iComm2008 Background check

The Records of the Major Canadian Parties on LGBTQ Issues

Since we’re looking at a federal election in this country on Tuesday, I thought it might be a good time to look at the records of the parties.

The parties’ platforms are discussed at length elsewhere. But platforms during an election are airy things — anyone can promise the moon. I personally believe that past performance is the best predictor of future behaviour, when it comes to party politics.

NDP

It will likely come as no surprise that the New Democratic Party has by far the best record of any sitting party on LGBTQ issues. This started forty-one years ago, in 1967, when party founder and Baptist minister Tommy Douglas became the first parliamentarian to call for the legalization of homosexuality. This support became official in 1976, when the party was the first to make support of the gay liberation movement a part of its platform.

The party has most of “firsts” of LGBTQ politics. It ran its first openly gay candidate in 1988 (Douglas Wilson). After the 1988 election, the NDP’s Svend Robinson became the first member of parliament to come out publicly. In 2001, Libby Davies of the NDP became the first queer woman parliamentarian to come out. In 2004, Bill Siksay became the first MP to come out before he was elected and win his seat.

The party was also the first to propose same-sex marriage — Robinson had been arguing for this throughout the 1990s. It regularly whips LGBTQ-related votes in our favour, such as adding us to the human rights code, and adding violence against us to hate-crimes provisions. It has “affirmative action committees” made up of LGBTQ members of the party that drafts its policies on queer issues.

The NDP was the only party to whip the vote on same-sex marriage. One NDPer voted against it — Bev Desjarlais — and was remove from the shadow cabinet as punishment. She later lost the nomination for her riding.

On immigration issues, the NDP’s newest MP Thomas Mulcair made a name for himself fighting the deportation of Kulenthiram Amirthalingam to Malaysia, where he has already suffered violent persecution as a gay man.

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