‘Amazing’ how far we have come on LGBTQ2 rights: Boissonnault
Liberal MP Randy Boissonnault said his time at the University of Oxford taught him the importance of staying on top of a busy schedule.
There as a Rhodes Scholar studying philosophy, politics and economics, Boissonnault also took up German and Spanish, rowing and ice hockey — all while making sure to be far away from his college,
Corpus Christi, one evening a week.
That was the night a campus pride group held its meetings, and Boissonnault, who was in the closet at the time, found it too close for comfort.
“I thought if I came out, I wouldn’t have any career prospects,” Boissonnault, 46, said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
“I wouldn’t be loved. I would lose my family and my friends and it would be a big, dark, scary hole.”
Coming home to Canada in 1996, it was as if the world was shifting, he recalled. There were gay role models in politics and popular culture. Soon, benefits were extended to same-sex couples and then, eventually, marriage was too.
“To see all the change that has happened in my lifetime and to see how far we’ve come as a country and as a people is really amazing,” said Boissonnault, who was elected to represent the riding of Edmonton Centre in 2015.
There is more work to do, both at home and abroad.
As the special adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on LGBTQ2 issues, Boissonnault has been working with advocacy groups to promote equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and two-spirited people — a term used broadly to describe indigenous people who identify as part of the community.
Boissonnault is a member of the Liberal indigenous caucus and identifies as “non-status adoptive Cree,” a heritage traced back to a maternal great-grandmother in the family that adopted him.
That role of special adviser, which Boissonnault took on last November, now also has some support. The 2017 federal budget committed $3.6 million over three years to set up and support an LGBTQ2 secretariat within the Privy Council Office.
One part of that job is to better co-ordinate the machinery of government so that policies are not blind to sexual orientation and gender diversity.