Ellen DeGeneres got an invitation to visit Toronto recently from an unusual place: Toronto’s vegan community. The invite came from Toronto's YouTube buddies Vegan Meal Times in advance of an Aug 10 event at Yonge-Dundas Square, where organizers plan to give out 5,000 vegan hotdogs.

 

The duo wants people to write to Ellen on her website to ask her to attend. Watch the invitation video below.

 

The Supreme Court of Canada announced May 5 that it will hear the case of an HIV-positive man who failed to disclose his status before having sex. The case, known as Mabior, will be the third such case to go to the Supreme Court, and the first in almost a decade.

Another case, R v DC in Quebec, is winding its way through the appeal process and could end up before the Supreme Court soon.

The court does not give reasons for agreeing to hear a case, but HIV activists believe that Mabior and DC will be a test of two defences against HIV-related charges: condom use and low viral load.

In interviews with Xtra in February, lawyer Glenn Betteridge and Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network's Cécile Kazatchkine described Supreme Court challenges as one of three prongs they're using to minimize the harm caused by unchecked prosecutions of poz folks for nondisclosure.

In the case headed to the Supremes, a Winnipeg man was sentenced to 14 years in jail for six counts of aggravated sexual assault. Four of those convictions were overturned on appeal. Because he is a new immigrant, when he is released, he will likely be deported.

The Supreme Court first ruled that knowingly exposing a sexual partner to HIV is a prosecutable crime in 1998's Cuerrier decision. It reinforced that decision in 2003's R v Williams.

But developments in treatment and advances in the science of HIV mean that new information will be presented to the court. Research released since Williams shows that those who are being treated and have an undetectable viral load pose little or no risk of infecting others, even when they have sex without a condom.

 

 

 

The May 2 election was always about two things: will the Conservatives win a majority, and will the NDP make major breakthroughs in Quebec? The answer on both counts, as it turns out, is a resounding yes.

What will a Conservative majority look like? What does it mean for Stephen Harper's crime agenda, for the Supreme Court, for social programming? Some thoughts from Xtra.

When Harper took to the stage in Calgary to give his victory speech, his tone was jubilant, but his words were measured. He avoided some of the eye-poking partisan barbs he's capable of, saying simply, "What a great night," and "Canada can now turn the page."

"For our part, we can and must be aware that we are the government for all Canadians, even those who did not vote for us," Harper said, perhaps in reference to his party's dismal showing in Quebec.

Even so, he renewed his pledge to "promptly deliver" on his campaign promises, including his crime omnibus.

"At long last," he said, "we will pass our plan to make our streets and neighbourhoods safer."

There were many surprises over the course of the night. Perhaps the most striking was the Conservative gain in Toronto, unseating prominent Liberals like Ken Dryden, Rob Oliphant and even Liberal Party Leader Michael Ignatieff. The NDP also picked up a handful of Toronto ridings south of Bloor and will be sending Andrew Cash (Davenport), Peggy Nash (Parkdale-High Park), Matthew Kellway (Beaches-East York) and Dan Harris (Scarborough-Southwest) to Ottawa in addition to Jack Layton and Olivia Chow.

At the dissolution of Parliament, there were five openly gay MPs: NDPers Bill Siksay and Libby Davies and Liberals Scott Brison, Mario Silva and Rob Oliphant. Siksay retired and Silva and Oliphant have lost their seats.

Davies and Brison were reelected. They will be joined by at least two NDP rookies -- Dany Morin (Chicoutimi) and Phil Toone (Gaspésie-Îles-de-la-Madeleine). One more -- Randall Garrison in BC -- is locked in a tight race at this hour and it's too close to call.



 

Councillor Georgio Mammoliti says he will not move to defund Pride Toronto next week, as he had previously announced.

The news comes after Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) withdrew from Toronto's annual Pride parade, according to a press release issued April 15. Instead, QuAIA will hold its own event, without Pride Toronto (PT), sometime during Pride Week.

"Last year’s struggle was around censorship and our right to march in our community’s Pride parade,” says QuAIA spokesperson Tim McCaskell in the press release. “With the City report settling that debate, now is the time for us to move beyond the parade to build our community’s response to Israeli apartheid.”

On April 13, PT and QuAIA were exonerated in a city manager's report, which concluded that PT had not broken the city's anti-discrimination policy.

Earlier this week, Giorgio Mammoliti promised to strip the festival of funds. But on April 15, he said that QuAIA had "done the right thing."

"Because of what they've done, you won't see me move a motion to take the funds away," Mammoliti tells Xtra.

With this news, it appears that the festival's city funding is secure for 2011. Last year, PT received $123,807 from the city, plus roughly $300,000 in-kind services like policing and cleanup.

But Mammoliti stopped well short of endorsing PT funding in future years, saying that all programs would be reviewed this year in an effort to find $700 million in savings. Mammoliti's comments play into the tone of QuAIA's press release, which chides Mayor Rob Ford's administration for using QuAIA as an excuse to defund the festival.

“Rob Ford wants to use us as an excuse to cut Pride funding, even though he has always opposed funding the parade, long before we showed up,” the release quotes QuAIA member Elle Flanders as saying. “By holding our Pride events outside of the parade, we are forcing him to make a choice: fund Pride or have your real homophobic, rightwing agenda exposed.”

In an interview with Xtra, Flanders says that Mammoliti will still be looking for ways to defund PT, even though with QuAIA's announcement, he's lost "the pretext" he was using this week.

"As usual, he's talking out of both sides of his mouth," says Flanders.

After the announcement, the Twitterverse lit up with comments, most of them thanking QuAIA for withdrawing. University of Toronto law professor Brenda Cossman called the move "brilliant strategy," while former fab editor (and Xtra contributor) Scott Dagostino characterized it as "a smart move, noble even."

"There's give and take in communities," says Flanders. "We think that the community has been generous to us, and it's time for us to be generous in return. When you're facing rightwing, homophobic governments, you've got to band together."

But for queer activist Ashleigh Ingle, who was active on the Pride file, the move is something of an ominous sign.

"It's a really sad day when the political climate of the city is in such a place that it will force a political organization out of the Pride parade," she says.

Gaybourhood Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam emphasizes that the 2012 budget will still be a tough slog. She's worried about cash for PT and Caribana, HIV/AIDS prevention and community groups.

QuAIA "might have been a convenient excuse, but now that that's been taken off the table, there's no reason not to carry on funding Pride," says Wong-Tam.

Another outspoken oppponent of PT funding during QuAIA's time as a participant, Councillor James Pasternak, says he now supports funding for the festival.

“I don’t have a problem with helping out cultural, civic festivals, whether they’re cultural festivals or parades,” Pasternak told the Toronto Star April 15.

In an interview with the National Post, Mammoliti remains bullish, saying that he "doesn't trust" QuAIA and wants to see a letter from Pride Toronto verifying that QuAIA is out. In his interview with Xtra earlier in the day, he indicated he wanted a letter from QuAIA saying they will not march.

 

 

 

BY DALE SMITH – Bill C-389 – which would add gender identity and gender expression to the Canadian Human Rights Act and the hate crimes provisions of the Criminal Code – is about to die on the Senate Order Paper.

But another private member's bill – C-393, which would ease access to cheap AIDS drugs for developing countries – still has a chance of passing. Why is that?

For one, the drug bill had a sponsor lined up in the Senate before it arrived, so there was someone there to push the issue this week. As well, another almost identical bill, S-232, made it to the committee stage and got as far as clause-by-clause consideration before it died because of prorogation. And that means senators could speed it through committee this time around.

But Bill Siksay, C-389's author, never found a sponsor in the Senate, though it wasn't because there was no one willing to take it up. Liberal senators have said almost universally that they supported the bill. Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth was also in support but didn't sponsor it – or assume the role of government critic on the bill – because she planned to propose an amendment to further extend the Criminal Code protections to the category of "sex." 

Liberal senators I talked to said they hadn't been approached and they weren't about to jump up to support the bill unasked. Senators on both sides of the aisle resent being used as punching bags by the NDP; continually insulted for their appointed status, they have repeatedly cautioned MPs to be nice to senators if they want help shepherding their bills through the upper chamber.

For his part, Siksay didn't look for a sponsor before the bill passed the Commons, focusing his attention on getting the bill passed first – even though some of his NDP colleagues expressed amazement at the lapse. Siksay told me earlier this week that while there were still discussions going on, he wasn't going to make a push unless an election were ruled out.

Liberal Senator Claudette Tardif, the deputy opposition leader in the Senate, whose job it is to negotiate the progress of bills with the government side, expressed frustration with Siksay's failure to find a sponsor in a timely manner.

We spoke on Tuesday morning, before it was determined that an election was inevitable.

"I would think that with that case, the government should at least bring it up for second reading, whether they like it or not, because they are the ones that have the control," Tardif said. "We'll have to see with C-389 what's going to happen. I'm not going to let it sit there if no one comes through, and if there's no one that's been identified on the NDP side, and if the government doesn't put up someone to speak to it, we won't leave it lay there in limbo. We'll figure out something, so that at least it can hopefully on our side get it spoken to, and then we'll have to see what they do. But at this time, no one has spoken to it until that happens." 

There was the additional issue that C-389 would have gone before the Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee because of its Criminal Code provisions. That's a committee already loaded with government tough-on-crime bills that take precedence over private member's bills. That would have been a hurdle nearly impossible to clear before the election, even if the bill had a sponsor.  

There has been a commitment from both the NDP and the Liberals to revisit the bill in the next parliament, but with Siksay's retirement, advocates will have to find a new champion.