Mr. Speaker, back in May I raised a series of questions regarding the government's reckless ideological cuts to Toronto's gay pride festival.
The government stimulus program has been marked by patronage and problems. The infrastructure money it was giving out was done using new funding agreements instead of the existing gas tax transfer, generating more waste and taking longer to implement but with the advantage of Conservatives using it to pork barrel in their ridings.
Pork barrelling is one thing, but blatant discrimination is another. The marquee tourism program was supposed to help already established world-class events expand their tourism offerings as a stimulus measure. It came about because last year, the former tourism minister, the member for Calgary—Nose Hill, was stripped of the program after she appeared in a photo op with drag queens.
Toronto Pride leaves a $100-million economic footprint, creates 650 jobs and generates $18 million in tax revenue. Compare that to many other events that got the funding.
If this program were about stimulating the economy, than surely helping to expand one of the country's largest festivals would have met those objectives.
We all know that the Minister of Industry himself made the decision and that according to the National Post, he created new policy specifically to keep another drag queen photo opportunity from happening.
Why was this policy changed to exclude gay Canadians? Spreading the money around would seem to contradict the point of this stimulus program. Events with little international drawing power were funded.
When asked about the decision, the Prime Minister's former chief of staff, Tom Flanagan, said that the Tories deserved all the criticism they got and called the whole ordeal atrocious political mismanagement.
In fact, rather than give Pride Toronto the $600,000 it asked for, the minister actually let about $12 million from the program go unspent. If the point of the program was to stimulate the economy, then why did the government not spend all the money, particularly on proven economic drivers such as Pride Toronto?
No other gay pride event in Canada even got any money. This was not about Toronto. This was about excluding a specific group of Canadians from government out of pure prejudice. The executive director of Pride Toronto said that she believes that homophobia was behind the decision.
I guess the simple question I have, in conclusion, is has the government changed any other policies in order to exclude specific groups of Canadians?