Abrupt closure of Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity in the runup to National Coming Out Day a painful loss for the queer community and an affront to workers

OTTAWA, Ontario--(BUSINESS WIRE)--For 19 years, the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity (CCGSD) helped queer and trans youth find themselves, a sense of community, and safety. With the organization’s sudden bankruptcy announcement, that support is gone, passionate workers have been laid off, and queer and trans youth are left with one less advocate and ally in their corner.

The CCGSD offered a wide range of programs, facilitating workshops in schools, helping educators create welcoming environments, and creating resources from queer histories to sexual health guides. Much of their work has supported queer and trans youth who are also racialized, a natural area of focus given the vast majority of workers are racialized queer and trans people themselves.

Those workers – members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 2722 – were given just hours notice of the closure while the youth involved in programming only got word from a letter on the CCGSD website.

“These were more than jobs for us. Working here, building community, and supporting young people on journeys that many of us also took gave us a sense of meaning. We shared our own stories and experiences with the people we supported,” said a long-time CCGSD worker who wished to remain anonymous to protect their future job prospects in the small sector. “I had a few hours to wrap my head around this bankruptcy. I didn’t get to say goodbye to any of the people we work with. Those relationships which meant so much to us are now just gone.”

Workers at the centre joined CUPE in 2023 excited to bring worker solidarity into the fold of the avowedly progressive organization. Workers and CCGSD management just ratified their first collective agreement in July. At no point in the year-long bargaining process did management indicate such dire financial challenges.

“This closure is not happening in a vacuum. The ink on their first collective agreement is barely dry. These workers bravely fought to unionize because they wanted a say in their future. And these services are direly needed, now more than ever as we see concerted attacks on queer and trans rights across the country,” said Fred Hahn, President of CUPE Ontario. “Its devastating that there wasn’t even an attempt by the CCGSD to reach out to us to help solve this problem and advocate with them to keep these critically important programs in place. CUPE is going to do everything in our power to make sure these workers get what they are owed to the very letter of their collective agreement while we fight for to increases services for queer and trans youth because that is what it means to be in a progressive union.”

In recent years, CCGSD has focused on creating online resources whose reach far exceeds the small organization. Not Just The Tip was a multi-million dollar groundbreaking sexual health toolkit for educators that took years to produce and was used in schools across the country. The modules are no longer available as the entire CCGSD website, along with the much-needed resources, has been taken down.

“To have an organization that was dedicated to advocating and supporting queer and trans youth just disappear without a peep is shocking. To treat workers so badly and just abandon the community is an affront. They stripped their resources down and discarded workers who had already been living paycheck to paycheck during a cost of living crisis,” said Hahn. “For 19 years, this organization created community. This decision goes against the organization’s very DNA. Now it has no legacy and queer and trans youth have no home to go to.”

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