Toronto / June 2026
One of the first messages I read on OCASI work email this morning was sent by a colleague who is part of our PSI - Positive Spaces Initiative Team. The email was addressed to the whole office and said the following:
“June marks both Pride and Indigenous History Month, giving us an opportunity to reflect back on and honor the rich histories, cultures, and resilience of diverse Indigenous and 2SLGBTQIA+ communities. We recognize that gender and sexual diversity existed in many Indigenous cultures long before colonization. We also recognize that diverse expressions of gender, sexuality, family, and community have existed across cultures worldwide and continue to enrich our communities today.
We honor the strength of communities who continue to resist colonialism and fight for their right to self-determination, dignity, and justice from Palestine to Sudan to Turtle Island.
Guided by this year’s Pride theme, “We Won’t Stop,” we stand in solidarity with the Indigenous people of Turtle Island as well as diverse expressions of gender and sexuality across the globe. We won’t stop speaking out and pushing forward in our ongoing fight for liberation, as we remind ourselves that Pride has always been rooted in collective action, resistance, and resilience.
If you would like to learn more about the gender and sexual diversity in the many Indigenous Nations and communities across Turtle Island and colonization's impact, we highly recommend watching this short video. You can also check out 2-Spirited People of the 1st Nations and Native Youth Sexual Health Network websites as starters. “
The message ended with the ‘in solidarity’ sign-off I use for this rant/blog each month. It means something. Literally, in this case as we welcome in both Pride month and Indigenous Peoples Month. And at the Council we walk in solidarity always with our Indigenous relations as we work to create safe spaces for 2SLGBTIQ+ persons in our communities – Indigenous and Immigrants/Refugees.
Reading the message gave me a sense of hope, a feeling that is in scarce supply these days, as we watch the policy trade-offs being done by all levels of government while the social safety net we have spent building over a century and a half continues to deteriorate before our eyes.
Today is the first day of Pride - a time of celebration and political action. Celebration of our resilience as communities whose members often live at the intersections and in the margins. I think back to three years ago and the media attention we generated by resisting the City of Toronto’s racist and xenophobic directive to its shelter and housing staff to deny shelter for refugee claimants who were primarily Black and from various countries in Africa (see investigation by Ombudsman Toronto). A significant number identified as members of LGBTIQ+ communities. Many fled from their homes because of this identity. The resulting advocacy led to some policy attention and funding to make something happen that would get many of the people sheltered and the Black and refugee serving sector agencies, Faith groups and others made whole (for the most part) for the expenses they incurred by stepping up, when governments stepped away.
For a year or so we were hopeful. Hopeful that the political actors and policy-makers in our immigration and humanitarian programs would find ways to alleviate the difficult journey so many had endured up to the point of filing for protection.
There were and continue to be social media postings, traditional news stories, personal sharing of experiences of fear and flight from those more recently arrived, as one African country after another announced increasingly punitive and draconian laws which criminalizes same-sex/gender love.
Laws that previous Canadian governments have spoken out against loudly regardless of political stripe. Laws that often invited the threat of, even if not implemented, sanctions against the governments of these countries. Canada stood out as a beacon of hope for many, who risked life and limb to reach our shores in search of a safe harbour.
Then Bill C-12 happened. One of the most backward, egregious, unconstitutional (we hope the courts will concur) pieces of legislation we’ve seen in decades.
The Bill, as we argued in our brief to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration and in my appearance before the Committee, the groups most at risk from the proposed changes to our refugee protection system would be women fleeing violence and persons who identified as LGBTIQ+ or as MSM or any other non-western term denoting same sex love, characteristics or behaviour. While the Committee ‘studied’ the Bill, their ‘findings’ would have no bearing.
The retroactive application of certain clauses in the Bill to 2020 is both unfair and cruel. Some of the people who arrived in 2022/2023 may not have filed their claims until more than a year after arriving. Partly due to their houselessness and shelter hopping, which no access to services including legal support. It took a while for folks to settle in supportive shelter or transitional housing where legal support was available, and their refugee claims could be written and filed.
That was the situation of those caught in the Toronto 2023 shelter ‘crisis, including many who identified as ‘queer’. Those who were finally able to submit a claim eighteen or twenty-four months after arrival have had their applications for protection made null and void. I have read that upwards of thirty thousand people could be affected. This is wrong. It is shameful. It puts the lives of tens of thousands at risk. For many facing deportation, this is a decision that decides whether they live their lives free or imprisoned-physically and metaphorically.
I write this a few days after the world learned that the government of Ghana brought back and passed anti-same sex relationship laws including prison sentences. Uganda, Senegal, Iran, Russia and about sixty-one other countries around the world have these laws which criminalize consensual same-sex relations.
The enactment of Bill C-12 into law means that one of the world’s safest havens for those fleeing homo/transphobic persecution and prosecution has been cut-off for the most part. For those already here and receiving the life changing news about their claims being made null and void, I can only imagine the anguish. For those waiting in limbo and those who have not yet heard, the suspended terror or waiting to learn if you might be sent back to danger must be mentally and psychologically debilitating.
Add the cuts to Interim Federal Health (IFH) and the up to thirty percent co-pay expected from Claimants or refugees for mental health supports like psychotherapy, or the flat four dollars co-pay for necessary medication sets up the perfect storm.
These anti-humanitarian policies are creating the conditions for increasing our undocumented population. It contributes to houselessness and labour and sexual exploitation. Government policy is driving social in-cohesion and confusion.
My colleague’s message is a reminder that we do not have the privilege to languish in despair while there is so much work to be done. That our interlocking struggles demand that we each show up, prepared to do our part in collective actions towards our liberatory social and economic ideals.
At the City of Toronto’s flag raising during the late afternoon of June 1st, the Mayor honored the Faith leaders in the city who twenty-five years ago stood up for what was right, put their licenses on the line and married same-sex couples, even as the law prohibited and refused to recognize these unions. It is their brave and moral decisions that moved governments- provincial and federal and the courts, to make the definition of marriage much more inclusive, twenty-five years ago.
It was good to bear witness to this as organizers acknowledge the difficulties of financing this year’s Pride celebrations. Both (federal and provincial) levels of government have reduced their supports for Pride festivals across the country, including here in Ontario. Corporations, no longer needing to pink wash their brand, as anti- DEI/ anti- ‘wokeism’ (or its various permutations) have taken hold in corporate board rooms, are rescinding their sponsorships and the dollars that come along with it. For most Pride organizations this means upwards of seventy to eighty percent of their funding is in jeopardy. Sounds familiar?
In his closing remarks to the gathering of hundreds on the roof of Toronto City Hall, with a strong presence of refugees and asylum seekers in attendance, the executive director of Pride Toronto, Kojo Modeste ended by saying “ (T)hey can take some things from us, but will never take away our resilience.”
I would add, they will never be able to silence our resistance!
Happy Pride. Happy Indigenous People’s Month.
We won’t stop!
In Solidarity
dd