On January 23,
Canadians go to the polls to choose their next leader. But let’s be honest, it
doesn’t matter who forms the next federal government. We’ll still need to
scream bloody murder when they ignore our issues. That’s why we need…

The Queer Shadow Cabinet

Each of the big party leaders was asked during the French-language TV debate whether he would swear on the Bible that he’d keep his election promises, and each avoided the question. I don’t know what’s worse – that, or dragging the Bible into Canadian politics in the first place. The religion of homosexuality, though, is another matter. (Hey, if we’re gonna burn in hell, let’s make it worthwhile!) Queers need to increase their public profile in between the hysterical battles over equal rights, and for that, a shadow cabinet is ideal – an official homo opposition to keep the crank-yankers honest. So here they are, the best lineup of critics that gayness can find, charged with trapping the slippery eels who’ll make up the next bunch of goofs in the House of Commons. We have called upon the best (and even brought some of them back from the dead) to keep the Liberals from squandering our tax dollars on their luxe homes and 18-star hotels in Paris, stop the Conservatives from repealing same-sex marriage, and stop the New Democrats from spending us into the poorhouse.

Queer issues? Absolutely. But we’re Canadians, too, who care about the country as a whole. Our queer shadow cabinet, as chosen by fab, will tackle it all.

Ashley MacIsaac, Justice Critic
Decriminalizing marijuana is the Liberal government promise that never comes true. We trust earthy musician Ashley MacIsaac to filibuster by fiddle until it does. And why stop there? Next: legalizing hard drugs. Just imagine what the freed-up money from criminal prosecution and incarceration could do to rehabilitate the real, violent criminals, with extra left over for addiction counselling! The Tories have promised tougher drug laws in this election; we’ll have to build more prisons to house all the pot smokers. More music, Ashley! More music! After we win the drug war, golden showers fan MacIsaac can focus on repealing the asinine bawdy-house laws that send prostitutes (and, until last month’s Supreme Court of Canada swinger sex decision, bathhouse patrons) to jail.

Cherry Ames, Health Critic
A tough job needs a tough dyke, like the delightfully fictional Cherry Ames (recently seen in the company of girl detective Nancy Drew). I know what you’re thinking: Ames has never held a job for more than a few months – just long enough to get a book out of it. Remember the kid-lit classics Private Duty Nurse, Army Nurse, and my personal fave, Dude Ranch Nurse? Coming in a close second is Visiting Nurse, in which Ames rents a perfectly dear little Greenwich Village apartment. But Ames is no dilettante. She knows the health care system inside and out, having worked in almost every nursing job there is, in both the public and (officially non-existent) private systems. Ludicrous wait times? Greedy doctors? Foreign physicians forced to drive taxis for a living (not that there’s anything wrong with being a cabbie)? Clinic staff staring at computer screens for 10 minutes instead of asking how they can help you?

The NDP has promised to throw more money at health care. The Liberals have promised to throw more money at health care. The Conservatives have promised to throw more money at health care. Officially, no one’s in favour of two-tier health care, though the Tories are most likely to give in publicly (the Liberals have already given in, allowing the private system to inch in very, very quietly). Everyone’s ignoring the elephant that is a June Supreme Court of Canada decision ruling that private health insurance can pay for patients to jump the queue. Apparently an election is no time to discuss the real issues. Thank whatever non-denominational deity is in vogue for Cherry Ames. She knows that fixing health care is a giant mystery, she loves puzzle-solving, and she’s so darned nice! You just know she’ll fix it all up, lickety-split. And oh, I almost forgot, she’ll institute a proper dress code. Yes, Nurse!

Felipe Rose, Indian and Northern Affairs Critic
Felipe Rose was the man wearing the headdress in the Village People – his parents were Puerto Rican and Lakota Sioux – and he was the only one who was actually out during the singing group’s disco-era incarnation. There are few aboriginals in federal politics, but even more humiliating, none has ever held the Indian Affairs portfolio. Whites still run the reserve.

Our shadow critic is an urban boy who grew up in Brooklyn and who will understand the despair and poverty that run through certain aboriginal communities. This is Canada’s most horrible and hidden shame.

November’s Liberal monster funding announcement for aboriginals ($5.1 billion promised for housing, education, health and economic development) was welcome, of course. But it smelled of election opportunism, and the NDP took credit for demanding the cash in exchange for propping up the minority Grits in the House of Commons for a few more days. Though I guess that’s the sort of thing an opposition party would say. And I guess a governing party can promise whatever it wants; delivery is always optional.

Simon Tseko Nkoli, AIDS Critic
What’s that you say? There’s no such cabinet position? Well, there should be, and a shadow critic speaking out every day might finally humiliate a government into some goddamned action. The man to do it is Simon Tseko Nkoli, the anti-apartheid activist who almost single-handedly brought gay rights – and a gay rights movement in which blacks and whites worked together – to the forefront of South African politics. He died of AIDS in 1998 at 41.

There are 40.3 million people infected with HIV around the world. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria has a funding shortfall of $3.4 billion. Hell, the continent of Africa is a giant cemetery. Eventually there won’t be enough people left to bury the dead. I don’t care that this goes beyond Canada’s borders. AIDS is global, and we need to be, too.

Oscar Wilde, Environment Critic
Saint Oscar, the flamboyant Irish dandy (jailed for gay sex in 1895), is famous for being a wit without a brain. In fact, he was a libertarian socialist with real, honest-to-goodness politics. The environment – water, trees, air – is not private property. It belongs to us all, or at least, what’s left of it belongs to us all. And we must demand that it be cared for.

The Arctic permafrost is going soggy. So don’t start with me about global warming not existing. The worst is the carbon dioxide puffed out by your car and by the dirty factories producing all that stuff you buy by the bucket. All the crap in the atmosphere is raising asthma rates and clogging up the arteries of mice (and, undoubtedly, of men).

James Baldwin, Heritage Critic
Traditionally, this portfolio is what the prime minister tosses at somebody he wants out of the way. It can no longer be so. Shadow critic James Baldwin, the complex and political grand old man of 20th-century literature, will give culture the status it deserves. If we need a black American to do it in Canada, so be it. Sometimes the alienated outsider can see more clearly.

And what would he see? The ruling Liberals first starved the Canada Council, then inundated it with cash right after the election call. (Baldwin, who died in 1987, would never have received public support for his work in his time.) While a hands-off approach to the CBC makes sense, its dumbeddown programs have sent listeners south of the border to the National Public Radio network instead. That can’t be good for Canada, nor for the creation and articulation of a common national culture. After all, how can we talk to each other when there’s nothing bringing us together? If the CBC mess is about money, give them more. If it’s about management…

Gilgamesh, Foreign Affairs Critic
Gilgamesh was the king of Uruk (in what’s now Iraq), around 2700 BC. He meets Enkidu, a stranger from away, has a huge fist fight, and falls for the big lug. But Enkidu is punished by the gods for being an arrogant bad boy, and dies. A devastated Gilgamesh, much like a swanning foreign affairs minister, embarks on a journey to find immortality and the secret of eternal youth. This poem is a masterpiece, and foreign affairs is the best damned party circuit in the world.

There are also a handful of Important Diplomatic Incidents to review. Are Canadians training cops in Haiti who are using their newfound skills to murder fellow citizens who oppose favoured politicians? Is the United Nations even more corrupt than the Liberal Party of Canada? And how about Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar, who has so charmingly promised that a Palestinian state will outlaw homosexuality and dancing? Gilgamesh is on the case.

Larry Kramer, National Defence Critic
Or is that National Offence, as in giving offence? The very stereotype of the loud and obnoxious American, prickly snot Larry Kramer has just what the defence portfolio needs: cohones. His 1978 novel Faggots trashed the gay promiscuity and drug use that Kramer saw as mindlessly self-destructive. He founded the in-your-face ACT UP, attacking the mainstream health industry that was sitting back and watching gay men die. Soon afterwards came a new book that preached sexual abstinence.

He single-handedly started the queer battle against AIDS through smart direct action. Kramer is a radical moralist, unafraid to behave like a complete and utter lunatic. Our military has helicopters that can’t fly and submarines that can’t submerge. Luxembourg could invade our entire country in three-and-a-half days. And we’re practically giving away the north to Denmark and the United States. We need somebody to shake things up. Kramer is it, and he’ll rail against crystal meth and queer apathy along the way.

Truman Capote, Finance Critic
If you squint really hard, auteur and enfant terrible Truman Capote looks a bit like former finance minister (and current PM) Paul Martin. But Capote has an advantage: there’s nothing like a screaming nelly queen to put her foot down and get the money in order. Snap, snap.

Writer Capote (the rough trade in Breakfast at Tiffany’s was edited out for the movie) was famous for being a bitch on wheels, something else he has in common with Martin. But Capote was stupid enough to publish a few chapters from a vicious book on New York’s high society, and his friends abandoned him. His pariah status led to yet another battle with booze that ended in death.

But a little booze on the job isn’t such a big deal, since the Tories would cut down the job responsibilities anyway. A GST cut from seven to five percent, for starters, will shave off a few minutes of finance work every day, ’cause there will be less moolah. The Tories want less state intervention (no national daycare program, for example), while the NDP wants the government to control it all (and will need mondo cash for its daycare program). And the Liberals – well, the Liberals will do whatever the polls tell them to do. You want government-run daycare so crack-addled moms can’t cash in their support cheques to buy booze? You got it!

Shiva, Canadian Border Services Agency Critic
Shiva is a very naughty and androgynous Hindu god, beloved of hijras (Indian trannies and eunuchs) and often represented as a giant phallus that’s ritually bathed by admirers. Ahem.

With queer books still being banned at the border by gung-ho Canadian customs officers who see indecency in fist-fucking and cartoon semen, we need a more progressive version of “community values.” Like Shiva’s.

Barney the Dinosaur, Unity Critic
Honey, Quebec may want to lose the rest of Canada, but you don’t want to lose Quebec. The Supreme Court of Canada decision that recently legalized swinger sex clubs was fought for by straight Quebecers, and it’s a case that’s going to help protect every gay bathhouse in the country from police raids. Quebecers even created their own political party, the Bloc Québécois, so they don’t have to vote for either the slimy sponsorship-scandal Grits or the moralizing gays-are-icky Tories.

Without the relaxed joi de vivre learned from a visit to gaystrip- club-filled Montreal, no homo in Anglo Canada would be a happenin’ gay man. Let’s serenade Quebec back into the fold! All together now: “I love you, you love me, we’re a happy family.”

Barney the Dino got some help with a French translation from a nice man he met in a Montreal spa, who told him the message needed to be tailored to a Québécois audience. If only Canadians could understand the differences between our peoples! En français, tous ensemble: “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?”

Eleanor Brown is a Montreal-based writer. Read her blog at
www.OpinionatedLesbian.com