Editor's note: For the 2019 federal election, BarrieToday teamed up with a journalism student to provide extra coverage on important issues.
The interviews conducted during this Q-and-A series were done by Emily Hsueh from Algonquin College in Ottawa. The issues and topics of discussion focused mainly on youth and young adults in Canada and the Barrie-Innisfil riding. The answers have been edited for length and clarity.
This installment touches on LGBTQ+ issues.
Conservative candidate John Brassard, who participated in the previous series of questions, had to end the interview due to time constraints.
Liberal candidate Lisa-Marie Wilson and People’s Party candidate Stephanie Robinson could not be reached after several attempts.
What will you do to support youth in the LGBTQ+ community in your area?
Green Bonnie North
I’m a former board member of Barrie Pride and there’s a wonderful organization here in Barrie called the Gilbert Centre that does outreach and counseling. They’re amazing.
The Green Party of Canada, as well as all of the other parties, want to focus on making sure we are inclusive and look after our LGBT community. We want to establish a funding program within Health Canada to support community-based organizations like the Gilbert Centre that offer targeted LGBTQ mental-health and well-being programs, including suicide prevention and peer support.
We want to repeal all federal laws and policies that discriminate on the grounds of sexuality, including Section 159 that refers to intersex reality as a defect or an aberration.
We have to have federal legislation that bans conversion therapy at the federal level. It’s not good enough to say to say to our LGBT community and kids who are closeted that, "the provinces will take care of the conversion ban. We don’t need to get into that."
That’s not good enough, because if it’s not, then it’s not going to be universal. We want to ensure access to comprehensive sexual health care and gender affirming health care, including the hormone treatments and blockers. We want to ban surgeries for intersex because there are well-meaning parents and doctors and family members that might want to start instituting some kind of surgical program, but that doesn’t necessarily take in to account the rights of the young people going through those medical interventions.
Right now, I’m not a volunteer with the Gilbert Centre, but we have done some training with them on safe spaces. I’m also the deputy leader of the Green Party of Ontario and one thing I would like to do when the hustle and bustle of the election is over is, I want to make sure our riding association here in Barrie-Innisfil gets training through the Gilbert Centre.
These are all volunteers. All the riding associations in the Green Party are managed by volunteers. We are inclusive already, but we want to increase the awareness and understanding of what inclusivity really means, and so I would love to see all of the Green riding associations, not only across the province of Ontario but across Canada, get involved in safe spaced education so we truly know what it means to be inclusive and safe.
Even if I’m not a volunteer with the Gilbert Centre, I think there’s so much that the Gilbert Centre can offer and all we need to do it go to them and make it happen.
NDP Pekka Reinio
The NDP has always been a big supporter of the LGBTQ+ community. Locally, what I’ve done is I’ve supported our Pride festivals and parades. In fact, this year, the Innisfil Pride team started their very first Innisfil Pride Festival and so we took part in that festival. We had a booth for the entire weekend to support the LGBTQ community and to let them know our party stands with them, because their hard-earned rights cannot be compromised.
We need to support our community and ensure that their hard-fought rights are protected and strengthened. We would also be looking at banning conversion therapy for minors.
Other topics in the Q&A series are: food distribution, homelessness, the youth job market, mental health and substance abuse, and the environment.
The federal election is Oct. 21. More local coverage is available here.
