Toronto LGBT theatre's Rhubarb Festival inexplicably loses funding from the Harper government

After many years of support from the federal Department of Canadian Heritage for the annual Rhubarb Festival, which will celebrate its 35th year in February, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (which puts on the festival) received some bad news last month from the feds.

Buddies' application to the department's Building Communities through Arts and Heritage program had been rejected. No explanation was given, despite the fact the Rhubarb Festival has been approved in the past.

Buddies explains the situation further on its website:

"When we contacted the department to get some more information about why we suddenly did not fit the funding criteria, we were told in very generalized terms that we no longer meet the objectives of the Canadian Heritage program Building Communities through Arts and Heritage. The stated objective of this program is: “to engage citizens in their local communities through performing and visual arts, as well as through the expression, celebration, and preservation of local historical heritage.”

"This is not the first time that Canadian Heritage has withheld support from us. It happened once before. However, when this occurred, we received specific indications from the department on where our application fell short. What is troubling this time is that we have not been given any clear indication as to why we no longer meet their criteria. This has left us surprised and confused. Why do we no longer meet the program’s objective? We did not propose any significant shifts to the festival in our application. There has been no announced change in policy or priorities. The only source of new priorities that we can see at Canadian Heritage is the appointment of the new Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, the Honourable Shelly Glover.

"Unfortunately, there is no appeal process. We have been encouraged to reapply in the future and we will. We hope that we will have the opportunity to work with Canadian Heritage again.

"However, we also believe that it is important for the arts community and the public to know when there are shifts in government policy affecting the arts in Canada. As a queer organization that promotes freedom of expression for communities and perspectives that are often silenced, it is our duty to inform them. It becomes even more important for us to speak out when these shifts occur without any explanation. We believe that it is reasonable for citizens to expect a level of transparency from the Department of Canadian Heritage."

"...Rest assured, the Rhubarb Festival will still happen this upcoming February and we remain committed to providing space for communities to engage with boundary-pushing performance and ideas."

I am a supporter of Buddies in Bad Times theatre and a regular patron. I've also attended the Rhubarb Festival in the past and fully support its work at "building communities through arts". The festival has met the "needs of Canadians" in our community.

Why, Minister Glover, have you treated our important local theatre so poorly and without explanation?

Fighting for truth through Xtra's biased political coverage

In January 2013, Xtra Toronto had hoped to get more videographers accredited to attend the Ontario Liberal leadership convention, but unfortunately the party wasn't able to accommodate them and many other media in their demands.

In response, Xtra Toronto published an article entitled "Access Denied" that insinuated that Xtra had been shut out completely of the convention, when in fact its reporter Andrea Houston had been given accreditation to attend.

The article even quoted Gerald Hannon, never a friend of the Liberal Party, as saying, “You would think they would want Xtra to be there,” he says. “Do you detect a whiff of homophobia in there?”

The insinuation of homophobia was immediately made ridiculous as the convention went on to elect Kathleen Wynne as Ontario's new premier.

Fast forward to Xtra's coverage of the ongoing Toronto Centre by-election and again we're seeing some anti-Liberal bias rear its ugly head.

The recent fawning coverage afforded to NDP candidate Linda McQuaig was matched with less-than-flattering coverage given to Liberal candidate Chrystia Freeland.

The Xtra web page featuring Freeland's interview contains a direct link to McQuaig's interview, but no such link back to Freeland's interview exists on McQuaig's page. (Watch out to see if Xtra rectifies this after I post this.)

Xtra writes: "The Liberal candidate in the Toronto Centre federal by-election says she is a strong LGBT ally who, if elected, will continue to fight for the rights of queer people in Canada and abroad. However, in an interview with Xtra about where she stands on key LGBT issues, Chrystia Freeland left many questions unanswered...Xtra was only able to chat with Freeland for 27 minutes."

The problem here is the questions were never posed due to time running out, so how can unasked questions be unanswered? It's also odd because until today, Xtra had published, "Xtra was only able to chat with Freeland for 20 minutes." We've seen numerous NDP twitterers refer to those "20 minutes" often since the article was published. Now it's 27 minutes.

Perhaps the slight alteration in the interview time was due to this clarification posted on Freeland's website today:

"The Daily Xtra, an online news source for the LGBTTQ community, published an interview with Chrystia earlier this week. Even though Chrystia ended up speaking to the interviewer for longer than the agreed-to 20 minutes that were scheduled, the interviewer was unable to ask all the questions that she had hoped could be answered during the (plus an additional 9 minutes of run-over time). Here is Chrystia’s stance on those issues that were not covered in the interview..."

I'm glad that Freeland has put on the record her stands on those important issues.

Today, Xtra also published an online video interview with Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, which he handled very well with reporter Andrea Houston earlier this week.

But again, in the write-up accompanying the video, Houston focuses almost exclusively on alleged Liberal shortcomings on certain issues.

All politicians should be made to account for their actions and performance. The media should be able to toss whatever questions they deem fit at those politicians.

I do have a great deal of respect for Houston and for the work that Xtra does in the community. Their coverage of issues important to LGBT people is usually pretty stellar.

But as we've seen, their political coverage tends to have a pro-NDP bias. Liberals who dare not to give Xtra everything it demands (such as a video crew at the Ontario Liberal leadership convention) or unlimited extra time to ask questions during interviews already running over the agreed-to time, seem to get poorer coverage from them as a result.

Most people in the LGBT community are smart. We know that Xtra, like most media outlets, is not without its biases. Attacking certain media for such biases can seem often pointless. It's a fact of life. But calling it out is also fair and necessary.

Indiegogo campaign to fund new Leon Le film - DONATE

Dear Friends & Readers --

Please allow me to put aside politics for today and instead write about a new short film project being undertaken by my friend, director Leon Le.

I'm proud to say that Leon's launched an Indiegogo campaign to help raise funds to produce the film, tentatively titled 'Talk To Her.' The film is about love, acceptance, and missed opportunities and it explores the complicated relationships between Michael, a second generation Chinese-American man, his mother, and his girlfriend of two years to whom he plans to propose.

Leon Le is an extremely talented director and artist who produced/directed/wrote/edited another short film in 2012 called "Dawn," which I worked on as associate producer. It was a gritty, realistic and moving film about a young black man who detects what he considers to be a racist glance from another passenger on a subway, whom he follows off the train to try to teach him a lesson, to shocking results. Here's the great trailer below:

"Dawn" has already played at over 20 film festivals and continues to find audiences and win awards.

This is the next film project by Leon Le and I'm happy to say I'm also working at Associate Producer on it as well.

If you would like to invest in the project and help make it happen, please consider giving to the Indiegogo campaign. Every little bit helps!

MOVEMBER:

And speaking of helping out friends, another good friend of mine, Jefferson Darrell, is growing a moustache for Movember. If you want to help him out, here is the Movember Canada link to his campaign.