Want to know where the provincial candidates stand on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues?
Fierté Simcoe Pride has done a lot of the legwork for you.
Fierté Simcoe Pride has released the results of its Proud Vote survey, in which it asked all of the candidates across the five ridings in Simcoe County (York-Simcoe, Barrie-Innisfil, Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte, Simcoe-Grey and Simcoe North) a series of questions about issues faced by LGBT people to see where they stand. The candidates were given two weeks to respond.
Fierté Simcoe Pride's board of directors, along with community members, reviewed the responses and assigned an overall grade to each candidate and party.
Brandon Rhéal Amyot, president of Fierté Simcoe Pride, was encouraged by the candidates' responses and sees their willingness to engage as encouraging.
“If we had done this five years ago, I don’t think we would have received many responses — maybe one or two,” Amyot said this week when reached for an interview.
“We want to encourage discussion and discourse. It’s very hard to put nuanced ideas into a report card. Our main goal is to get people to read them, and also to convince people to get out and vote,” Amyot said.
While some parties fared better than others, Amyot stressed the goal of the exercise wasn’t to necessarily to rank parties, but more to disseminate information in a more digestible way for LGBT voters.
“Marginalized communities tend to see themselves as not represented in the discourse and discussion,” Amyot said.
Fourteen policy questions as well as three party questions were asked of each candidate. Some examples of topics are LGBT inclusion in the health curriculum, access to health care for transgender people, mental health services, the blood donation ban, and truth and reconciliation.
Some parties chose to show a united front by sending in responses as a group. For example, the Green Party candidates sent one response for all candidates in Simcoe County (Bonnie North of Barrie-Innisfil, Keenan Aylwin of Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte, Jesseca Perry of Simcoe-Grey, Valerie Powell of Simcoe North, and Alexandra Zalucky of York-Simcoe).
Amyot says some candidates are still reaching out despite the deadline being passed, indicating they met with York-Simcoe PC candidate Caroline Mulroney on Monday morning and would be adding new responses as they are received.
Amyot also said the grading system in no way indicates endorsement of any candidate by Fierté Simcoe Pride.
For detailed responses from the candidates as well as the full list of questions, click here.
Party rankings from Proud Vote — overall score
Green Party: A
NDP: B+
Liberal: B
Progressive Conservative: C
None of the Above: C
Canadians’ Choice: C
Libertarian: C
Trillium: D
