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All Xtra's Pride coverage here; our Community Advisory Panel coverage here.

Community Advisory Panel Presentation:

Pride Toronto Board response:

UPDATE - JAN 6: Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto pastor Brent Hawkes told Xtra the names of the Toronto city staff members at the Community Advisory Panel targetted consultation on Jan 5.

The staff members include Mike Williams, general manager of economic development; Chris Brillinger, director of social policy analysis and research; Lori Martin, senior affairs officer; Rita Davies, executive director of culture and Ceta Ramkhalawansingh, the former manager of diversity and community engagement, who has since left the city for a new post but asked to attend the meeting, Hawkes says.

JAN 5: The list of groups and individuals requesting targeted consultations with the Pride Toronto (PT) Community Advisory Panel (CAP) has been posted publicly.

The release of the list on Jan 5 comes after vocal demands at the five consultation sessions in December as well as on the CAP Facebook page.

There are 36 groups and organizations on the list. Some come as no surprise: Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA), Pride Toronto staff, Church Wellesley Business Improvement Area (BIA) and Ward 27 Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam.

Then there are unnamed members of Toronto city staff.

Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto pastor Brent Hawkes didn’t have his notes from the panel's meetings with the city in front of him, so he could not provide Xtra with the names of the city staff members that attended, nor could he provide their departments.

There were two meetings between the panel and city staff, he says. One meeting was held about a month ago, and the most recent meeting, with five city staff members, was on Jan 5.

“From the city’s perspective, we heard what some of the key issues are, what the city feels Pride needs to work on,” he said. “For the city there are two issues: policy issues and political issues.

“But at the policy level, the city has requirements of all grant recipients. And finding out what Pride needs to do to ensure the funding is not in jeopardy because of a policy issue.”

Hawkes said the panel came away from its meeting with the city with much more clarity on policy issues.

This is a developing story.

After a 33-7 vote yesterday, Toronto City Council endorsed the Vienna Declaration, a document that denounces the war on drugs, the National Post reports.

The declaration favours public health responses to drugs instead of enforcement.

“The war against drugs has failed. In every jurisdiction and in every community, we know that policing this issue is not enough,” said gaybourhood councillor Kyle Rae.

Last year, controversy erupted during a Toronto safe consumption site feasibility study when Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he planned to shut down a Vancouver safe injection site.

The Vienna Declaration aims to end all that.

“The criminalization of illicit drug users is fuelling the HIV epidemic and has resulted in overwhelmingly negative health and social consequences. A full policy reorientation is needed.”

Approving the Vienna Declaration does not necessarily mean Toronto will have its own safe consumption site, says Councillor Gord Perks and Toronto Drug Strategy board chairperson.

“It’s a declaration, not a prescription. It would simply reinforce the existing Toronto Drug Strategy. For example, Public Health workers already hand out safe crack kits to prevent the spread of hepatitis and have numerous other programs for drug users,” says Perks.

In 2007, Shawn Syms wrote that embracing harm reduction could revitalize queer politics:

Law-enforcement officials will tell you drugs like crack are illegal because they're harmful to users and society. But the reverse is even more true — some drug use is harmful specifically because of the fact that it's against the law.

For instance, needle use can lead to many more health problems than inhaling a substance — such as abscesses, endocarditis (a potentially fatal heart infection) and a greater risk of overdose and death. But if you can be arrested for getting high, many people will choose the route least likely to be detected — and shooting up generates no telltale smoke or odours.

One of the biggest harms of all associated with addictive drugs is their economic cost. It's easy to link illicit drug use and criminal acts such as theft — after all, both are considered morally suspect in the public imagination. But most addicts wouldn't steal if illegal drugs — produced and distributed via underground economies fraught with risk — were not so unfairly expensive. In this way, drug laws set up a cycle of incarceration that wouldn't otherwise exist.

COMPILED BY NEIL MCKINNON

At a press event outside Toronto City Hall today, mayoral candidate Rob Ford embraced the endorsement of a fundamentalist Christian pastor who says Pride is "immoral" and suggests that the "moral foundation" of society is being dismantled by gay marriage.

Asked by a reporter if he supports gay marriage, Ford said: "No, I support traditional marriage. I always have, but if people want, to each their own. I'm not worried about what people do in their private life. I look out for taxpayers' money, and to each his own when it comes to what happens behind closed doors."

Ford made the comments at a presser where Rev Wendell Brereton announced that he was dropping out of the mayoral race and throwing his support behind Ford. Brereton is now running for council in Ward 6.

Watch a clip of the event below (Ford's comments about gay marriage start at 1:05):   

Toronto City councillor Giorgio Mammoliti's motion to defund Pride Toronto (PT) as punishment for its decision to rescind its ban on the words "Israeli apartheid" in Toronto's Pride parade passed at city council today after a vote of 36-1. But the motion was changed significantly before it came to a vote.  

It reads: 

1. City Council direct that funding for Pride Toronto be paid after the parade and be conditional upon Pride Toronto requiring all registered participants to comply with the City of Toronto's Anti-Discrimination Policy (read the policy here - PDF).

2. City Council request the City Manager to advise Pride Toronto on what is required of them to meet the Policy.

3. City Council request the City Manager to advise Pride Toronto whether the participation of QAIA and the signs or banners they carry contravenes the City's Anti-Discrimination Policy.

(Full text of the motion and the votes can be viewed here)

That means that funding for PT's 2010 celebration won't be clawed back and that the matter is closed at least for this year. For next year, the onus for interpreting the city's antidiscrimination policy, for making the determination whether or not the presence of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid in Toronto's Pride parade violates that policy, will fall to the city manager's office. Also, PT will get its city money after future Pride celebrations rather than before, as is the case now.

Xtra talked with PT executive director Tracey Sandilands after the vote. She said she is relieved by the outcome. She said that getting city funding after the parade in the future is a bit of an inconvenience, but that she's happy PT isn't on the hook for interpreting the city's antidiscrimination policy. She said she believes PT was always in compliance with city policy.

Although a significant victory for Toronto's gay communities, the move does come with some risks. For example, those opposed to QuAIA's presence in the Pride parade now know precisely where to target their lobbying efforts: the city manager's office. If those lobbyists are successful over the course of the next few months, gay people may have to deal with QuAIA censorship issues again next year. But there's nothing in Canadian jurisprudence to suggest that criticism of the Israeli government is discriminatory. So it seems implausible that city managers could reasonably make that determination. At any rate, for now the ball rests firmly in the courts of the anti-QuAIA lobby and the city manager's office.

QuAIA has always maintained that the presence of its contingent does not breach the city’s policy. After announcing it would ban the term "Israeli apartheid" on May 25, Pride Toronto rescinded the ban on June 23, less than two weeks before the parade on July 4.

Mammoliti's original motion demanded retroactive repayment of city grants to Pride Toronto for the 2010 celebration as punishment for Pride Toronto's decision to rescind its ban on the term "Israeli apartheid."

Sandilands also told Xtra that despite a relatively successful Pride celebration this year, she anticipates that PT will have a deficit of at least $100,000.