didn't, and so again that fight to ensure that we are talking about these things, the space that post-secondary institutions do and giving us access to certain theory and the opportunity to put that theory into practice, is super key and important."

It's not just universities. Her organization does work nationally, but is headquartered in Ottawa, and she said that they saw an "alarming trend" last fall during municipal elections, with many candidates running for school board trustee with the goal of "disrupting progressive education."

• Read more: Anti-LGBTQ2S+ groups trying to elect 'god-fearing' and 'anti-woke' school board trustees, group says

It's all part of the greater trend of hate increasing country-wide, she said.

"This government has a responsibility to stop dragging its feet to slow the spread of all kinds of hatred and bigotry in this country."

ORGANIZATIONS NEED MORE SUPPORT

Another thing advocates called for in the press conference is for more funding for local organizations that support the LGBTQ2S+ community. Organizations that Johnstone says are "struggling on shoestring budgets," utilizing volunteers and working full-time hours at jobs that weren't meant to be full-time.

"The solution to rising hate is to invest in community organizations to help them strengthen their work and to do it in a way that centres those most marginalized."

Khaled Salam, executive director at AIDS Committee of Ottawa, said at the press conference that his is one of the organizations that is "under resourced" and "always forgotten."

"We don't have the resources to provide the kind of services our communities need as is," Salam said. "Rising hate will worsen the already precarious health, safety and wellbeing of our community … embolden harassers and increase the anxiety of our service users."

He added that the City of Ottawa recently turned down their application for funding that they had long relied on.

"It's almost like we're regressing, it feels," he said. "Not only are we not seeing improvement, we're actually seeing that we're taking two steps back."

There has been reaction from governments to push back against the threat of anti-LGBTQ2S+ hate with more funding: in early June, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged $1.5 million for increased security at Pride events this summer in order to ensure they stay safe.

But advocates say security isn't a long-term solution, and that they would like to see funding also being put into community-based alternatives to policing.

Whitfield called on the City of Ottawa at Tuesday's press conference to fund "frontline services to support and respond to community members who are being targeted."

He noted that he's echoing recommendations made in a 2019 report commissioned by the City to identify service gaps for Ottawa’s LGBTQ2S+ community, and that the City is aware these gaps exist.

This is far from the first time that the LGBTQ2S+ community has raised flags around rising hate, however, it's getting more and more dangerous to receive muted responses from governments, activists say.

"I think my worry is that we imagine the homophobes are like our great uncle who hasn't gotten with the times, and we don't do justice to the amount of money and resourcing that is driving the rise in hate around the world," Johnstone said. "There is a global movement here."

Johnstone adds it can be easy to pretend that Canada is exempt from serious homophobic and transphobic rhetoric, particularly when more drastic anti-LGBTQ2S+ legislation targeting education and transgender health is being introduced almost weekly in the U.S., but said we can't be blind to what is happening in our own country.

"We do a disservice to our own communities that have struggled for generations to advance queer and trans inclusion in this country when we imagine it's an American problem. And that Canadian naivete only blinds us from taking rising hate seriously and putting in the resources and supports that our organizations need to tackle this hate head on," Johnstone said.

"It is all too easy to imagine it can't happen here. But in 10 years of advocacy, I've never been as worried about where we'll be in five years as I am today."