It was hard to imagine worse times would come for the UCP, but they did. That is, the book ban.

First came complaints from parents and religious leaders about inappropriate books in Alberta school libraries. Did the UCP know there were graphic novels in Alberta school libraries that contain visual depictions of sex between teenagers…? The consensus among UCPers: these books must be removed. Banning them seemed even better.

But first some boundaries had to be set, a bureaucratic framework for the action. The premier put her minister of education on the job, and he produced a doozy: a ministerial directive that spared no detail. “Explicit sexual content” was defined and minutely described: which body parts would be allowed to touch or enter which other body parts. The bit about “artificial sexual organs or substitutes” was an eye-opener. It was somewhat of a relief when the minister added “non-sexual acts” would be okay, as would “non-explicit sexual acts.”

Page two of the directive got into “non-explicit sexual content.” Again, no detail was spared. First of all, “non-sexual content means content that is not sexual in nature.” That’s pretty clear. The same catalogue of body parts is mentioned. But page two lists exceptions. Body parts and activities can be depicted if relating to medical conditions, examination and treatment and the understanding of human development. Another exception is religious scripture—I suppose meaning those kinky bits in the Old Testament.

Ayn Rand’s wooden prose and romantic scenes have a dual effect. They put your teenagers off both sex and reading.

But then the minister made a very important distinction. Sexual depiction is allowed if it “is for information and is not narrative.” There. He pinned it down. The dangerous smut occurs in fiction: novels and stories. Mind you, I’m not sure what we’ll do with smutty personal diaries, which, technically, are non-fiction. But I’ll move on.

To show that the Alberta government is not entirely against healthy romance between young people and their little gestures of fondness, it produced another list of those things young people can be shown doing in the name of affection: hand-holding, perhaps a chaste kiss. But for kids below Grade 10, even non-explicit sexual content is out. I guess there will have to be a ruling on books with hand games: pattycake, hand-stacking and thumb-wrestling—especially if these books are in narrative form.

At any rate, the school libraries of Alberta would have until October 1 to comply with the directive.

Things quickly went awry. A document appeared on social media: a list of books the Edmonton Public School Board said it would have to remove from its libraries to comply with the ministerial directive. It has 221 books by over 90 authors!

On the EPSB list were several titles by Canada’s Nobel literary laureate, Alice Munro. Another title was the Governor General’s Award-winning novel The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood—arguably the most read Canadian novel in history. Beloved Canadian First Nations authors made the list. So did George Orwell’s famous anti-fascist novel 1984. A surprise for me was to find US author Ayn Rand’s novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Rand’s mid-20th century novels are regarded highly by America’s political right for their stout defence of selfishness and greed. Danielle Smith was in fact annoyed by Atlas Shrugged’s proposed banning. She told a reporter that the book should be “mandatory reading in high school.” I personally read Shrugged in high school and, trust me, Rand’s wooden prose and romantic scenes have a dual effect. They will put your teenagers off both sex and reading.

When the EPSB list became public, our premier called the board’s action “vicious compliance.” I tried to think of another example of “vicious compliance” but couldn’t. I’ll fall back on a quote I remember from Canadian publishing legend Jack McClelland about book banning: “You set your sights on Larry Flynt [publisher of Hustler] and you hit Margaret Laurence every time.”

I think the dagger moment in all of this was when Atwood herself heard news she was banned in Alberta and posted online a little story she’d written to comply with the directive. Her tale is about a perfect Alberta couple that manages to have five perfect children without having sex.

The premier came back with a plaintive little line to the effect that all her government really wanted gone were the four graphic novels. Then I guess that’s what they should have said. Hindsight, eh?

Fred Stenson’s many books include the novels Who By Fire, The Trade, Lightning and The Great Karoo.

The post Viciously We Comply appeared first on Alberta Views.

Premier Danielle Smith had released a video entitled “Alberta Transgender Policy” in January 2024. Scored with soothing acoustic guitar music, and with a watercolour painting of prairie farmland as a backdrop, Smith announced a host of proposed policies focused on transgender youth and 2SLGBTQ rights. Alberta’s queer and transgender community recoiled, and critics quickly denounced the measures as “the most draconian in Canada.”

Kim and Ashley Large, parents of an 11-year-old transgender daughter in Smith’s Brooks-Medicine Hat riding, sought an in-person meeting with the premier as soon as the video aired. “As parents and constituents, we needed to sit across the table from her and tell her what we know to be true as people having first-hand experience,” Kim said. When Kim and Ashley arrived for the interview in October 2024, after months of correspondence with Smith’s office, a staff photographer offered to take a photo of them with the premier. The Larges politely declined.

The meeting made Kim nervous. Since they’d come to discuss such an emotional topic, Kim decided to read a statement the couple had prepared in advance. First, she told the premier how their daughter, assigned male at birth, has always loved to wear girl’s clothes. “At the age of 3, there was a Snow White dress,” Kim recounted. By grade 3, their daughter was already firmly gender nonconforming. “I collected dresses from my friends and thrift stores and presented them to her,” Kim said. “And the look on her face. The joy. No one can tell me this isn’t her.”

As the premier listened, Kim described her daughter’s first appointment at the Pediatric Gender Services Clinic at the Alberta Children’s Hospital in the spring of 2022, how she told her parents she “didn’t want to have boy puberty or become a boy,” and how she returned to school for grade 5 as a transgender girl. Kim also told Smith how, after much consultation with doctors, counsellors and an endocrinologist, they decided their daughter was ready for puberty suppression therapy. “Our biggest fear was intolerance and wanting to shield my baby’s heart from the ugliness of the world. I can’t do that. But we can walk with her, supporting her always, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Kim then explained to the premier why she was worried for other trans kids in the wake of the government’s new policies. Kim cited a US study reporting a 72 per cent increase in suicide attempts among trans and non-binary youth in states that had passed anti-trans legislation. Medical decisions around youth transition, she told Smith, should be left to medical professionals, parents and the youth themselves—not to government officials.

After Kim finished reading her statement, she asked Smith if she had any questions. Smith had none. “Then she proceeded to tell us why we were wrong,” Kim said. Smith alluded that the medical establishment couldn’t be trusted on gender issues, for example, and snapped back when Kim referred to the new policies as “anti-trans,” insisting that youth can socially transition all they want. “She did not come to listen,” Kim said. “She did not care. She had a few talking points that she regurgitated at us.”

The moment that most astonished the Larges was when Smith told them that since their daughter had such supportive parents, she was going to be okay. “I didn’t know what to say,” Ashley said. “It was like she was saying ‘your kid’s fine. Why do you care about anybody else What does it matter?’” Ashley recalls the confused look on Smith’s face in that moment, as if she couldn’t comprehend why the Larges would oppose policies that wouldn’t personally affect their own child. “I’ll regret forever not asking, point blank, ‘What about the rest?’”

Alberta’s transgender community didn’t feel loved. They felt attacked. But they didn’t feel surprised.

“I want every Albertan that identifies as transgender to know I care deeply about you and I accept you as you are,” said premier Smith in her January 2024 video. “In the case of children aged 17 and under who identify as transgender, I also want you to know that you are loved and supported…. You never have to feel alone or isolated.”

Then she abandoned them. The following October, as promised, Smith tabled three bills aimed at controlling the lives of transgender youth. The Education Amendment Act, 2024, which the government says would require children under 16 to obtain parental consent before changing their names or pronouns at school and obligate teachers to notify parents if students 16 and over request the same. The Fairness in Safety and Sport Act, which would allow schools and sporting organizations to bar transgender girls and women from participating in sports alongside cisgender athletes. And the Health Statutes Amendment Act, 2024 (No. 2), which would prohibit transition-related surgeries and hormonal treatments for minors. Alberta’s transgender community didn’t feel loved. They felt attacked.

They didn’t, however, feel surprised. “We saw a real hyper focus on trans and queer people following the quieting down of the so-called Freedom Convoy,” said Corinne Mason, co-founder of the Queer Parenting in the Time of Parental Rights research project. Mason and their colleague Leah Hamilton—both parents of queer and trans kids—have been following the threats to Alberta’s queer and transgender community, and especially to trans and gender-diverse youth, since before Danielle Smith became premier. They noticed active bigotry towards Alberta’s queer and transgender citizens rising just as the anger against COVID restrictions was abating.

During the pandemic, the Canadians most angered by the government’s COVID measures had gathered to denounce vaccine mandates and other perceived injustices—a movement that culminated in the convoy to Ottawa and the blockade at Coutts. Their shared rage forged a kinship among the protesters. And when the pandemic restrictions ended, they didn’t want to dismantle the communities they’d built. The real Freedom Convoy, as it turned out, was the friends they made along the way.

The movement needed a new target. Railing against critical race theory never really caught on in Canada like it did in the US, and the “15-minute cities” conspiracy lasted about as long. For a while, the agitators focused on “Drag Queen Storytimes.” Alberta libraries had been hosting such events since 2017, at which drag performers read children’s books aloud, but organized actions against them only started post-COVID. Protesters showed up at story times in Calgary and Edmonton to intimidate and harass attendees. They accused organizers of sexualizing children, and held signs decrying “weirdos in drag” and “gender benders.”

The attacks against drag story time had mostly petered out by mid-2023, but the preoccupation with queer and trans issues stuck, especially in regard to youth. The agitators turned their focus from libraries to the legislature. Attendees at the 2023 UCP AGM in Calgary demanded the government take on issues of gender and sexuality in schools. Party members put forward and approved resolutions to require teachers to inform parents of their child’s intent to change their name or pronouns, to prevent schools from providing materials of a sexual nature to students, and to enshrine what they termed “parental rights” in legislation. The new policies premier Smith announced in her January video seemed borne out of these resolutions.

Canada’s Charter of Rights doesn’t protect parental rights. While Smith’s supporters are quick to quote a court ruling asserting that, as outlined by a Government of Canada site on Section 2(a)–Freedom of Religion, “parents have the right to rear their children according to their religious beliefs, including choosing religious education and choosing medical and other treatments,” they tend to skip the caveat that immediately follows: “However, such activities can and must be restricted when they are against the child’s best interests.”

Regardless of the legal reality of parental rights, or lack thereof, the idea acts as an effective rallying cry and recruitment tool. “‘Parental rights’ as a term is used to bring people into right-wing extremist movements under the guise of loving, protecting and wanting the best for your children,” Mason said. “Because who doesn’t want that?”

The tactic attracts a diversity of actors and broadens the political tent. “Under the guise of parental rights, you’ve got everyday moms, who might be concerned about what sex ed their kids are learning, in the same boat as the Proud Boys,” Mason said. White nationalists march alongside religious zealots. The only qualifications one needs to join this particular club is transphobia.

Ironically, these issues attract a wide swath of people, yet inspire wide-ranging policies about a community that is vanishingly small. While an accurate count of transgender youth in Alberta doesn’t exist, the 2021 Canadian census showed there are about 7,300 transgender and 5,200 non-binary people in Alberta, together comprising less than 0.4 per cent of the population 15 years of age and older. Chances are, the people agitating against transgender youth have never even met a trans person.

A rally outside Calgary City Hall on Feb 3, 2024, to oppose the government’s transgender policies.

The video came out, and all our lives shifted dramatically,” Mason said.

Life has never been easy for Alberta’s trans youth and their families. Now it’s even harder. “I can tell you personally we are all experiencing more insidious and sometimes more emboldened forms of harassment, discrimination, hate and threats,” Mason said. Soon after Smith’s announcement, Mason’s family was accosted during a birthday dinner at a restaurant. Diners at the next table noticed Mason’s partner’s T-shirt from Skipping Stone, a trans and gender-diverse advocacy organization. “They just started absolutely ripping on us as abusers and pedophiles and groomers,” Mason said. “They called gender-affirming care ‘mutilation.’ ” All this occurred in front of Mason’s child. Eventually restaurant staff kicked the agitators out.

Other parents of trans kids have similar stories. They’ve told Mason that Smith poured gasoline on an anti-queer and anti-trans fire that was already burning. “We are all living with that fire burning in so many parts of our lives. It’s at work. It’s at restaurants. It’s at our kids’ soccer practice. It’s at school. It’s at playdates.”

And it’s at the doctor’s office. Peer-reviewed medical research has found that for some trans youth an estrogen- or testosterone-driven puberty will exacerbate gender dysphoria and cause elevated stress. A prescription for puberty blockers provides youth and their parents time to explore future medical options for transition without risking irreversible changes to their bodies. Access to blockers is directly linked to better mental health and well-being outcomes, and in some cases will lessen the need for surgical interventions in the future.

Despite this data, trans patients have faced discrimination from healthcare providers. In the past year Mason has heard a growing number of stories of family physicians who, instead of simply prescribing hormones or puberty blockers, as they would with any other medication, now insist a trans patient seek specialized care. Trans people have also experienced heightened gatekeeping around referrals. General practitioners have refused to send young trans patients to gender specialists, advising them to ask again at a later date if they still want the appointment, thus discounting their medical needs as a phase they’ll grow out of. “The discrimination is getting worse,” Mason said.

This all seems darkly familiar to Victoria Bucholtz, a historian at Mount Royal University with a particular interest in the rise of fascism in Europe in the early 20th century. In Alberta in 2025, she said, “we’re seeing the differential treatment of people based on perceived value—the idea that we’re not all equal and that some people’s rights are negotiable.” That, she said, “is definitely classic fascist behaviour.”

Bucholtz and other advocates feel the UCP’s new legislation is aimed at nothing less than the eradication of trans life. “Once they start denying our humanity around sports and bathrooms,” she says, “it gets easier to legislate us out of existence in other ways.” She predicts an exodus of transgender Albertans unless Smith’s policies are reversed.

This will come too late for some. “There’s already been trans youth who have taken their lives in this province because they no longer see a future for themselves,” Bucholtz said. “Last summer we lost a young member of our community, and their surviving family said they believe that it’s 100 per cent related to this.”

Premier Smith poured gasoline on an anti-trans fire that was already burning.

In September 2024 about 50 people assembled at Medicine Hat’s Athletic Park to participate in the nationwide “1 Million March for Children” protest. They walked to City Hall, where they rallied in favour of “parental rights” and against “gender ideology” in education. Julia Ingram, mother of a 13-year-old transgender daughter named Skyler, joined a group of counter-protesters up the street at the public library. “We were just there with our signs showing love,” Julia said.

They received no love in return. The parental rights demonstrators snarled insults at Julia and her colleagues and called them pedophiles. The worst part of the day for Julia, however, was seeing people she recognized in the crowd of haters. “I’ve been in the city for a long time,” she said. “I know there are people who don’t like me, and don’t like my family, and don’t agree with how we live. To be able to put a face to those people was really gutting.”

Skyler first switched to she/her pronouns in Grade 3. Her classmates didn’t understand the change and teased her. “It’s really weird being trans,” Skyler said. “But it was a big day for me.” Julia had met with Skyler’s principal, vice-principal and school counsellor in advance of the change. The school staff supported Skyler’s pronoun transition, but it took two years for the change to stick. Finally, in Grade 5, teachers referred to Skyler as “she” for the entire school year. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow. I’m actually being respected.’”

No transition journey is easy. Skyler’s father didn’t accept her identity at first. He does now. “We’ve come so far,” Julia said. “We went from wiping off nail polish before her dad came home, to her dad bringing her on a father–daughter trip to Lake Louise.” Just like Kim and Ashley Large with their daughter, ensuring Skyler is supported at home remains Julia’s top priority.

Skyler began her puberty-blocking therapy just a few weeks before the legislation came into effect. The thought of being denied the treatment terrified her. “Not to sound crazy, but I would be really messed up if I couldn’t have hormone blockers. Suicidal. Really depressed. Life would be hard.” Skyler has transgender friends, though, who won’t receive the blockers. “It really sucks for them,” she said. Two of them are gifted athletes who won’t be able to pursue sports under the new rules banning transgender girls from competing on cisgender teams.

In response to the UCP’s policies, Skyler created a YouTube channel, “ProtectTransYouth.” One of her first short videos featured distorted images of the premier flashing alongside screengrabs of news headlines related to the trans policies, all set to a nightmarish soundtrack of woozy funhouse organs—the aesthetic opposite of Smith’s video from the previous January. A caption encourages viewers to sign a petition to stop the legislation.

Julia believes her daughter’s outspoken nature and ferocity—her “attitude and life and brightness”—bode well for her future. “She’s gonna be the first trans kid to do a lot of things,” Julia said, beaming.

Skyler is specific. “I want to work at a nuclear reactor,” she said. “Or be an MLA.”

Not all trans kids enjoy such family support. Hawthorne Guthrie started transitioning when he was 14. His puberty was already in progress by then and it was too late to block it. Instead, he sought hormone replacement therapy (HRT). First, though, Hawthorne had to go through two years of appointments, diagnoses and consultations. Once the therapy started, his medical transition advanced quickly. Hawthorne grew his beard within four months of HRT, though he attributes this as much to his Mediterranean genetics as to the testosterone. “I’m Greek,” Hawthorne said, now 19 years old. “I was already halfway there.”

Hormone medications, whether Hawthorne’s testosterone or Skyler’s puberty blockers, do more than ensure trans youth feel comfortable in their own bodies. Fairly or otherwise, these treatments also allow other people to be more at ease around them. “Gender dysphoria affects every aspect of a person’s life,” Hawthorne said. “It’s not just a discomfort within the body. It’s a discomfort with how people perceive you.” The further a trans youth progresses on their transition journey, especially if they “pass,” the more they’re accepted. This acceptance affords them safety.

Had he been a 16-year-old trans kid in Alberta today, and living under Smith’s new laws, Hawthorne wouldn’t be able to access HRT and enjoy the solace the treatment brought him. Transitioning socially wouldn’t have been enough for him. “HRT was absolutely something I needed to feel fully comfortable,” he said. “That’s not the case for everyone.” He believes that without the therapy, he would never have been safe at school. “I’d be checking my head on a swivel every time I tried to walk into a men’s bathroom.”

Hawthorne grew up in a “nightmare household.” His mother didn’t support his decision to transition. She believed Hawthorne had been brainwashed by the “woke mind virus” and figured his gender dysphoria was a phase he’d inevitably get over. She came around eventually. Hawthorne’s father, though, never did and is no longer part of Hawthorne’s life.

Like many trans kids, Hawthorne found safety at school, particularly with two of his teachers. In his Ontario junior high, Hawthorne would spend many lunch hours with his school’s music teacher and leader of the GSA club. The two would sit in the music room, play guitar and talk. After Hawthorne and his mother moved to Calgary, Hawthorne’s high school English teacher became his new lunchtime confidant. “Sometimes I just sat beside him and read quietly,” Hawthorne said.

Both teachers provided Hawthorne with something vital and fundamental. “It’s so important to know that you have somebody around you who supports you, who respects you, who’s going to have your back, and who really sees you,” Hawthorne said. Such teachers are especially important for youth who don’t have such supports at home. “I grew up in an environment where I never felt seen. So just having those little safe spaces, especially with teachers, was amazing. It was everything.” Without safe people in safe spaces, Hawthorne might not have come out as trans at all.

Had these teachers disclosed their conversations with Hawthorne to his parents, the results would’ve been catastrophic. “If my being trans was thrown into the loop, that would’ve been really, really horrible,” Hawthorne said. “That’s an understatement. It would’ve been disastrous.” When questioned about the dangers of mandating teachers to out trans kids to potentially violent parents, premier Smith has said Alberta already has “child protection laws that will be strictly enforced.” Smith loves trans kids enough to rescue them after they’ve been abused, and maybe punish their abusers, but not enough to prevent them from being abused in the first place. In other words, why worry about preventing fires as long as we have a fire department to fight them once they’re blazing?

Two days after the UCP’s Health Statutes Amendment Act, 2024 (No. 2) received royal assent, Egale Canada, Skipping Stone and several families in Alberta launched a lawsuit against the Alberta government. Lawyers claim the statute violates the Charter rights of young Albertans—particularly their right to security of the person, their right to be free from cruel and unusual treatment, and their right to equality.

Mason, and many of the families of trans youth they speak to, have invested their hopes in such legal battles and court injunctions. The outcome of this suit remains uncertain. The premier has already threatened to use the notwithstanding clause to override the Charter if necessary. “But at least we can tie these up in court for as long as we can in order for their families to have the most protection and the most access to life-saving care,” Mason said. The longer they can hold up the legislation, “the longer trans kids can continue playing on their soccer teams with their friends and enjoy their regular lives.”

In the meantime, transgender Albertans and their advocates are gathering resources in order to minimize the harm inflicted on their community. “There are already major pushes to build support networks to help trans youth who are struggling and facing negative mental health outcomes because of this,” Bucholtz said. And they want to make all Albertans understand what’s at stake. “It’s shocking how many people still don’t know what’s happening to us.”

Hawthorne agrees. “People don’t listen until we’re dead,” he said. “The time for polite allyship is over.”

Marcello Di Cintio is the author of several non-fiction books, including Driven, Pay No Heed to the Rockets and Walls.

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Read more from the archive “System in Chaos” November 2014.

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The post The War on Trans Youth Comes to Alberta appeared first on Alberta Views.

Consider this also my disclosure that I’m a party member—reluctantly—and a confession that I’ve spent much of the past 20 years needing to hope, usually against all evidence, that the results of a democratic vote in Alberta might pleasantly surprise me. They’ve done so on a few rare and exquisite occasions, the two most notable ones involving both the party gathering that day and its frontrunner candidate—though not both at the same time.

I’d watched in delighted shock as Naheed Nenshi won his first mayoral race in Calgary in October 2010. I’d stood with thousands of others in front of the Legislature in Edmonton in May 2015 with my jaw agape to Looney-Tunes-character levels, still unable to fully process that I was watching Alberta’s NDP being sworn in as the new government. (I wasn’t a party member then and I still don’t like being one, but for now I’m reluctantly in the wing of the party that is genuinely bothered that my Alberta NDP membership also means I’m nominally a federal NDP member.) And now I’d arrived at the Hyatt Regency’s Imperial Ballroom to witness Nenshi being chosen as the NDP’s new leader. A few months earlier this outcome might’ve shocked me nearly as much as that first mayoral victory. Nenshi was very much not a partisan of the NDP (or any other party). But the result was a certainty by the time it was made official.

Calgary Herald, October 19, 2010

Alberta Views, April 2011

The route by which we’d arrived at this moment is likely familiar to anyone paying even casual attention to Alberta politics, but here’s my condensed version: In 2023, as the culmination of a stunning political comeback, Danielle Smith led the United Conservative Party to re-election  and retained her position as premier. She did so by winning virtually every non-urban seat in the province, along with just enough ridings in Calgary to seal the deal. Her margin of victory consisted of only a few thousand votes in close Calgary races, making electoral success in that city appear absolutely crucial for winning a provincial election from here on out. This is all uncharted territory for Alberta politics, because until 2023 there hadn’t been a genuinely close two-horse race here in living memory.

The slim margin of victory notwithstanding, Danielle Smith was premier again, and in her return to power she summarily commenced to do Danielle Smith sorts of things. These included, in just the first few months, upending the management and structure of the healthcare system, actively impeding the province’s wildly successful renewable energy business, and tossing aside a long-standing rhetorical commitment to LGBTQ+ rights to bring in new policies designed to make life worse and more dangerous for LGBTQ+ youth. This last Danielle Smith sort of thing may have been the final straw for Nenshi, who’d surely been hearing pleas to consider a run at the NDP leadership since the day he stepped down as mayor in 2021. He joined LGBTQ+ activists in February 2024, in front of the very City Hall he’d once presided over, to deliver a ferocious and powerful rebuttal to Smith’s new policies, which would change the rules around gender-affirming healthcare and oblige schools to notify parents of a child’s name change (and require parental consent for those under the age of 15). Effectively, it would soon be provincial policy that school administrators must out trans kids to their parents whether the kids were ready for that or not.

An NDP leadership race had never been like this one: the stakes had never been as high.

Nenshi’s speech at that rally left no doubt that he took Smith’s abandonment of her commitment to protect LGBTQ+ youth personally. He has known her since they were both active in campus politics at the University of Calgary in the early 1990s, and he claimed he’d taken her at her word that she wouldn’t do anything as premier to make the province less safe for those kids. This makes it highly plausible that whatever mix of factors convinced Nenshi to abandon his own long-standing commitment to non-partisanship, Smith’s new socially conservative policies regarding LGBTQ+ youth ranked high on the list. (I know Nenshi socially, but I’m not privy to any of his thinking on this decision.)

In any case, the former mayor declared his intention to seek the Alberta NDP leadership in March, five weeks after that City Hall rally. And his candidacy summarily changed the dynamics of the race with all the subtlety of a prairie hailstorm. Within weeks, the party’s membership numbers had risen to such a stunning degree that one of the candidates, Edmonton MLA Rakhi Pancholi, viewed as a strong contender for the leadership, ended her campaign and shifted her support to Nenshi.

There followed the usual mechanics of a party leadership race—stump speeches and town-hall meetings, social media ads and debates—but no objective observer expected any result other than the one that greeted us on that sunny June day.

At the Calgary Pride Festival, September 2023.

So join me back at the Hyatt Regency. Ride up with me on the escalator from the lobby. Overhear a prominent Calgary Sun columnist a few steps farther up discussing his summer holiday plans. And soak in the obvious symbolism of Alberta’s NDP gathering in a luxury conference hotel’s Imperial Ballroom in the heart of corporate Calgary to welcome its new leader. Historically, the NDP is not corporate, nor luxurious, nor based in Calgary. And if you go far enough back—not that far, really, perhaps to 2014, when the NDP was fourth in the provincial seat count—that Sun columnist up ahead of me on the escalator surely didn’t feel obliged to cover their leadership events, because it didn’t matter much to Calgarians who the head of the provincial NDP happened to be.

Let’s skip ahead now past some friendly nods and how-ya-doins to the main event. The party faithful now gathered to fill the room, the small talk friendly and anxious, the number of faces I associate primarily with Nenshi’s municipal politics running roughly 1:1 with faces I associate primarily with Calgary’s fledgling NDP machine.

Greetings from the Grand Hyatt ballroom’s podium on this day fell to Joe Ceci, the former NDP finance minister and de facto head of the party’s Calgary caucus. Ceci opened with a short, vivid anecdote about how far the party had come. When he’d first mulled a run for a provincial seat in the months ahead of the 2015 election, he said, he’d given real consideration to running as an independent. Not even a decade ago, the NDP’s standing in Calgary had been so weak that it didn’t seem to offer him anything that a resourceful candidate with the organization and name-recognition of a former city councillor couldn’t cobble together for himself.

Even if he was overstating how seriously he’d considered the indie approach, who could’ve blamed him if he’d gone that way Ceci was, after all, a Calgary progressive, and he knew as well as anyone in the room what that had meant before 2015. It meant there was no clear path to victory at the provincial or the federal level and never had been. So what did it matter which party banner you stood under The goal for a Calgary progressive running in a provincial election was to try to steal a single seat in the Legislature, where your likely role in the real business of government would at best consist of trying to broker a deal or two with the reigning conservatives to get some pale facsimile of your ideals embedded in the legislation they were rubber-stamping. Provincial politics were dynastic in Alberta, and the dynasties were conservative. Serious opposition to the regime came almost exclusively from breakaway factions in its own ranks. But a progressive Running in Calgary Red, orange, purple—the colour of the banner barely mattered at all.

The dynastic nature of Alberta politics isn’t news, I realize. But the full scale of it is worth pausing to marvel at. From 1935, when William Aberhart’s Social Credit party defeated the United Farmers of Alberta to form government, until 2015, when conservatives spread their votes evenly enough across two parties to hand the Legislature to the NDP, there had been one change in governing party. Of the nine Social Credit governments, only two controlled less than two-thirds of the province’s seats. The Progressive Conservatives formed 12 governments, and only two of those—the one that brought them to power in 1971 and the Liberals’ near-miss in 1993—were majorities of less than two-thirds. Tally it up: 21 governments, one change in ruling party, and essentially no serious challenge to conservative rule other than that interregnum between the Lougheed and Klein dynasties, when King Ralph was left to eke out his first win in 1993. To be a progressive in this 80-year epoch was to make some sort of peace either with occupying the thin progressive section of the conservative benches or residing forever in the wilderness of no-hope opposition, alongside a dozen or so other lonely souls.

All of that changed with the NDP’s shocking victory in 2015—possibly forever. And everything since, including Joe Ceci’s fun little warmup joke about seeing more hope in flying solo than in riding with the party that won the whole election, has been an exercise, by turns giddy and gut-churning, in trying to map out the new landscape on the fly and find the strongest footing in this wild new terrain.

In 2024 winning the leadership of the NDP meant, for the first time ever, taking the reins of a progressive party with a legitimate shot at forming the next government. There had never been an NDP leadership race like this one, because the stakes had never been as high. There’d barely even been stakes before.

June 22, 2024. Nenshi got 86 per cent of the vote. In his victory speech he shared his vision of an Alberta ready to “start dreaming big.”

So that was the NDP’s path to this moment. What about mine I was looking on from the sidelines at the Hyatt Regency that day, knowing—before his name was called—that I’d registered my vote for the victor. And, yes, wishing I hadn’t been obliged to also become a member of the federal NDP in order to do so.

I take party affiliations seriously. It matters less to my kind of journalism than it does to a daily reporter on the government beat, but I don’t ever want anyone to assume I’m speaking for anyone but myself. I’ve only been a party member at any level twice before. The first time was a federal NDP membership, which I bought to lend my support to Jack Layton’s run for the leadership in 2003 because he was the first politician I’d ever heard talk sensibly and at the appropriate scale about the climate crisis. I let that membership lapse when Layton’s NDP cynically attacked good climate policy to hasten the destruction of the Liberals under Stéphane Dion and his “Green Shift” platform in the 2008 election. The federal NDP has still not restored real coherence to its climate policies—which is, in part, why I resented being made to join the party as a necessary condition of my Alberta NDP membership.

From a base of 16,277, the party grew to 85,277 members eligible to vote for the new leader.

The next membership I took out was with the Green Party of Canada, so I could run as (and vote for myself as) the Green candidate in the 2012 Calgary-Centre by-election. I let that one lapse when the Liberals arrived with a workable and effective climate policy package in 2015. I was a member of no party when Nenshi declared his candidacy for the Alberta NDP. One of his stated goals on the campaign trail was to consider whether the party should maintain its formal partnership with the federal party. It’s not a trivial question, and it cuts to the core of what kind of party the Alberta NDP is and wants to become.

Back at the Hyatt’s Imperial Ballroom, Joe Ceci ceded the podium to a series of officials variously touting the party’s bedrock social democratic values and celebrating the fact of its extraordinary growth during the leadership campaign. The numbers were legitimately impressive—from a base of 16,277 at the start of the race, the party had grown to 85,277 members now eligible to vote for the new leader. The surge in membership was widely acknowledged to have been a product of the attention that accompanied Nenshi’s candidacy—particularly in Calgary. And it is likely in Calgary where the question of the Alberta NDP’s federal ties is most urgent.

When Nenshi raised the issue during the campaign, Rachel Notley responded with a full-throated defence of the formal federal link that provides a particularly clear illustration of the limits to the party’s growth—in appeal, perhaps also in imagination—under an old-school NDP leader. In an interview with the Calgary Herald, Notley responded to Nenshi’s challenge by pointing out that she first met Tommy Douglas when she was just four years old, which is about as strong as bragging rights get in NDP circles. “The idea of running away from that brand is to me silly, superficial, short-sighted,” she said.

When I ran for Parliament in Calgary in 2012, I quickly learned that long-time campaign volunteers share a lore about the parties. Conservatives tend to run the most aggressive campaigns, Liberals the most arrogant ones. But no party, so goes the lore, is as fiercely partisan as the NDP. NDP campaigns have a reputation for trusting in fellow Dippers from afar over local experts lacking sufficient party ties. The NDP would rather maintain righteous internal agreement on a key issue than massage a position to win a race. They too often prefer the correct stance over the best tactics. And that perhaps explains, at least in part, why Notley’s NDP, facing an uphill battle to unseat an unpopular UCP government in 2023, came to the conclusion that unveiling plans for a corporate tax hike was a move worth making in the middle of a struggle to win over Calgary voters wary of a party considered hostile to business.

I can’t say exactly how Notley and her team arrived at that particular decision, and I can’t say with certainty that it was a pivotal factor in the NDP falling a few thousand votes short of victory in a handful of Calgary ridings that would’ve delivered enough seats to win the election. But I do know that political insiders familiar with the lore thought it was exactly on brand. Maddeningly on brand. Which is why changing the brand does in fact matter—because it’s not just the brand that changes under a leader with no previous party affiliations but the whole way the party thinks. And to consistently compete for and win elections in Alberta, the NDP needs to learn how to think differently from its old-school roots. It shouldn’t feel in any way like it is abandoning those roots—the party’s long history of championing workers’ rights and building social democracy are assets in Calgary as much as they are to its long-standing Edmonton supporters. But it must become a party with a broader and more nimble imagination, a party that can attract votes from Lougheed Tories and traditional Liberals recently arrived from the rest of Canada as readily as from its union-backed “Redmonton” base.

I attended a leadership debate at the BMO Centre in Calgary in mid-May, and Kathleen Ganley summed up the NDP’s experience in the 2023 election this way: “We were right about everything. But it wasn’t enough.” The candidates on stage—Sarah Hoffman, Gil McGowan and Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse, in addition to Ganley and Nenshi—spent a good portion of the debate praising each other, tacitly agreeing with Ganley’s assertion that the party was on the right side of the issues. All also agreed, though, that the NDP had to expand its appeal beyond its traditional base. Being right was not enough—the party needed to learn how to win in the two-horse races to come.

Vigorous agreement doesn’t produce many sparks, but Hoffman and Nenshi did engage in a heated exchange over the City of Calgary’s closure of a mobile home park under his mayoral watch. Nenshi defended his record vigorously, and the discussion spun off into policy esoterica. I happened to look over just then and notice that Zain Velji, the Nenshi campaign’s co-director, was seated just across from me in an empty row at the back of the room. His gaze never left his phone throughout, nor showed the slightest concern at the sharp attack his candidate was fending off. I’ve known Velji since he chipped in on my campaign in 2012, and I know first-hand that he understands the lore as well as anyone. He didn’t seem at all worried—and didn’t need to be—that Nenshi’s social-democratic bona fides were being called into question. The tens of thousands of new members registering to vote in the leadership race were not rushing in to argue over shades of orange in an urban housing policy. They were coming because they reckoned the party’s tent might finally be broad enough for them, and because the ringleader they were coming to vote for might attract a crowd big enough to win the next election.

I was surprised by the results after all. Not by the outcome—Naheed Nenshi won easily—but by the sheer size of the victory. I’m not an NDP loyalist, not aware of its internal dynamics. I’d heard rumblings about an old guard that might rally a bit against the insurgent and assumed there was some truth behind those rumours. Instead, the announcement of the vote tally, when it came, echoed around the Imperial Ballroom to affirm a coronation. Nenshi received 86 per cent of the vote. The nearest runner-up (Ganley) came in at only 8 per cent. I wasn’t expecting multiple runoff tallies or anything, but I didn’t anticipate such a landslide.

Elation filled the room. No surprise there—everyone on the winning side in politics seems at least a little delirious about it all, regardless of the stakes. What struck me the most was the sort of tableau the elation created. In his victory speech, Nenshi contrasted his vision of an Alberta ready to “start dreaming big” against the small-minded, defensive, backward-looking UCP version. He described his province not as a “fortress to be defended” but as a “wide-open door with a welcome mat.” And then, one by one, he called up the members of the NDP caucus to attest bodily to that vision.

Here was an NDP caucus showing legitimate, lived-in diversity with effortless ease. Here was an NDP caucus numerous enough to fill the Hyatt Regency’s stage to overflowing—something few progressive caucuses in the province’s history could accomplish. Here, more than that, was an NDP caucus that looked and felt like the Alberta I’ve known and loved best in my 20 years as a resident and sometime dreamer of brighter political futures, a place that truly is remarkable in its open-mindedness and progressive ambition. If that isn’t the only Alberta there is, it’s the one that has been most notably absent as a permanent presence in its politics for most of the dynastic conservative epoch.

Here was a real, united, ambitious opposition, ready and able to contend for power not just in the next election but in any number after that. Never has that existed in Alberta’s progressive politics. And that’s why I’m willing to hope, to dream—to bet, even—that an entire new epoch began on that first Saturday of summer in downtown Calgary.

Calgary’s Chris Turner is the author most recently of How to Be a Climate Optimist, which won the 2023 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.

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The media and public outcry was instantaneous. Albertans were revolted at the idea of using the constitutional clause to strip legal rights from a group of uniquely vulnerable people. Less than 24 hours later premier Ralph Klein reversed his decision. “This was presented to caucus in pure, legal technical terms and… yes, my political sense probably didn’t click into gear,” he told reporters at the time. “It became abundantly clear that to individuals in this country, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is paramount and the use of any tool… to undermine the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is something that should be used only in very, very rare circumstances.”

If we become inured to abuse of the notwithstanding clause, the rights of all Canadians will be at risk.

Just three weeks later, the Supreme Court brought down a powerful unanimous decision in the Vriend case, ruling that protection from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation should be read into Alberta’s human rights legislation and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Klein again came under immense pressure, this time from two sides: from social conservatives demanding he invoke the notwithstanding clause, and from many other Albertans who called on him to respect the Supreme Court’s ruling. After a week of rancorous public and caucus debate, Klein announced he would not invoke the clause and would let the landmark gay rights decision stand.

Thus, in an accident of political timing, the PR debacle over the use of the notwithstanding clause in March helped to uphold LGBTQ rights in April.

A quarter-century ago, the notwithstanding clause worked exactly the way it was supposed to. It gave the ultimate decision on matters of profound public importance to the elected legislature. And Albertans did their job and held their government to account.

Klein may have been an unlikely defender of minority rights. But he was a deft and canny politician. He learned that invoking the clause had a high political cost, one he wasn’t willing to pay.

Yet 25 years later Saskatchewan pre-emptively invoked the notwithstanding clause to out trans and gender queer kids, to bully literal schoolchildren, in order to uphold a policy that would strip young teens, wrestling with questions of gender identity, of their rights to privacy—and safety.

The Moe government’s shocking 2023 decision isn’t just empty culture-war posturing. This isn’t just a fight about trendy pronouns. Saskatchewan’s “Parental Inclusion and Consent” policy puts the safety of children under 16 at real risk. Students would no longer be able to trust their teachers and principals not to “out” them. Kids who live with transphobic parents or guardians could become victims of emotional or physical abuse. They could well end up homeless, betrayed by their teachers and rejected by those who are supposed to care for them.

In the name of “parental rights” the government of Saskatchewan is poised to rip families apart, all because it has fallen under the thrall of a moral panic imported from the US— the fear that schools and libraries are somehow “grooming” children and “turning them” trans. It is telling people their children are in danger, that some menacing, mysterious group wants to steal or mutilate or somehow convert their kid. That’s propaganda with a bloody pedigree. For thousands of years, across cultures and continents, “save the children” rhetoric has been the go-to tactic to incite a mob. It’s the rhetoric of the witch hunt. It’s the rhetoric of blood libel. And it’s the ugly illogic, alas, endorsed by UCP members at their fall policy convention.

The only true bulwark we have against the misuse of the notwithstanding clause is voter indignation—and politicians’ fear. This means, alas, that minority rights are only protected when enough people rally to defend them. One of the reasons Klein backed down on using the notwithstanding clause—twice—was because strong news organizations helped inspire a backlash. Today, with newsrooms a shadow of their former selves, I fear there aren’t enough voices sounding the alarm.

But if we allow the notwithstanding clause to become a routine tool to strip minorities of their rights, whether they be observant Sikhs, Muslims and Jews in Quebec, or gender queer children in Saskatchewan, if we become inured to its abuse, we put the rights of all Canadians at risk. It remains up to all of us to push back and make our voices heard—just as Albertans were brave enough to do 25 years ago.

Paula Simons is an independent senator and the host of the podcast Alberta Unbound. She lives in Edmonton.

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That all changed one Friday in April of 2021.

Dunham, who co-owns and operates the Coffee Cottage in Innisfail with his partner, Shaun Steen, was chatting with one of their employees. The woman told Dunham that her child, who identifies as trans, wished for a Pride festival right there in Innisfail.

Dunham was inspired. He remembered the way he had been bullied and beaten as a gay kid growing up in southwest Calgary in the 1970s. “I had a lot of shame and I hid who I was,” he says. “I lived behind a mask, because I didn’t feel worthy of love.”

He decided that no kid and no adult in Innisfail should feel that way. “I ran up to Shaun, who was working, and I said, ‘We’re going to hold a Pride!’ And he just said, ‘OK, honey.’ ”

Dunham rounded up volunteers and sponsors. He earned the unanimous endorsement of his town council colleagues. Two months later, in June of 2021, Innisfail held its first Pride, a one-day event, in the parking lot of the Coffee Cottage.

As Dunham acknowledges, that first year’s event was a little bit heavy on earnest speeches and a little bit light on entertainment. But it was a hit nonetheless. In fact, due to COVID restrictions, the organizers had to turn dozens and dozens of people away.

In June of 2022 Innisfail Pride was a two-day event in the Legion Picnic Park, with more food, more music and a celebrity drag show featuring not just visiting drag queens but a number of (very) straight local community leaders who put on drag for the first time and took to the stage alongside the pros.

I had the honour to speak at the festival kickoff—and I must tell you, there was a fair bit of apprehension before the events began. Organizers and civic leaders were worried about the homophobia kicked up by the Convoy movement and by the rising tide of anti-gay and anti-trans legislation and agitation around the world. Just hours before the Innisfail event, in fact, the news broke that a gunman in Oslo, Norway, had shot 23 people at a Pride event there, killing two of them. It took some authentic Alberta courage for people to turn out and to speak out.

But no protesters or hatemongers showed up at the Legion park that day. There was no anger, no violence. Just warmth and celebration and a sense of new possibilities.

As I drove back up the highway to Edmonton that night, I thought about my own prejudices, my own preconceptions about rural Alberta. It’s dangerously easy and dangerously lazy to assume that a small town like Innisfail might be full of homophobes, transphobes and racists. What I saw on display that day in that park, though, was a generous community taking pride and joy in its diversity and its inclusion.

It’s bad enough that people outside Alberta often see the rest of us as hateful and angry. As Albertans we ourselves have to celebrate and share real stories like that of Innisfail Pride—because they are absolutely a part of who we are. We mustn’t fall into the trap of letting a few angry, frightened voices define us to the world—nor indeed to ourselves.

“Society has evolved and the town of Innisfail is no different,” says Innisfail mayor Jean Barclay. “Unfortunately, central Alberta has been stereotyped.”

“People say, ‘Oh, Alberta. Crazy redneck Alberta.’ But belonging is an Innisfail value,” she says. “There will always be a few very loud, angry voices. But after all the division of the last three years, it’s important that we stand up to hateful rhetoric.”

I love the Canadian sitcom Schitt’s Creek, where big-city boy David Rose falls in love with small-town Patrick Brewer—and the two of them open a local business that becomes the beating heart of their community. That’s a TV show. But Dale Dunham and Shaun Steen have, in their own ways, made that fantasy a reality, sharing their love with the town they proudly call home.

“Dale and Shaun,” says Mayor Barclay, “give back to our community in so many ways. I am so proud to call them my friends.”

This year, Innisfail Pride is back—as a three-day event—from June 23 to 25. There are plans for an adults only, 18+ drag show on Friday night, and for more family-focused events including a talent show and carnival over the weekend. There won’t be a parade. It won’t be as flashy and loud as Pride in Toronto or Vancouver or Montreal. But it will be organic and homegrown. And it will be the pride of Innisfail.

Paula Simons is an independent senator and the host of the podcast Alberta Unbound. She lives in Edmonton.

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Karen Kerr says no

President of Edmonton Atheists and co-founder of Alberta Secular Conference 

In Canada many charities and other non-profits, including churches and religious groups, are tax-exempt if they are deemed to create public benefit. The exemption is premised on the idea that they provide a public good. However, churches differ from non-profit charities in some important ways.

Charitable non-profit groups include food banks, the SPCA, hostels, homeless shelters and the Salvation Army. The main difference between these groups and religious places of worship are the rules the non-profits must follow, which include the building being “unrestricted at least 70 per cent of operating time” and adherence to rules against discrimination (race, culture, religious belief etc.). While charities must focus on charitable acts, religious groups can focus on the needs of their congregations first, with the charity coming second. Even if religious groups totally ignore the stipulations about public access and non-discrimination, they are often assumed to be contributing to the community.

We need to start asking: Should all churches/religious buildings automatically be given tax exemptions, or should they first meet the same requirements as other non-profits?

Many religious groups do use their buildings to benefit the community while serving the public without discrimination. With others, however, services come with a trade-off of sitting through a sermon first, or are unavailable to certain demographics, such as the LGBTQ+ community. In White Rock, BC, for example, an LGBTQ+ group was denied a church rental in April 2019 because they weren’t aligned with the values of the church. Allowance for such discrimination is built into automatic approval for churches’ tax exemption.

Public revenue is lost in Alberta through such tax breaks. Some BC numbers can give us a rough idea. Saanich, a district on Vancouver Island, has a population of about 120,000. In 2018 Saanich determined they gave tax breaks on property to 46 churches, resulting in just over $550,000 of forgone revenue. Given Alberta and BC property tax rates aren’t so dramatically different and the fact Edmonton alone has over 250 churches, Alberta loses out on multiple millions of dollars worth of public revenue each year because of property tax breaks given to religious groups.

With a 2019 provincial budget that saw billions of dollars cut from social services, education and healthcare, we need to start looking at sources of revenue that haven’t been previously explored and examining who gets tax breaks. A public benefits test for religions would protect tax exemptions for those churches that contribute to the community in valuable ways without discrimination, while the ones that don’t fulfill the requirements can contribute to their communities by paying property taxes, which in turn fund the services we need. It’s a win-win.

Rev. Markus Wilhelm says yes

Pastor at Sherwood Park’s Glory Lutheran Church and Chester Ronning Centre adviser 

I’d like to rephrase the question: Should charities receive tax breaks Churches are registered charities under federal law. According to the government of Canada, charities “must use their resources for charitable activities and have charitable purposes that fall into one or more of the following categories: the relief of poverty, the advancement of education, the advancement of religion, [and] other purposes that benefit the community.”

Most churches provide such things as meals for the hungry, refugee sponsorship and resettlement, clothing drives, overseas relief and development aid, community gardens, seniors housing, nursing homes, daycares, space for friendship and mutual support, music and cultural events, weddings and funerals, as well as grief support and various forms of counselling. Many of these are local, small-scale activities tailored to specific situations, such as the soup kitchen operating in a church hall. Others are larger scale, such as Catholic Social Services and the Mennonite Centre for Newcomers.

The law also recognizes the role of religion alongside that of education and other activities. The core purpose of churches and other faith communities is worship, ritual and spiritual teaching. Religious activity is concerned, among other things, with the transmission of the virtue of charity, which is another word for love. A maxim many traditions teach is “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Christian faith teaches to “love your neighbour as yourself.” It also teaches that taxes should be paid to whom they are due. (Jesus famously said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”) Government uses taxes, among other things, to help the poor, the sick, the elderly, the needy and the disadvantaged; churches teach charity and practise it wherever possible. Governments and society, by giving tax breaks to churches, are acknowledging this vital role of religious communities.

Not everyone recognizes the importance of worship, ritual and religious teaching. By the same token, not everyone requires a nursing home or language training, uses libraries or appreciates classical music. Charitable activity doesn’t require that everyone agree on its benefit. It’s enough that we recognize the cultural, moral or material benefits to society as a whole.

Charitable organizations in general have low administrative costs and are required by law to channel their income towards charitable activities and purposes. They are also closely audited. Canada’s current system of taxation and service delivery means that churches and other religious organizations will continue to play an important role in providing vital services. Most importantly, perhaps, religious traditions provide a moral foundation for the kinds of charitable services society depends on and which government is ultimately responsible for funding. Exempting churches from taxes is a way of recognizing this role too.

Karen Kerr responds to Markus Wilhelm

My dialogue partner has tried to change the topic question in an effort to equate churches and religious groups, first and foremost, with charitable organizations. It’s important to know that organizations offering charity through a religious orientation aren’t necessarily focused on charity as their first goal. Religious groups’ mission statements tend to include the advancement of religion as their main goal, not the charitable cause that’s also supported. This main mission is to proselytize. Charity is secondary—and in some cases the charity work even provides an outlet for the main mission of proselytizing.

My argument, then, is against the assumption that they be given tax breaks and charitable status automatically, and I further contend that advancement of religion cannot be the only benchmark.

In order to qualify as a charity in our country, you must show that your organization follows laws and public policies, including those against discrimination. While my dialogue partner points out that religion is concerned with teaching the virtue of charity, some beliefs within some religious teachings can directly conflict with public policies.

For example, while public policy does not allow for discrimination, some religions actively discriminate even within their own hiring and hierarchical systems. Women and LGBTQ+ people are not allowed to hold certain positions in some churches and are segregated in others. Some religious groups actively teach that homosexuality needs to be “cured,” and in some more dangerous examples use their untaxed revenues to fund “conversion therapy” (a practice that is being banned in many cities across our country because it is so harmful, has no science behind it and goes against human rights). Same-sex marriage is not accepted or performed in certain religious groups. Most religions have rigid ethical codes written into them as part of their teachings, which cannot waver or change even when faced with our modern understanding of humanity and human rights.

Canadians also all have a Charter right to freedom of (and from) religion, whichever religion you choose that to be. If you find yourself in the unfortunate position of requiring a helping hand via a charitable organization, you certainly shouldn’t have to also be faced with religious views that differ from your own as part and parcel with the services.

Pastor Wilhelm also makes the assumption that religions provide our moral foundations. The golden rule (ethic of reciprocity) he quoted is found in many cultures, going back all the way to ancient Egypt, long before the Abrahamic religions. While I do not have the space to go into detail in this dialogue, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that many moral foundations have also been witnessed in the animal kingdom, evolving as we evolved into humans (if you’re interested, research the work of primatologist and ethologist Frans de Waal).

Simply put: Religion does not have a monopoly on altruism.

So, this raises a new question: Why is “advancement of religion,” which can go against public policy, still automatically recognized as charitable Maybe it’s time to look at our charity laws and make amendments.

My dialogue partner offered a list of wonderful charitable services that most (not all, as he admits) churches provide, without noting that none of these services require “advancement of religion” superimposed on it in order to be a benefit to communities in need. His entire list of charitable causes can be supported perfectly well through secular organizations instead. Indeed, advancement of religion as the first mission, with charity merely secondary, may actually affect how well a religious charity can meet the needs of those who require it, if that particular charity has rigid ethical codes as part of its teachings.

Secular charities also have to work under tougher conditions. While not everyone needs to access a food bank or a nursing home, as my dialogue partner points out, those that do require these services shouldn’t be denied them based on their gender, relationship status or any other reason that in Canada has been deemed discrimination. Yet religious groups sometimes do deny charitable services on these grounds (or at least deter people who are often discriminated against from seeking those services), leaving secular charities to pick up the slack.

I’d like to reiterate: It is easy to see the merit in allowing tax breaks for organizations that focus on charity work while still adhering to public policy, but this isn’t always the case with many religious groups. Instituting a public-benefit test would be a fairer way to ensure that those religious groups and churches that meet the requirement that other charities must can continue to reap benefits of those tax breaks afforded to them as a result. Those that do not can contribute to their communities through taxes.

Markus Wilhelm responds to Karen Kerr

Charitable status should be reserved for organizations that create public benefits and that operate within the laws of the land. Nobody should automatically be given a tax exemption. In this respect I am in complete agreement with Karen Kerr.

I question, however, whether the rule of unrestricted access 70 per cent of operating time is a good argument. It cannot mean giving access to facilities for activities that contradict the organization’s mission and purpose. Nursing homes and seniors facilities welcome young and able-bodied people to come and visit residents, but they don’t allow them to move in. LGBTQ+ groups welcome anyone seeking support or information on sexual orientation and gender issues, but probably not those who peddle “conversion therapy.” Libraries welcome everyone to spend time, read or borrow books, but not to hold a choir practice. The atheist society would expect people of faith to refrain from proselytizing its members.

Thus, while all people are certainly welcome in churches, the assumption is that they come to practise religion. A church would not be a church if its facilities were used by the local gun club, a political party or indeed members of a different religion 70 per cent of the time. In other words, every organization must “discriminate” in one way or another in order to fulfill its mission. If the mission and purpose fall within the definition of what is a charitable organization, constituting clear benefits for society, then they should be eligible for tax exemption.

The benefits of churches, as I said before, go far beyond the walls of their houses of worship. The Salvation Army’s mission, for example, is clearly charitable, as Kerr recognizes. (The Salvation Army is actually a church!) The Catholic Covenant Foundation operates public hospitals, nursing homes, auxiliary hospitals and other services throughout Alberta. The church denomination I belong to founded the Good Samaritan Society, which operates 29 seniors care facilities and programs in western Canada. While most of these facilities and services are not primarily funded or staffed by church members, their existence illustrates the connection between the worshiping community and their social impact well beyond the walls of the church building. People do get inspired and motivated by the sermons they sit through in church. Because Jesus said at the conclusion of the story of the Good Samaritan to “go and do likewise,” many churchgoers do just that.

There are self-serving people in the church, as there are everywhere. Fraudsters use their tax-exempt status to fleece vulnerable, gullible people, giving other religious people a bad name. Convicted felon Jimmy Bakker, for example, offers buckets of freeze-dried survival food for what he says is the imminent end time, in exchange for “charitable donations.” He also boasts that he helped elect Donald Trump. Trump in turn thanked him and issued an executive order to protect the tax-free status of quasi-corporate entities such as Bakker’s. Phoneys need to be stopped, and fraud punished. Those who subvert the mission of the church for their own ends should have their charitable status revoked. It is the government’s duty to keep churches in line with the tax code.

In January 2020 the US evangelical magazine Christianity Today ran an article titled “The Hidden Cost of Tax Exemption.” Its author, Paul Matzko, a church historian, questions the tax-exempt status of US churches, arguing that while tax exemption can be used to silence churches politically, it can also lead to collusion between church and state. Maybe it is time, the article concludes, for this privilege to be ended.

In the same issue of the magazine, on the other hand, a sociologist unaffiliated with a church offers the opposite opinion, based on research about churches’ contribution to the local economy. This so-called “halo effect” includes employment, food and the flowers that congregations buy, as well as direct financial savings such as when a pastor, through counselling, helps prevent someone’s suicide. Of course, this invites the question of whether or not taxing churches would decrease their charitable activity in the community. The debate rages on.

How much churches’ tax exemption might be costing society in lost public revenue is debatable. I would venture it’s considerably less than what is lost from for-profit industries through unpaid taxes. Oil and gas companies, for example, owe close to $200-million in unpaid property taxes to Alberta municipalities. In any case, considering what I’ve already written, I believe the overall benefits of faith communities to society outweigh the loss of revenue.

While paying taxes is a civic duty for Christians and the issue of tax exemption is not a hill I would want to die on, I believe that in Canada, under present rules, most churches deserve their tax-exempt status and should be treated the same as other charities.

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It’s a commercial carnival out here on the Alberta prairies. Hawkers shout for attention. Small children harass visitors, drag them over to racks of statuettes and books. Vendors are arrayed around the impromptu temple and its bizarre tropical oasis.

When we pull up in the parking lot, sliding in behind a coach full of Québécois tourists, my husband smirks knowingly at the weary look on my face.

“Try to have fun, okay Try to enjoy yourself.”

I cock an eyebrow at him. Since when have I ever had fun on one of his assignments

We established our dynamic early on. I’m the curmudgeonly one. He’s the adventurous one. I stay at home in Toronto denying visa applications for the immigration bureau. He jets around the world writing articles for his surprisingly lucrative travel blog.

When he does drag me along, it’s all forcing a smile in front of cliché monuments and trying to avoid doing anything blogworthy—a lesson I learned the hard way when I accidentally ate a bull penis in Saigon.

People bring their own inferior fruits—lacking the fullness and weight of Her soulful produce—to leave at her feet.

This trip, I can’t avoid being mentioned. I’m a subject of study. This is my home turf.

“I’ve been invited to go on a tour of Alberta!” he crowed the moment he got the email. “You have to come! You never talk about your homeland. You can show off your old haunts. Like I did when we went home to visit my parents.”

“Yeah, but you’re from New York. It’s not the same.”

“Well, I already emailed back, before the tour company finds some other blogger. Case closed. We’re going.”

Our marriage counsellor thinks it’s a great idea. Maybe going home will help resolve my insomnia and my sleepwalking, which have been getting worse.

So here I am. Musidora, Alberta. Formerly the armpit of nowhere. Now a major tourist destination. All thanks to Her.

“I can’t believe you’ve never been here,” says my husband as we leave the air-conditioned tranquility of the rental car and are immediately assaulted by a 10-year-old shaking sandalwood beads.

“You’d never been to the Statue of Liberty,” I say.

“That’s different. It’s a point of pride for New Yorkers to avoid the Statue of Liberty. And besides, there’s so much else to do in New York.”

We weave our way through the small community that has sprouted up around the accidental landmark. My husband buys too many souvenirs—a trucker hat, a pack of gum, a tube of incense. He buys a book, Divine Teachings of the Madonna of Musidora, which I’m sure will appear in my Christmas stocking this year.

We join the long queue for the temple, which stretches all the way around the spontaneous shrine. I hold our place as my husband goes to get some overpriced food. Really, he’s hunting for a good story in the thousand-strong crowd. It shouldn’t be too hard to find. There are dozens of pilgrims leaning on crutches and canes, waiting for the moment they can cast them away and declare themselves miraculously healed.

My husband returns eventually with some limp green onion cakes bathed in sriracha sauce, and I chew one of the cardboardy disks for the next 10 minutes. When we reach the entrance, a serene, white-robed acolyte tells us we are expected to limit our time to five minutes in Her presence, take no photos and remain reverently silent in the temple.

When we enter the grand room, however, we meet a scene of pandemonium. A crowd of at least a hundred is gathered around Her, pushing and jostling for position. Everyone has one hand in the air, all trying to take the exact same photo with their smartphones. I’m reminded of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, not just because of the mob of ill-behaved tourists, but also because of Her face.

The Madonna of Musidora wears an enigmatic smile. She sits there with Her legs pretzelled, Her eyes closed, Her metres of copper-gold hair. The temple has cold marble floors and golden walls, a cavernous space that amplifies the noise of the crowd. But the Madonna sits in the dirt, as She has since the beginning.

Behind Her sprouts the temple’s most impressive feature—a giant tree, growing up the curved side of the dome, reaching towards the oculus in its roof, through which sunlight rains down. Its boughs are heavy with fruit and bursting with blossoms, a biological impossibility just like the Madonna Herself.

The story goes that the Madonna had an orange in Her pocket when She sat down, and it fell out and implanted itself in the freshly tilled soil behind her. Her divine influence seeped out to infect the surrounding earth, making it absurdly fertile. People bring their own inferior fruits—genetically engineered to be flawless, though lacking the fullness and weight of Her soulful produce—to leave at Her feet and ask for a blessing.

Eventually we shuffle our way to the front of the crowd, behind a waist-high glass barrier that leaves us a metre away from Her. My husband passes me a piece of crystallized pineapple, and we kneel down and place our offerings beside a hundred-hour candle. I let the pineapple linger in my hand for a moment, visualizing my wish. My husband draws his hand away quickly. I’m sure he doesn’t wish for what I wish for.

The Madonna wears en enigmatic smile, with Her legs pretzelled, Her eyes closed, Her metres of copper-gold hair. She sits in the dirt.

He leans into me, almost nibbles on my ear as he whispers to me.

“What do you feel?”

I stare up into the woman’s face and consider the question. The Madonna of Musidora is like the Mona Lisa, with her famous smile. It’s mysterious and self-satisfied, to the point that it borders on smugness. She has this “I know something you don’t know” smirk, eyebrows raised to just the right angle.

When I look into her eternally young, glowing face I don’t feel peace or contentment or inspiration. I feel a yellow curd of resentment, stinking up my insides. Who does she think she is, really Why are you oh-so-enlightened What’s your great secret, huh

I hate my life. Everything that once seemed exciting, colourful, full of promise is now just a taunt, a reminder of how naive I once was. Most people hate their lives, I think, which is why we spend so much time grasping around at distractions. Doing things that other people pretend to be happy about and advertise, like buying a house or getting married.

But here sits this woman, almost 120 years old with the face of a 20-year-old, announcing silently that She’s figured it all out. She’s beaten the misery monster that gnaws at everyone from the inside. She’s achieved a pure and perfect joy, independent of circumstance, unassailable by doubt or regret or exhaustion. Wherever She is in there—in that strange, ageless body sitting rooted to the dusty prairie—She seems to be mocking us, showing us how easy it is to slip free of our shackles.

We’re shuffled out of the temple, into the interpretive centre and gift shop. My husband drags me into a small theatre that plays a short film. The story of her life.

“Before She came to be known as the Madonna, Victoria Sunady had another nickname: The Queen of the Porcelain Throne.”

A baritone voice narrates as photos of Her as an old woman fill the screen.

“She recognized that great wealth could spring from the most unexpected of places. She read a strange statistic about the amount of rare and precious metals in human biosolids, and decided to begin a waste control business that filtered and collected these base elements. Gold, silver, platinum, copper—a dozen valuable metals were mined directly from a million toilets across Alberta.”

A map appears, showing Victoria Sunady’s sewage pipelines, running from across the province to her central distillery in Edmonton.

“Her business boomed, and soon she was selling these metals back to various industries, for use in electronics and construction. She survived several assassination attempts by panicked strip mining companies, and her eco-conscious business model prevailed. Other nations copied her, and now her method is used globally.”

Footage of the distillation process fills the screen, frothy pools with fine-meshed sieves.

“But after having built an empire and accrued massive wealth, Victoria Sunady was stunned to discover Herself extremely unhappy. She hid Her depression for years, burying it away, burying Herself in work. Eventually, She came to a breaking point. Her life was intolerable. She had to change. So she walked away from it all, through the day, through the night. At dawn She sat down in the middle of a field. She closed Her eyes, and let out a deep breath.”

The narration pauses here, for dramatic effect. The crowd leans in perceptibly. My husband is hanging off every word, scribbling on his notepad manically.

“The Madonna of Musidora has only breathed twice since She came across the fields and sat down. Once was 40 years ago, when She breathed in. Once was 15 years ago, when She breathed out. The acolytes of Her Order wait for Her third breath, where they will find synchronicity with Her.”

The video ends and the screen plays a video montage of the #musidora Twitter and Instagram streams. My husband spends an hour in the giftshop, buying everything from a tin of dirt to a jar of honey made from the bees that suck the nectar from Her tree. The honey costs several hundred dollars.

“It’s a business expense,” says my husband innocently. “I’ll write it off on our taxes.”

I follow him back to the car, arms laden with his purchases, and soon I’m pulling us out of the oasis and back onto the highway. We pass through Musidora itself, originally a hamlet of 200 people whose population has mushroomed to 50,000, a local economy supported entirely by Victoria Sunady.

“I wish we’d seen Her breathe,” says my husband, chewing on the end of his pencil and staring out the window. “Imagine breathing in the air She exhaled, that’s been held in Her lungs for so long. It would be like a blessing. Maybe you’d start aging in reverse too.”

He grins at me. I keep my eyes on the road.

“I like the age I am,” I say.

We ride on in silence until we get back to Vegreville, which has also benefited from Musidora’s cash-flush pilgrims.

The Pysanka Hotel is a gaudy kaleidoscopic building whose staff pretends it’s 1870 and will only talk to you in Ukrainian. Of course my husband loves it, washboard laundry and butter churning and all. We head into the dining room for a perogy and kolbassa buffet. I pick at the onion-infested meal while my husband eats with gusto.

“I have so much to write about,” he says through a mouthful of dumpling and sausage. “I met this woman who was selling oranges from the Madonna’s actual tree. She said she was a skeptic herself, but then she ate one of them 10 years ago and it cured her of her infertility. And she had, like, six kids around her now. The oranges cost, like, thirty thousand dollars though, so I was like nah…that’s too much.”

It’s nice to know my husband has a ceiling, no matter how high it is.

“I heard Her children had a big court battle over Her estate,” continues my husband. “But the government ruled that they couldn’t inherit Her fortune because legally she’s still alive, even if Her heart only beats once a year.”

He digs in to his braided bread-cake and washes down each chunk with a big gulp of milk.

“Of course, they’re both dead now. She’ll probably outlive all her grandchildren too.”

If he notices my silence he doesn’t care. He only ever needed someone to listen as he talks on and on. I wonder if he’s talking all about children just to be vindictive. No. Probably not. He’s more thoughtless than he is cruel.

“How do you think She does it, really?”

He sips his milk and looks up at the shumka dancers, performing at the other end of the dining room in their bright woven costumes.

“I don’t know. I have a headache. I’m gonna go to bed early, I think.”

“You should drink some water. Eighty per cent of Canadians are chronically dehydrated.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

I stand up and set my dinner napkin beside my fork.

“I’ll be upstairs. Try not to make too much noise when you come up.”

My husband nods distractedly. He’s flipped open his notepad and is staining its pages with greasy fingerprints, leafing back through his treasure trove of experiences from the day. He’ll distill all of it into a 3,000-word advertisement, inspiring the envy of anyone too poor or too busy or too mainstream to visit Musidora. I used to like his writing. Now it’s all just a big fake confection about how great everything is and how happy you’d be if you were there, elsewhere, anywhere but where you are.

I feel a yellow curd of resentment, stinking up my insides. Who does she think she is, really Why are you oh-so-enlightened?

I brush my teeth and wash my face and lie in our bed, staring at the ceiling. Blood pounds in my temples. My eyes ache. I squeeze them shut. Like every night for the past decade, I retrace my steps through my memory, trying to find the moment where it all started to go wrong. When I left Edmonton When I did a graduate degree in literature When I met my husband-to-be When I married him Or even before all that, when I thought I was happy even though I wasn’t really

I drift off to sleep, and dream myself through a dozen different lives, where I made better choices. In one of them I’m living in Nagasaki, teaching English, learning Japanese. In one of them I’m a famous poet, performing to packed halls in Montreal. In one of them I have a rich, powerful husband who loves kids and who loves me for raising our bright, wonderful children.

We’re at our cabin on Lake Edith, playing Scrabble as a family and making up words. I feel right, like I belong here, like this is the life I truly deserve. My caring husband holds my hand as we play, ganging up on the kids and trying to convince them that “quizzy” is definitely a word.

The little one gets mad, says “No, it’s not!” and starts to hold her breath for as long as she can in protest. She takes a big gulp of air and smirks at us. After a moment she starts floating up towards the ceiling, her fiery hair billowing out in all directions. She squeezes her face and her chipmunk cheeks quiver and then she explodes like a helium balloon introduced to a hairpin.

An icicle of horror plunges through my gut, but before I can scream or cry, the world is erased. I wake up.

I’m lying on a smooth marble floor, in a perfect circle of moonlight. My feet are bare, broken, aching, bleeding. I pick myself up and gasp when I see where my sleepwalking has carried me this time.

Victoria Sunady sits before me, on Her perfect circle of dirt. A heady perfume seeps down from Her tree’s white blossoms, filling up the empty temple. Her smile seems even more radiant than I remember. In this quiet, moonlit place, Her whole body seems to glow with soft, orange luminescence.

I try to stand but my feet are too tender. That’s what comes of walking for hours with no shoes. At least the marble is cool and soothing against my swollen skin.

I wonder how I even got into the dome. I thought they’d have security, or acolytes performing midnight rituals. But it’s just me and the Madonna.

I crawl over to Her shrine, under the branches of the mighty tree. The offerings are all gone, as is the glass barrier. I could reach out and touch Her bare feet if I wanted to. She exerts a mesmerizing magnetism, like staring into the embers at the heart of a bonfire.

Out of nowhere, a violent impulse urges me to strike the smug smile off her face, shake her by the shoulders until she admits that she’s no better than the rest of us. This feeling races through me, a wildfire of envy and hate.

Before I know it, I’m on my feet, bearing down on her, an inch away from her lustrous golden skin. But just as I’m about to destroy Victoria Sunady and her false promise of peace, something stays my hand.

She breathes.

One long, deep, constant inhalation. Her eyes stay shut, Her smile stays wide, but Her chest expands, drawing in gallons and gallons of air.

It’s only when Her deep breath ends that I realize I’ve been holding my own. I let it out, and I’m surprised by how deeply I can dig, how much stale dry air is lurking around the back tunnels of my lungs.

As the air leaves my lungs, it carries some dark spores of resentment up out of my body. The Madonna of Musidora smiles a little wider.

I imagine Her using whatever strange power She found buried out here on the random prairies—or maybe just found buried deep within Herself—to draw out my despair and share her tranquility. Not some zen bullshit from a fake memoir, but an earthy presence from her body.

I’m going to leave my husband. I’m going to quit my job. I’m going to breathe out all these noxious memory fumes. And when they’re gone, I’m going to pause and reflect in emptiness. And then I’m going to breathe in.

Bruce Cinnamon lives in Edmonton. His stories have appeared in various journals. He is working on his first novel.

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The post Breathe In appeared first on Alberta Views.

Now let’s consider another story with no happy ending. In 2004 a boy—call him Patrick—took his own life. He had been subjected to relentless homophobic bullying at the Calgary Catholic high school where Tonya was teaching. The day she learned of his death, Tonya came home, her hands shaking, and asked Suzette if she would support Tonya’s quitting her job and going back to university. She wanted to go to graduate school and study homophobia in Canadian Catholic schools, the problem she felt had caused Patrick to take his life.

Both Tonya’s and Suzette’s lives were dramatically changed by Patrick’s death. Tonya’s graduate work looked for causes behind the sad statistic (confirmed by the Canadian Mental Health Association) that LGBTQ youth are a high risk for suicide. Patrick had been a promising drama student in his school. He had sought help from school counselors and administration but found none. When Suzette, a novelist, read Tonya’s Master’s thesis, she asked, “Can I turn your life into a novel?” She wrote Monoceros, a novel in which a gay youth named Patrick Furey commits suicide after being unremittingly bullied in his Calgary Catholic high school. Pure fiction—based on pure fact. Tonya’s thesis was also published under the title That’s So Gay: Homophobia in Canadian Catholic Schools.

Later, when Tonya taught at the University of Calgary, a frequent reaction to her saying she had written about homophobia in Canadian Catholic schools was a shrug. “Homophobia in Catholic schools What else would you expect?” Though Monoceros was positively reviewed all over Canada and won literary awards, people would often say to Suzette, “That couldn’t happen nowadays, right?”

We have come to understand that our background is a lot more than just our story. It is part of the evolution of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Questioning (LGBTQ) rights in Canada. In Alberta, the latest chapter in that development is an educational, legislative and social struggle over Gay-Straight Alliances in schools. Because of Patrick’s death and the books we have written in response to his tragedy, we have naturally been involved in that struggle. Could a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) in Patrick’s school have swayed things for him, enabled him to live on?

Originating in the US, GSAs are in-school student clubs that focus on making schools safe spaces for LGBTQ students and their straight friends. Scholarly studies have shown GSAs to be a success story contributing to whole-school wellness with positive effects on the broader community. Of particular note was a 2014 University of British Columbia study headed by Elizabeth Saewyc that compared GSAs to school-based anti-homophobia policies. It found that GSAs are more successful than school policies in creating a more welcoming atmosphere for LGBTQ students.

Just ask any student who is currently, or has been, involved in a GSA. One of 16-year-old Mackenzie Beerbaum’s “proudest accomplishments” is being one of the founders of Alberta’s first junior high school GSA (at Calgary’s George P. Vanier Junior High School) in 2014. An avid musician who is active in marching band, she is hoping to be accepted as a mallet percussionist in the Calgary Stampede Showband. Her GSA made T-shirts, held bake sales, attended the Calgary Pride parade and worked on educating club members about LGBTQ social issues. Her most poignant memory from an early GSA meeting was when a guest from the Calgary Sexual Health Centre helped Beerbaum’s GSA make buttons with rainbow images and “I (heart) diversity” on them. “It was so simple,” Beerbaum recalls, “but just being in a group of people, talking and making buttons was so nice. It felt so comfortable. This is when I realized that the people around me…were going to be there for me when I needed support or just someone to talk to.”

At the university, a frequent reaction was “Homophobia in Catholic schools What else would you expect#8221;

According to Grade 12 student Austin Bender, the 2015 recipient of the Governor General’s Caring Canadian Award, being able to start a GSA at Springbank Community High School changed his life. Having endured homophobic name-calling since Grade 5, things came to a head in 2013 when he came home crying. His mother talked to school administration and the bullying stopped. But Bender felt he could not wait for the school environment to change. “By doing nothing I would be hurting those who couldn’t speak. I had to take the initiative.” At the first meeting, only Bender, his teacher-sponsor and two friends attended. But the club grew to a regular attendance of 25–35. A pivotal moment for Bender was when he noticed that his friends had stopped using homophobic slurs. He also reconciled with his bullies. “The best thing is the people who were doing this, I’m actually friends with them now. They’ve come to meetings. We’ve reconciled. My motto is…forgive others not because they deserve forgiveness but because you deserve peace.” Interestingly, one of the students who bullied Austin has now identified as LGBTQ.

Because of the GSA, Bender’s school has become a safe place. “We’ve had people say that they’re suicidal and we’ve gotten them to see the counselor, and it’s really helped them.” Bender’s future is bright. He has been conditionally accepted into the University of Calgary’s Werklund School of Education.

The first known Alberta GSA was begun in 1999 when a student at Red Deer’s Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive High School approached her English teacher, asking him why an anti-discrimination group already in existence in the school was doing nothing to counter prejudice based on sexual orientation. The teacher helped her negotiate with the school administration, and the group was allowed to form in 2000. In 2005, the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) showed its support for GSAs through a subcommittee called Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI). SOGI promotes understanding of gender and sexually diverse students and teachers, including students who have parents of the same gender. Prior to its support for GSAs, the ATA was the first teachers’ federation in Canada to amend its Code of Professional Conduct to protect students from discrimination on the basis of gender identity. But the ATA can only create its own policy. For GSAs to be more than an idea, government had to become involved.

In 2014, Alberta Liberal MLAs Kent Hehr and Laurie Blakeman were both well aware of GSAs and looking for ways to assist them. In April of 2014, Hehr introduced Motion 503 in the Alberta Legislature, a motion to support GSAs within provincial law. Speaking to his motion, Hehr said, “(The) reality is GSAs save lives.” Hehr’s motion was voted down by both the PC majority and the Wildrose opposition. Though the motion was defeated, Blakeman felt that Alberta public and the government were not on the same page. “Albertans were already there,” she said. “It was just the politicians who needed to be brought along.”

In late 2014, Blakeman won the rare opportunity for an opposition member to present a private member’s bill of her choosing. Her choice was Bill 202, the Safe and Inclusive Schools Statutes Amendment Act, which she dedicated to her mother, a principal and high school teacher who was especially concerned about rights for vulnerable students. With this Act, Blakeman wanted to ensure students could have GSAs in their schools, but she wanted to take advantage of the bill’s form to go further. “Given that I had a whole bill, not just a motion,” she says, “I put in all the things I felt needed to be addressed: granting of GSAs; protecting students’ choice to call them GSAs if they wished; repealing section 11.1 from the Human Rights Act (which gave parents notice and the right to opt out); and re-instating of references to the Charter and the Alberta Human Rights Act in the Education Act and the Schools Act.” That students must be able to name a GSA a “Gay-Straight Alliance” was especially important for Blakeman. She didn’t want school administrations choosing “cute euphemisms.”

Former premier Jim Prentice called Blakeman’s Bill 202 “unfair” and “unbalanced.” He said, “Bill 202 asks us to cast aside our constituents’ beliefs in parental rights, and in the autonomy of school boards, to support GSAs.” Rather than amend Bill 202, the government introduced Bill 10, an Act to Amend the Alberta Bill of Rights to Protect our Children. Procedurally Bill 10 displaced Bill 202; Blakeman’s bill died. In a television interview following the news, she wept.

According to Prentice, Bill 10 was going to “build consensus” and resolve the “divisive” elements of Bill 202, the ones threatening to take control over GSAs away from parents and schools. Unlike Blakeman’s Bill 202, Bill 10 did not guarantee a student’s right to form a GSA in a school. Its support of school “autonomy” left the decision on GSAs up to school administrators. A clause in Bill 10 described how a student whose request for a GSA had been denied could go to court to request that one be created. This was simply impractical. At the age of 14, getting a learner’s license is probably daunting enough. Forget about navigating the court system and its costs.

Somewhat unexpectedly, Bill 10 was met with an eruption of criticism in news editorials and from NDP and Liberal politicians. After Bill 10’s second reading, Thomas Lukaszuk, the only PC politician to initially oppose the bill, said, “I simply do not believe in incremental granting of human rights… We didn’t give women half a vote, we gave them a full vote.” Another high-profile critic was the Calgary Stampeders’ star Canadian running back, Jon Cornish, who tweeted sarcastically, “Gay Straight Alliance No! Get back in the closet!”

The negative publicity over Bill 10 caused the PCs to add an amendment two days after the original bill was introduced. The change was that students denied a GSA by their school could appeal to the Ministry of Education rather than to the court. According to PC MLA Sandra Jansen, who presented the amendment, if a GSA were not allowed in a school, it could occur “hopefully within a school environment.” Blakeman and other opposition members immediately interpreted Jansen’s words as a loophole schools could exploit to move GSAs off school grounds.

Seeing these developments in the news, anyone—LGBTQ or straight—who cared about social justice could only shake their heads. It was like the old Jim Crow laws, the US segregation laws whereby African-American people were supposed to be separate but equal. In this situation, young LGTBQ people like Patrick would still be out in the cold.

The PCs’ Bill 10 was like US segregation laws in which African-Americans were supposed to be equal but separate.

Frustrating as the “amended” Bill 10 was, the outrage that it had caused among LGBTQ people and straight allies was gratifying. Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi was most succinct when he said the bill would make Albertans look like “hillbillies.” Responding to Prentice’s comment about Bill 10 that “Rights are never absolute,” comedian Rick Mercer mockingly tweeted, “Nice ring to it, Jim. Maybe that should be on the [Alberta] license plate.”

To many people’s total surprise, before Bill 10 went to its third and final reading, Premier Prentice announced the Bill would be put on hold. He admitted, “Bill 10 has added to, rather than resolved, these divisions.” Albertans still did not have legally protected GSAs, but they also were not stuck with the flawed Bill 10.

It was three months before the Alberta government introduced a radically amended Bill 10. It received Royal Assent on March 19, 2015. As of that date, all Alberta schools could have GSAs if requested by students. The final version of Bill 10 contained all the features of Blakeman’s Bill 202, and her smile was wide when she said in the Legislative Assembly, “It’s hard to contain my joy.” Both our elation and frustration were reflected perfectly in a piece by long-time activist Stephen Lock in GayCalgary magazine. He wrote, “This was, and is, such a clear-cut case of ‘Just-get-on-with-it-already’.”

Passage of the improved Bill 10 was a great achievement: a complete reversal on GSAs by the PC government of Alberta. But the people who helped cause the change still see potential for trouble. Following Bill 10’s passage, Hehr asked the Legislature, “When a staff member is not able to be found to run or organize a GSA, what will the process be, and how will it go forward?” He imagined that the excuse of not finding a staff member could “be utilized by some schools or school systems to derail the process.” The ATA expressed additional reservations. In a news release, ATA president Mark Ramsankar noted, “Government, boards and many individuals have some widely divergent views on what Bill 10 will mean in practice.”

The way GSAs have played out in other jurisdictions suggests the kind of hurdles that might remain. In Ontario in 2011, Catholic education leaders reluctantly agreed to a Catholic version of GSAs after pressure from Catholic students, Canadian human rights and civil liberties groups, the media and the general public. What the Catholic leaders were advocating were watered-down versions of GSAs with names like “By Your SIDE Spaces” (an acronym for Safety, Inclusivity, Diversity and Equity). Some in the media called these “decoy GSAs.”

The Ontario GSA debate made international headlines in 2011 when a group of students led by Leanne Iskander at St. Joseph Catholic Secondary School in Mississauga tried to start their own “LGBT club” ¬—Iskander and her friends had never heard of GSAs. School administrators’ response was a blunt no.

Unfazed, Iskander’s unauthorized GSA group brought rainbow signs and posters to school, only to be told they could not put them up because, as Iskander recounted in an interview, “They said rainbows are associated with [LGBTQ] pride.” In spite of the school’s ban, the students managed to secretly unfurl their rainbows by baking dyed batter into cupcakes that they sold for 50 cents apiece, raising $200 for charity. This campaign went viral.

The result in Ontario of unrelenting international, national and provincial pressure was Bill 13, the Accepting Schools Act, passed in 2012. According to this Bill, all Ontario schools—including faith-based schools—must allow students to establish GSA support groups. Bill 13 included a notable provision that required schools to allow students to use the word “gay” in the name of their GSA. This was necessary because of Ontario Catholic education leaders’ ongoing resistance to GSAs, especially to having “gay” in a GSA’s name. They also continued to resist the use of celebratory symbols like the rainbow pride flag.

In similar fashion, Alberta’s Catholic education leaders are looking for loopholes. Shortly after the final passage of Bill 10, the Alberta Catholic School Trustees’ Association issued a statement praising the “flexibility” of Bill 10 and referred to a Catholic education policy document, the LIFE Framework, which claims among other things that names for student groups must be approved by a school’s principal. The Life Framework states that student group names “will incorporate language in keeping with the teachings of the Catholic Church” and that group facilitators will “integrate prayer, scripture and Catholic teaching…as appropriate.”

Calgary Bishop Fred Henry’s support for the original, reviled Bill 10 as a “win-win for everyone,” and his insistence in a December 2014 pastoral letter circulated to congregants that “we already have in place policies, protocols and resources supporting inclusive communities” do not offer much hope. Bishop Henry’s dismal record with LGBTQ issues was tellingly revealed during the marriage equality battle when he lumped together “homosexuality, adultery, prostitution and pornography” as elements that “undermine the foundations of the family, the basis of society.” Those who follow Henry’s directives will not be able to create bona fide GSAs.

In light of Bill 10, someone like Patrick should now be able to start a GSA in his Alberta school. But will he be allowed to call it a “Gay-Straight” or a “Queer” Alliance Will he be required to call it a “Diversity Club” or some other “cute euphemism?” Would Patrick and his peers even be told that a GSA existed in their school Would the GSA’s meetings be advertised, the same way that the school’s chess club or yearbook club meetings are If Patrick were able to join a diversity club in his school, would he be subjected there to negative information about LGBTQ people?

If, as seems likely, Patrick’s Alberta Catholic school would not have a GSA by its true name and meaning, the question of where kids like him will go to find support is left open and empty. Some of the former students Tonya interviewed for her book ended up on the street. In Monoceros, and in real life, Patrick ended up dead.

Tonya Callaghan is an assistant professor in the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary. Suzette Mayr is the author of four novels including Monoceros, which won the ReLit Award and the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize and was longlisted for the 2011 Giller.

If you or someone you know wants to start a GSA, google “Alberta Teachers Association GSA”.

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The post Why Gay-Straight Alliances are Essential appeared first on Alberta Views.

But there’s an effort behind the motions, says Willes, who has spent the past few years perfecting the day-to-day gestures. “There’s an emotional transition that goes along with gender [transition],” she says. “[You’re] trying to learn as much as you can about the differences in gender: everything from speech, to etiquette, to discovering your fashion style… it takes time to figure out who you are.”

The irony of that statement is that Willes knew who she was—a woman—from an early age. Her gender identity, however, was in conflict with her physiological sex. Willes is a trans-woman: a transgender person assigned as a male at birth but who has a female gender identity. She was 15 the first time she typed “gender transition” into a search engine. It was the mid-1990s and there were no support groups or informational pages on the Web about being transgender. Soon after, her father came across the browser history and things “exploded” at home. “It set me back a long time,” says Willes. “We never talked about it again and it kind of disappeared.”

But the reality of being a woman trapped in a man’s body never did. Willes lived as a man until her mid-20s, until she could no longer ignore her overwhelming feelings and decided to begin her transition. After that came years of drawn-out and often painful therapies and procedures, including regular appointments with a psychologist, hormone therapy—high doses of testosterone blockers and estrogen—hair removal and surgeries. And then, four years ago, Willes was planning to complete her male-to-female transition by undergoing gender reassignment surgery (GRS), in her case vaginoplasty, a $20,000 procedure that creates female genitalia from penile tissue. The surgery, funded by the provincial government, was going to be the last stage of Willes’s transition and the first step to moving on with her life in the body she was meant to have, she says.

But on April 7, 2009, much to Willes’s and the rest of the Alberta transgender community’s surprise, the government announced it was cutting GRS funding—effective immediately.

The following week, then-Minister of Health & Wellness Ron Liepert was challenged in the legislature by Edmonton-Centre MLA Laurie Blakeman (Lib) to explain the reasons for delisting GRS. “Why was there a complete lack of consultation with any medical professionals with expertise in this field?” she asked. Liepert replied that the delisting “was not based on medical decisions.” It was a matter of making “very tough decisions” based on budget cuts, he said. The GRS delisting was to save around $700,000 of the province’s $10.9-billion annual healthcare budget for that year and was part of a $215-million overall cut.

Even as he defended the cut to GRS, however, Liepert allowed that the delisting process might be flawed. Albertans, he said, should discuss whether the province needs “an expert panel to start to determine what is medically necessary, what is essential, what needs to be covered.” To many Albertans, Liepert’s comments came as a shock. How was it possible that a politician with no medical background could delist a medical procedure without consulting experts in the field—and without considering the delisting a “medical decision” in the first place?

Some people think Alberta’s decision to delist GRS had a lot to do with transgender citizens’ lack of rights.

The process—or lack thereof—through which the provincial government makes decisions about listing medical services and procedures is indeed deeply flawed, says Dr. R. Michael Giuffre, president of the Alberta Medical Association (AMA). Too much power rests in the minister’s hands: “It’s very much… ‘I’ll make the decision, I’ll watch the decision, and if [the pressure gets] too much, I’ll reverse my decision.’”

Health ministers, he acknowledges, are often under pressure to make cuts to the healthcare budget while at the same time meeting public expectations. And healthcare needs are always changing. The minister must take into account an aging population, rising costs for pharmaceuticals, and new, advanced surgical and diagnostic procedures. This is why decisions about what medical procedures and services to cover need to be made through consultation with medical experts, says Giuffre. “From a physician’s point of view, as soon as the Ministry of Health gets involved, it has the potential to interfere in healthcare… it threatens the physician–patient relationship,” he says.

As gender identity disorder affects a small percentage of citizens, and GRS surgery is received by only around 16 Albertans per year, the procedure makes an easy target. “The most vulnerable [patients] tend to be the ones that get cherry-picked by a minister who says ‘this will have the least political fallout, so let’s delist this and save some money,’” says Guiffre.

Canadians receive coverage for “medically necessary” procedures and services under the Canada Health Act (CHA). In Alberta, the Alberta Health Care Insurance Plan provides additional benefits and services for “medically necessary” procedures that the CHA overlooks or ignores. Although the federal plan sets a template for what is “medically necessary” by the services and procedures it funds, it does not define the term, leaving plenty of room for interpretation by each provincial government. “It’s purposely vague, set up on a broad definition, because what it boils down to is that medical necessity [varies by] patient,” says Giuffre.

What is and is not covered varies from province to province because funding for provincially designated services and procedures—which in most provinces includes GRS—is at the discretion, typically, of each province’s minister of health. In Alberta—as in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and BC—although the Minister of Health can draw on medical reviews and literature and consult a committee that consists of physicians or experts (typically from the province’s medical association), they aren’t obliged to.

“What ends up happening is that delisting or relisting comes up when the government says we want good value, and we don’t have enough dollars,” says Giuffre. But he adds that cutting medically necessary procedures doesn’t create value or save money. “Short-term squeezing of the system just increases pressure in other areas,” he says. “And often those decisions end up being reversed because the public protests, and we end up right back where we started.”

It was by reading his morning newspaper that Dr. Lorne Warneke learned GRS funding had been eliminated. Dr. Warneke is one of the few Alberta psychiatrists who see transgender patients and diagnose gender identity disorder (a requirement for GRS funding approval). When treatment was delisted, he was the sole psychiatrist in the province who had been requesting GRS funding on behalf of his patients, and he’d been doing so for more than a decade.

“If the Alberta government was going to do something that would have a major impact on the patient population, why wouldn’t they contact the person who can make some comments on what that impact would be?” asks Dr. Warneke.

Despite popular misconception that GRS is a cosmetic surgery, it is a medically necessary procedure—often with life and death consequences, says Dr. Warneke. “People say it’s a choice. Clearly, common sense would say Why would anybody choose to be transgender It doesn’t make any sense.” Studies have proven that certain areas of the brain are sexually dimorphic, meaning that they are different in the brains of males and females. In trans-women, these areas are the same as in biological females, and the same is true with trans-men and biological men, says Dr. Warneke.

Due to societal ignorance, lack of acceptance and scarcity of resources, suicide attempt rates are some of the highest among the transgender community. According to a recent study out of Ontario by Trans Pulse (an NGO that researches access to health and social services), 43 per cent of trans-people have attempted suicide.

After delisting GRS in 2009, the Alberta government announced it would still fund the 26 people who were already approved and 20 more who had undergone irreversible physical changes with hormone therapy or initial surgeries. But even so, Dr. Warneke received a flood of frantic phone calls from people who no longer qualified for funding in 2009. “There was a lot of despair among older people but especially young people with their whole lives ahead of them, thinking What am I going to do?” he says, adding that when the government cut funding, it did not consider the irreversible psychological state of many transgender patients. Delisting “affected an entire group in our society that was a minority group and was already discriminated against.”

Following the delisting announcement, two of the doctor’s transgender patients were hospitalized for several weeks after suicide attempts—a great cost, both emotional and medical, that could have been prevented, Dr. Warneke says.

How can a minister with no medical background delist a surgery—and consider it a non-medical decision?

The Alberta government in 1996 began funding final-stage gender reassignment surgery—vaginoplasty for trans-women and phalloplasty for trans-men—for patients who met a long list of clinical criteria based on the World Professional Association for Transgender Health Standards of Care. The criteria include a psychiatric diagnosis of gender identity disorder; one year of Real Life Experience, or living full-time in the desired gender; necessary hormone therapy; and preliminary surgeries (hysterectomies for trans-men, for example). Montreal’s Centre métropolitain de chirurgie plastique is the only clinic in Canada where GRS is performed. The program does not fund what the government deems “cosmetic procedures,” such as Adam’s apple shaving, facial feminization and voice surgery for trans-women. Hormone therapy is also an out-of-pocket expense and drugs can cost upwards of $1,200 per year.

Physical gender transitions can take anywhere from two to 10 years, but emotional and psychological transitions often take much longer. For every transgender person, the journey is vastly different, and the idea of being complete in their transition varies widely. As the procedure is extraordinarily difficult, and patients are at risk for a number of side effects, many trans-men don’t undergo phalloplasty, which costs approximately $60,000. Instead, they rely on the effects of testosterone therapy to achieve the primary and secondary male sex characteristics—larger external genitalia, muscle development, hair growth and lower voice pitch—they feel are enough for living as their true gender. Vaginoplasty, on the other hand, is a more common procedure, and the results of the surgery are often so successful that the constructed vagina is indistinguishable from a biological one.

For trans-women, even after estrogen therapy and testosterone blockers, characteristics that are already in place, such as bone structure, facial hair and voice pitch, do not change. (Estrogen therapy will result in breast growth and may soften facial hair to some degree.)

Because of costs associated with hair removal, and cosmetic procedures such as chondrolaryngoplasty (Adam’s apple shaving), facial feminization to soften bone structure and voice surgery to achieve a more female-sounding voice, trans-women pay more out-of-pocket costs during transition than trans-men (hysterectomies and mastectomies for trans-men are covered under the Canada Health Act).

Willes saved up for years for the cosmetic procedures and was planning on getting them done first—to make her everyday life as a woman in society easier—before undergoing GRS. When GRS funding was delisted, she had to make a choice: spend her $20,000 on the facial and voice surgeries or spend it on GRS.

In the end, Willes went to a Boston clinic for the chondrolaryngoplasty and facial feminization and voice surgeries, because those changes would make her everyday life easier. “For me, having transitioned to the point where I can live in my gender role [day to day] has made a huge difference,” says Willes, although she adds she will not feel complete in her transition until she has had GRS. Although Willes is lucky to have a supportive partner she can be intimate with, many trans-people don’t have one, and will not consider having a partner prior to undergoing GRS. Sacrificing a healthy relationship and intimacy for the ability to go about everyday life without harassment and judgment, something most of us never think about, is not something Willes, or anybody, should have to do.

In June 2012 the Alberta government under Premier Alison Redford reinstated GRS funding under the Alberta Health Care Insurance Plan for up to 25 people per year for an annual cost of about $1-million. “We’re a new government now, and a new administration, and we view this issue very differently,” says Health Minister Fred Horne. “This is an issue that affects a very small number of people in our province, but those that it affects, it affects profoundly.” It was a welcome decision to members of the transgender community—and, like the delisting three years earlier, it came out of the blue.

This time the government did consult with medical professionals, including Dr. Warneke, before relisting the surgery. But as was the case with delisting GRS four years before, there was no formal process. And although the relisting is a victory for the transgender community, its members are aware that nothing stops the minister from cutting GRS funding again.

When I ask Horne about how easy it appears to delist and then relist a medical procedure if it’s not under the Canada Health Act, he says that a case like the one in 2009 is a rare occurrence and more often the government adds rather than subtracts services. “Nobody takes any of these decisions lightly, because for everything you do fund, there are other needs that are not funded, because there are a finite amount of resources to work with,” says Horne. “We don’t see a lot of changes in the coverage.” (According to the AMA, the last significant delist before GRS was in 1994 when the Alberta government cut funding for oculo-visual assessments, a.k.a. eye exams.)

Some members of the community think Alberta’s decision to delist GRS had much to do with transgender Canadians’ lack of rights. “Trans rights… are where queer rights were 40 years ago; we don’t have employment protection or housing protection,” says James Demers, a trans-man and Calgary activist who works closely with Alberta’s transgender community and who adds that because there is no formal process or federal guidelines in place, delisting GRS could happen just as quickly again with a new government.

Transgender rights are changing, however. In March, Bill C-279 was approved by the House of Commons and at press time was awaiting Senate approval. The Bill seeks amendments to the Criminal Code and the Canadian Human Rights Act to mandate that gender identity and gender expression be taken into consideration at the time of sentencing under the former, and as prohibited grounds of discrimination under the latter. If it gains Senate approval and receives royal assent, the Bill will affect future decisions about services for transgender citizens.

A number of complaints were filed with the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship commission after the province cut funding for gender reassignment surgery. This is something the province might have expected; a similar situation had occurred in Ontario a year earlier, when the delisting of GRS funding was ruled a human rights violation. (The Ontario government cut GRS funding in 1998 and faced a costly, decade-long court battle until the Ontario Human Rights Commission ruled the cut discriminatory on the basis of the province’s Human Rights Code and forced the government to reinstate funding in 2008.) With Redford’s decision to relist GRS, these complaints were withdrawn.

From the AMA perspective, the GRS case is a prime example of how decision-making about medical insurance needs to change. “We need an explicit, good process,” says Giuffre. “We need to be able to scrutinize [decisions], see that they are transparent and see that they’re fair. And the process needs to be based on clinical information that is reliable, that analyzes both the impact and the consequences of any type of delisting. It really has to be based on the input from healthcare providers on the frontline. And the input also has to involve patients.”

Dr. Warneke would like to see the federal government create a set of guidelines for provinces that would offer consistency in what is funded, especially when it comes to GRS, and that would provide guidance to medical practitioners. He’d also like better care for transgender patients in Alberta. Apart from himself, few local medical professionals will treat transgender patients, he says, for reasons ranging from unfamiliarity with treatments to not being trans-friendly. On average, it takes eight months to see Dr. Warneke, who receives at least five referral requests per week. And only after the first appointment does the one-year Real Life Experience begin, even if the patient has already been living in the gender for some time.

As for Willes, she’s just glad the surgery is funded again. She hopes to undergo GRS in the next couple of years and finally put it all behind her. “When you’re struggling with the identity of being trans, there is so much self-loathing and so much self-hatred… You hate yourself so much and you give up and despair and want to end it all,” she says. “To have the surgery would probably alleviate the last remaining self-loathing and self-hatred.”

Calgary expat Malwina Gudowska contributes to a variety of publications and is currently a social media editor in London, UK.

The post Delisted appeared first on Alberta Views.

As it happens, Purdy and Kennedy have no particular desire to get married. They are happy with their 13-year arrangement and with the commitment ceremony they had at Calgary’s Metropolitan Community Church, in 1992. But, like many other gay couples, they want the choice. More importantly, they want others, who do want to get married, to have the choice. And given recent decisions of the Ontario and British Columbia Courts of Appeal, and the federal draft legislation and reference to the Supreme Court of Canada, they are beginning to wonder when that choice will be available in Alberta.

Tanya and Ana Paula Mullen are married. In their United Church ceremony, which many said was the most traditional wedding they’d ever attended, the brides wore white. The two women don’t feel any less married because they lack a state-sanctioned marriage certificate, but they would take advantage of a legal marriage, given the choice. They,  too, wonder when that choice will be available  in their home province.

While the question of who can marry is constitutionally within federal jurisdiction, the provinces control marriage licences and ceremonies. Although Alberta has new, far- reaching legislation granting rights to same- sex couples, it does not grant the one right that, to many, matters most: the right to be joined in a legal marriage. Today it seems that every province except Alberta is willing to follow the courts’ and federal government’s lead in legalizing same-sex marriage. If our government has its way, our province might be the only one that won’t.

The long road of changes to homosexual rights began with Canada’s adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in 1982. Section 15, the “equality” section, came into force in 1985, and barely four years later the Supreme Court began hearing equality-based challenges to existing legislation. The Charter’s guarantee of the right to equal protection and benefit of the law without discrimination is general, but a provision in section 15 lists specific prohibited grounds of discrimination: “race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.” In 1989, the Supreme Court determined that section 15 applied to discrimination on the basis not only of the listed grounds but also analogous grounds. By 1995, the court had determined that marital status and sexual orientation were analogous grounds.

The Ontario Court defined marriage as “the voluntary union for life of two persons to the exclusion of all others,” and ordered authorities to grant licences to same-sex couples.

These rulings led the way to the Vriend decision in  1998, the first time Alberta was forced to deal with the Charter’s protection of gay rights. Delwin Vriend was fired from a teaching job at a religious college in  Edmonton because he was gay. Vriend’s complaint to the Alberta Human Rights Commission ended up in Alberta’s Court of Queen’s Bench, where his lawyers challenged the province’s Individual’s Rights Protection Act for not including sexual orientation as a prohibited ground of discrimination. The court ruled that the omission violated section 15 of the Charter and ordered that sexual orientation be read into the act. The Alberta Court of Appeal overturned this decision. It was satisfied that the legislature had considered sexual orientation as a prohibited ground in drafting the act. The Supreme Court, however, agreeing with the Queen’s Bench decision, found that the legislature should have included, and not merely considered, sexual orientation, and ordered that it be read into the act.

The Supreme Court decision led to an anti-gay backlash, fuelling the perception of Alberta as a redneck, homophobic province. Indeed, the response from the Klein government seemed predictable, with expostulations on the use of the notwithstanding clause to opt out of this reading of the Charter. “Initially, the right-wing politicians talked big, building fences with the right wing of the party,” says Stephen Jenuth, Calgary lawyer and president of the Alberta Civil Liberties Association, “but when it came right down to it, they backed off.”

The provincial government did, however, use the notwithstanding clause to make clear their stance on same- sex marriage: they announced their support of the existing federal law restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples and amended the Marriage Act, which governs the solemnization of wedding vows in the province. Declaring that the act “operates notwithstanding [certain provisions of] the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and…the Alberta Bill of Rights,” the legislation defined marriage as a union “between a man and a woman.”

In 1999, the year after the Vriend decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Ontario’s definition of “spouse,” in legislation that dealt with adoption, discriminated against same- sex couples and contravened the Charter. The federal government and the governments of Ontario, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Quebec, Manitoba, New Brunswick and Newfoundland all responded by bringing in new legislation or amending existing legislation to redefine the legal status of relationships—same-sex partner- ships, common-law partnerships, marriage-like relation- ships. Nova Scotia established the legal status of “domestic partnership,” Quebec the legal status of “civil union.” Couples in these relationships were granted rights and obligations similar to married persons and, in most cases, the same as those of opposite-sex common-law partners.

Omnibus legislation by the federal government included equal treatment for same-sex couples under income tax laws as well as survivor benefits under the Canada Pension Plan.

It was then Alberta’s turn to face the definition of “spouse” in its legislation. Prior to 1999, a person could not adopt a same-sex partner’s child. Two lesbian couples challenged the province’s Child Welfare Act, which provided for adoption of a child by the spouse of the child’s parent but did not define the term “spouse.” If “spouse” did not include a same-sex partner, the argument went, the act would be discriminatory under the Charter, just as the Supreme Court had decided in the Ontario case. A week before trial, according to Calgary lawyer Sandra Sebree, who frequently deals with these cases, the government “gave in.” But rather than deal with the issue of same-sex couples, the government amended the act by deleting the reference to “spouse” and replacing it with “step-parent,” without defining that term. Subsequently, “step-parent” was interpreted by the Court of Queen’s Bench to include a same-sex partner of the child’s parent. “So the government did not have to face the Charter argument,” says Sebree, “although we had done all the work and were prepared to argue it.”

How far will the Alberta government go in its stated intention of using the notwithstanding clause to prevent same-sex marriage in the province?

In 2000, the province’s definition of “spouse” was again challenged, this time with regard to the Intestate Succession Act, which governs estates. A gay man’s partner died without leaving a will, and under the act his estate would go to his former wife and children. The Alberta Surrogate Court found that the act’s limitation of benefits to only married persons contravened the Charter. In April 2002, a year after the court’s decision, the province amended the Act to extend benefits to an “adult interdependent partner,” while reinforcing the meaning of “spouse” as a married person.

Next came the challenge regarding health-care premiums and benefits. The Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission ruled in December 2002 that the government had discriminated against same-sex couples by forcing them to pay individual premiums, denying them family coverage. On the very same day, the government passed  the  Adult  Interdependent  Relationships  Act. (“They thought that by introducing the new legislation,    the case would go away,” says Purdy, “but they didn’t do it fast enough. If they had, we might have dropped our  case.”) This new act would not only replace the amended Intestate Succession Act but also extend benefits and obligations to same-sex relationships in other provincial legislation. The critical difference between this new act and    the older legislation, as explained by Edmonton lawyer Douglas Stollery in a paper he prepared for the Legal Education Society of Alberta, is that the new act no longer requires the relationship “to be conjugal in nature.” Under the new act, “conjugality would be a relevant but not a necessary factor.” And this, Stollery said, goes well beyond legislation found anywhere else in Canada. Same-sex partners, opposite-sex partners, roommates, family members—any of these could be determined to constitute an adult interdependent relationship, as long as criteria of duration, emotional commitment, economic and domestic interdependence and so on are met. The relationship can exist by written agreement, as provided in the act, or by ascription, which is similar to a court’s determination that, due to certain behaviours and the passage of time, a common-law relationship exists. In essence, Stollery explained, the legislation “extends rights and obligations traditionally limited  to marriage-like relationships not only to conjugal com- mon-law relationships but also to a much wider range of non-conjugal relationships.”

While the Adult Interdependent Relationships Act does grant many of the rights that same-sex couples have been fighting for, its provisions for almost every kind of relation- ship except same-sex marriage reflect the government’s unwillingness to move on this issue. It also grants rights  and obligations to those who don’t want them. “It gives a  lot of rights and obligations, which is great, but it may   have gone too far,” says Sebree. Many same-sex couples have no desire to be governed by such a regime. Others  may not even know they are, until it is too late. For example, if a couple decides to go their separate ways after being in a relationship for several years, and then one of them decides to apply for financial support, the other partner   may then have to pay spousal-type support. (An Ontario court has recently awarded interim support to a gay man under that province’s Family Law Act.) David Crosson, the editor of Outlooks, a Calgary-based national gay magazine, suggests that there are people who don’t like the idea of all those responsibilities. “I don’t think I’d want to be in a position where I would have to split my assets with some-body I had a relationship with,” he says. Still others say, “My relationship is different than a heterosexual relation- ship, and I don’t want to be governed by any of this.” Sebree cautions that couples should enter into a written agreement as provided by the act or a written agreement to opt out. Because the act will affect many other pieces of legislation, couples living in any domestic relationship out- side of marriage should consider how they will be affected.

The Alberta  Government’s unwillingness  to recognize same-sex marriage may now have become irrelevant. In May, the B.C. Court of Appeal overturned a lower court decision and ruled that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples violates the equality provisions of the Charter. It gave the federal government until July 2004 to change the laws to allow these marriages. In June, the Ontario Court   of Appeal went further: defining marriage as “the voluntary union for life of two persons to the exclusion of all others,” it ordered authorities to immediately begin granting licences to same-sex couples. (The first legal same-sex marriage in Canada was performed in Toronto just hours after the ruling.) This was followed, in early July, by the B.C. court lifting its moratorium, allowing same-sex marriages to proceed immediately.

Finally, the federal government stepped in. It did not consider the parliamentary justice committee’s report of its recently completed cross-Canada hearings on various options for marriage. It did not appeal the B.C. and Ontario rulings to the Supreme Court. Instead, in mid-July it drafted new legislation and sent it to the Supreme Court for review, by way of a “reference.” The legislation defines marriage “for civil purposes” as being the lawful union of two per- sons, and it specifies that religious groups can refuse to per- form marriages that are not in accordance with  their religious beliefs. The federal government asked the Supreme Court to answer three questions: Does Parliament have the exclusive legal authority to define marriage Is the proposed act compatible with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms Does the Constitution protect religious leaders who refuse to sanctify same-sex marriages The Supreme Court is not expected to respond for several months. When it does, the legislation will be presented to the House of Commons for a free vote.

(Before the government decided to draft legislation and refer it to the Supreme Court, legal experts had thought    the court would eventually hear and rule on same-sex marriage, and would rule in its favour. “The court finds the equality logic of the Charter very compelling,” says Miriam Smith, a political science professor at Carleton University. The “separate but equal” status of civil unions and interdependent relationships would be unlikely to satisfy the Supreme Court. In a recent case on property rights, the court ruled that it is not discriminatory to deny common- law partners the same rights as married people regarding equal division of property after a relationship breaks down. The decision to marry is personal, said the court, and couples have the freedom to marry or not. That gay couples do not have that freedom would be another argument in favour of same-sex marriage.)

Alberta has the reputation of being homophobic, but according to Jenuth it is no more anti-gay than other parts of the  country.

The question now is how far the Alberta government will go in its stated intention of using the notwithstanding clause to prevent same-sex marriage in the province—and how far it can go. David Hancock, the provincial justice minister, has stated the government will “try” to use the notwithstanding clause in attempting to refuse marriage licences to same-sex couples, regardless of the new federal definition of marriage. Whether this can be done may depend on the Supreme Court’s response to the reference. Today, the Alberta government could refuse to issue marriage licences and certificates and refuse to perform a marriage ceremony for a same-sex couple, but it could not refuse to recognize such a marriage lawfully performed in another jurisdiction. “A marriage performed in Saskatchewan or B.C. would be as valid in Alberta as it would be there,” says Jenuth. Patrick Monahan, a constitutional expert at Toronto’s Osgoode Hall Law School, has said, “You cannot use a province’s right to issue marriage licences to frustrate the operation of federal law.”

Lesbian couples often look at the historical underpinnings of marriage as “property, patriarchy, God,” and they don’t want to embrace that.

Will Premier Klein really persist in his attempt to invoke the notwithstanding clause Will the Alberta government refuse to register same-sex marriages, and take the issue to court if challenged, as Hancock has suggested Alberta often has the reputation of being a homophobic place, but according to Jenuth, it is no more anti-gay or homophobic than other parts of the country. He suggests there is a small constituency in Alberta, perhaps 10 to 15 per cent of voters, who support the anti-gay view and who are pandered to by certain politicians, “until the going gets tough.” He says this percentage is no different in other provinces, except that the 10 to 15 percent in Alberta is a core support of these politicians and they can’t be seen to alienate those voters. Even Purdy, who has had his own legal encounters with government, does not believe that Alberta is any more anti-gay than other provinces. “In any area of the country, you have pockets of what I call ‘the redneck attitude,’” he says. “In Alberta, it’s primarily the rural areas, where there is a higher concentration of the religious aspect of society.” Purdy suggests that the cabinet and premier behave as though they agree with that vocal minority—until the point comes where they can say, “We tried.”

Tanya and Ana Paula Mullen, Who have been together  for 11 years and wedded for seven, are still hoping to be legally married. Their church wedding included communion and Tanya being walked down the aisle by her father. They have a six-year-old daughter, of whom Tanya is the biological mother and a gay friend is the biological sperm- donor father. Ana Paula is expecting their second child in January; the sperm-donor father is a childhood  friend.

The Mullens have never doubted that same-sex marriage would happen, either by a Supreme Court of Canada decision or by the federal government redefining marriage. When it does, the first thing they will do is apply to have each other declared the third legal parent of their children. As it is, they are concerned that only the father would  be considered a legal parent, should the mother die.  Everything is fine and agreeable today, they say, with the father of Tanya’s child recognizing that Ana Paula has been the day-to-day parent for all of the child’s life. But if Tanya should die “You never really know what would happen,” Ana Paula says. “We had our ceremony, and that’s our marriage, but that legal document gives you security. You don’t have to fight for your rights.”

Some gay couples have been looking for the “social authenticity” that marriage confers. “Gay marriage is a societal recognition of equality,” Crosson says. “More and more people are supportive of the idea because it’s one last fence to hurdle in terms of being accepted the same as everyone else.” Others, of course, have no interest in marriage, seeing it as an institution that belongs to the heterosexual community. Lesbian couples often look at the historical underpinnings of marriage as “property, patriarchy, God,” and they don’t want to embrace that. “The gay community doesn’t want to lose the things that make us unique and different,” says Crosson. When Sebree held an information session on the new act, and asked those present who would get married if they could, no one responded. “Nobody wants to get married,” she says. “It’s a dying institution!”

The Mullens disagree. They will marry as soon as it is possible “without a hassle”; they want to marry in Alberta rather than travel to B.C. or Ontario. Others are prepared for the hassle. Shortly after the Ontario decision, Purdy  and Kennedy marched back to the registry office. Again denied a marriage licence, they crossed the street and filed a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights  Commission.

Sandy Kalef is a freelance writer and a legal and policy analyst. She lives in Calgary.

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