On Dec. 7, 2020, the Ontario Legislative Assembly met to debate Bill 213. The proposed law is a sour treat from the province’s populist leader, Doug Ford. Its name: Better for People, Smarter for Business Act, a moniker fit for a Fordian Ontario. Its claim: That it will boost the provincial economy by removing red tape for businesses. And within was a gift for one of Ford’s own—one that would have deep ramifications for LGBTQ2S+ Ontarians.
A section of the bill, otherwise known as Schedule 2, would grant Canada Christian College (CCC) accreditation, allowing the Whitby, Ontario, school to be called a university and grant bachelor’s of science and arts degrees. That institution is presided over by Charles McVety, a conservative evangelical pastor and long-time friend of Ford’s.
But McVety is no friend of the LGBTQ2S+ community. Some 15 years since its legislation, he remains staunchly against same-sex marriage. Until 2008, McVety was also the president of the Canada Family Action Coalition, a group that lobbied against same-sex marriage. In 2006, the group supported a Conservative motion tabled by the Conservative Party to restore the “traditional” definition of marriage. (The motion failed.)
McVety is also known for pushing to repeal the Ontario Liberal’s sex-ed curriculum in 2010 with such fervor that he won over then-premier Dalton McGuinty. He didn’t stop there. In 2018—the same year he attended the throne speech as Premier Ford’s invited guest—McVety called classroom discussions around gender fluidity “ideological experiments.” He celebrated Ford’s repeal of the 2015 updated sex-ed curriculum by declaring, “the fruit of the poisonous tree has been cut down,” then played a significant role advising the premier on the province’s new curriculum. He also said that Bill C-16, Canada’s trans rights bill, would victimize women and girls—even though numerous studies have proven that notion to be false.
Unsurprisingly, McVety’s school is just as controversial as McVety himself. CCC’s code of conduct requires that faculty and students to not engage in activities that are “Biblically condemned” and “sexual sins.” Faculty members don’t have their credentials listed clearly on the school’s website, which raises questions about their legitimacy. The school has also been charged with being Islamophobic. In 2011, in a closed, invitation-only event, the school hosted Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician known for his Islamophobic ideas. Wilders routinely spreads disinformation about Muslim people and the Quran; members of Toronto’s Muslim community have denounced his ideas as racist and ill-informed.
“It’s worrisome to see more post-secondary institutions moving to restrict ideas on same-sex marriage, rather than the opposite.”
The move to accredit the CCC was met with pushback from both the NDP and Liberal parties—including former premier Kathleen Wynne and Opposition leader Andrea Horwath. “I was hoping that after all the questioning, debate and media coverage of this very concerning issue, the premier might come to the light and realize that doing this sends the wrong message to a whole bunch of people here in Ontario,” Ontario Liberal MPP John Fraser said in a video before the vote in December.
And yet, in a vote 52-35, the bill passed its final reading. On Dec. 8, 2020, Bill 213 became law. As a result, CCC is set to undergo an independent review in order to receive accreditation; when that review will be completed remains unknown.
Now, Ontario must grapple with the possibility of accrediting the school—and what that newfound status could mean for the gender and sexual freedoms of the province’s post-secondary education system. The message Ford’s bill sends: LGBTQ2S+ protections are not a priority in Ontario’s educational institutions.
The CCC’s possible accreditation is baffling to Shannon Dea. An advocate for anti-oppressive ideologies and curricula on university campuses who has long worked to make academia more inclusive, Dea has been sounding the alarm bells ever since news of CCC’s possible accreditation broke in October last year.
Dea’s biggest concern is the precedent the accreditation would set for Canada’s education system. Accreditation is in many ways a sign of legitimacy for post-secondary institutions across Canada. For a school like CCC—whose founder has openly spewed homophobia and Islamophobia—it would suggest that the Ontario government doesn’t find homophobic, transphobic and Islamophobic beliefs to be problematic in an educational institution. “It’s worrisome to see more post-secondary institutions moving [to restrict ideas on same-sex marriage], rather than the opposite,” she says.
That sentiment was echoed by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations. “Allowing the Canada Christian College to call itself a ‘university’ and to award degrees in our province would most certainly harm these marginalized communities and allow hateful and discriminatory speech to persist,” a media release on its website reads.
For Brandon Rhéal Amyot—a Two-Spirit, queer student at Lakehead University and a constituency commissioner with the Canadian Federation of Students–Ontario—the biggest concern is that students are not being heard or consulted with by the government. They also said that if the CCC is accredited, it will raise questions about the safety of Muslim and LGBTQ2S+ folks in Ontario.
“[Accrediting CCC] weakens our confidence in post-secondary education but also in government processes. It raises concerns about the safety of students not only at CCC but across the province,” Amyot says. “This institution spent years vilifying people like me and my friends who are Muslims.”
“People in these communities are going to be harmed and they’re telling us this.”
NDP MPP Laura Mae Lindo, the official Opposition critic for anti-Racism, colleges and universities, understands all too well that LGBTQ2S+ and BIPOC communities have been fighting for legitimacy in academia for years. Prior to her election in 2018, she worked as the director of diversity and equity at Wilfrid Laurier University. She also has a PhD in education from York University. Lindo says she spent her entire academic career fighting for inclusivity in academia, only to have the Ford government not take LGBTQ2S+ concerns seriously.
“Equity offices and rainbow centres at university campuses are not often funded very well. LGBTQ2S+ folks on campus are not taken seriously when they say they’ve experienced homophobia or transphobia in the classroom,” she says. “People in these communities are going to be harmed and they’re literally telling us this.”
Queer and trans post-secondary students also face disproportionate amounts of discrimination compared to their straight, cisgender counterparts. Data from Statistics Canada in 2019 found that nearly half of all students surveyed had seen or experienced discrimination on the basis of gender, gender identity or sexual orientation on Canadian campuses. And nearly one in every three LGBTQ2S+ students will experience discrimination.
Considering the implications of CCC’s possible accreditation, Lindo took action: She wrote a letter to the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) that raised concerns about potential Human Rights Code violations committed by CCC. And in a speech at Queen’s Park on Nov. 3, Lindo outlined the CCC faculty’s lack of credible credentials and asked the government to pull the legislation from Bill 213.
“The director (of CCC) is actively homophobic, transphobic and Islamophobic, so how will this university be aligned with the requirements listed in the Human Rights Code? This is why I wrote to the Human Rights Commission,” she says. The Ontario Human Rights Code protects Ontarians from discrimination on the basis of gender, gender identity and expression and sexual orientation.
“When you hold those values, the curriculum is bound to be imbued with homophobia and transphobia.”
Lindo also fears that homophobia and transphobia will leak into the curriculums of CCC’s programs. A program’s curriculum is based on the school’s values, especially since many universities and colleges require that an institution approve of course materials before they’re offered to students. Lindo says that many educators reached out to her voicing their concerns about CCC’s curricula during the weeks leading up to the bill’s vote.
“When you hold those values and you believe that you are justified in holding those values, the curriculum is bound to be imbued with homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia and a touch of racism, no matter what,” Lindo says.
Now that the bill has passed, critics are left waiting for the independent review into CCC to conclude. That review will be undertaken by Ontario’s post-secondary quality assessment board. If the review decides against the school’s accreditation, it could be a win for the prioritization of the protections of LGBTQ2S+ and other marginalized students. But a decision for accreditation, Lindo says, could set the province back.
“Our post-secondary institutions are supposed to be places where we support the building of people’s sense of values, knowledge, wisdom and leadership,” Lindo says. “When a person’s starting point is in a homophobic and transphobic institution, especially at an institution accredited by the government, it appears that the premier is willing to prioritize whatever promises he’s made to his friends as opposed to the Ontario public.”
Why you can trust Xtra
