News From Ottawa

Mayor's Assistants Finally meet the Rainbow Community

After almost of year of begging and pleading the Mayor's office will meet with leaders and community organizations of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Trans, TwoSpirited & Queer community.

The community has been trying to meet with mayor Larry O'Brien since before his election. Jeremy Dias, Director of Jer's Vision: Canada's Youth Diversity Initiative volunteered to organize the meeting on behalf of the GLBTQ community. He said: "This has been the only meeting with a politician or diplomat that we have organized that has taken so long...and we are not even meeting the Mayor, just his staff".

The mayor, who did not attend the Women's, Aboriginal & GLBTQ Meet and Greets during the Election, promised to meet with groups immediately after the election. He and his office have continued to post-pone meeting, and are refusing to set dates.

"The Mayor and his staff won't even confirm that the Mayor will meet with us eventually. We have been shuffled form person to person, ignored, not called back and in some cases been the subject of discrimination through inappropriate language and slurs" said Jeremy. "I am very much concerned when elected officials won't meet with the most vulnerable persons in their community, a population the Mayor has admitted he knows nothing about."

The Mayor's staff have said that the Mayor's schedule is too busy to accomodate meetings with everyone and that they are doing things differently. The staff hope that this meeting will give them the opportunity to introduce the mayor to the community's concerns.

Jeremy replied saying that he expects his mayor to keep the promise he made. "When I met him at the Innauguration, he promised me he would meet with our community. I hope that the mayor was not lying."

The community will meet with the Mayor's staff today at 6pm in the Keefer Room at city hall.

For more information, please call Jeremy Dias at 613-562-5800 ext 6486 or on his cell at 613-858-3427.

From Jer's Vision: Canada's Youth Diversity Initiative, www.jersvision.org