I have a background in working with newcomers as well. There's an intersectional layer of oppression there. We need more services to be provided in an anti-oppressive way. A lot of times when we go to settlement agencies, we have translators, for example, and we don't know who.... A lot of times those folks are coming from those communities and those communities are small and they know families. Sometimes the barrier to accessing support can be the settlement worker or the interpreter. We need to do more work on anti-oppressive training.
We also need more organizations that cater to newcomer LGBTQ youth. I know OCASI does some of that work, and there are pop-ups. In Windsor we have a few folks doing that stuff as well.
There are also safety factors that come in. I know that recently—and correct me if I'm wrong—something was passed whereby LGBTQ rights will trump religious rights in certain situations.
How do we navigate that while still allowing those youth to keep their faith intact? There's dignity in that, and I think sometimes we're forcing folks to choose between those two things. We need to do more education where we can allow people to have multiple identities in one person. I'm not just a queer woman; there are lots of other things about me. I think that's where the services and the wraparounds need to be more inclusive.