‘I get goosebumps’: Canadians across the country mark Remembrance Day

MONTREAL – Private Martine Roy was only 20 years old in 1984 when she was arrested, interrogated and dismissed from the Canadian Armed Forces for being what was then termed a “sexual deviant.”

After fighting for the right to be recognized as a veteran, she laid a wreath at Montreal’s Remembrance Day ceremony Monday on behalf of survivors of the wave of persecution that has become known as the LGBT Purge.

“I was arrested twice, then sent to a psychiatrist and then finally dismissed,” she said of her experience. “That was really, really hard for me.”

Roy was one of the lead plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit that led to a $145-million settlement and a 2017 federal apology for decades of discrimination against members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities.

According to the website of the LGBT Purge Fund, between the 1950s and mid-1990s, LGBTQ+ members of the Armed Forces, the RCMP and the federal public service were followed, interrogated, abused, traumatized and often fired “as a matter of policy and sanctioned practice.”

Roy, a Montreal native, enlisted in 1983 to become a medical assistant. After a stint in Quebec she was sent to Borden, Ont., where she was arrested the first time after someone found out she was dating women as well as men.

While she was allowed to finish her course and move to the now-closed National Defence Medical Centre in Ottawa, she was arrested a second time and discharged in December 1984.

She said her removal from the Armed Forces at such a young age affected every aspect of her life, and she struggled for years with shame, drug use and fear that she would be subjected to further discrimination in the workplace.

“I was 20, I didn’t know if I was gay or not. I don’t think it was important at that moment,” she said. “So kicking me out like this, I didn’t want to tell anybody. I was ashamed.”

She said the trauma went so deep that she didn’t return to Ottawa until 2014. For years, she and others like her weren’t recognized as veterans at all.

Over time, Roy went on to have a stable career and became an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and better inclusion in the workplace. She began to feel like the federal government’s decision to reverse its official policy of discrimination in 1992 wasn’t enough.

That’s when she got involved in the class action and, later, as a board member for the LGBT Purge Fund. In 2023, she was appointed a member of the Order of Canada for her decades of advocacy for diversity, inclusion and equity.

On Monday, under drizzly skies, Roy joined Premier François Legault and other dignitaries who gathered at a downtown square for Montreal’s Remembrance Day ceremony. She laid a wreath on behalf of LGBTQ+ veterans alongside fellow purge survivor Peggy Hayes.

Roy said attending Remembrance Day ceremonies allows her to feel like a part of the military as a veteran, and to commemorate others who had similar experiences but are no longer living.

Laying wreaths is meaningful, she said, “because we are important, and the queer people that fought for Canada are important.”

She said that for many purge survivors, memories of service is “kind of a double thing:” a mixture of pride over serving their country, and the knowledge that they were let go for something that had nothing to do with skills.

“We did that to over 9,000 people,” she said of the purge. “We destroyed their family and their life, so this is why today is so important.”

She said some of the money from the court settlement is being used for initiatives that honour the contribution of Canada’s LGBTQ+ veterans, including a monument in Ottawa dedicated to purge survivors. The LGBT Purge Fund is also collecting and preserving records of the purge, working on an exhibition at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg and making recommendations on how to improve LGBTQ+ inclusion in the public service.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 11, 2024.

The exterior of police stations will soon look different in Surrey, B.C.

New signs have been ordered to reflect a transfer of policing responsibility to the municipal Surrey Police Service from the RCMP, after six years of planning and political turmoil.

On Nov. 29, the municipal service becomes the police force of jurisdiction in British Columbia’s second most populous municipality, while the Mounties take on what’s expected to be a years-long supporting role.

But there’s still no formal agreement on how responsibilities will be split between the two forces with less than three weeks to go before the transition becomes official.

Surrey Police Chief Norm Lipinski said Friday that meetings between his office and the RCMP happen multiple times a week as they work out the finer points of the deal, which he is confident will be signed “in a matter of days.”

“We’re putting those pieces together to get us to a place where public safety is not going to be compromised in Surrey, I’m very, very confident about that. It will not be compromised. There’s enough overlap, there’s enough people, there’s enough equipment,” he said.

The head of the RCMP’s union said its officers are committed to public safety in Surrey, but members are anxious about being so close to the handover without a clear understanding of what their jobs will look like.

Brian Sauvé, president of the National Police Federation, said RCMP members haven’t been told what’s going to happen after the transition and since each police service has its own policies and procedures there could be challenges.

“I think, generally speaking, (people are feeling) anxious, uncertain, concerned, knot in stomach, if you will. Mainly because nobody knows what’s happening,” he said.

Lipinski would not go into specifics about the agreement that is being worked on, but said the two forces are essentially dividing up Surrey geographically with the RCMP responsible for some areas and the Surrey Police Service in charge of others.

“We will start with geography and certain areas, and they will start with their geography. Then what happens is, as we build up and they scale down, we take over more of their geography. We’ve got a plan for that. It makes total sense,” he said.

Lipinski said the Surrey Police Service has 455 members and will need 785 to take over from the RCMP completely. He said he expects it to take another two to three years to get the force up to full strength.

While policing in Surrey has been managed by the RCMP, Surrey Police Service officers have been working alongside them since 2021 while a dispute over the transition played out in municipal and provincial politics.

In November 2018, after winning his third term as mayor of Surrey, Doug McCallum put forward a motion at his first council meeting to create a municipal police force in the community of nearly 600,000 people 35 kilometres southeast of Vancouver.

By 2021 the first officers had been deployed. But the next year Brenda Locke defeated McCallum to become the new mayor, promising to reverse the transition and putting her on a collision course with Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth, who continued to support the power transfer.

The dispute was often heated, with Farnworth accusing the city of playing games and Locke accusing the minister of bullying and misogyny.

Locke declined a request to be interviewed for this story.

In the end, Farnworth used his authority to force the city to move forward with the Surrey Police Service, and the municipality lost a bid to have the decision reversed by the B.C. Supreme Court.

Sauvé said that legally the Mounties can’t work under a municipal police force, a situation commonly referred to as “red under blue,” which is why having an agreement on responsibilities is so important.

He said there would be “no shame” in the Nov. 29 deadline being pushed back to give both sides more time.

“What does Nov. 30 look like? I think the City of Surrey is going to be safe. The membership of the RCMP will do their job,” he said.

“How that looks, and the nitty gritty of what that looks like, obviously, I’m very, very curious to see the details. And it has been underwhelming with respect to how much has been relayed to us,” he said.

Lipinski said he is confident things will be ready for Nov. 29.

He said “there’s nothing super onerous about having two chains of command” and while there may be “unforeseen circumstances” he’s optimistic the two sides will be able to work through them.

“There will not be any public safety risk, and there will be business continuity as we move forward and as we evolve. And, of course, there will be things that you have to do thereafter because you didn’t have the time to do it before,” he said.

“It’s like building a house, and sometimes you move in and you have to do some of the other elements, such as painting and so forth and so on. But it’s there. The structure is there and we’re ready to go.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 11, 2024.

VANCOUVER – The federal government is urging both sides in the British Columbia port dispute to return to the table after Saturday’s collapse of mediated talks to end the lockout at container terminals that has entered its second week.

A statement issued by the office of federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon on Monday said both the port employers and the union representing more than 700 longshore supervisors “must understand the urgency of the situation.”

The statement also urged both sides to “do the work necessary to reach an agreement.”

“Canadians are counting on them,” the statement from MacKinnon’s office said.

The lockout at B.C. container terminals including those in Vancouver — Canada’s largest port — began last week after the BC Maritime Employers Association said members of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Ship and Dock Foremen Local 514 began strike activity in response to a “final offer” from employers.

The union said the plan was only for an overtime ban and a refusal to implement automation technology, calling the provincewide lockout a reckless overreaction.

On Saturday, the two sides began what was scheduled to be up to three days of mediated talks, after MacKinnon spoke to both sides and said on social media that there was a “concerning lack of urgency” to resolve the dispute.

But the union said the talks lasted “less than one hour” Saturday without resolution, accusing the employers of cutting them off.

The employers denied ending the talks, saying the mediator concluded the discussions after “there was no progress made” in talks conducted separately with the association and the union.

“The BCMEA went into the meeting with open minds and seeking to achieve a negotiated settlement at the bargaining table,” a statement from the employers said.

“In a sincere effort to bring these drawn-out negotiations to a close, the BCMEA provided a competitive offer to ILWU Local 514 … the offer did not require any concessions from the union and, if accepted, would have ended this dispute.”

The employers said the offer includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term along with an average lump sum payment of $21,000 per qualified worker, but the union said it did not address staffing levels given the advent of port automation technology in terminals such as DP World’s Centerm in Vancouver.

After talks broke off, the union accused the employers of “showing flagrant disregard for the seriousness of their lockout.”

Local 514 president Frank Morena said in a statement on Saturday that the union is “calling on the actual individual employers who run the terminals to order their bargaining agent — the BCMEA — to get back to the table.”

“We believe the individual employers who actually run the terminals need to step up and order their bargaining agent to get back to the table and start negotiations and stop the confrontation,” Morena said.

No further talks are currently scheduled.

According to the Canada Labour Code, the labour minister or either party in a dispute can request a mediator to “make recommendations for settlement of the dispute or the difference.”

In addition, Section 107 of the Code gives the minister additional powers to take action that “seem likely to maintain or secure industrial peace and to promote conditions favourable to the settlement of industrial disputes,” and could direct the Canada Industrial Relations Board “to do such things as the Minister deems necessary.”

Liam McHugh-Russell, assistant professor at Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University, said Section 107 “is very vague about what it allows a minister to do.”

“All it says is that the minister can refer a problem and a solution to the Labour Board. They can ask the Labour Board to try and solve the problem,” he said.

“Maybe the minister will try to do that. It remains to be seen.”

The other option if mediated talks fail — beyond the parties reaching a solution on their own — would be a legislated return to work, which would be an exception to the normal way labour negotiations operate under the Labour Code.

Parliament is not scheduled to sit this week and will return on Nov. 18.

The labour strife at B.C. ports is happening at the same time another dispute is disrupting Montreal, Canada’s second-largest port.

The employers there locked out almost 1,200 workers on Sunday night after a “final” offer was not accepted, greatly reducing operations.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 11, 2024.