Rainbow flags burned, Pride marches disrupted: Canadian LGBTQ community faces ‘climate of hate’
- Violent and homophobic threats on the rise in Canada, one of the first countries in the world to legalise same-sex marriage
Members of Canada’s LGBTQ community have denounced a resurgence of “hateful comments and attacks,” including seeing rainbow flags burned, Pride marches disrupted and increasing violence targeting them – all a stark contrast to the country’s reputation of tolerance.
For years, many parts of the country have been considered a haven where one can freely live one’s sexual and gender identity. Canada was one of the first countries in the world to legalise same-sex marriage.
In the five years to 2023, however, the number of crimes and offences in Canada related to the sexual orientation of victims quadrupled from 186 to 860, according to Statistics Canada.
As in other places in the world, “street violence” and hate on social media has exploded in recent years, observes Pascal Vaillancourt, director of Interligne, a support service for the LGBTQ community.
“People call us and tell us about troubles that we had been hearing less and less about,” he said, pointing to a rise in verbal abuse and physical attacks.
He says he himself was recently – and for the first time – the victim of violent and homophobic threats on the streets of Montreal while out with his partner.
