When: 9:00am, Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Where: Ottawa Marriott Hotel on 100 Kent St., Victoria North Ballroom (2nd Floor)

I got in touch to be among the speakers, but I was too late. Nevertheless, I have the following prepared should the opportunity present itself:

To my esteemed parliamentarians and participants here today,

My name is Julien McArdle. Full disclosure: I organized in the spring of last year a petition to lift the ban on Gay-Straight Alliances, or GSAs, in the Ottawa Catholic School Board. I amassed over 700 signatures to this effect. The accompanying Facebook group has over 400 followers.

I’m here today to talk about Bill 13, and more specifically to discuss Gay-Straight Alliances. I believe it to be the elephant in the room with regards to this bill and the reason why there is such strong opposition from a dedicated minority.

What I propose is simple: listen to the students. I find that they are so easy to forget when we hold these sessions away, both in time and place, from schools.

If you listen to the students, they have already spoken. They did so when they tried to set up Gay-Straight Alliances. Let me remind you that it was not the students who then forbade their establishment.

I must also speak out on the “Respecting Differences” clubs. I would find it a wonderful asset were it not actually utilized as a tool to legitimize the prohibition of genuine support to students. The guidelines for the Respecting Differences group forbid conversations on gender identity. I ask you: how is a group where you can’t even discuss what you’re facing supposed to be of any help? It can not. Imagine how ineffective an anti-racism club would be if its participants were not permitted to talk about issues of race.

On the matter of religious freedom, an argument oft-cited by opponents, I ask this: how is one’s religious freedoms impinged by the existence of a group whose mandate is to foster understanding? It is not.

That some speakers before you have made comparisons to slavery and the residential school abuses in reference to a mere support group attests to the toxicity in the public sphere that makes GSAs so necessary to the young recipients of this ignorance.

I conclude with a simple message: the beneficiaries of this bill are the students. They have already spoken, they just need for you to listen.

Thank you,

Julien McArdle

The trip was a success. I read an entire book – the Pulitzer-winning The Forever War by Dexter Filkins – and got a head start on The Fate of Africa by Martin Meredith. I wrote, start-to-finish, the draft for my second book. Every day, I went to bed early, woke up late, ate well, swam, read and wrote. There was no computer screen, no work emergency to concern myself with. It was absolutely fantastic.

I have never had vacation time before that wasn’t a rush to complete objectives – either by juggling family around Christmas or speed-running through cities on travels abroad. To just have all the time in the world was such a wonderful feeling.

Jay couldn’t come this time round due to school constraints, but we’ve resolved that we’ll go off together once he graduates. I very much look forward to that.

A member of the Progressive Conservative party voting against Bill 13, the "Safe Schools Act" on May 3rd, 2012.

Original Story:  May 1, 2012. Of the 77 bills in this session of the Ontario legislature, the Accepting Schools Act is now in the top spot for the most debated, sharing the title with the Healthy Homes Renovation Tax Credit Act. You can find my previous coverage of the debates here and here.

Such is the state of affairs that the education minister alleged that the PCs were intentionally blocking the bill by way of stalling tactics during second reading. I’d have to agree with her. It is quite clear from the contrast between the debate with Bill 13 and the PCs own Anti-Bullying Act that they don’t want the Accepting Schools Act to pass.

No one should be surprised. The PCs ran on a homophobic and transphobic platform six months ago. In one of the earlier debates for this anti-bullying bill, they asserted that to oppose discrimination against children was to oppose religious freedoms.

This is all because the bill includes references to sexual orientation and gender identity in addition to sex, disability, and race. I believe the strength of the opposition is emblematic of precisely there’s a need for its inclusion.

Anyways, back to the debates. Yasir Naqvi, the Liberal MPP for Ottawa recited a letter he had received:

Ruth wrote, “I support Bill 13 because no one deserves to be pushed, beaten, spit on, called names, shunned, segregated or bullied for any reason. We can’t be judged for race. We can’t be judged for religion. Why should we be allowed to be judged based on sexuality? Please help change this.”

Liberal member John Gerretsen on the stalling tactics by the Progressive Conservatives:

The first thing that I would ask the people of Ontario to do is to go to the legislative website and read Bill 13 and Bill 14. I would ask them if they can actually see a difference in those two bills. There’s very little difference. We’re all talking about the same thing: bullying.

Now, you know, everybody is accusing everybody else of playing games with this, and there have been a lot of games played here and probably on all sides of the House—and I’ll be the first to admit that. But one of the games that the Tories have been playing with this bill—and that’s why it’s been debated here so often—is that whenever they talk about this bill, they make the bells ring for half an hour, wasting half an hour of everybody’s time. That’s why this bill is back here day after day, because every bill has to have so many hours of debate; I’ve forgotten exactly what it is but something like seven or eight hours of debate, etc.

Liberal Bob Delaney on the same subject:

Speaker, I say to my colleagues in the PC Party, if they really want to move forward on this, let’s let debate collapse. Let’s get it into committee. Let’s get it into committee today.

Seven times, representing 12 hours and 55 minutes of delay, the PC Party has just rung the bells needlessly on this bill. There’s no cause for it at all.

The PC explanation by Julia Monroe:

We have a very serious issue on the floor of this chamber: the question of Bill 13 and the question of Bill 14. No one, I think, misunderstands that we also have a very serious issue in the need for a select committee. The bells are simply an opportunity to demonstrate the dissatisfaction of the opposition, and serve as a reminder of the need to look at the issue of Ornge. I certainly don’t think that I mixed those messages in my remarks.

Ornge is the air ambulance service operated by the province. The auditor general had recently found serious issues with how it was handled. The PCs also alleged that the Liberals were obstructing Bill 14 in committee:

Right now, Bill 14 has already passed second reading. It’s before committee. The government that talks about obstruction, and how they are opposed to obstruction, is the very group of people obstructing the passage of Bill 14 and its work through committee right now.

The NDP offered to mediate the differences, but I’d be very surprised if anyone took them up on their offer. Not least of which because the PCs wouldn’t allow a bill that extends protections to queer kids. As they argued, preventing the Catholic schools from banning support groups for queer youth would be tantamount to bullying the schools:

Let’s not force schools. Let’s not bully them into having these particular clubs of a particular name so that it satisfies a particular goal.

The goal being related to a seemingly nefarious “agenda” when speaking of equity policies:

I’ve listened and heard from schools, even now, about certain agendas that are being aggressively pushed in the school. I will put that on the record, and I can refute it from parents and students from high schools and elementary schools who are upset with the current curriculum driving an agenda.

This type of logic either presumes that no kid in an Ontario high school is queer, or wilfully ignores their existence. It looks at policies of acceptance as a negative force from the outside being pushed on to administrators and parents. It is a refusal to help the very individuals who should benefit from legislation to make schools better: the students.

There appears to be a shift in the framing of the opposition by the PC to make their stance seem more palatable. They are now presenting this as a matter of their bill being more inclusive. But their actions speak louder than their words, and their actions tell of a stance that sees inclusiveness as fine as long as it doesn’t include LGBT youth.

It isn’t all peachy though – while there’s a good selection of applications, it could be better. It also lacks association with applications that are known to mainstream users. Windows has Word, Mac has Garage Band, and the iOS has Instagram. When it comes to operating systems, apps are everything.

I think now that we have a convergence between mobile and desktop operating systems, there’s a real opportunity here for desktop Linux distributions. Simply said: have a popular distro like Ubuntu be able to run Android apps out of the box. You can right now through the emulator that comes with the SDK provided by Google, but that doesn’t have a native feel to it. You want the Android app to appear to run like any other program (emphasis on appear.)

Ride on the popularity of Android. It and the iOS are a developer hot bed with thousands making programs that people like you and me want to use. People go where the apps are, and I believe there’s a chance here to pull people away from Windows. Especially if you (or Canonical, the people behind Ubuntu) can market the fact that it can also run Windows applications anyways.

Or perhaps I’m completely out to lunch.

I decided to try to make my own baklavas. I kind of screwed up the dough though, so it looks better than it tastes.

It’s an interesting criticism, and it’s true that we are fortunate enough to live in a region where oil production and violent crackdowns aren’t associated with each other. That said, this positive trait does not negate the question of whether things could be improved from an environmental perspective. It’s a very resource hungry process.

Enter an organization that bears the name Ethical Oil. Right now, they’re levying a boycott against a banana producer for opting to fuel their transportation by what they see as more responsible means.

Which means that despite their name, this organization really isn’t about ethics. If it were, they would acknowledge the environmental concerns of this company, even if they disagreed with the specifics. Instead, it’s a front for those blindly advocating development, and the only ethics to be found are in its name.

The NDP through MPP Cheri DiNovo affirmed their support for the legislation, while re-iterating where they saw avenues for improvement. She also talked extensively about Gay-Straight Alliances. She quoted a student who felt rejected by his school administration, which had banned students from forming a GSA. She also went on to talk about statistics of suicide among LGBT youth, and the need for the support:

We want to support these students, and part of supporting these students is to support them in supporting themselves. When they say—and they don’t all say, but when they do say—that they want a gay-straight alliance in their schools, we need to be behind them.

DiNovo then spoke of the demonstrable benefits of having such support in schools:

I want to just share some quotes, and these quotes are from various groups. First of all, let’s look at Egale. Egale Canada says, “GSAs … demonstrably improve the lives of LGBTQ youth, increasing their safety and improving their self-esteem.”

By simply existing, GSAs present “students with the idea that LGBTQ identities have a place in the school, and society at large. Directly engaging LGBTQ youth and their allies within school, as well as those who are ambivalent regarding LGBTQ themes, is an excellent means towards addressing school climate, isolation, promoting social connectedness.” They cite a study in California that found gay-straight alliance presence and participation in high school to be highly correlated with decreased depression, substance abuse and lifetime suicide attempts among LGBTQ young adults.

The Progressive Conservatives through MPP John O’Toole voiced their objection to Bill 13. O’Toole suggested that passing this law would be tantamount to bullying:

I believe this document from the Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association, Respecting Difference, summarizes particularly how I feel about the issue. I believe that the secular society forcing views on non-secular society is in fact bullying.

Perpetrators are being framed with the same language used to describe the victims, in an attempt to provide a sense that both positions are of equal merit. And yet, when you look at who is exercising control over the other, such illusions are quickly dispelled.

The students are seeking to form a support group. They are not preventing other students from forming a support group. They are not preventing the school’s administrators from creating a support group. They are not making bigoted decisions that negatively impact others. On the contrary, they are the recipient of such prejudice. Contrary to the MPP’s assertions, the inability for a perpetrator to infringe on the well-being of others does not make them victims.

I find it telling that the MPP quoted the Respecting Differences document, which forbids students from even speaking openly about matters of gender identity.

As Liberal MPP Glenn Murray noted:

The reason the GSAs, and not organizations for disabilities or black kids or aboriginal kids, are at the centre of this is because of our social discomfort with sexual orientation. That’s what the Hotwire—Charles McVety and a few thousand extremists are going to be out on the front lawn. They’re not here talking about kids with disabilities. They have no problem with stopping bullying against young folks who are unfortunately overweight or kids who are a little ungainly or awkward or a bit nerdy or whatever the thing is that brings on that horrible bullying.

Then taking aim at the comments made by O’Toole, Murray said:

You know, it isn’t bullying. There’s no one here that’s suggesting that we shouldn’t teach a Catholic perspective in our schools. Let me read Charles McVety, who is a person who, if you had to find the philosophical polar opposite to my world—this is what he recently said in a news article editorial he wrote. He said that Catholic teaching is defined in the document, by referring to the document Pastoral Guidelines to Assist Students of Same Sex Orientation in the 2006 CCCB statement, which the member from Durham mentioned before: “Basing itself on sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity” and a tradition that declared—he’s quoting from the bishop’s direction—“homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.”

I have to say to the bishops: “You’re not allowed to do that anymore.” I’m not allowed to say to the Catholics—nor should I—or to other Christians or Muslims or Jews, that because of your faith you’re intrinsically disordered. I would never say to you that anything that goes on in your family with the person you love—can you imagine me describing a husband-and-wife relationship as inherently depraved? Can you imagine how it feels to gay and lesbian families and to our children in schools when people like Charles McVety say we’re unfit to be parents? How much do you love your children? How would you feel, as an Ontarian or as a Canadian? You feel a little less Canadian. I feel a little less welcome in my own country every time someone like that is endorsed.

He concluded by stating he hoped both the Liberal Bill 13 and the PC Bill 14 passed. There was more commentary by other MPPs, and declaration that this debate would be continued another time.

Then came the second reading for Bill 14. NDP MPP Rosario Marchese expressed her party’s support for the legislation, while PC MPP Lisa MacLeod told the audience where she thought it was better than Bill 13. More accountability and better at remediation, she said. Another Liberal, Liz Sandals, said she would support Bill 14. Other MPPs spoke up to support the private member’s bill. There was a motion to carry. With that, the PC bill passed second reading.

It seems that Glenn Murray’s observations were spot on. Because Bill 14 did not explicitly cover LGBT students, it was devoid of the opposition that has plagued the Liberal bill. Its second reading debate lasted an hour, and then it passed to the next phase for legislation. Meanwhile, Bill 13 has been dragged in second reading debates for days, with no clear end in sight.

I’m glad Bill 14 passed this stage. I’ll be more happy when Bill 13 does too.

Yesterday was the second reading for the Accepting Schools Act (Bill 13), the anti-bullying legislation introduced by the Liberal Party of Ontario.

The provisions in the bill would create a “bullying awareness and prevention week”, grant the Minister the ability to put a policies and guidelines to deal with bullying, and also the following:

Every board shall support pupils who want to establish and lead,

(a) activities or organizations that promote gender equity;

(b) activities or organizations that promote anti-racism;

(c) activities or organizations that promote the awareness and understanding of, and respect for, people with disabilities; or

(d) activities or organizations that promote the awareness and understanding of, and respect for, people of all sexual orientations and gender identities, including organizations with the name gay-straight alliance or another name.

Unfortunately, there is a very vocal force opposing the introduction of this bill. Now I don’t pretend to fully understand those who reject this anti-bullying legislation. That said, I have tried to read the statements written by the detractors to get a better insight into their objections.

There’s a few things to take away from this opposition. First of all, it exists because the anti-bullying legislation also covers discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. If that inclusion wasn’t there, you wouldn’t have these groups make a ruckus.

To that extent, this opposition is entirely religious in nature, including not just adherents of the Catholic faith but other religions as well. This is not all that surprising since faith-based groups have historically opposed measures of acceptance for LGBT folk. Let us not forget that this bill partly owes its existence as a reaction to the much-publicized ban by Catholic schools on support groups for LGBT students.

It would be unfair to group these opponents together, though there are a few discussion points I’ve seen crop up over and over. One is the concept that in the case of students from sexual minorities, there is such a thing as just discrimination. The other is this idea that they fear the normalization of homosexuality (in other words – acceptance.) This latter notion seems ideologically-tied to the concept of the fictitious homosexual agenda, the queer equivalent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

There’s unfortunately little middle ground here with that kind of rhetoric. One side is arguing against the acceptance of certain students as equals because of the minority to which they belong, while the other wants those same students to be treated as equals. As this anti-bullying legislation is incompatible with the continued “just” discrimination against a minority, so the religious leaders appear to be saying, it cannot be allowed to succeed.

 Bill 13: Second reading

You can read a full transcript of the second reading here. Starting the day was a petition to kill the anti-bullying bill by the religious Parents As First Educators:

To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

Whereas, as an anti-bullying measure, Bill 13 is unnecessary because Ontarians already have Bill 157; and

Whereas Bill 13 promotes radical revisions to school instruction on sex and gender that a majority of parents do not support; and

Whereas legislation is not the way to implement equity education (this should rather be addressed by teacher training, after wider parental consultation, in a way which respects the views of people of faith);

We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to vote against Bill 113.

A member for the Progressive Conservative party, meanwhile, appeared to suggest that the opposition would not support Bill 13. Or in parliamentary-speak:

We believe that Bill 14, which has been brought forward by my colleague, is the more comprehensive bill, and that’s what we’ll be supporting.

Bill 14 is the competing anti-bullying legislation tabled by the Progressive Conservative. It was introduced the same day as Bill 13, and unlike the latter, makes no reference to orientation or any other basis for discrimination, but rather focusing on acts. Education critic for the opposition, Lisa MacLeod explained why she believed her party’s bill was superior, and accused the Liberals of not negotiating in good faith with her party in coming up with a joint solution.

The PC’s bill language does nothing to confront prejudice that’s from the board-level, and so the bans on support groups for LGBT youth would continue if they succeeded in supplanting Bill 13. I do believe this omission is why they introduced the legislation – so as to protect the discriminatory policies of the Catholic schools, which their supporters see as a matter of “freedom of religion, expression and thought“.

The NDP meanwhile stated that they disagreed with the PC’s approach of placing all the blame on the bully while ignoring the environmental factors that lead to those behaviours. They backed Bill 13, but saw it as being in need of improvements.

The member speaking for the NDP, Peter Tabuns, also spoke of the GSA issue:

As contentious as they may be, there is another issue that has taken on much more profile, and that takes me to the whole question of student clubs to reduce bullying, the most contentious section of this bill—and that is because one section has to do with the formation of gay-straight alliances in schools. This is the part of the bill that helps to address two issues: cultural change and building support networks for those who are under attack.

Culture change—because when authorities recognize and respect groups that are under attack, that are subjected to abusive action, it changes the dynamic of power. When authorities show respect for girls, when authorities show respect for those who have different skin colour, show respect for those who are disabled, show respect for our gay youth, that helps to shift the culture as much as the principal of my school coming in to talk to my class when I was in grade 3. It says the ground has to move. Allowing students in schools, under the sanction of the administration, to set up clubs says to all students that those students deserve respect; that the authorities in charge of the schools and the education system believe that those students deserve respect. Allowing students in schools to set up support networks gives them the security of being together and reduces the isolation that we all know can be, literally, deadly.

He read off the provision I quoted in the introduction, and talked about how clubs dealing with gender, racism, and disability issues are in great need here in Ontario. He continued:

That takes me to the last category in this subsection of the bill: “(d) activities or organizations that promote the awareness and understanding of, and respect for, people of all sexual orientations and gender identities, including organizations with the name gay-straight alliance or another name.”

Everything that has been seen to be true for other responses to oppression based on gender, racism or ability is true when we come to sexual orientation. Yet, as you are well aware, Speaker, this is the most contentious item of the bill. We’ll explore that, I am sure, as we go further through debate and through committee.

This bill supports formation of equity-promoting groups for gay and lesbian students but does not require school boards to allow students to determine the most appropriate name for the committee. Speaker, I think that is a change that is going to be necessary, to give the students the right to determine the names of their committees. This lack runs counter to the aim of creating schools which are accepting of all students and of stopping prejudice and discrimination.

Egale Canada says “GSAs … demonstrably improve the lives of” lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and questioning “youth, increasing safety and improving their self-esteem.”

By simply existing, GSAs present students “with the idea that LGBTQ identities have a place in the school, and society at large. Directly engaging LGBTQ youth and their allies within school, as well as those who are ambivalent regarding” those “themes, is an excellent means towards addressing school climate, isolation and promoting social connectedness….”

A recent study in California found GSA presence and participation in high school to be highly correlated with decreased depression, substance abuse and lifetime suicide attempts among LGBT young adults.

Now we started off this afternoon with the member from Nepean–Carleton talking about the tragic death of Jamie Hubley. I have to say his death was not one that was so rare that we could say there was no pattern. I wish—and this is tragic to say—I wish it was that rare.

In the Toronto Star last December, Antonia Zerbisias wrote about Support Our Youth, an organization in Toronto on Sherbourne Street that supports gay youth. In her article, she talked about how children are bullied and how gay children tend to be particularly picked out for abusive treatment.

She notes in her article: “‘Numerous studies suggest that among lesbian, gay and bisexual youth, approximately 32 per cent contemplate or attempt suicide (compared to 7 per cent of all youth)’ says a recent analysis by Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.” Those are very high numbers, Speaker. Those are numbers that every person in this room should keep in mind as we debate this bill, because the simple reality is that we’re dealing with decisions that will affect life and death of our young people. Researchers and advocates say that “it’s not their sexuality that leads these kids down a suicidal path—it’s the stigma and discrimination they face in a heterosexual world…. Jamie Hubley, 15, killed himself” last fall. “Orangeville girlfriends Jeanine Blanchette, 21, and Chantal Dube, 17, were found in a wooded area in 2010, apparently after committing suicide with pills.

“In 2007, 13-year-old Shaquille Wisdom hung himself the day after he was stuffed into a garbage can at his Ajax high school. His homophobic bullies have never been outed—or punished.”

All of us have a responsibility to protect our children no matter what colour they are, what gender they are, no matter what their gender orientation. All of us in this building, in this chamber, who have power, authority and responsibility have to protect our children. Speaker, we cannot abandon children to their fate; we have to act.

Bill 13 could be enhanced by incorporating elements of the Conservatives’ anti-bullying private member’s bill. Elements around public reporting, enhanced staff training, inclusion in curriculum, alternative programming—all those need to be taken into account as we get into committee, and everything that is going to advance the protection of children in this province that is incorporated in that private member’s bill needs to be brought into the government’s bill.

This session of the Ontario parliament has 107 seats. 53 are taken up by Liberals, and another 17 by the NDP. The PC meanwhile has 37 elected members. So presumably if the issue were to come to a vote today, Bill 13 would pass even without the PC’s support.

But success is not yet assured. I’ll keep you posted.

I’m not one for kitchenware, but this was definitively worth it.

I really enjoyed this book, for a few reasons. Key among these is the author’s attempt to see the cost of war from all involved parties. Stearns does not portray groups in moral absolutes with tragedies examined for one side and ignored for the other. He also navigates through different levels of governance, linking political events with their repercussions on the ground. But perhaps what I appreciate most is the author’s exposition as to the causes of the war, as viewed on its own terms, going back into the history of each country involved.

For it is important to note that the wars in the Congo was not just about the country itself, but about the interests of principally Rwanda, Uganda, Angola and Zimbabwe.  Though the wars are officially over, the country is still a broken one mired in violence. In the book’s final pages, the author examines why he believes that is.