The major political parties’ platforms were all released extremely late in this election cycle, having apparently decided to wait until after the debates were over, possibly for fear of being grilled on the details of their plans on camera, which is what happened in the last election cycle. To make it worse, advance voting had already begun (with record turnout, one might add) when the Liberals and NDP released their platforms and the associated costing, by which point at least two million Canadians had already voted before even having a chance to read it. The Conservatives didn’t release their own “costed” platform (and I use the term very loosely) until after advanced voting had closed, which feels increasingly cynical about the nature of electoral politics. Platforms are important because they send strong signals about just how coherent a party’s beliefs are when stacked together.
The NDP’s wasn’t even really much of a platform, given that Jagmeet Singh decided to finally give up the pretense that he was ever going to be prime minister, and instead decided to run on a series of “commitments” that he was going to try and hold the government to. This approach optimistically counts on the NDP being able to hold the balance of power in the next Parliament, when in reality, they may not even achieve official party status. (A party that has fewer than 12 MPs doesn’t have enough to provide representation on committees, and as a result, they don’t get the same parliamentary resources.) Singh has been running a defensive campaign in ridings that the party already holds, pleading with voters to save the seats of their incumbents (never mind that more than a quarter of the caucus had decided that they weren’t going to run again), and insisted that they were needed to hold the Liberals to account.
Their list of commitments is pretty silent on queer and trans issues, consisting of a single line under the heading of “Protecting what makes us Canadian,” saying “we would take new steps to protect diversity in Canada, including supporting 2SLGBTQI+ communities who are increasingly subjected to hate and to violence.” It doesn’t help that much of their platform intrudes into areas of provincial jurisdiction, particularly around healthcare and promising national rent control, and tries to hand-wave away that particular problem, but that too has become par for the course for the federal NDP.
The Conservatives’ platform was, in short, a mess of incoherence, misleading claims about what the Liberals have done over ten years and incredibly bad math that includes counting on revenues from unrealistic growth projections that they think will happen if they just cut taxes and deregulate. (Never mind that trickle-down economics has been disproven time and again.) There are no mentions of queer people in the document, but there is an oblique reference to trans women. Under the “Restore Public Safety” heading, Poilievre promises to “Defend women’s safety by repealing Commissioner’s Directive 100, which allows male offenders to be housed in women’s prisons and ensure that women’s spaces and services remain protected in federal institutions and policy.” Poilievre has taken cues from Donald Trump’s rhetoric in the States that attacking trans rights is seen as a political winner for the voters he is looking to attract, and is part of a broader pattern of LGBTQ2S+ scapegoating that authoritarian regimes engage in.
It’s also worth noting that while on the campaign trail, Poilievre has reiterated his promise to invoke the Notwithstanding Clause to override a Supreme Court of Canada decision to strike down consecutive life sentences for mass murders, though the document itself doesn’t spell this out. This is likely a particular test case, because it was likely never really about mass murderers, who won’t be released in any case. It has been about using them as an excuse to weaken Charter rights, because as soon as it becomes acceptable to use the clause to attack one set of Charter rights, it is easier for the attack on the next set of rights, whether that is the rights of trans women, or anyone else. It should also be noted that while Poilievre promised in the platform not to legislate on abortion, he has voted in favour of bills that would grant rights to fetuses, which has been a backdoor attempt at anti-abortion legislation. It was also noted by several media outlets that Poilievre toned down the promise to fight “woke ideology” in the English-language platform whereas it was in his Quebec-specific party platform a couple of weeks ago, only for him to re-insert it afterward claiming it was a “publishing oversight.”
As for the Liberals, theirs was the only platform that did have some mention of queer and trans issues. Like the NDP, Mark Carney used the spectre of rising hate to promise to maintain specific security funds for Pride organizations to be distributed by Fierté Canada Pride, which the government rolled out in June of 2023. The party also pledges to make the 2SLGBTQI+ Community Capacity Fund permanent (or as permanent as any government program can be), given its importance to protect rights and advance equality. There is also a promise to establish a new in vitro fertilization (IVF) program that would provide up to $20,000 for a single standard cycle of IVF treatment, making it more affordable, particularly for LGBTQ2S+ Canadians who are disproportionately affected. (That work would, however, need to be done in coordination with provinces, given that they deliver healthcare.)
On an international level, the Liberals are promising additional funding for the LGBTQI+ International Assistance Program, which aims to “support for LGBTQI+ individuals facing persecution abroad, promote global equality, and partner with international organizations.” This is part of Carney’s pledge to have Canada take more of a global leadership position as the U.S. steps back, but then again, Canadian governments have been promising global leadership for decades and never actually delivering, so take that with a shaker’s worth of salt. That said, there is still no promise to create a special envoy for LGBTQ2S+ human rights as civil society groups (and former cabinet ministers) have been demanding. The platform also promises to expand the Rainbow Refugee Assistance Partnership.
This is an important election for queer and trans people in Canada, given that our neighbours to the south can no longer be credibly called a full democracy, and the influence of their authoritarian government is already being felt in this country. We need to ensure that we have a government in place that can resist these impulses rather than give into them for electoral gain, and while the polls are looking good for Carney’s Liberals so far, there is no room to be complacent.
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