Mayor Ford Tells Canadian Jewish News That City Will Cut Funding To Pride Toronto If Queers Against Israeli Apartheid Permitted To Participate

In an interview with the Canadian Jewish News, newly-elected Toronto Mayor Rob Ford says that more than $100,000 in city funding for the 2011 Toronto Pride Parade will not be forthcoming if organizers allow an anti-Israel group to participate. The annual event, which runs this year from June 24th to July 4th, created controversy in 2010 by first rejecting, then accepting an application to take part in the parade by the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid. “Tax-payers dollars should not go toward funding hate speech,” Ford said, specifically referencing Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, a pledge he made during the mayoral campaign not to fund Pride if QuAIA is permitted to participate. Pride received $123,807 from the city last year, but during the debate about QuAIA’s participation in last year’s march, then-candidate Ford said that as mayor, he would withhold Pride’s funding if it let the group march again. Since it first participated in 2008, the group has been heavily criticized by many in the Jewish gay and lesbian community, as well as in the broader community, for being out of place in a parade that seeks to celebrate inclusivity. The loss of city funding would be critical to Pride Toronto, which somehow managed to emerge from the 2010 festival with a debt of nearly $110,000 due to alleged financial mismanagement and the loss of a $400,000 federal grant. Following the QuAIA controversy, Pride Toronto set up a community advisory panel last year made up of nine volunteer members who represented views on both sides of the issue. The panel was chaired by Reverend Brent Hawkes and held several community forums in an attempt to find consensus on what to do about QuAIA. On Feb. 17, the panel presented its official recommendations. Pride Toronto has since accepted all the recommendations. However, the panel did not reach a conclusion on the question of QuAIA’s participation, even though the report itself acknowledged that the issue is what precipitated the need for the panel in the first place. Oddly, the panel’s 21-page executive summary only mentions QuAIA by name once. Following nine months of debate and community consultation, the panel urged that all Parade participants “be required to sign an enforceable undertaking not to portray messages or images that condone or promote violence, hatred or negative stereotypes against any group,” as well as recommending that Pride set up a “dispute resolution process” that would be binding for all participants. Francisco Alvarez, co-chair of Pride Toronto, said his organization is in the process of implementing this recommendation by assembling a pool of “qualified dispute resolution officers,” adding that “We are quite certain that when we are set up to do this… [complaints about QuAIA] will go through the dispute resolution process, and the final outcome will be determined by an independent arbitrator, not by Pride Toronto. Pride will abide by this decision, whatever it may be.” Of Ford’s threat to withhold funding if QuAIA participates this year, Alvarez indicated Pride will fight that decision if it happens, saying “If the city later decides to cut funding to one of its major annual community and tourist events, one that generates millions in tax revenues and hotel, restaurant and retail profits for Toronto businesses, we will be prepared to contest that decision, and, if necessary, reduce the scope of the festival. But we are hopeful that we will continue to receive the city’s support.”