Queer Ontario announces that it will not be participating in the upcoming Pride Toronto Community Consultations to be conducted by the Advisory Panel currently being assembled by Pride Toronto. The group sees the process of constituting the Panel as fundamentally flawed and inconsistent with the values and principles of community relations and community engagement. Queer Ontario raises the following questions regarding the striking of the Pride Toronto Advisory Panel:

• Given Pride Toronto’s establishment of the panel to answer to the concerns of the community — one being a lack of transparency on the part of the organization — why has this entire process been shrouded in secrecy without any consultation with the community? More fundamentally: why is Pride Toronto opposed to meeting directly with the very community it so urgently needs to re-establish a relationship with?
  

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Pride Toronto announced on June 23rd that it has passed a resolution to reverse its ban of the phrase “Israeli Apartheid” at all Pride events, which will now be replaced by a policy requiring all participating groups to review and sign the City of Toronto’s Declaration of a Non-Discrimination Policy. In addition, the organization has also proposed to appoint a panel of ‘LGBTTIQQ2SA leaders and friends’ that would oversee the ‘protection’ and ‘advancement’ of the festival’s core values and principles by consulting directly with members of the community. The reversal comes just over a month to the day that Pride Toronto announced it would play censor with the LGBT communities to appease city councilors, bureaucrats and corporate sponsors. Queer Ontario applauds the change in policy, but is raising a series of questions regarding the process that led to this latest decision and how it will be implemented.

Queer Ontario founder, Nick Mulé says, “Although Douglas Elliott, Brent Hawkes and Maura Lawless the three individuals who proposed the resolutions should be commended for assisting Pride Toronto in reversing the ban, the way this was conducted and is being characterized is highly suspect. At a time in which protests in this city are growing in response to G20 leaders meeting behind closed doors the same process being undertaken with this controversy undermines efforts made by the community.” As such, Queer Ontario raises the following questions:
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_wp7l3sxao&w=600&h=375]

Queer Ontario’s Nick Mulé is interviewed by rabble.ca about the history of attempts to censor LGBT activists at Toronto’s Pride Parades.