IN Toronto magazine

ANALYSIS:

Is City Hall about to destroy everything we hold dear about Toronto? And is the LGBT community at particular risk?

When it comes to municipal politics, September could be the bloodiest month Toronto has seen in years. That’s when Mayor Rob Ford and his executive committee will announce the budget cuts they want to see for 2012. And if they pass, the result could be a city unrecognizable to many of its citizens.

Everything is on the table. Possible cuts run from Christmas presents for needy children and snowplowing to fluoride in the water, daycare and old-age homes.

"The mayor’s staff has said to me the cuts will be apocalyptic, and the person who said that was almost gleeful."

And while gay men, lesbians and trans folk use all of those services, there will likely be cuts to services and institutions near and dear to Toronto’s queer community: most notably Pride, AIDS organizations, community centres, including The 519 in the heart of the Church-Wellesley Village, and the arts (see below).

For the next year, that funding is safe. Pride will get its money for 2011, despite Ford skipping the event to go to his family cottage and Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti stalking the Dyke March to find any evidence of “political messages.” Community centres, including The 519, will keep their funding for this year. And Toronto AIDS service organizations will maintain their funding, despite the mayor being the only member of council who voted to abolish their grants. Ford also voted against every other grant to any community organization or program in the city.

But for next year’s budget, everything could change. The mayor could bring out the heavy artillery and many things important to the LGBT community could be mowed down.

So the question many, including city councillors, are asking is: Is there a homophobic element at work? Or is the LGBT community just being caught up in a right-wing rush to cut every publicly-funded service available?

Kyle Rae — who, until he retired before the last election, was the long-serving councillor for the ward encompassing the gay village and a long-time nemesis of Ford — has no doubt that Ford and his supporters take homophobic glee in going after things like AIDS funding.

“Last year when city grants came before council, then-Councillor Ford [voted against] all $46-million, it didn’t matter what, money to kids, to the homeless, to new Canadians, to recreation, to equity,” says Rae. “He voted against them all, but he decided to speak only about AIDS education and clean needles. I found his comments offensive and in my reply I called him homophobic and AIDS-phobic. When he responded, he didn’t ask me to withdraw my comments, which is what one usually does if a councillor crosses the line.”

John Maxwell, the director of programs and services for the AIDS Committee of Toronto, says that sort of long-held attitude on Ford’s part is worrying. He’s happy that city funding to ACT — which he estimates at about $450,000 a year — and other AIDS organizations is safe for the next year, but worries that future cuts could lead to a health catastrophe.

“Our mayor was quoted some years ago as saying if you’re not gay or a drug user, you don’t get AIDS. For some councillors, they may not say it, but it does feed into their attitudes around ‘the other,’ why are we giving money to ‘these people?’

“Cutting funding could easily double the number of infections in the city. Right now, we have two new infections every day in Toronto, and 70 percent of those are gay men.”

Maxwell says the additional expense of caring for those increased numbers would cost the city far more than it would save by cutting AIDS funding.

Rae, though, isn’t convinced that logic will persuade Ford and his supporters. “Ford is a crude, vulgar, empty-headed buffoon. He just says the same thing over and over and over. And he can barely look you in the eye when he’s talking to you. He counts amongst his supporters a number of homophobic and unpleasant people who didn’t feel comfortable before, but who now see him as their champion.”

Ford and a number of his allies on council, including Mammoliti and Michael Thompson, did not respond to requests for an interview. But several councillors who oppose many of Ford’s plans agree that the LGBT community is vulnerable, though they’re less definite about attributing that to homophobia.

“It would surprise me profoundly if Ford didn’t come after the gay and lesbian community again,” says downtown councillor Adam Vaughan. “He considers it gravy, pink gravy maybe, rainbow-coloured gravy.

“But Mammoliti’s creepy behaviour notwithstanding, most of it is anti-progressive, anti-downtown. Whether it’s motivated by homophobia gets muddy in that regard. It’s not The 519 they dislike, it’s all community centres. It’s not Buddies in Bad Times they dislike, but they point to it whenever they use examples [of city-owned theatres]. They don’t like public health as a division and when they criticize it, they go after AIDS. If it were up to them, they would remove funding from all parades, not just Pride.”

But Vaughan also thinks Ford and his supporters are quite happy to make those cuts that will directly affect the LGBT community. “They’re either casting a wide net and scooping up the gay and lesbian community or they’re afraid to go after the gay and lesbian community directly.”

Kristyn Wong-Tam, Rae’s successor on council, says the LGBT community and other minority groups also make a convenient target to garner support for cuts.

“I think some councillors don’t fully understand what the LGBT community is about and how we integrate in society. There’s a sense we are ‘the other,’ and we are on the margins, and that’s not true. What I see happening is this polarization of the other. There’s a manufactured split between ‘us’ and ‘them.’”

Wong-Tam points to Pride as an example. “Pride is a very convenient excuse. Ultimately, what they want to do is get government out of arts and culture funding. Unless there’s a hockey scene on it, they’re not going to see it as art.”

Scarborough councillor Glenn de Baeremaeker agrees, saying that while there may be one or two homophobes on council, the LGBT community is more likely to suffer because it didn’t vote the right way.

“I do think the mayor is segregating some communities. He’s saying this is the gay community, they didn’t vote for me, I don’t care if I offend them. And cyclists… all of them are gay anyway.”

As we roll inexorably towards a September showdown, Ford has remained silent about what cuts he wants to see. But those looking to maintain services in the city say the LGBT community has to be prepared to fight back.

“It’s a question of who’ll blink first,” says Vaughan, “and the mayor right now is hiding in a dark room where you can’t see his eyes. When the executive council makes these decisions in September, there’ll only be a week or two to rally the troops.”

So Wong-Tam says the LGBT troops will have to be ready. “The mayor’s staff has said to me the cuts will be apocalyptic, and the person who said that was almost gleeful.

“But we have always been very resilient and we may have to look inward again for that sort of leadership. We have an administration that has proven it doesn’t want to support us. We’re on high alert and the community was one of the first to start fighting back against this administration.”

with files from Gordon Bowness

The show must go on

Artists and arts administrators are running scared. Wholesale cuts could be coming to the city’s Community Partnership and Investment Program (CPIP) which funnels $19 million to the Toronto Arts Council, four local arts service organizations and major institutions like the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Toronto International Film Festival, Pride and Caribbean Carnival (formerly Caribana).

“The arts council has been very fortunate over the past 20 years or so,” says former city councillor Kyle Rae. “Back in the early ’90s, when we went through the last fiscal crisis, city council flat-lined it but didn’t cut its budget. The majors, however, were cut heavily.”

“Pride funding might be the smallest potato in the bag,” says video artist Roy Mitchell, executive director of Trinity Square Video, an artist-run video production house and gallery; he also sits on the board of Pride. “Every artist and arts organization in town is worried about cuts. For the film and video sector, a cut to the Toronto Arts Council would be disastrous.”

Tim Jones, CEO of Artscape, the not-for-profit arts-hub and urban development group, isn’t ready to give into doom and gloom just yet. “We have to remember that just two months ago, council, including the mayor, unanimously approved a new culture plan that called for increased spending on the arts. So it’s really unclear at this point and we won’t know until September where council’s priorities are.

“In our experience at Artscape we have met with councillors on all sides of the political spectrum and what we’ve found is broad support for what we’re doing and for the arts in general.”

“I was pleasantly surprised that the new cultural action plan was adopted unanimously at council recently,” writes Scott Miller Berry, executive director of Images, Toronto’s huge media arts festival, in an email.

“But I also have no faith or trust that the current leadership at the city has any love for culture at the community-based levels that Images and so many others operate: artist-run, independent, and ‘non-commercial.’”

Some types of art are more palatable than others. Cuts are one thing; targetted cuts, motivated by politics, are another. Last year, the Toronto Sun made burning hay over Homegrown, Catherine Frid’s play at Summerworks, by whipping up hysteria over tax dollars supporting what was depicted, sight unseen, as a pro-terrorist play. Even the prime minister and the PMO weighed in. Then this year, about a month before Summerworks kicked off, Heritage Canada announced that it was not renewing the festival’s long-term funding, leading many to accuse the feds of punishing Canada’s largest juried theatre festival. Councillor Mammoliti’s attacks on Pride stemming from what he considers undesirable politics at the event show that a similar funding/censorship chill is at work at the city level.

“The cultural and creative sector is a fragile ecology. If you screw it up, it will take decades to build it back up.”

“Arts funding should always be determined at an arm’s length,” says Michael Rubenfeld, artistic producer of Summerworks (running Thu, Aug 4 to 14; summerworks.ca). “Politicians are qualified to make political decisions. They have no qualifications to determine what art has value, and so their decisions become filtered through a political lens. It’s like asking somebody who has no experience fixing cars to decide who the best mechanics are.”

“What’s happening around Pride and Summerworks shows the danger of when politicians get involved in funding the arts, when there’s no arm’s-length jury,” says Mitchell.

“Our life is politics, though maybe not overtly,” says Christopher Alexander, the CFO of Caribbean Carnival, considered the largest cultural festival in the city. “Our lives are entwined; we don’t live in silos; our lives encompass so many different things. I don’t know where you could draw a line to separate life and politics.”

Many arts leaders caution not to write off the mayor and his supporters on council, calling for engagement and new ways of framing the partnership between the city and its artists. Some focus on the economics of culture, how it contributes $9.4 billion to the city’s GDP and the cost effectiveness of arts grants that yield multiple returns. Others focus on the intrinsic value of art and its crucial role in our public — and private — life. Debates over tactics aside, there’s a palpable sense of urgency.

“The cultural and creative sector is a fragile ecology,” says Jones. “If you screw it up, it will take decades to build it back up.”

“We should be organizing now,” writes Miller. “We usually react to a cut or crackdown or censorship after it happens — which is important. But we should be organizing now to keep strong city funding for the arts and culture, to ensure arm’s-length funding and to let the mayor and council know that there is no Toronto without the arts.”

Gordon Bowness