2019 marks 50 years since the Stonewall rebellion, now regarded as the watershed moment in American and even global (Euro-American-centric) queer liberation. A hot summer night at the mafia-run Stonewall Inn in New York City became a six-day-long riot after queers refused to submit to police violence, and its anniversary is now celebrated as the turning point in the course of LGBTQ2S+ history.

The American celebration of this anniversary is marked this year by sponsored events such as WorldPride, as well a plenitude of institutional commemorations. Love and Resistance: Stonewall 50 is an exhibition in the New York Public Library’s main branch on Fifth Avenue, lit in deep lavenders, cobalt, and neon red made to look like the iconic bar’s signage. The show is replete with “little magazines” (what we would now call zines, or chapbooks) and photos of the years directly preceding, and then after, the Stonewall rebellion. Before 1969, the photographs are mostly in silhouette, hiding the identity of the subject; newspaper articles ridiculing pansies and drag queens. Pamphlets, handouts, and other paper ephemera line the walls as the public gains of the era generated more press, more attention and more celebration. It showcases community joy: the dances, the bars, and party culture. But Love and Resistance was deliberately culled in its curatorial scope so that the materials highlight the activism of a first generation fighting for “gay liberation,” but elided any material related to hiv/aids. While this is often how the historical timeline is divided, curator Jason Baumann aimed with this exhibition to inspire our contemporary population to action and activism. By framing the exhibition as a triumph over adversity and leaving out contemporary struggle, the Stonewall moment is effectively neutralized. Stigma around HIV/AIDS; transsexual, transgender, and gender non-conforming people—even the fight for equal employment rights is far from over across North America. There are numerous ongoing struggles in the queer community. These must be addressed through legal frameworks, policy reform, and destigmatization of sexual identity and behaviour within Canada and the United States. The potential energy of the Stonewall anniversary flags in its efforts to galvanize people to activism when it’s positioned as separate and disconnected.

But we’ve made it this far, and we’ve minted it now.

The shining new “gay loonie” was launched on April 23, 2019 commemorating the 50th anniversary of Bill C-150, which is also cited as the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1968-69, and Omnibus bill of 1969. Our collective memory echoes the words of (Pierre) Trudeau:”…there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.” In this statement, he was referring to the reform that was tucked into the bill marking Canada’s first move towards state deregulation of sexual conduct. While C-150 lessened the official censure of gay sex—only acceptable in private between two consenting adults over 21—the taboo of gay life was still a pesky, divisive topic. In the bill there is no mention of the word “homosexual” and instead this bill aimed at widespread decriminalization of sodomy and other sexual acts between two adult persons. The decriminalization of gay sex was a by-product of protections and non-interference by the Canadian government—all the bedrooms of the nation would be safe as long as there was no public display, or group sex. This wall between the public and private served as a thin barrier between pseudo-legality and gross indecency.

Bill C-150 was neither a strident act for the rights of queer people in Canada, nor one that would solve social homophobia. The milquetoast effect of the bill—neither fully legalizing gay sex nor actively outlawing discrimination against queer people—today represents the peak of homobanality that floats into gay villages every summer. Scholars and activists have contested the release and celebration of the coin. The Anti-69 Network is a group of affiliated scholars and activists across the country against the shoring up of the “myth” of 1969, as historian Tom Hooper of York University states. The network points to the underlying insidious nature of the ’69 criminal code reform. Their actions include the organization of the Anti-69 conference, Against the Mythologies of the 1969 Criminal Code Reform, held at Carleton University in Ottawa in March of this year. The conference was aimed to heighten awareness of the increased surveillance of queer life and sex post-Reform. Gary Kinsmen, co-author (with Patrizia Gentile) of The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation, mentioned in a conference plenary statement that Trudeau’s famous quote about the bedrooms of the nation has been historically misremembered: while the bedrooms of the nation were safe, very few other places were, because of the differentiation between the public and private sphere, laws regulating group sex and the ways in which homosexuals were seen as simultaneously dangerous and pathological, tolerable only away from the “normal” public. The surveillance and criminalization of queer people in Canada intensified and was more explicit as the parallel gender-based violence of the colonial state continued to inflict assimilationist policies on the Indigenous Two-Spirit communities through residential and day schools, and the drafting of the 1969 White Paper by Trudeau’s Liberal government.

Today, while (Justin) Trudeau marches at Pride celebrations, trans people are often unable to access healthcare because of social and medical barriers and Indigenous Two-Spirit people are subject to heightened violence and discrimination in settler and Indigenous communities. These challenges as well go unaddressed by our cadre of popular and populist political leaders: Andrew Scheer refuses to participate in Toronto Pride, while Doug Ford actually leaves town. We have parades; we have currency, but we don’t have political leaders who care about the distinct challenges in the lives of actual queer people within Indigenous and settler communities. In an election year, the platitudes can be numbing, just washing over us like pink waves, or rainbow smoke.

It’s easy to celebrate the ’69 Reform and our neighbouring queer history at Stonewall as particular, rich moments. To commemorate something, we often want to be able to look back and have uncomplicated feelings about what happened then, how bad it was then, how good we have it now. But celebrating the past means also looking critically at the inclusions or exclusions that make it into, or are left out of, our commemorative ephemera, and exhibitions. In celebration of our collective struggle we owe it to ourselves to pursue a memory that can recognize our past while establishing a dialogue with our present.

Photo courtesy of Arsenal Pulp Press

When Omar, a cook working for cash-in-hand at a Toronto restaurant, learns about the suicide of his ex-girlfriend Anna, he becomes caught in his grief and rage and is unwilling to accept what he’s been told: she didn’t leave him a note. He finds some respite from his woes when he meets an attractive and welcoming young woman named Kali. However, his obsession with finding closure continues to grow and, after an encounter with local police, Omar’s choices begin to ripple through all parts of his life, and into the lives of others.

Toronto-based author Adnan Khan began his writing career with thoughtful essays (for which he was awarded the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award in 2016) full of careful observations on the lived experiences of people of colour, both globally and in Canada. Khan follows suit with his first venture into fiction, There Has to Be a Knife, released by Arsenal Pulp Press in October. The novel probes into struggles with life, loss, and the systemic frustrations of being a young Muslim man.

Khan doesn’t hold back when it comes to the intensity of his protagonist’s narrative. It is unabashedly sensory and stark. Khan conveys Omar’s markedly youthful life, lived distinctly, through texting vernacular, flurried Reddit posts, and descriptions of the throes of physical gratifications. Omar, meanwhile, tamps down his emotions, which risk overflowing in every interaction.

“What I wanted to do was sit directly on that intersection of [toxic masculinity and misogyny]—that fear of racialized men, mixed with an exploration of empathy,” says Khan about writing a novel in the current, racially charged climate.
“I wanted to see what it looks like to live on that intersection, how that plays out, what that means for the people involved. The challenge was inhabiting Omar’s headspace for so many years while trying to balance the formal questions of the book.”

As Omar navigates through his own personal torments along the streets of downtown Toronto and North York, he is both self-aware and self-destructive. Intelligent and careless. Omar’s anger is palpable, yet his yearning for true and deep affection is ever-present beneath a toughened façade. Omar is apologetic and defiant all at once—to his city, to the people in his life, to the girl he lost, and to himself. When Omar gets into a violent altercation with one of the other kitchen staff at his job, Omar’s thoughts give depth to his fury: “Sorry, my body is out of my control, a ghost has taken over forever. More than I want to say sorry, though, I’m pleased with my disruption to the world, that I could still have an impact on another person, and that my slap proved that the world existed outside my brain.”

Khan cites several notable international writers as inspiring his use of both complex themes and authentic voices to create compelling characters. Khan also lists Canadian authors as his literary precursors.

“I’m happy to follow the path of the Canadian writers exploring this terrain and carving out a path before me: Dany Laferrière, Wajdi Mouawad, Pasha Malla, Dionne Brand, Lee Maracle, Rawi Hage, Djanet Sears—writers and artists of colour who have always been doing work, mentoring younger writers, and adding to the aesthetic and intellectual rigorousness of this tradition.”

“I want what I think all artists want,” Khan says about considering an audience that may not personally identify with Omar’s background and experiences, “readers who approach with a desire to explore, a keen curiosity, and an open mind.”

Image: iStock/Inna Sinano; design: Valerie Thai

In the spring of 2019, Newfoundlanders Adam Denny and Jonathon Brown came together after learning they both had a similar vision in mind: a provincial Green party.
Their province, which was hit hard by the cod fishery collapse in 1992, has increasingly been focused on developing an offshore oil industry. Even though that too has faced troubles, it still brings in big bucks—about 25 percent of the province’s GDP.

In Denny’s view, the provincial Conservatives, Liberals, and even the NDP consider the expansion of the oil and gas industry non-negotiable—an important economic engine, despite the province’s commitment to lowering carbon emissions. When Denny couldn’t accept the expansion as necessary or appropriate, he and Brown began corralling others via Facebook and taking modest steps with the goal of running Green candidates in the next provincial election, likely to take place in 2023. “There’s not a single party out there that’s truly taking climate change as the crisis that it is,” Denny says.

At the time Denny and Brown started taking steps towards formally founding a party, Newfoundland and Labrador was the only province in the country that did not have a provincial Green party. On top of that, only 1.1 percent of voters—the lowest rate in the nation—selected the Greens in the last federal election. But the recent election in Prince Edward Island, which bolted the Greens from relative obscurity to the official opposition, was inspiring to Denny. “That was a light bulb moment,” he says. “Not just in Newfoundland, but I suspect across the country.”

With climate crisis a top voting issue, the Greens have found new footing. A recent government study found that Canada’s climate is warming twice as fast as the global average. And as of June 2019, the Climate Action Tracker found that Canada’s efforts to fulfil the goals of the Paris Agreement—limiting global average temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius—were “insufficient.”

Over the last two calendar years, in addition to their historic showing in P.E.I., provincial Green parties have gained seats in British Columbia, New Brunswick, and Ontario. Federally, a second Green MP, Paul Manly of Nanaimo–Ladysmith, was elected in a May 2019 by-election and joined Elizabeth May in Ottawa.

For the first time since their 1983 founding, federal Greens have the opportunity to make their biggest move yet nationally, drawing from their experiences on smaller stages. Jo-Ann Roberts, deputy leader of the federal Greens, says the biggest change she’s noticed is a shift in voter attitudes.
“I can tell you as a candidate in Atlantic Canada who’s going door to door, the biggest impact the win on P.E.I. is having on the doorstep is Greens are seen as first of all winnable,” she says.

The collaboration seen between P.E.I. Greens and other parties helps too, she says. For instance, in July, P.E.I.’s MLAs, including Conservatives and Liberals, voted in favour of stronger provincial emissions targets. “Those are things that people see as real action,” Roberts says, adding that it’s translating to voters asking if the Greens could achieve something similar at the federal level.

But as the party looms larger, so does criticism of their policy points; their non-environmental platform, for example, doesn’t always stack up. During the lead-up to the 2015 election, the Greens were criticized for not budgeting enough for early childhood education or at all for a Guaranteed Livable Income plan. The party also courted controversy this summer after contracting the political strategist Warren Kinsella to build a party war room to defend against political attacks. Both the symbolism and the choice of Kinsella were widely considered at odds with Green values.

Moreover, some of the party’s environmental policy planks—like ensuring all new cars are electric and retrofitting “every building in Canada” to be carbon neutral by 2030—could be considered naive. The International Energy Agency estimates around a 30 percent adoption rate for electric vehicles in Canada by 2030 in one of their scenarios; even an ambitious proposal from the Canada Green Building Council only identifies retrofitting a strategic percentage
of buildings.

The Greens have also been experiencing internal growing pains that have come as a result of their expansion. Don Desserud, a University of Prince Edward Island political science professor, pinpoints criticism in P.E.I. about how the candidate nomination process ran prior to the last provincial election as an example of this. Some Greens, he says, were concerned with “selling out” by moving towards the centre from the party’s previous, more strident leadership—for instance, when it came to critiquing agricultural polluters. Though Desserud also says that some of the “moderating” in P.E.I. was of tone more than anything else—they changed gears from criticizing farmers for pesticide use, focusing instead on encouraging individual responsibility rather than strictly increasing governmental regulations. Desserud describes the change as “a compromise in methods but not in principle.”

“That sort of fringe—if it’s a fringe—of the Green Party that’s there probably saw quite rightly that their party was not [as ‘pure’ a party as] they thought, but this is the nature of our electoral system for good or for bad.”

In a proportional representation system, Desserud says, there wouldn’t be a need to moderate to increase electability. The Greens, he says, are not the only party that needs to confront this issue—it’s a regular and cyclical conundrum for the NDP that plays out every few elections. “Every time [the NDP] got a bit of success nationally, they’d move their party a little more to the right and then they’d get hammered the next election because they looked too much like the Liberals,” he says. “And so then they’d rush back to the left and talk about restoring themselves to their first principles and start the process over again.”

Over email, Alex Tyrrell, leader of Quebec’s Green Party, says that in his view Green voters aren’t looking for the party to become more moderate. “With this newfound success the Canadian Green movement is at a crossroads; should we stick to our principles and continue our work to transform Canadian society or should we advocate for some practical first steps in an effort to attract centrist voters?” he writes. “In my opinion, if people are voting Green they are doing so because they want to see a radical change; not just to change the name of the governing party.”

As the party courts new potential Green voters, though, they’ll need to address the harsh reality that new voters don’t necessarily have the same desires as the party faithful. A June 2019 Abacus Data report found that while 35 percent of Green voters want to see a Green government, only 10 percent of those who would consider voting for the Greens but currently don’t—“Green accessible” voters—want the same. “It is very hard for a party that has two MPs and won 3.5 percent of the vote in the last election to imagine that they can form government,” says Abacus CEO David Coletto.

Even though Newfoundland and Labrador’s Greens are the last to start, Denny says he is hopeful they will benefit from building upon the knowledge and experience of other Green parties.
They have a base of support that has been developing for several years, he says; his and Brown’s work to mobilize potential party members means this largely silent, disparate support will finally have an outlet.

Despite climate concerns and recent wins offering tailwinds to the Greens, though, their future isn’t certain. While voters want to see changes in climate policy, they may not want to see the Greens—with their broad-strokes, big-picture ideas—form government.

But even if the Greens don’t form government, a larger slate of their MPs could make a positive difference; they have so far in P.E.I. even without a plurality of seats. There’s a place for environment-focused thinking in parliament, and the Greens may just be what the country needs right now.

Image: Valerie Thai

6. Islamophobia

The face of Zunera Ishaq, the niqab–wearing woman who resisted Stephen Harper’s attempted niqab ban during the citizenship oath ceremony, consumed front pages during the last federal election.

A shameful amount of effort, media attention, and public resources were funnelled into this thinly veiled Islamophobia-forward campaign. Justin Trudeau condemned Harper’s agenda and promised sunny ways that got him elected with a sweeping majority. As a young, visible Muslim voting in my first federal election, I was frustrated with the focus on such a non-issue.

Since then, there has been a rise in Islamophobic policies and violent attacks, both in Canada and abroad. In January 2017, an armed shooter killed six innocent Muslims at a Quebec City mosque. Just over two years later, a gunman killed 51 Muslims in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, citing inspiration from the earlier attack. Each catastrophic incident shaped the lives of Muslims globally, amplifying our burden of grief and fear of existing in public space.

Although the Prime Minister and his ministers have used the word “Islamophobia” to describe such events—which is more than some Conservative leaders can say—none of their policies offered effective anti-Islamophobia measures. The non-binding parliamentary Motion 103, announced shortly after the Quebec mosque shooting, aimed to study anti-Muslim sentiments and violence. It caused uproar among Islamophobic groups, such as Canadian Coalition of Concerned Citizens, who protested in Calgary. The MP behind the motion, Iqra Khalid, received death threats. Despite the misinformed fear, the motion and ensuing study yielded no tangible outcomes. The government did not even do something as superficial as designate January 29 as a day of action against Islamophobia.

In the spring of 2019, Bill 21 became law in Quebec. It bans some civil servants from wearing visible religious signs and disproportionately affects Muslim women who wear hijab and niqab. But none of the federal party leaders addressed this legislation as targeting minority religious groups. They provided watered down objections, presumably afraid of losing their Quebec seats come October. They should know that Muslims, especially Muslim women, were keeping receipts.

So what does this mean for the upcoming election?

No major federal party has presented a solid action plan to deal with Islamophobia and other forms of white supremacist hate. In recent years, members of the Conservative party have been anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim. Even as official opposition, they have not addressed anti-Muslim behaviour internal to their party. During a justice committee hearing where Faisal Khan Suri, president of the Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Council, was testifying on alt-right hate, MP Michael Cooper read the Christchurch shooter manifesto into the public record. After criticism from activists, he was asked to leave the justice committee but he was not removed from caucus and faced no real penalties for inciting discomfort and distress onto a Muslim witness.

It’s highly unlikely that any one political party can save us  from Islamophobia. But the discourse a governing party adopts shapes public opinion and consciousness. As a visible Muslim woman, I simply cannot risk another Conservative mandate that inflames the political climate in Canada against Muslims.

Like many others, I find myself in a bind: do I vote for the NDP, hoping the underdog party finally wins big with the first racialized leader of a federal party? Or is that a risky move that would leave space for the Conservatives to win a sweeping majority?

Every major party must have a robust plan to deal with online hate, and right wing radicalization and violence. For Islamophobia to be effectively addressed, it must be considered a human rights and safety concern that affects all Canadians across party lines. Canadian politicians watched in horror as the death toll rose in the recent mosque shootings. As they draft their upcoming platforms, it’s time they promise Canadians mosque shootings do not happen again, and start putting their money where their tears are.

—Baraa Arar

7. Reproductive health

This past May, we began hearing about the introduction of state legislation to significantly restrict access to—and in some places, criminalize—abortion across the United States. Many of us responded instinctively with feelings of sadness and anger. Personally, I was surprised to feel some relief as well. I moved to Canada from the suburbs of Washington, D.C. and have, on many occasions over the course of the last three years, felt lucky to be observing, not experiencing, the far-right rearing
its ugly head south of the border.

That feeling of relief was, of course, fleeting. Right around the same time, between the U.S.’ moves, Niagara West MPP Sam Oosterhoff spoke at the annual March for Life anti-choice rally at Queen’s Park—just blocks from my current apartment—pledging to “fight to make abortion unthinkable in our lifetime.” He was likely emboldened by counterparts in the U.S., and in hopping on the bandwagon, emboldened other anti-choicers across Canada to follow suit. About a week later, an anti-abortion group called Show the Truth was reported showing up to schools in Prince Edward Island wielding graphic posters they claim depicted aborted fetuses. Another cohort of anti-choice protestors showed up at the Confederation Building in St. John’s, Newfoundland, days after that. (Worth noting: they were outnumbered by pro-choice protestors 100 to 10.)

Over the course of a very short amount of time, the anti-choice movement has gained real traction in Canada, posing a threat to the rights of all Canadians with uteruses. But attacks against reproductive rights are not a new thing in this country. Despite abortion being legal federally since 1969 (in cases where the health/life of a woman was threatened; 1988 was when it was legalized at any stage), the first legal abortion performed in P.E.I. in 35 years did not take place until 2017; prior to that, people seeking legal abortions had to travel out of province to receive one, which disadvantages low-income people, those working several jobs, and anyone with mobility issues. (Until 2017 the province would pay for abortions performed off-island.) Up until 2017, patients in Nova Scotia were required to obtain a physician’s referral before receiving a surgical abortion, which slowed down the process for many by months—meanwhile, there’s provincial coverage for the abortion pill in Nova Scotia now, but there are still major barriers to access (e.g. billing issues, lack of supply, etc.). As we near the federal election, it’s time to think deeply about national leadership that stands a chance not only against blatant anti-abortion protests, but that stands to revoke some of these everyday barriers to reproductive care access.

Conservative leaders have remained notably quiet about the abortion issue since Oosterhoff’s rally appearance—though 12 Conservative MPs were present at Ottawa’s March for Life rally. Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Andrew Scheer have both said they have no plans to “re-open the debate” around abortion, but both have evaded questions on the matter, and more notably, failed to reprimand actions of politicians like Oosterhoff. Even more troubling is the fact that Scheer’s campaign has, in the past, used his record of voting in favour of anti-abortion legislation to woo supporters. These supporters are likely to come out in droves come election time.

Even on the other side of the political spectrum, there’s reason to keep an eye on the abortion debate. Elizabeth May, leader of the federal Greens, has been known to waver on the topic; while she says she remains steadfast in her support for the right to choose today, she has a history of voicing opposition to abortion (which she has claimed was misreported). And while Justin Trudeau has condemned movements against abortion in both Canada and the States, he also recently had a “cordial conversation” with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on the topic, who in the same meeting, said he was “proud to be part of a pro-life administration.” Perhaps, cordiality is not worth applauding when it comes to attacks on human rights.

When I think about what the anti-abortion movement looks like in the U.S., I think of the people I was up against the summer I canvassed for Planned Parenthood on the streets of New York City. It was 2015, and even then, I was routinely shouted at by anti-choice passersby. I was often called a “murderer.” I regularly had to explain to unconvinced citizens that, despite abortion being federally legal, countless states were defunding abortion clinics, leaving many with no choice but to travel miles and miles, often out of state, to get the care they needed (an especially difficult task for those lacking the money or ability to take time off work to travel). So when I learned that, four years later, the situation in my country of origin had grown far worse, I felt fortunate to no longer be living there.

It’s easy to watch these attacks play out in the U.S. and assume they would never happen in Canada. But anti-abortion groups across the country are becoming increasingly loud, empowered by political leaders like Oosterhoff, Ford, and Scheer. As the federal election nears, it’s time to think wisely about what a government best suited to squash this movement looks like.

—Audrey Carleton

8. MMIWG

A week after the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) released their final report and Calls for Justice, there was a conference, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women: An Epidemic Crossing the Medicine Line, at the University of British Columbia, where people convened to talk about MMIWG in Canada and the United States. Chief Commissioner of the National Inquiry, Marion Buller, was a keynote speaker.

She spoke about the inquiry and the report—a culmination of 15 community hearings, over 2,380 testimonies from families and survivors, and almost three years of work.

Throughout her talk, Buller shared many informative, empowering, and often heart-wrenching insights, but one statement I remember her making, in particular, sticks with me. In response to the media backlash the report received upon release, mostly around its firm use of the word genocide, she said, “Canadians cannot unhear the truth.”

It’s a powerful statement. And she’s right. But coming into an election season, the concern these days is not so much that Canadians won’t hear the truth, but that they won’t listen to it. That they won’t insist upon the changes that the
truth demands.

I worry that the implementation of the Calls for Justice will become a partisan issue—that there will be debates on the extent to which they should be implemented; that the necessity and spirit of the report will be compromised so that parties can attempt to secure power and votes. I worry that the winning government will feel little pressure or accountability to care about MMIWG, the report, or the Calls for Justice at all. These are worries I know can all too feasibly become realities, especially when looking at how the current party leaders stand on the implementation and findings of the National Inquiry.

Jagmeet Singh and Elizabeth May have both stated that they agree with the report’s findings, but Andrew Scheer and Justin Trudeau, whose parties currently have significant leads in the polls, have had more to say.

Representatives from the Conservative Party have said they will commit to a national action plan to implement the Calls to Justice, yet Andrew Scheer has stated that the situation “doesn’t fall into that category of genocide.” Justin Trudeau, promised that his “government will turn the inquiry’s calls for justice into real, meaningful, Indigenous-led action” but has also said that “cultural genocide” was a more appropriate term in his opinion—presumedly as opposed to the actual genocide that the report named and defined.

How does an action plan or commitment hold any meaning if you don’t believe in the reality they are supposed to address? These insufficient and problematic commitments will surely be all the MMIWG report receives come October if Canadians and other non-Indigenous people don’t take up a meaningful stand of solidarity with Indigenous communities leading up to the election, and when casting their votes.

Among the 231 Calls for Justice that the National Inquiry set out, eight are directed specifically to all Canadians. With the federal election in mind, Call 15.8 stands out most. It directs Canadians to “help hold all governments accountable to act on the Calls for Justice, and to implement them according to the important principles we [the National Inquiry] set out.”

Honouring and embodying this call means listening to the voices of Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA folks when deciding who to vote for. It means insisting candidates commit to the realization of the Calls for Justice and holding them accountable to that commitment long after the ballots close.

The truth is, Indigenous communities are living through genocide and the governments who are largely responsible for upholding that genocide cannot be allowed to ignore or contradict that. The safety and justice owed to Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA folks are not partisan issues, and further, not issues at all—they are rights that must be ensured, and in many ways, including by their voices and votes, Canadians have a role to play in ensuring them. I hope we can hear that truth, and then act on it.

—Riley Yesno

9. HIV decriminalization

HIV isn’t exactly a hot topic on the campaign trail. On a rare day, a political candidate might be found gesturing to its impact in developing countries, or even mentioning treatment and prevention advances like PrEP or U=U (Undetectable = Untransmittable). These are important issues, but it’s time to start pressing candidates on Canada’s grim claim to fame in the field: we are a true world leader in aggressively criminalizing people living with HIV.

In Canada, more than 180 people have been charged with aggravated sexual assault for allegedly not disclosing their HIV status to sexual partners. In many cases, no transmission occurs (or is even possible), and the accused have taken measures to protect their partners. Even so, a conviction results in years of incarceration and a lifetime on the registry of sex offenders.

Such prosecutions rely on a not-so-subtly homophobic logic that sees HIV-positive (poz for short) people as inherent predators. This framework, based primarily on stigma and homophobia, is woefully out of step with global norms and current HIV science. Denmark, Senegal, Australia, and many others have repealed HIV criminalization laws in the last decade or so.

More importantly, the Canadian approach has horrifying effects on people living with HIV. Victims of these laws typically end up in provincial prisons, notorious for their inadequate health care. Afterwards, decent work and housing can be nearly impossible to access due to the sex offender registration.

Even if they haven’t been directly accused, criminalization leaves poz folks in a constant state of fear and surveillance. At any moment, one’s immigration status could be jeopardized by charges, or an abusive partner or family member could use HIV status as fodder for blackmail or violence. The kicker? Criminalization actively discourages Canadians from getting tested and treated, directly undermining public health objectives.

But we may have a chance to change this. For years HIV activists have organized deftly to stop these prosecutions. Politicians have been slow to listen, but there is finally some will towards change. While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself hasn’t spoken to the issue, his government is listening. On World AIDS Day 2017, then-federal Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould announced that the justice committee would review the issue of nondisclosure cases. In June, current Justice Minister David Lametti delivered the resulting report, which condemned the current approach. The committee recommended replacing current practice with a new offence in the Criminal Code that would apply to non-disclosure cases of any infectious disease, but only when transmission occurs, among other suggestions.

Thus, we find ourselves on the precipice of a big change on this issue. The recommendations are not perfect. Broadening the law to other diseases might result in more people being criminalized for their health conditions. And activists have long demanded that criminal charges should be limited only to those extremely rare cases where somebody has intentionally transmitted HIV, a position echoed by the NDP committee members in their dissent. Meanwhile, Conservatives on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights said they still believe folks should be charged when there is a “realistic” chance of transmission.

And this is what brings us back to the election ahead. The recommendation shared by Lametti in June is just that—a suggestion. It’s not likely to become law before we vote. Real follow-through will be required if the Liberals want this to mean anything, or if the NDP were to actually narrow the scope further. And of course, if the Conservatives take it, there’s a good chance they will try to throw the report in the trash while we’re not looking.

So now’s the time to ask candidates across the board: what are you going to do about the mandated changes in how the law treats people with HIV?

—Jonathan Valelly

10. The North

It has to take a massive amount of dissonance to be proud of Canada being an “Arctic country” that ignores its North. (“We the North” seems fun to chant until it’s time to listen to the North…) As a geographical region it’s 40 percent of the country, but the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Inuit Nunangat (Inuit Regions of Canada) are so distinct from each other; within each is a diverse, mostly-Indigenous, population with varying needs. Nunavut has the highest unemployment rate in the country; Yukon has the lowest. Nunavummiut are concerned with the high suicide rates and high cost of living. The Yukon and NWT are rich for mining; the federal government’s five-year ban on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic is being reviewed and companies are thirsty.

The common reality heard from Northerners across borders, though, is the North is ignored. Indigenous and territorial governments are left with the burden of making up for the dire lack of infrastructure funding and the high cost of living, which increasingly includes the fallout of the climate crisis. Shouldering the majority of weight of climate change for the entire country—despite being the lowest contributors to climate change (along with P.E.I.)—the North and Northerners are getting stretched thin.

Both Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer and Green Party leader Elizabeth May made their respective rounds to the North in the beginning of July. May gathered a crowd of people in Yellowknife answering to her plans for getting the North off of fossil fuels and promising a ban on all new oil and gas development across Canada. Meanwhile, in June, Scheer gathered his own crowds in Iqaluit, NU and Whitehorse, YT where he promised to honour the funding promises the Liberal government has made to Inuit Nunangat. Trudeau made a visit to Iqaluit, NU in the summer to announce new promises.

If any federal party were serious about investing in the North and empowering Northerners—they would create a cabinet portfolio specifically for the North and any of the three territorial MPs would be appointed. When there’s just one member of parliament representing an entire territory in a sea of about 300 other MPs, that one member wielding that power matters. Sometimes people feel like they can’t really base their vote on the party. The people of each territory have to vote for who they think will represent and advocate for the best interests of their territory.

And Northern MPs don’t often get appointed to cabinet.
The Northwest Territories has never had one appointed and the Yukon has had just one, which was in the 70s. Ethel Dorothy Blondin-Andrew of NWT was a junior cabinet minister; Erik Nielson was an elected minister in 1979 (he was also deputy PM for a time in the 80s). Four-time Liberal Yukon MP Larry Bagnell and two-time Liberal NWT MP Michael McLeod were both passed up for Minister of Intergovernmental and Northern Affairs and Internal Trade during a cabinet shuffle in July last year.

On top of decades of neglect and disregard, climate change has reached a breaking point in the North. It’s underbuilt, underdeveloped, and undersupported. The Canadian Arctic is 25 percent of the international circumpolar world but contributes less than two percent to the circumpolar economy.

Politicians need to invest robust funding in robust infrastructure development alongside Indigenous and territorial governments with actual vision that include sustaining the land. The shores of Tuktoyaktuk, NT are eroding before residents’ eyes. Homes are sinking from melting permafrost. Coastal hunters from Alaska to Gjoa Haven, NU report changes in migration and movement patterns in marine animals. Nunavummiut along the Northwest Passage are concerned with the increasing traffic through
the infamous Arctic waterway.

The party leaders are concerned with asserting Arctic sovereignty in the North and the Northwest Passage, but it’s impossible when the region is suffering economically and socially. To assert any sovereignty in the North internationally means asserting Inuit Nunangut’s claim.

Indigenous communities in the North understand what they need best. Northerners are asking governments to invest in infrastructure for sustainable and healthy standards of living. These all need to be addressed with the environment in mind and with what Inuit want and need in their communities, like subsidies for access to country foods and support for hunters. Tap into the pulse of any town and you’ll find for each concern, there are a handful of people with potential solutions and ideas. Ones that might actually work if they’re given a chance.

—Kaila Jefferd-Moore

Image: iStock/JPA1999; Design: Valerie Thai

“Indigenous nations are their own sovereign nations.” It’s a rhetoric stated consistently in a variety of arenas, both political and non-political. It is a truthful rhetoric at that.

Being Anishinaabe, and also raising an Anishinaabe/Nehiyaw/Nakoda daughter, has further affirmed the truth that we are, 100 percent, our own sovereign nations as Indigenous Peoples. It has affirmed this truth within myself as I think about the future my daughter will have growing up on the political landscape that exists today, constantly having to fight for the truth of her inherent rights.

As such, we as Indigenous nations have absolutely no business in voting within a political system founded and grounded on the continued genocidal, assimilative practices and policies that make up “Canada” today.

When my ancestors made treaty  with the Crown, the original intent and outcome was never based on the idea that we, as Indigenous nations, would assimilate to the point that we would deem our own political and traditional governance systems irrelevant and dissolvable.

With this knowledge, I know that in order to have strong, healthy nations, I must raise my daughter with the knowledge of the original intent and outcome of those treaties. This, in turn, aids in the reminder of the immortality of treaty.

The fact is, treaties are of international stature. Canada has created a false narrative that these treaties have already been “fulfilled,” and even the idea that it is time for, the colonially named, “new nation to nation relationship.” And so many of our people are cattle to that idea. The idea, framed in other words, really just means that Canada is ready to enact their next stage of their assimilation policies.

I, for one, am not for these processes. I stand firm in who I am, and where I come from, as an Anishinaabe person on these lands. And with that knowing any ideas or commitments that come from this “new nation to nation relationship” are as void as any identity colonial governments have given me in my lifetime.

Another fact is that only sovereign nations can make treaty. They are agreements made between two nations, an eternal commitment. And many people forget that.

What many people are also forgetting—or aren’t even learning about—is that treaties, 1 to 11 specifically, created an agreement between Indigenous nations and the Crown that gave permission to the queen to enact her government, which eventually took the shape of Canada.

Also, Canada holds absolutely no title to the land. Even though they place it out like they do. Indigenous Peoples, and our nations, were, and are, the ones who gave that permission for Canada to even be what it is today. Settlers who live on these lands today are only here because of the permission that was given when those treaties were signed.

That doesn’t mean I’m going around reminding settlers on who allowed them to build their lives and families on these lands, unless of course their racism creates the space for me to. It is simply a piece of knowledge that must be made known to all people when learning about the history of these lands on which we live.

So, here we are, in a space where Canada attempts to define our peoples as domestic ethnic minorities, rather than the sovereign nations that we are. The trauma that colonialism inflicted on our peoples, and that it continues to attempt to inflict, has confused the collective mind of many Indigenous Peoples. The colonially created trauma that was deeply rooted in my childhood was a direct outcome of Canada attempting to define who my family was, as Anishinaabe peoples, and doing everything they can to control us.

This confusion has led many families to follow the concept of “pan-Aboriginalism,” and the “Aboriginal Canadian” that abides by, complies with, and conforms to Canadian perspectives of how an Indigenous person is to conduct themselves. We see this being fulfilled when Indigenous Peoples, of their own sovereign nations, are becoming political members within another nation’s (Canada’s) political system.

Me, as an Indigenous person—from an Indigenous nation—participating, and becoming a part of Canadian federal, provincial, and municipal politics would be like Donald Trump coming into Canada’s system and becoming a member of parliament.
It doesn’t make it any sense.

So why have we allowed it to make sense for our people today?

Some people make the suggestion of a “First Nations,” or “Aboriginal” political party.

A First Nations political party will only create an inheritance of this debt to ourselves as Indigenous Peoples, when in reality, that debt is not even ours to carry in the first place.

Because of treaties, Canada is in debt to us, as Indigenous Peoples. The goal is to treat us like ethnic minorities in order to alleviate that debt. To relieve that debt, they must assimilate us as Indigenous Peoples, and many of our people are falling for it. The narrative has brainwashed a lot of our peoples to the point where reinstating our original traditional governance systems have become a no-go zone. Going to that no-go zone is what our children, as Indigenous Peoples, need in the times of crises that we are constantly facing today.

I am doing my best to raise my daughter with that knowledge, and to equip her with the tools to speak up when people state otherwise.

John A. Macdonald has been quoted saying that “we must take the Indian out of the child” in order to “solve the Indian problem.” This is a concept that is still publicly being practiced today. In fact, the concept of “the Indian problem” didn’t ever go away in the eyes of Canada, it was just transformed into the debt problem. Every colonial political party aims to relive that debt in some way, shape, or form.

With this genocidal history in mind, and with the attempts being ongoing today, I continue to restate the truth that there never was an “Indian problem” in the first place. Because from the lens of Indigenous systems, there is only the problem of colonialism.

So for myself, voting in Canada represents me justifying and agreeing with the unlawful and colonial perceptions of the treaty relationship, along with all the assimilation processes that have, and are continuing to, take place today. Ultimately, it would be compromising what my ancestors had put their lives into, and what they prayed about, specifically in relation to treaty.

The solutions to our struggles as a result of colonialism are not in a vote every four years in a system that created these problems. The solutions are in the revival of our kinship systems, the protection of our children, and the affirmation of who we have always been as Indigenous Peoples. It is in the reoccupation of our lands and governing systems, which worked for us for generations prior to colonialism.

The aim is to manipulate the next generations of our peoples to forget about that. And we are seeing that in the form of policies and programs targeting Indigenous youth.

The reality is both the Canadian and Indigenous Peoples are blaming the results of the Indian Act for what treaty was supposed to be, rather than what Canada has made it to be.

So rather than investing my time and energy in a system that has created the problems we are facing in the first place, I would rather invest my time and energy in strengthening our communities to our continuing nations through the work of healing our traumas and restoring our kinship systems, and ultimately, how we as Indigenous Peoples relate to our children.

I will always practice strengthening our own Indigenous systems, rather than complying with systems that colonialism has lethally placed
against us.

Because that, in itself, is where our uprising begins.

Design by Valerie Thai

1. The Rise of the Alt-Right

Andrew Scheer formally addressed the United We Roll convoy in February, a protest that began as a pro-pipeline demonstration and grew to represent racism and xenophobia characteristic of the worldwide yellow vest movement. In May, Conservative MP Michael Cooper read a passage from the New Zealand shooter’s manifesto into parliamentary record, though his comments were later purged. In June, the RCMP launched a hate speech investigation into the Canadian Nationalist Party, an extremist far-right group that failed to gain federal status in the 2019 election. The party’s leader, Travis Patron, posted a video calling for the removal of the “parasitic tribe,” a not-so-subtle dog-whistle for Jewish people.

Far-right hate groups aren’t new in Canada, but they’re getting louder and some of their rhetoric is starting to seep into mainstream politics. Not challenging this rise in the upcoming election would send a clear message to these groups that there’s room in the political mainstream for the hateful views characteristic of the alt-right. “If you don’t condemn that kind of activity, you’re actually giving it oxygen,” says Barbara Perry, the director of the Centre on Hate, Bias, and Extremism. She says the number of far-right extremist groups in Canada is closing in on 300. Around the time of the 2015 election, she says that number was more like 100. This movement to the right, she says, is being called something of a “perfect storm.”

“We often like to blame Trump for … normalizing hatred,” Perry says. “But you know, we had our own patterns of a movement to the right, some of which predated Trump,” like the increase in anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment in the 2015 federal election.This “perfect storm” has emboldened far-right hate groups and people who have ties to them in Canada. In the 2018 Toronto municipal election, Faith Goldy, a former correspondent for Rebel media, ran for mayor. She’s been widely criticized for her association with white nationalism, especially after her reporting at the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally and her appearance on The Krypto Report, a podcast from the neo-Nazi blog The Daily Stormer. She garnered over 25,000 votes in her run for mayor. “There is that political normalization of hate and hostility I think that we’ve seen now modelled in Europe, modelled in the U.S.and then our own brand as well,” Perry says.

Coverage of the alt-right and far-right hate groups can have massive implications in public understanding. There’s a risk that taking fringe groups too seriously can give them too much oxygen, but ignoring them means these groups can continue to operate unchecked. The often ironic rhetoric of alt-right fringe groups does require extra analysis, and there’s work to be done in debunking their claims.

“So much of [the work] around anti-immigrant sentiment is taking down those myths, taking down those stereotypes that they associate with it,” Perry says.

—Michal Stein

2. Foreign policy

On February 28, 2019, the New Democratic Party published a statement urging the Trudeau government to cease arms exports to Saudi Arabia: “As Canada joins the international community to provide desperately needed assistance in Yemen, it continues to export arms to Saudi Arabia, the chief instigator of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” says the NDP International Development Critic, Linda Duncan.

The Saudi arms deal—and other, similar policies—tell the true story of Canadian politics. During elections, domestic issues tend to dominate the agenda. What we fail to realize is how seriously Canadian foreign policy impacts the world beyond our borders; it stimulates famine, refugee crises, environmental destruction, and political repression.

As an example: we often discuss immigration without recognizing Canada’s role in creating refugee crises in Latin America and the Caribbean. Forced migration is the product of sustained, racist intervention in those regions, like Canada’s armed support for the 2004 Haiti coup. Canada has interfered in Haitian elections, destabilized its institutions, and supported right-wing politicians, all in an effort to reduce wages and open up Haiti’s gold reserves to Canadian mining companies. These actions create economic conditions that force Haitians to flee and seek asylum—only to be met with anti-Blackness and unjust detention.

Canadian policy is regularly determined by the interests of mining companies. As a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Canadian mining companies contracted paramilitary security teams in Mexico, Ecuador, and Peru that are accused of kidnapping workers, protestors, and their families. The Liberals promised to regulate the industry in 2015. Yet, as the group MiningWatch Canada notes, the government never committed to legislating the international operations of Canadian mining companies, despite ongoing protest against abuse. Broken promises and willful ignorance are Canada’s de facto foreign policy, in part due to the connections between corporations and politicians. The mining industry and the political class share financiers, investments, and economic interests.

The failure to ensure livable wages at home is directly reflected in the coercion of cheap labour abroad, in defiance of human rights and international law. Canadian free trade with Israel, for example, relies on and benefits from the economic and political repression of Palestinians. Still, as the government of Canada website boasts, “Since CIFTA [Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement] first came into effect over two decades ago, Canada’s two-way merchandise trade with Israel has more than tripled, totalling $1.9 billion in 2018.”

Canada’s close relationship with Israel has wider international consequences. While Canadian relations with Iran have improved in recent years, the Canadian government still views Iran as inherently threatening, and continues to find new reasons to halt diplomatic relations and impose sanctions—including those instituted in 2006 and 2010 in the wake of the Iran nuclear deal, at the urging of Israeli government officials and pro-Israel lobby organizations. It is worth recognizing that Canadian hostility towards Iran does not happen in a vacuum, but comes partly as a result of extensive lobbying by officials and organizations that perceive Iran to be a threat to Israel, and have thus made it a priority to characterize every action by the Iranian state as a violation punishable by a regime of coordinated isolation, marginalization, and sanction.

The sanctions, imposed by Canada and the U.S. among others, are monstrous; they directly endanger Iran’s most vulnerable communities. Sanctions disproportionately impact women, as over 170 Iranian women artists and activists argued in an open letter opposing American sanctions. Iran also holds a substantial refugee population, most of whom will go without vital services and will be instead pushed to deportation due to the sanctions. Canada’s bellicose policies against Iran—integral to its support for Israel—contradict our leaders’ “pro-woman” or “pro-refugee” public image.

It is necessary to draw links between these destabilizing economies of extraction and the waves of forced migration, income inequality, and climate crisis that have shaped the 2019 election. The same global capitalist system that makes rich Canadians richer and poor Canadians poorer relies upon state-sanctioned violence abroad. It succeeds by deflating wages, repressing protests, and killing local economies. Canada’s foreign policy agenda is deeply enmeshed with its domestic policy choices. This election, Canadian voters must recognize the global stakes.

—Alex V. Green

3. Artificial Intelligence

Since March 2017, Justin Trudeau has been hyping the federal government’s investments in AI. At every budget announcement, ribbon cutting, and international panel, he has talked up responsible adoption of AI that is human-centric and grounded in human rights. The initial investment of $125 million was topped up with another $230 million in 2018. In the meantime, dozens of jobs for AI researchers, and graduate student positions have been created in computer science and engineering schools.

As a job creation and innovation strategy, it seems to be doing well—there’s been a boom in tech startups in Toronto and Montreal—but there’s been a conspicuous lack of investment on the human rights side. Of the hundreds of millions of dollars being invested in AI research, exactly $0 of that is going to hire or train people with the expertise necessary to make sure the results won’t be a dumpster fire. While deep-learning experts are getting cushy jobs, experts in the social and ethical implications of AI are only getting a couple of workshops.

It’s unclear whether the strategy is that the people with the training needed to stop the ascendancy of our AI overlords should volunteer their time, or that the AI geniuses should do this work themselves, because after all, they’re geniuses. But letting AI geniuses take care of human rights issues would be as reckless as letting artists perform brain surgery. There is a long history of people in AI being blissfully unaware that other kinds of expertise exist, and this attitude is exactly why companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google are now mired in controversy over their ethical blunders.

Some of the not-so-genius ideas AI workers have come up with recently are algorithms that recommend home movies of kids running through sprinklers or doing gymnastics to people who watch child pornography, selling facial recognition software that barely works to cops who don’t know how to use it, but are making false arrests with it anyway, and pretending to sell music players or thermostats that actually conceal hidden microphones that monitor your conversations.

The average doomsday naysayer may think they have nothing to hide, but stalkerware is enabling disgruntled exes, incels and other trolls to track, harass, and potentially kill people. Cell phone tracking data is being sold to bounty hunters, resulting in Coen brothers-esque shootouts, and hundreds of millions of social media users were unknowingly exposed to fake news stories during recent election campaigns.

Trudeau has a mediocre track record for keeping his promises about protecting digital rights. He campaigned on the promise to repeal Bill C-51, which allows CSIS to spy on Canadians without cause in the name of anti-terrorism, but he only rolled back select parts of it. That said, Trudeau is the only official party leader who seems to have a policy on tech innovation at all. Andrew Scheer only cares about innovation when it comes to oil. While Jagmeet Singh’s commitments don’t mention the tech sector, other NDP members, in partnership with the Green Party’s Elizabeth May, have been vocal in advocating for a stronger Digital Privacy Act, and giving the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada more enforcement power.

AI and commercial surveillance are going in directions far worse than even the most paranoid imagination could cook up. This is not a field that is capable of regulating itself, and empty rhetoric about human-centred AI isn’t doing anything to hold beneficiaries of AI investment, like the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence, to their promises. The money is there. If even a small fraction of the investment in AI were directed toward protecting rights, we might have a chance at avoiding creating our own homegrown AI dystopia. So far none of the official party leaders seem up to the task.

—Catherine Stinson

4. The opioid crisis

Since 2016, more than 10,000 people have died of an opioid-related overdose in Canada. After years of headlines, such a number can seem abstract, or even worse, desensitizing. These are more than statistics though; each one of those numbers represents a void: someone who will not be at a birthday party, at a graduation, at a wedding, at the dinner table. From January to September of 2018 alone, 3,286 Canadians died and of this 73 percent of deaths were attributed to fentanyl.

Things have changed in the past three years. Safe injection sites, once limited to a section of Vancouver, are now opening up across the country—thanks to the dedicated work of frontline workers, who initially risked arrest by opening up unsanctioned sites. Once scoffed at by politicians, local mayors are now accepting that these sites save lives. Still, the death toll continues to rise. Safe injection sites are not a panacea, nor can overworked frontline workers be everywhere at once to stop an overdose. As the federal election looms and the opioid crisis rages on, one has to ask: are our representatives doing anything?

No party has thus far put forward a comprehensive plan to tackle the opioid crisis beyond vague platitudes. Even the NDP plan, which promises to expand treatment and decriminalize drugs, in the same vein, proposes going after “the real criminals—those who traffic in and profit from the sale of illegal drugs” with harsh and strict penalties, betraying the entire point and purpose of decriminalization. Meanwhile, Liberal party officials keep tweeting about how the overdose crisis is a crisis, while ignoring the fact that they currently have the power to do something about it. 

The solutions to the overdose crisis are clear: while we need more safe injection sites and we need those sites to be supported by federal funding—and harm reduction workers need supports too—these sites do not actually stem the rate of overdose.
They do however, prevent overdose deaths—a key distinction.

In order to stem overdoses, people need access to a clean supply of drugs. Advocates are calling upon the government to allow prescription heroin, and some doctors have taken it upon themselves to start prescribing another opioid, hydromorphone.

Treatment also needs to be made easier. Typically, drugs like methadone or buprenorphine are used in treatment, weaker opioids that reduce withdrawal symptoms while a person is in recovery. Two years ago, British Columbia switched the medication used for treatment from methadone to methadose, a drug that is even weaker than the former. As a result, the B.C. Association of People on Methadone says that switch resulted in people resorting to using heroin. The College of Pharmacists of B.C. says the switch was made to reduce the tendency of “abuse,” a false idea that reaffirms stigma against drug users and reinforces the moral panic around drug use.

One last piece of advice to politicians as they hit the campaign trail is this: listen to people who use drugs and those on the front lines. Go to an overdose prevention site without cameras, meet with members of drug users unions across the country—learn about their experiences and use those to shape policy.

There are deeper conversations to be had about addiction in Canada. How the lack of housing, financial support, and health care among other things are feeding the overdose crisis; but for now, a safe supply of drugs, better access to treatment and more safe injection sites make up a good plan to stop the deaths and stem the rate of overdose. People who use drugs, harm reduction workers, doctors, and public health professionals have been saying this all along; let’s hope our leaders listen for once.

—Abdullah Shihipar

5. Climate justice

We’ve got a problem. The climate crisis is on our doorstep, but instead of looking to scientific data and ongoing evidence, the issue has been divided along political lines. Ideologies about trade and taxation have become the test-pieces about whether one is actively working to limit climate change, recognizing it as a concern, or remaining, still, a skeptic.

Fortunately, international science shows that it’s not too late to keep global warming below the critical 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming—a level that will not halt climatic change, but will significantly temper the impacts. However, instead of hunkering down and working to a) keep the warming to 1.5 degrees, and b) put measures in place to deal with the impacts we know are coming, political parties—and much of the media around them—are mired in discussions that would have been outdated a decade ago.

In Canada, two of the most public climate conversations are around the carbon tax and the Trans Mountain Pipeline. These are certainly not insignificant issues, but the laser focus on them obscures the bigger picture. There is a solution to the climate crisis, but only one: we have to radically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. At this point, neither the Liberals’ nor Conservatives’ climate plans are sufficient to keep global warming to the threshold 1.5 degrees Celsius. To meet that target, there can be absolutely no new carbon infrastructure, never mind a project like the Trans Mountain Pipeline that is the equivalent of putting two million more cars on the road.

Here’s a broader slice of the picture: a 2019 report using government data and approved by independent scientists, states that Canada is heating up twice as fast as the average rate of the planet—twice as fast.

Global warming causes major events, including melting permafrost, loss of ice caps, rising seas, record high temperatures, severe flooding, and droughts. In turn, those events can lead to further impacts: loss of income, loss of housing, food insecurity, tainted water supplies, and so on. Much of Canada has already experienced at least some of these effects and the magnitude and frequency of impacts are projected to increase over time.

On June 17th, Canada declared a national climate emergency which was, in a weird way, heartening. Except the meaning of it was lost the next day when they also re-(re)approved a significant expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure. The longer we dither, the less likely our solutions will be robust or equitable. And we only have just over a decade before we’ve stalled so long there is no way to limit climate impacts to a reasonable level. This is a crisis. But, unlike many crises, we know how to stop this one. We need politicians to recognize this as a fact, not an opinion, and face this issue head on. We can still keep the ship afloat, but to do so we’re going to need all hands on deck.

—Nola Poirier

Photo courtesy of Shake Up The Establishment

What happens when two bio-medical science graduates, a philosophy PhD candidate, and an arts major commiserate over climate change in Canada? Positive activism is born.

In April 2019, a group of University of Guelph students and recent graduates, Manvi Bhalla, Janaya Campbell, Taro Halfnight, and Cameron Fioret, were commiserating over Canada’s response to climate change. Disheartened by misinformation in the political sphere, they wanted to make information available and accurate; they decided to act.

“We wanted to make climate change more of a priority in the Canadian federal election and noticed a media frenzy in America on party platform issues a year in advance of their 2020 election,” says Bhalla, an award-winning activist and leader with numerous NGOs. “Yet Canada had not really announced anything despite our election being six months away.”

Shake Up The Establishment, or SUTE for short, was born that evening. “We wanted to shake up the establishment, shake up how we do politics; shake it up with information, positive change and power to the people,” says Fioret.

SUTE’s objective is to increase informed voting and voter turnout regarding the fight against climate change while maintaining positive government relations. The group decided to make all information on their website non-partisan, up-to-date, and fact-checked, citing credible sources, such as academic papers and links to party platforms. It is entirely volunteer-run and currently receives no funding. They may seek out funding in the future, they say, but will never accept partisan funding.

“SUTE is a one-stop hub for up-to-date federal party platform information, not a regulatory body,” explains Fioret. The website’s content is updated weekly with new announcements or party corrections via politician speeches or MP’s offices. “The goal was to encourage people to obtain accurate, up-to-date information [through] a lay summary of climate change, how it works, and how it affects people. We try to add information [to the website] that is as specific as possible [to counter any bias in the media].”

In the week after launching, the four millennials contacted MP offices and the party profiles poured in. Bhalla created a simple, straightforward chart to compare each federal party’s policies and promises on this hot-button issue, which they have categorized by different types of emissions.

“We wanted to provide reputable information from reputable sources to encourage positive activism,” says Bhalla, noting 300 people contacted their MPs within two days after SUTE posted a “how-to reach your local MP” social media post. Another highlight Bhalla shares is when their post, “Breaking news: Canada has declared a climate emergency,” received close to 1,000 likes in one day.

The group has also received kudos from leading climate scientists, 1960s environmental activists and some high-profile media coverage, including a CBC interview, print media features and being featured on a podcast that also included Catherine McKenna, Environment and Climate Change Minister, and Ed Fast, Official Opposition Critic for the Environment. But their most important audience is their growing social media following. On Instagram, for example, hundreds of people tune into SUTE’s weekly Q&A each Monday.

“Youth are very excited and energized. We’ve seen them mobilize [on social media and through letter campaigns], so that’s very exciting,” says Bhalla, noting that SUTE’s most active followers are the 18 to 25 millennial cohort. (Their target audience is 18 to 34 because that is the highest percent of electorate this election.) Bhalla also points out that many of their followers message regularly for updates on certain climate emergencies when the media does not cover it.

“People want to help,” Campbell acknowledges, citing SUTE’s success with shareable social media alerts and campaigns. “But if it’s too hard, it will deter people.”

Armed with easy-to-use letter campaigns and MP contact information, SUTE has provided effective tools for the public to mobilize, speak up and challenge Canadian federal government parties who are not living up to election party promises.

“Climate change definitely isn’t going to go away, even after the election. Our organization is about giving power to the people to hold their leaders accountable in an accessible way,” says Fioret.

Image: iStock/hannarongsds; design: Valerie Thai

In 2015 Canadians broke a record: 88 women were elected to the Canadian House of Commons.

Fifty women were among the 184 Liberal MPs elected. Trudeau went on to appoint his cabinet with gender parity. Because it was 2015. But a male appointing an equal cabinet with representation based on the binary does not a feminist make. It was of course a gain for women everywhere; countries like Colombia, Ethiopia, France, and Spain followed suit.

It may seem hard to dispute Trudeau’s feminism, given his “it’s 2015” cavalier approach, appointing a gender-balanced cabinet and vocally grandstanding as a feminist. He said he will keep saying he’s a feminist until it’s met with a shrug. But we should always shrug when a man says he’s a feminist. We should always be cautious when someone calls themselves an ally—specifically when a man calls himself an ally to feminism. Identifying as a feminist is the bare minimum a man can do. Men aren’t feminists just because they say so and we don’t have to take their word for it when they do.

But I don’t think anyone is really negating Trudeau’s #wokebae persona. The deconstruction of Trudeau’s public image as a feminist is sprouting through the cracks created from his brand of shallow, white feminism that doesn’t address the underlying injustices that further gender inequality.

At a debate back in 2015, ahead of the election, Trudeau pointed to “misogyny in certain types of music,” access to porn, “communities in which fathers are less present,” and shifting parental roles as factors contributing to sexualized violence. These are stereotypes and myths familiarly associated with Black communities, signalling the lack of intersectionality in his feminism to communities of colour.

Another red flag was when Trudeau was caught appointing all minister of state positions—a junior cabinet position, basically given a specific responsibility within a senior cabinet minister’s portfolio and a salary that paid $20,000 less—to women. Five
of those being part of his legendary

15 women in cabinet. (An equal salary was retroactively applied.) This isn’t proof that the Liberal party under Trudeau isn’t feminist but it does reveal priorities; appearing to be feminist is easy, acting on it takes more thorough thinking and planning.

In 2016 he was accused of having a deeply unfeminist first budget, just two weeks after addressing the UN women’s conference, declaring himself a feminist loudly and proudly. Kate McInturff, a senior researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, found a gender divide in the 43,000 new jobs promised in the 2016 budget and 100,000 in 2017-18. And the Status of Women’s total budget was just 0.02 percent of total federal program spending. Pam Palmater, a Mi’kmaw lawyer, professor, activist, and politician pointed out the wan funding promised for Indigenous Peoples.

That same year, it became mandatory for all memos to cabinet and treasury board submissions to include a gender-based analysis (GBA+). GBA+ is a tool to determine how policy, legislation and program decisions impact women and men differently, including age, income, disability and other intersecting factors, across all government departments and agencies. This was introduced without giving the adequate resources necessary to effectively implement it, so, fewer than half of federal departments and agencies have a gba+ framework. The Liberal 2019 budget promises to fund the Treasury Board Secretariat with $1.5 million in order to support GBA+ in all departments receiving 2019 funding.

But it wasn’t until the SNC-Lavalin scandal that Canadians writ-large began questioning his feminist agenda and what kind of feminism it truly served. CBC reported Tourism Minister Mélanie Joly said the Liberals have a feminist agenda and “our record speaks for itself” in defence of her party leader’s questioned feminism.

Funnily enough, Finance Minister Bill Morneau hasn’t been shuffled once in his four years, despite multiple ethical fumbles and then becoming a central player in the SNC-Lavalin scandal.
Yet the heat was entirely on Jody Wilson-Raybould and Trudeau allowed it to happen; he actively participated in that narrative by shunning Wilson-Raybould for breaching the party’s trust without so much as a blink in the direction of beginning to understand why an Indigenous woman felt pressured into recording conversations. She knew she wouldn’t be believed.

When Trudeau 2.0 was elected into office, it was on campaigning about a transparent government, electoral reform, feminism, and Indigenous rights—it was a campaign based on “sunny ways” or whatever.

Officially, the Liberals campaigned on 231 promises. Along with gender parity in cabinet and ensuring gender-based impact analysis on cabinet decision-making, other promises that directly or indirectly affected women included launching the inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG), developing a new National Early Learning and Child Care Framework, implementing a Canada Child Benefit, electoral reform, and including representatives from women’s groups on the Canadian Firearms Advisory Committee.

When the Liberal government announced it was backpedalling on one of its major campaign promises, electoral reform, and let then-Minister of Democratic Institutions, Maryam Monsef become the scapegoat, it let down a lot of women.

There were 533 women candidates in the 2015 election and only 16 percent of them were elected. Canada’s first-past-the-post is a “majoritarian” political system as opposed to proportional representation. Fair Vote Canada reports “of the five countries
in the world who have 30 percent or more female parliamentarians … three have a proportional electoral system, and two have a mixed proportional electoral system.”

Despite making up just over half of the population, we still only represent 26 percent of our federal government so gender parity in cabinet seemed big.

Between 2016 and 2018, 43 percent of Governor in Council appointees (the people who get paid to work on federal commissions, boards, crown corporations, agencies, and tribunals) had gone to women; women make up
46 percent of the Senate.

Canada used to be ranked 50th in terms of gender equality internationally and now it ranks 62nd. We aren’t advancing as fast as other countries, like Bolivia, Iraq and Kazakhstan, in terms of parliamentary gender equality. The United Nations suggests 30 percent leads to a shift in policy and practice in government. This slug-paced crawl towards gender parity in parliament won’t get us to gender equality elsewhere. In fact, some estimate it  will be 118 years before the gender wage gap is closed.

Now, technically, Trudeau achieved gender parity, launched the inquiry into MMIWG, developed the child care framework and overall completed 100-plus promises.

Last December the government finally passed the long-awaited Pay Equity Act to force equal pay between men and women employed in federally regulated workplaces—so it doesn’t help women working in the hospitality or service industries, post-secondary institutions or health care, among others. This was followed by creating the Department for Women and Gender Equality in December—elevating the Status of Women Canada from an agency within the Department of Canadian Heritage to its own full department.

The Canadian Gender Budgeting Act also passed in December 2018, which requires the government to consider gender and diversity in taxation and resource allocation decisions and in the development of policy in a budgetary context.

Persistent and just-as-large gaps remain in pensions, parental leave, and health care. Initiatives meant to decrease these gaps need to be adequately funded: otherwise, they’re window dressings on a decaying house. Trudeau has made marked advances in his feminist agenda that deserve recognition, but a government that only waters the leaves will starve the roots, inhibiting true growth.

Illustration by Graeme Zirk

Dear Citizens,

They’re coming for you. For your brains. You hear that and you think of George Romero. Dawn or Day or Night of the Living Dead. But this is worse. I’m not talking about zombies. I’m talking about politicians. Zombies will come for you and they’ll chew on you for a bit, but that’s it. They won’t ask you for money or stand at your doorstep and promise they care about you and whatever you care about, then take your vote and disappear for half a decade. Zombies won’t tell you to watch out for other zombies because those other guys don’t really have a plan for munching on your cerebral cortex and, worse still, if those other zombies win, they’ll take that roadkill you’ve brought home for dinner.

During the federal election this year, politicians and their follower-hordes will use sophisticated techniques to frame issues and target, mobilize, and demobilize you and other voters. They know how to talk about things, e.g. tax cuts are relief, climate pricing is a tax or an incentive, and how to appeal to the right neighbourhoods (not everyone gets a door knock) or age groups (young people don’t vote, older people do). They’ll play on your fears. (If you don’t vote for Party X, then Party Y might win, and don’t even consider Party Z because why are they even bothering?)

Working on my master’s and PhD, I spent most of a decade learning about the psychology of how we make political decisions. I come by the zombie idea honestly. Humans haven’t evolved to make complex, considered, rational political decisions easily. We can do it. But making good political decisions—ones you come up with based on reliable information and reasons that are your own and true—is tough. We can do it, but it takes time, effort, practice, resources, and incentives. You’d think in a democracy—rule by the people and all that—the state would be set up for such things. You’d think politicians would want there to be plenty of meaningful chances for folks to participate in public life. Not so much.

Politicians are often very decent and capable people. Some are quite smart. But come election season, they want your vote. If you can bring a friend to the polls with you, assuming they’re a supporter, even better. They don’t care so much about you making good political decisions at that point. In exchange, you get Heaven, and that’s better than Hell, which is what you get from the other guys. Unfortunately, the road to each is paved with platitudes and half-truths and doublespeak.

There are some things you can do to resist. If it’s zombies you’re worried about, you’re going to want boards and nails and clubs and Molotov cocktails and whisky. If it’s politicians, it’s good and critical news sources and awareness of the traps that candidates will set for you and time to think and (if you’ll excuse the self-promotion) my book and probably, at least for some, whisky.

You might be tempted to give up. Don’t. Either when managing zombies or politicians. Push back. Don’t give into the fear or hopelessness. Arm yourself. Turn out to vote and pick the person you want to pick for your reasons—just make sure you have reasons and you know what you’re doing. Trust me. It’s the best way to maximize your chances of surviving this thing. 

Wishing you all the best,

David Moscrop

image: iStock/design: Valerie Thai

As Green Party Leader Elizabeth May prepared for the upcoming federal election, she realized she had a shortcoming: managing inevitable smear campaigns from opposing parties. Earlier in her career, May had told a group of Ontario nuns that she’d talked women out of abortions, and it raised questions about where the Green Party stood on the issue. While May has since unequivocally affirmed a pro-choice stance, she was determined to avoid being burned again. She appointed a protector: political dark-arts specialist Warren Kinsella, who previously worked for the Liberals.

Kinsella was an unlikely choice for May. According to a February Nanos survey, Canadians consider her the most ethical federal party leader; Kinsella, on the other hand, has been known to achieve his political aims by playing fast and loose. May was fully aware of Kinsella’s reputation. “I thought it was appalling,” she says. They reached an agreement—he’d provide cover but not advise on policy. May was adamant that Kinsella’s involvement with her re-election team wouldn’t impact her ethics; the moment their arrangement didn’t work, she reasoned, it’d be over. The collaboration held and Kinsella completed his assignment to set up a “quick response team” for the Greens.

May’s decision to hire Kinsella raised some eyebrows—not surprising given Canadians’ growing wariness of party politics. While voters tend to hold their leaders to higher ethical standards, politics is a dirty game; political hopefuls often talk about truth and transparency, but end up relying on spin and obfuscation instead.

This raises a pertinent question: is it really possible to be ethical while seeking and maintaining political power?

David Merner was a Liberal candidate for the Vancouver Island riding of Esquimalt–Saanich–Sooke when Justin Trudeau promised to reform the electoral system and find an alternative to first-past-the-post. Within a year, Trudeau had broken that promise. It was the first in a series of disappointments that ultimately led Merner to realize he couldn’t possibly run as a Liberal again. “Why would voters ever believe you when you’re on their doorstep?” he says. He switched parties, joining the Greens.

MPs often have to balance their ethics against their commitment to their party. When voting on legislation, MPs are expected to fall in line with their party’s position—a practice rather brutally referred to as “whipping.” Parties will allow members to “vote with their conscience” on social or moral issues such as abortion-related bills, but those free votes are rare. Bloc Québécois MP Maria Mourani, for example, was ousted from the party in 2013 for her opposition to the Quebec Charter of Values, which proposed banning the wearing of religious symbols by public-sector employees.

The Green Party—which consistently tops surveys as the most ethical party—doesn’t engage in whipping, instead entrusting MPs to their own ethical beliefs. According to Merner, whipping lets representatives off the hook from really engaging with difficult issues. Wrestling with ideas, he believes, is critical to democracy. It’s not unusual for Green MPs to vote differently from one another on legislation, taking opposite stances on issues. In 2014, when voting on Canada’s military contribution to the fight against the Islamic State, May was at odds with fellow Green member Bruce Hyer. May favoured limited involvement that excluded air strikes and urged Hyer to vote similarly, but he refused. May pushed, but it wasn’t what his constituents wanted at the time; the freedom to prioritize his constituents above the party had been a key reason he joined the Greens.

More often, MPs tend to get punished when they stand up for what they believe is right. When Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott attempted to hold the Prime Minister accountable for his role in the snc-Lavalin scandal, for example, they were kicked out of the Liberal caucus. And they weren’t the only departures. Weeks earlier, after a meeting with Trudeau in which Ontario MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes says she felt bullied by the Prime Minister, she left the Liberal party, continuing to represent her constituents as an independent. “It gets really difficult,” Caeser-Chavannes says, but she remains steadfast. “I’m not going to apologize for doing what’s right.”

“You do lose friendships,” Merner says of crossing the floor. Before joining the Greens, he’d spent 35 years with the Liberals. It felt like a family—until he left. “You get ostracized and marginalized very quickly,” he says.

Floor-crossing and going independent carry considerable political risk. A recent study on legislative party switching determined that in the past few decades, the majority of MPs brave enough to make such a move saw their voting share shrink in re-elections. For those who go independent, losing party affiliation can also make it more difficult to push through legislation.

Is following one’s ethics worth it? According to Caesar-Chavannes, it’s essential. “There’s a lot of opportunity and privilege that comes with this job, so it has to be the thread that holds everything together,” she says.

But it’s difficult to guess how voters will respond to MPs who’ve taken a definitive and public ethical stance. According to Elisabeth Gidengil, professor of political science at McGill University, a lot of factors play into a voter’s decision, including socio-economic background and party affiliations. Voters that identify strongly with a certain party will be more forgiving of their ethical missteps. Other voters are blissfully unaware. “There is a segment of the electorate that does not pay much attention to politics, even when a campaign is underway,” Gidengil says.

Canadians’ views on ethics in politics are also somewhat inconsistent. A recent Globe and Mail/Nanos survey found that 73 percent of Canadians considered ethics in government to be the biggest issue in the upcoming federal election—but a separate CTV/Nanos survey found that only 25 percent expected the snc-Lavalin scandal to influence their vote. After Wilson-Raybould’s testimony to the House of Commons justice committee, Liberals slipped to fourth place in Canadians’ ethical standings, but it appears voters’ memories are fading, or the scandal ranks lower than other issues of concern: most recent polls show the Liberals and Conservatives neck-and-neck. Barring any new scandals, that pattern is expected to hold.

An earlier version of this article stated that Warren Kinsella previously worked for the Conservative Party; this was an error, which we apologize for.