“Heartened” by progress made between the Toronto Police Service (TPS) and the city’s LGBT2Q+ communities, Pride Toronto says it will welcome the force to apply to march in the 2019 parade.
The organization made the announcement on Tuesday, after two consecutive years of excluding uniformed officers from the annual event.
Pride Toronto Executive Director Olivia Nuamah said the decision stems from “critical” conversations between the two parties and a number of community consultations.
“We are encouraging an application on the basis that it would go through the process all our organizations go through when applying to participate in our parade,” Nuamah said Tuesday from The 519 Community Centre on Church Street.
“But what we wanted to ensure is that we prioritize the work that we’re doing together to find solutions to the issues that were raised.”
Nuamah acknowledged that more work is required, and that some may see the decision as “premature,” but maintained that the decision shows progress.
“We know there’s a lot of work that needs to be done, but at some point we have to decide to undertake that work, which is what we’re doing now,” Nuamah said. “We’re looking for real solutions to some of these issues. What we’re not going to do is sit around a table and talk to one another in order to arrive at those solutions together.”
Nuamah also suggested the decision was made with logistics in mind.
She said the organization wanted to have the conversation about police participation early and not on the eve of the event, as has occurred in the past.
“It takes a long time to put on this festival. It takes basically 12 months. So you have to work out a number of things very early on. One of the things we wanted to work out was – do we want to be discussing this issue for another festival? And if we don’t, how are we going to manage our way through that?” Nuamah said.
“Right now, this is the most comfortable thing for Pride Toronto.”
The rocky relationship between police and the parade came to boil in 2016, when members of Black Lives Matter-Toronto brought the procession to a halt. Citing racial tensions, its members presented the parade's then-director with several demands, including that uniformed police officers be excluded.
Friction intensified earlier this year, in the wake of the investigation into alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur.
Members of the LGBTQ community accused the service of failing to properly investigate the disappearances of several men linked to the city’s Church-Wellesley neighbourhood, known commonly as the Gay Village.
McArthur was arrested on January 18 and, to date, has been charged with eight counts of first-degree murder. The charges have not been proven in court.
Police previously refuted suggestions that there was a serial killer lurking in the neighbourhood.
“Certainly Bruce McArthur did raise a number of issues that the police have taken up themselves,” Nuamah said.
“We’ve all undertaken an attempt to find solutions to some of the issues that were not only raised in 2016 but as a result of Bruce McArthur … It’s incumbent upon us to work more closely to ensure it does not happen again.”
Saunders, for his part, withdrew the service’s application to participate in the 2018 Pride parade this past June. He called the move a “concrete example” of his service’s attentiveness to the community’s concern and their desire to do better.
He told reporters Tuesday he’s happy with the decision and has every intention of participating himself next year, pending the success of the service’s application.
“I’ve said from the start, the importance of inclusion is what defines community safety. Anything that I can do to enhance relationship building is something that’s necessary for today’s environment in policing,” he said.
“I’m not saying that today means that it’s right. I’m being very open. There are still a lot of things that need to be done to be successful.”
He nodded to the newly-expanded neighbourhood-officer program and the service’s Community Police Liaison committee as other “relationship building components.”
“I think that success will involve our legitimacy, our transparency and our willingness to listen, learn and talk and really have those ugly conversations, to hear the sentiment of the community as a whole,” he said.
What remains unclear, though, are the specifics behind how officers would march if their application is approved.
Pride Toronto said the service’s application will only be approved if it meets the organization’s “Rules of Parade Entry” or ROPE, which include policies on branding, float and vehicle safety, and attendance at a mandatory information session.
Nuamah said planning for the 2019 parade is in the “early stages” and Pride Toronto is not yet ready to decide in what capacity officers could participate.
That notion does not sit well with Toronto Police Association President Mike McCormack.
While pleased with Pride Toronto’s announcement, McCormack said he's cautiously optimistic about the future of police participation in the parade.
“The details are going to be what’s really important here,” he said. “What does it really mean? Are we welcomed back to that parade in uniform? What is that going to look like? We think it’s the right decision but again we want to make sure all the details are right for that decision as well.”
Black Lives Matter has said the organization was not consulted on Pride Toronto’s decision to allow police officers to apply to participate in the parade.
“It’s been two years. I’ve seen nothing from Toronto police. I’ve seen nothing from Pride Toronto to actually address those key concerns,” Black Lives Matter- Toronto co-founder Rodney Diverlus said. “What we’ve been seeing is a lot of whining and complaining from Toronto police of not being invited to the party, and now this invitation this morning”
Saunders said he has not yet submitted an application to Pride Toronto but intends to in the coming days.
Toronto Mayor John Tory, who was also in attendance at the announcement, said he looks forward to marching alongside Saunders.
“I did tell him that it would carry with it the consequence of something I haven’t been able to do for the last two years, namely to man my squirt gun to make sure he is kept suitably cool on the day of the parade,” Tory said with a laugh.
“Today is a good news day because we’re going to have a unified Pride next year.”
