Did Canadian Tourism Minister Lose Post Over Gay Pride Funding?
Anti-gay Web outlet LifeSiteNews.com, which frequently features content critical of GLBTs, reported in a July 6 article that Canadian Tourism Minister Diane Ablonczy, who had been in charge of tourism matters, had those responsibilities taken away from her after authorizing $400,000 in funding for Toronto Gay Pride.
The site--which called Toronto Pride "notorious," and claimed that the event featured nudity--based its report on comments made to LifeSiteNews by a Minister of Parliament belonging to the Conservative Party, Brad Trost.
Trost refused to speak with mainstream media provider CanWest News Service, according to a July 8 story carried at Canada.com.
But Trost did speak with the anti-gay site, telling LifeSiteNews that, "The pro-life and the pro-family community should know and understand that the tourism funding money that went to the gay pride parade in Toronto was not government policy, was not supported by--I think it's safe to say by a large majority--of the MPs.
"This was a very isolated decision."
Saying that the funding resulted from "sloppiness" rather than any ideological shift, Trost declared, "It shouldn't be deemed to have been a change in Party policy.
"Most of the caucus is still strongly pro-traditional marriage," Trost added.
Noting that the responsibility of funding cultural events through the government fund had been reassigned to a different minister, Trost said, "The whole tourism program and funding for major tourism events is being reviewed."
The LifeSiteNews article quoted the national coordinator of an anti-abortion group, Mary Ellen Douglas, as saying, "I'm glad they're owning up to a very grave error here."
A member of the same organization, Jeff Gunnarson, whose group, the Campaign for Life Coalition, has launched a petition drive for laws providing for "legal protection for unborn babies from the moment of conception/fertilization to natural death," was quoted in the article as saying, "Given the fact that the Conservative government supports marriage as a union of one man and one woman in Section 68 iii of their Policy Declaration, I am concerned that they find it prudent to give nearly half a million dollars to a group that diametrically opposes that very section of the policy."
The CanWest article said that the funds were drawn from a government initiative called the Marquee Tourism Events Program, through which an overall budget of $100 million will be apportioned to cultural events over a two-year period as an investment in the nation's tourism industry.
Trost said that there was no "official connection" between the program being reassigned to MP Tony Clements and the $400,000 grant.
To be sure, a report on the issue published by 24 Hours Vancouver on July 8 indicated much the same thing.
The 24 Hours Vancouver article said that the grant was not an issue until Trost made it into one; the article also asserted that, according to Clements, Ablonczy's administration of the program was only temporary and due to end once Clements, occupied with other matters for a time, was ready to assume it.
While conservative Canadians were reportedly upset about the funds going to a gay Pride event, GLTB leaders expressed dismay that their government seemed to be suggesting that their cultural gatherings have less importance than do others.
Said Ken Coolen, president of the Vancouver Pride Society, "I think it's a shame that the Conservative government doesn't consider the large portion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in this country as a part of the community."
The article reported that, according to Coolen, the only reason the Vancouver Pride Society did not apply for a grant of its own from the program was that it did not meet all the funding criteria.
But Pride fulfills the overall rationale for the program, Coolen pointed out, saying, "The pride festival draws many people from around the world.
"It's not just Canadian people that come. It's people from all walks of life."
According to a Wikipedia article, MP Ablonczy took the post of Small Business and Tourism Secretary of State in 2007, after having served since the previous year as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance in February 2006.
MP Ablonczy also had served in the capacity of Chief Opposition Critic for Citizenship and Immigration, Health, and Human Resources Development, the article said.
Abloczy also has served as a Member of the Cabinet Committee for Economic Growth and Long Term Prosperity, according to Wikipedia.