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Banner image: “Anarchy in Print” (detail) by spray-paint artist Mario Bergeron

Pride season was still in full swing as the Québec election was announced earlier this month. A large percentage of the general population (journalists included) were on vacation, and the heat wave made it seem like we might never get our brains back. Slyly calling the vote for Sept 4, the day after Labour Day, Jean Charest made his strategy all too clear: the Parti Québécois was “allied with extremists”, the Liberals were the only party with a functional economic platform, and if voters are on vacation (and gays are busy partying) and don’t care, all the better!

Catering to the gay vote is a relatively recent strategy for politicians and one which the Liberals seem to have all but mastered. Just days after the election was called, the office of Justice Minister Jean-Marc Fournier finally announced the names of the 24 gay organizations which will benefit from the largesse of his Bureau de lutte contre l’homophobie. The organizations had themselves known since March that they were getting the funding, but the Ministry conveniently decided to wait until after the election call to tell us who was getting what amounts, and for which projects.

Unsurprisingly, Gai Écoute was the recipient of one of the Bureau’s largest grants, to the tune of $60,000, used for the creation of their registre des actes homophobes (RAH), which they launched in June. Unsurprising because the director of the Fondation Émergence, Laurent McCutcheon, was a major player in the adoption of the anti-homophobia action plan and Bureau from the beginning, and because the project was tailored to one of the action plan’s stated goals, “to document and prevent homophobic and transphobic violence.” The RAH’s main purpose will be to better understand the extent of homophobic violence in Québec, and to share information with police to better combat it.

Now, we know that lesbian, gay, and bisexual people (as well as those who are seen as queer in any way) are at least 2.5 times as likely as other people to experience hate motivated violence. For trans people, the vulnerability to violence is even greater. With the RAH, the police become the answer, again. And when the police become the answer, the real money winds up going to the police. Take for example the $10 million that the City of Montéal spent on police overtime to corral, beat, and jail protesters during the student demonstrations of the spring and summer. Police beatings, tear gasing, and treatment of every demo as if it were a riot (which none were), resulted in hundreds of hours of overtime earned by officers which now the City expects Québec to pay for. (The Montréal police force’s lust for overtime pay was also a widely acknowledged motivation for raids on gay events such as the infamous Sex Garage party in 1990).

By contrast, the entire budget of the anti-homophobia action plan for five years is only $7.1 million, which is being given to non-profit organizations for short-term projects that they cannot use for their core operations. After two terms in the National Assembly, Charest’s Liberals are faced with a gigantic deficit, and have decided to rake back the funds they need by attacking students, traditionally the demographic least likely to exercise their democratic freedoms by voting in such an election.

I am not bringing this up because I think that Gai Écoute’s online register is bad idea. I am not bringing this up because I think that all police are as bad as those who needlessly beat and arrested peaceful demonstrators in the spring. I bring this up because, as we head into this election, we need to put into perspective what the Liberal government’s perceived support for LGBT community projects really means.

Before you cast your vote this September 4, ask yourself if you really agree with most of what your candidate’s party stands for, or if your ballot is just being bought. 

“Red Manifest 1″ by Mario Bergeron, courtesy of Zéphyr lieu d’art

"Anarchy in Print" and “Red Manifest 1” by Mario Bergeron will be on display at 

Zéphyr lieu d'art (2112 Amherst, Montréal) Sept. 4-22
www.galeriezephyr2112.com