Ontario PC Party passes resolution to debate recognition of gender identity – Global News
Resolution to do away with gender identity moves forward at Tory convention – City News
Ontario’s PC party passed a non-binding resolution on Saturday calling for education around gender identity to be removed from Ontario schools, prompting critics to deride the move as an attack against transgender people – CBC
The Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, led by Premier Doug Ford, passed a controversial policy resolution this weekend that does not recognize gender identity. – CTV News
Ford pledges to stop motion that calls for gender identity to be removed from the health curriculum – The Toronto Star
Doug Ford says PC party proposal that declares gender identity a ‘Liberal ideology’ won’t go ahead – The National Post
The resolution, proposed at the PC party convention, was slammed as transphobic – The Huffington Post
I attended the Ontario PC convention last weekend and from the monday morning headlines among the mainstream media you’d think it was a front for a clan rally. But somehow in just the last couple of years we have gone from it being controversial to suggest that sexual identity could extend beyond mere male and female to it now being controversial to suggest that male and female ever existed in the first place. And to suggest such things are bigotry. Well, as someone who attended the convention I’d like to give my first hand accounts of the events that took place. Also address the allegations from Jim Karahajackass that the election was rigged. TVO Agenda Interview with Jim Karahalios
“I’m a breathing human being that exists,” Carver said.
“I’m not an ideology. And neither are the rest of our community.”
‘Very afraid’
Carver says even debating this is in contravention of Ontario human rights laws.
“After the roll back of the sex-ed curriculum that’s taken place, and now you see that they would like to remove gender identity and trans identities completely from the schools, it kind of shows the tone that this party is willing to take,” she said.
“It makes organizations and communities like ours very afraid of what this is going to look like going forward.”
– CBC.ca
There was a hell of a lot that happened over the weekend but you wouldn’t know it given that almost every single media reported on one line of resolution brought before delegates by Tanya Granic Allen. Now, there’s a LOT that I can say to rebut the stories but let’s face facts, the current news is a dying media and they thrive off of click bait based stories. They feed off your outrage and drink your tears. I’m not about to call the media “the enemy of the people” or any bull crap like that. Conservatives are no longer opposition, they’re the ones sitting on the throne now. With an almost super majority too. So next election we won’t have the benefit of “change” to campaign on. So it’s important we listen carefully to what everyone is saying, even if we disagree, even if they’re fabrications of the truth. The conservatives have lots of time yet ahead to respond in whatever way they want. But that being said, if this is what the media took away from the convention then frankly it’s just too bad that they’re not mature enough to have a discussion about any other very important topics which we, as a society, will need to address over the next 3 years.
Since the election I’ve made a point to keep in touch with the party and attended a local party meeting where I put my name forward to become a delegate. Luckily I made enough friends through volunteering that others were willing to vote for me and I became a delegate to represent the Mississauga Center riding. This role enables me to participate in conventions and participate in the voting process. Having an actual voice from within the party could be an opportunity to build bridges between those who oppose the government and a party who claims to be of the people. Because I truly do believe that this government can actually have EVERYONE’S interests at heart. But waking up to see the kind of headlines I saw monday really opens my eyes to the uphill battle the whole party has ahead of it. But this does not surprise any conservative. Nor does it discourage us from wanting to reach out and welcome everyone to give the party a chance. Regardless your political stripes, after 15 years of one government, we can all agree that new faces and fresh ideas can be healthy for the province. And with the province getting further and further in debt, with yet more jobs leaving the province and having hallway healthcare, we ALL felt there could be improvements to the way this province was being governed. Even if some of us are too stubborn to admit it.
Well the new government is here and if nothing else, they’ve proven that they’re willing to work their butts off to get shit done. They’re giving it their all to deal with all our baggage NOW, TODAY, instead of leaving it for our children and grandchildren to deal with. But dealing with that is going to take ACTUAL leadership. The kind of leadership that means making unpopular decisions. And that’s just that much more contentious when we live in such a populist age. But conservatives understand that we are adaptable, strong people who would gladly carry today’s burden if it meant opportunity for our future generations. Because it won’t just be debt they’ll be dealing with. It’ll be a landscape of complete automation takeover. We haven’t even been mature enough to discuss the implications of social media’s impact on society let alone what the impact automation innovation will have on our economy. We have more students in postsecondary than ever before at the brink of the dawn of modernization. And that conversation isn’t on ANY media’s radar. It’s not even a priority on a list of things to consider. And that’s how we’re already failing the next generation. Just like the last generation failed us by pushing postsecondary and discouraging skilled trades.
What I CAN tell you are some of the things that the media decided was irrelevant to cover:
– Ford announced that people earning less than $30 000 per year won’t pay income tax
– Christine Elliot (Deputy Premier and Minister of Health and Long-Term Care) and Lisa MacLeoud (ministry of children, community and social services and minister responsible for women’s issues) tabled an open forum on issues involving their affairs where they took questions. They discussed the overlap between their ministries and how ministers would be working together on many issues to break a culture of segregated duties that left a lot of people in the lurch over “that’s not my job”. And how eliminating red tape and layers of bureaucracy would help open up ministers to getting more directly involved with constituents and getting more hands on with tackling the problems.
Find me one single news report that mentioned anything about human trafficking and I will give you $100. Because Mrs. McLeod declared that Ontario is under a human trafficking crisis. Many girls involved as young as 11 years old. Did you see any reference to that in any news feeds? She also addressed staggering rates of high school and postsecondary drop outs. So that’s on the table to investigate more. And Mrs. Elliott declared they were on point to opening 1000 spaces for hospitals for this year’s flu season. Apparently there are going to be more announcements on this stuff on thursday. So stay tuned.
– A few of the other resolutions that we voted on included initiatives to promote students pursuing skilled trades (FINALLY THANK GOD) and apparently they’ll be coming out with a more expansive plan to open the trades up so there aren’t such strict regulations around taking on apprentices. I’ve only been waiting for ANY acknowledgement for trade jobs since I started my apprenticeship back in 2006. Until now the only thing was a $1000 grant you could apply to for passing plumbing college courses.
– We voted on other resolutions to promote farming and there were talks about utilizing migrants skilled in agriculture to help grow rural Ontario
– We voted on a resolution to improve community based policing. To recognize that people who live around the Jane and Finch community have different needs than other communities 20 minutes outside in any direction, let alone the differences between suburban Ontario, rural Ontario and downtown cores. In today’s anti-cop culture, this is something we need to address.
And then there was the Tanya Granic Allen resolutions. There were several of them. And the vast majority them on saturday were based around the school curriculum and Kathleen wynne policies and bill89. (Bill89 Interpretation) They were to create a parental bill of rights, which I’m sure first nations people would have appreciated back in the residential school days. Another was to acknowledge parents as the first educators of their children. Stuff that should be common sense but after the assault on the family that was the kathleen wynne government, it’s now necessary for political parties to openly declare their positions on the role of the family. This included an acknowledgement that parents are the first educators of their children. Which is absolutely true! In what world are parents not responsible to raise and inform their children to prepare them for a diverse, modern world? But none of those make for good headlines when you’re trying to outrage your readers I guess. And very counter narrative to be portraying conservatives as protecting rights to cultural traditions and values.
It was papa Trudeau who famously said, “there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.” And we’re just saying that actually extends to the rest of the house. And then I was thrilled to vote to repeal Bill89 to revert the amendments to the child services act back to how it was before Kathleen Wynne decided that she had the right to remove your kids if you failed to affirm their gender transition, regardless the age. Yeah, we don’t let 5 year old boys walk into the doctor’s office to get a vasectomy or a 5 year old girl getting her tubes tied but God forbid you don’t hook them up to puberty blockers because they claimed they identified more with the opposing gender.
And this is where things get controversial. Not because there’s anything controversial with not wanting to treat your child as a social experiment, but because there are people who actually believe this is an acceptable way to treat a child. Are all these resolutions necessary? Well when you have teachers openly advertising to the world that they have no intention of respecting any wishes of the current government. And the teachers union openly encourages teachers to protest this government. If only they had this much zeal when the Liberals took away collective bargaining and retroactively removed contractual benefits over bill115. (CBC on Bill 115) So yeah, I believe these resolutions were actually necessary. That’s why I also voted for a resolution to make it mandatory for schools to advise parents a day ahead of teaching any sex ed. So if you know your kid’s teacher is an activist you have the ability to pull your child from indoctrination class. Not that I’m happy at the idea of this level of distrust of the education system but it is a symptom of the times we are now living in.
So then we got to the resolution where Tanya calls for an end to the teaching of “Gender Identity Theory” because it is a “highly controversial, unscientific liberal ideology”. The resolutions required 2/3 support to vote. The vast majority of delegates voted in favour of the resolutions, passing them all. I was among those who voted in favour and were very proud to do so. But not one single of these resolutions have anything to do with actual transgender people. The key word you need to pay attention to here is the word “theory”. Conservatives are not like these “progressives” who feel the need to hide behind dressed up language and talk in circles around what they actually mean. The theory is a direct reference to the Marxist method of critique for the purposes of deconstruction. It is not the role of the teacher to contest science through marxist critical theory. Biology is not a theory or bigotry. Biology is reality. And the resolution was aimed to draw a clear distinction between the home and the classroom. The classroom is for teaching facts and the home is for teaching values. Any parents who don’t want to love, embrace and value their children, we have child services for that.
We, in the city, sometimes fail to observe the occasional social bubble we can get trapped in. The majority of Ontarians support these changes and repeatedly complained to the Kathleen Government that she hadn’t consulted with them at all before making any of these radical changes. This government is doing just this, consulting. But it’s typical that we cannot even table a discussion of these subjects without being denounced by every media outlet. These aren’t direct policies either, these are votes on subject matter towards policy creation for next year’s convention. So right now they’re nothing more than conversation. Taking a temperature of relevant issues. And it’s not like the newspapers even engaged in that dialogue, it’s just your typical “bigot, racist, homophobe, transphobe, etc etc etc” and making sure every person you interview talks about how scared they are. Because treating the government as the boogeyman isn’t intellectually dishonest at all. But the media is not speaking for the actual majority view of the people. All they have demonstrated by their headlines are that they are narrative based activism, not the objective news that people deserve.
If you want to understand better how the wider main stream media manipulates the truth, feel free to watch this video lecture with Melanie Phillips: Melanie Philips Lecture on how media manipulate the truth.
Conservatives don’t have gender or ethnicity quotas. And the party has displayed quite well that this has not held anyone back from entering the party. The media would have you believe this is the party of white supremacists. I’m not saying all conservatives are angels, we’re all just people and some of us can be assholes but most of us are good people. And this government manages a visibly diverse cabinet and inner party executive base. What these resolutions are about are drawing a line in the sand to define what things go too far. And all you need to do to see what’s wrong with these regressive ideologies on the left is simply contemplate 10 years into the future to see all implications of all these things we cling to in the name of “compassion”. The road to hell was paved with good intentions. And it’s time for everyone to know that it’s ok to have these conversations, it’s ok to stand up and say “no”.
A girl does not have to be the same as a boy to be equal. Diversity is our strength BECAUSE of our differences. Our ability to build bridges make us more innovative and more effective as a collective. Multiculturalism at its best is colour blind. Rating and ranking groups of people on superficial traits like skin colour is nothing more than divisive, regressively tribal and in contempt of individual sovereignty.
The conservatives won the election with an almost super majority because people of all walks of life around Ontario do not want their children to be social experiments. The actual science (as per sex researcher Dr. Debra Soh) says that the vast majority of children who identify with the opposing gender at an early age turn out to be gay. To see homosexual tendencies in your child and immediately act to affirm a transition of their own gender is nothing more than trying to train the gay out of your child in an act of some kind of bizarre inverted homophobia. My daughter won’t be a lesbian if she’s a straight man. My son won’t be gay if he’s a woman. And even if they are among the less than 1% of people who actually do truly feel they were born in the wrong body, they can wait till they’re adults to make that very adult decision. Why do you NEED hormone blockers for a minor? So they’ll be more “passable” when they transition in the future?
Hey, if I had a kid and they showed me that they truly believed they were a trapped in the wrong body, I would do everything in my power to make my kid feel comfortable in their own skin and I’d like to think we would find a way to make it work. People seem to think this attitude is rare when in reality the vast majority of families actually love and support their kids. And no one wants to see ANY kid left behind. But to subject the rest of the 99% of children and families to this deconstructionist post-modern authoritarianism is just insane. And that’s what the province told us on election day, it was actually campaigned on by Doug Ford.
Look, identity is a complex thing. If Kathleen Wynne had not gone SO extreme with her ideological possession then the pendulum wouldn’t need to autocorrect so hard. There is a reason why the Liberals got reduced below party status on election day. And if you want to believe it’s because of homophobic bigots then I ask you, who voted her into a majority in the prior election? The same homophobic bigots? She had a real opportunity here and she completely blew it by betraying the center. She stopped listening. I believe there is room for us to ALL agree on these issues. We all spend like the first 30 years of our lives trying to figure out who we are. Politically, sexually, philosophically, technically, artistically, athletically, etc. No one is saying there is no room for healthy discussion around the things that make us different. And it’s important that we observe, listen and learn from those who struggle through this. Vice did an indepth doc on trans children.
To the handful of parents who do have to deal with gender dysphoria issues with their little kids, my heart really does hurt for them. It really is a very complex issue. And very scary. But it’s more than clear to me that these unique situations need to be treated as a case by case basis. There may be situations where hormone blockers really are the best path forward. I literally cannot think of one scenario like that but I’m open to the possibility of it. But that’s up to that family to decide. Not any level of government bureaucracy. How anyone can’t agree on that is so fucking crazy to me. To subject an entire province to government tyranny like this based on junk science really just shows the contempt some people have for the vast majority of us.
But the differences of a classroom will vary from classroom to classroom and it’s the role of the teacher to identify the needs of the students and cater to those needs. But we need to get back to a time when teachers and parents had healthy, trusting relationships and the child’s best interests at the forefront. But we will never get to that place, we will never get to that place if we cannot entertain any shred of nuance. This is not debating anyone’s “existence” or “humanity” or anything like that. We’re trying to find a way forward that works for EVERYONE and gets education RIGHT. Not something that works for less than 1% of people and sticks the rest of us with the middle finger. When you get education right everything else falls into place. Deconstructing known facts in the name of “progressiveness” and “compassion” will only hurt society. Like, where would you draw the line? Should we allow the teaching of flat earth theory? Just because something calls itself “inclusive” doesn’t mean that’s actually good for us.
These are not my ideas by the way. there is a very vocal minority of professors who are speaking out about this stuff in academia. A minority because people are frankly terrified of the mob violence naysayers are subjected to. If this stuff is all relatively new to you then I highly advise you check out this fantastic lecture by Gad Saad.
Take the case of Emile Ratelbrand, the 69-year-old Dutchman who is seeking to change his age to 49. It’s hard to find a girlfriend when you’re 69, you know? Employers constantly discriminate against him based on his age but who are they to say that a 69 year old man can’t work a physical labour job for the next 30 years? Does the military or police or firefighters have a special bigoted, ageist agenda to hold back older people? why should they treat a 69 year old any different from a 19 year old? They don’t know his lived experience, they don’t know his truth! If you think this is ridiculous then you just haven’t been paying attention. If you do not stand for anything you just fall for everything. And we can discuss what things are actually good but there is no debating things that are actually bad. Bad actions actually tilt this world towards hell and we need to all shake hands, unite and move forward together.
I mean, if we’re going to talk about gay rights or trans rights then let’s discuss THAT. It’s not hard to observe all the ways homosexual and trans people experience REAL hate around the world. Whether that be the solidarity march in Ukraine that even the police failed to protect victims over. Or being sentenced to death through sharia law, resulting in being thrown off the roof of a high rise building. Or perhaps the leader of the country refuses to even acknowledge that their country even has a homosexual population. And even here at home we have places like covenant house which houses teenagers who have been kicked out of their homes for coming out to their parents. These are very real issues.
Simply discussing policy is not homophobia or transphobia. It’s a slap in the face to people who have actually experienced real hate and it actually creates a larger stigma against homosexuals and trans individuals. If we’re going to talk about one’s own “humanity” then we need to stop weaponizing actual people to be used as slurs against people and ideas we disagree with. There is nothing more patronizing than someone getting offended on my behalf. These people have dealt with tougher issues than the majority of us, they don’t need Andrea Horwath crying for them when her tears come with a subscription fee. Pride is more important than just some weekend event. And I’d like to invite all LGBTQ people to unite on this front and demand politicians stop using them as populist fodder for cheap political points. They deserve better. And I want to make it my mission to make sure that this PC government has an ear open to listen to ALL people. That’s why I invite you to put Ontario on your agenda. Let’s make Ontario the uniting tribe that we can all relate to. Let’s focus more on listening to one another. Your interests as an Ontarian are my interests as an Ontarian.
Now to address these claims of voting fraud. Take a look at that picture above. See how my voting card has been stamped? That means I voted. And it means you’re only voting once. If I were to slap another sticker over my name the hole would still be punched in the tag. They specifically had a table of people you went to before voting to handle your tag to verify you haven’t already voted. I even hung around the area while waiting on a few others and I did not see anyone voting more than once or anything sketchy at all. All these constitution amendments that he talked about in the TVO interview that were all so based on “democracy” were crazy. Things like if the party leader pisses you off you get to vote on kicking him out. Because apparently no one has learned anything from the chaos that was patrick brown. How the fuck does that not leave things open for any special interest group to come in and sabotage the whole party right before an election? Once you have a leader you need to get behind that leader and unite as a party, not constantly hold them hostage to inner party squabbling. Almost all his amendments were voted down and he lost the bid for party president and now he’s just butt hurt as all hell and throwing a temper tantrum. And the fact that he doesn’t care how it makes the party as a whole look is pretty disgraceful. I was shocked at how much support he had. But I’m glad Jim lost.
“Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away.”
– Elvis Presley
Rule #8 