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QUEER ONTARIO on the PROVINCIAL ELECTION (2 June 2022)

May 24th, 2022

The upcoming Provincial Election provides an important opportunity to consider an interlocking slate of issues aimed toward a transformative vision of social change that challenges a range of social and material inequalities without leaving marginalized communities behind.  

Queer Ontario invites all Ontarians, and especially 2SLGBTQ+ Ontarians, to consider these 12 areas and their attendant issues in the run up to the Ontario Provincial Election on June 2, 2022:

  1. Housing Precarity, Affordability, and Homelessness
  2. Food Security
  3. Income Security/ Funding for ODSP
  4. Public Education and 2SLGBTQ+ people, including moving to one public school system by ending funding for Catholic education and improving access to gender-affirming sexual education grounded in equity and evidence.
  5. Sex worker rights and repealing Bill 251
  6. Policing and Prisons; overhauling the carceral state (towards abolition)
  7. Programs addressing anti-Black, anti-Asian racism
  8. Basic income/elimination of poverty
  9. Decolonizing relations with Indigenous communities
  10. Healthcare reform, including enhancing access to gender-affirming care for Two-Spirit, Trans* and non-binary people
  11. Progressive and non-punitive drug use policies; decriminalization of all drugs
  12. Better community and social supports in the above areas (including support for Two-Spirit, Trans*, non-binary, BIPOC and other individuals and groups facing disproportionate discrimination in the areas of health, housing, and employment)

Ask yourself where each of the parties stand on these issues before heading to the polls in June! We have an opportunity to re-think our social order, re-examine the distribution and allotment of resources, and re-imagine a society that places deep equity at the core. In doing so, we challenge white supremacy, racism, anti-Indigeneity, colonial relations in all spheres of activity, heterosexism and cis-genderism among numerous other oppressions.

Long-standing intersecting oppressions have been exacerbated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the neoliberal response of the Provincial Government to this ongoing crisis.  The health of the economy continues to be prioritized over that of the public through policing and the inflexible enforcement of uniform government regulations on 2SLGBTQ+ and other marginalized populations without a corresponding provision of community-responsive social, economic, and healthcare supports.

Overall Queer Ontario sets its vision beyond the electoral cycle and, given the interlocking and nested global crises represented by climate change, global pandemics, and deepening poverty (including global water, food, and housing crises) that all people work toward a new social contract that prioritizes deep equity, profound economic transformations, and anti-discrimination. This requires moving away from models of liberal inclusion that fail to question or disturb the structural forces of settler-colonialism, cis-heterosexual hegemony, etc. and to address head on the root causes of the many social, political, and economic forces that continue to foster dangerous inequities in communities across the province.

Queer Ontario is a provincial network of gender and sexually diverse individuals — and their allies — who are committed to questioning, challenging, and reforming the laws, institutional practices, and social norms that regulate queer people. Operating under liberationist and sex-positive principles, we fight for accessibility, recognition, and pluralism, using social media and other tactics to engage in political action, public education, and coalition-building.

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