With 2SLGBTQAI+ people under attack in the US, and several provincial governments introducing anti-trans legislation, many queer people were terrified of what a Poilievre prime minister might do. Many surely breathed a sigh of relief when Carney’s Liberals won. But this is just a temporary reprieve. We — queer people — cannot rely on the Liberals to defend us or let the Liberals off the hook. As seen throughout our history, it’s only through mass working-class struggle that queer people protect ourselves and our communities.
The Federal election does nothing to protect queer people in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and New Brunswick, where provincial governments have passed laws targeting trans-healthcare, education, and the queer community broadly. Queer people in these provinces now have a target on their back placed there by the government. Conservative politicians don’t need to win a federal election to chip away at our communities; these are political battles being fought on city councils, provincial legislatures, and even in classrooms and libraries.
No trust in the Liberals
The victory of Carney and his Liberals does not signal a final defeat of regressive social forces — far from it. The economic stagnation and rising cost of living will only continue, regardless of this new leadership. This ever more precarious economic situation gives oxygen to the right wing who play on working people’s anxieties and fears by giving them scapegoats to blame. The Liberals will continue to tread ahead pretending everything is alright, giving lip service to queer issues and arguing that the Conservative alternative would be much worse. But most of the LGBTQ+ community is working class and faces these same struggles as the rest of the working class over housing costs, unemployment, and welfare access.
In recent decades, corporations and liberal politicians plastered their faces, logos, and products all over Pride events. But this “pinkwashing” was always a cynical, transactional relationship. Recently Google announced they would not sponsor Toronto Pride, an indication that they no longer see the affiliation as worth the investment. Trump’s attack on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is a clear attack on equal rights. Big business can see the signs and are cutting support for Pride. PepsiCo, Nissan, and Home Depot have also ditched their support for Toronto Pride. Queer people cannot rely on corporations to fight for us; they never did. When right-wing pressure grows, the Liberals will join this retreat, as the US Democrats did when they refused to fight for Democratic representative Sarah McBride after the Republicans banned her from using the appropriate bathroom.
Pride was born out of a fundamental conflict between the ruling class and working people, and the retreat of corporate pinkwashers makes all the clearer the need for the movement to return to its roots.
This Pride season will continue under the shadow of the Trump administration in the US, which Canadian conservatives are eyeing carefully, mimicking successful strategies to pursue their anti-democratic, anti-human agenda. While the target currently in the cross hairs is gender-nonconforming and trans people like me, if successful, their reactionary movement will turn against all queer people and women next. This is a clear strategy by them to pursue and repress those already pushed by society to the periphery in hopes that support for the 2SLGBTQAI+ community will melt away, letter by letter. These strategies have already been implemented in Alberta, with Bill 26 pushing the government further into the personal lives of trans youth, their parents, and their doctors.
Queer liberation through class struggle
As the right marches forward with electoral victories around the globe, it’s important to remember how our community first gained its recognition and rights. The queer community didn’t vote for politicians to give us rights or appoint judges sympathetic to our cause. We fought, struggled, and won these rights through mass movements — strikes, protests and riots. Decades of struggle by working-class queer people and their allies won these rights. Our community has always been the best champion of its own cause. Liberals and corporations loved to point to a month with a rainbow logo as progress, but this was merely a recognition of their need for us. Not the other way around.
What 2SLGBTQAI+ people need is to return to the idea of Pride as protest. What we need is a real fighting movement. We need a movement that is unafraid to oppose regressive policies at all levels of government. A movement that stands with teachers’ unions to oppose attempts to chip away at sexual orientation and gender identity education programs, and that fights alongside healthcare workers who are being attacked by conservative politicians for simply providing the care that has been proven to give our community the best outcomes. The federal NDP has suffered a huge defeat, having talked of supporting workers’ right to strike, while supporting the Liberal government that used administrative methods to force them back to work.
Our community needs a grassroots democratic party of struggle that will take up the fight in elections and on our streets and in our workplaces. We need a party that remembers we exist for more than one tweet a year and actively includes working-class queer people. Queer people have always led in fighting our battles and now is no different. We will not rely on some Liberal politician to determine that our existence is politically convenient for their campaign. It is likely that the present liberal “allies” of convenience will throw out our cause the second it conflicts with the needs of their ruling-class masters, who are ever desperate to crush us with higher rents, lower wages, and worsening healthcare.
It’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the ambient malaise of our political moment both in Canada and around the world. Things seem so dire for so many. The increasingly isolated and ignorant ruling class continues to centralize its wealth and power. Unable to control the anger of working-class people created by ever declining standards of living, the ruling class lashes out against convenient scapegoats. They Liberals are desperate to convince people that they can reverse things and go back to “normal” times. They simply can’t, as they defend capitalism, which is the cause of the crisis. They can’t control rent, they can’t control the standard of living, and they definitely can’t control the way we dress.
The true liberation of queer people goes hand in hand with the liberation of all those who are oppressed and the working class. That is the goal of the fighting Pride we need and that Socialist Alternative stands for.
