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Emergency Preparedness Policy and Social Programs for the LGBT Community in Canada
Canada ranks as one of the most advanced countries globally regarding the legal recognition of the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) peoples. It legalized same-sex sexual activity in 1969 through the enactment of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, and most of its large cities have designated gay areas and communities. Additionally, Canada has some of the highest social acceptance rates of homosexuality globally, with various surveys showing that acceptance of LGBT rights such as same-sex marriage and the right to adopt children range between 70 percent and 87 percent among Canadians (Ross & Khanna, 2015).
Despite Canada’s acceptance and protection of LGBT rights, the country’s emergency preparedness policies and social programs are largely not inclusive of the needs of LGBT communities (Smith, 2006). Research shows that the world over, emergencies often exacerbate the prejudices that marginalized people face and increase their vulnerability. Even though disaster risk reduction and relief protocols in Canada are increasingly sensitive to LGBT needs, they often overlook the specific vulnerabilities that are characteristic to these groups of people (Smith, 2006). In particular, LGBT people face considerable challenges regarding access to requisite healthcare services, accommodation, and social support services in the wake of disasters.
Canada’s Emergency Management Policy Framework
Canada is prone to natural disasters, with the most common being floods, wildfires, hurricanes, and tornadoes. Examples of such disasters which occurred recently include: wildfires in Slave Lake and Fort McMurray, Alberta in 2011 and 2016 respectively; the 2003 Alberta floods; the tornadoes in Goderich, Ontario, in 2011 and Pine Lake, Alberta, in 2000; as well as the 2003 Hurricane Juan, which devastated some parts of Atlantic Canada. The Emergency Management Act provides the policy framework for emergency preparedness and response in the country. The Ministry of Public Safety coordinates the activities of various federal government agencies and institutions in the implementation of the provisions of this act, which include the mobilization of resources for meeting the needs of victims of disasters in temporary emergency shelters and healthcare settings (Public Safety Canada, 2018). Additionally, the provinces and territories have their emergency management legislation, which outlines the role of municipalities as well as provincial ministers in dealing with emergency management within their jurisdictions (Henstra & McBean, 2005).
Emergency Preparedness Policy for the Healthcare Needs of the LGBT Community
One of the areas in which Canadian policy displays deficiencies regarding emergency response and access to services is access to requisite healthcare by LGBT individuals in the wake of disasters. Ignorance and lack of knowledge among healthcare personnel regarding the unique healthcare needs of the LGBT community contribute towards disparities in access to medical services during and after disasters. These disparities arise due to ignorance among healthcare personnel that lead to assumptions about the sex, gender, and sexuality of LGBT individuals as well as ignorance about their predisposition to a higher risk for mental health conditions, which worsens in the wake of disaster-induced trauma (Daley & MacDonnell, 2011).
Federal government policy, as well as the emergency response policies of the provinces of Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, Quebec, and British Columbia, recognize and emphasize the need to ensure that the LGBT community has access to healthcare services just like any other Canadian after disasters, but fails to recognize the specific healthcare needs of LGBT individuals or make provisions for the mobilization of resources to meet these needs (Smith, 2006). For instance, there were reports of a general lack of transgender-related healthcare services such as access to hormone therapy in southwest Alberta and the Calgary Region following the 2013 Alberta floods. This situation is unfair to the LGBT community considering that the disaster response aspects of the federal emergency management plan, as well as the corresponding emergency management plans at the provincial and territorial levels, have provisions for ensuring the continued accessibility of crucial medications for individuals with chronic medical conditions such as hypertension and diabetes (Public Safety Canada, 2018).
Emergency Preparedness Policy for the Social Service Needs of the LGBT Community
The legal recognition of the LGBT community in Canada has considerably facilitated their ability to access social-based services during emergency response through social programs facilitated by provincial governments, the federal ministries of Health, Children’s Services, Labor, and Seniors and Housing, as well as various community and social organizations. However, the shelter protocols of both federal and provincial emergency management plans lack information and guidelines on the categorization and care for LGBT people seeking shelter following disasters (Public Safety Canada, 2018). These protocols use the family unit as the basis for distributing relief services, an approach that often puts LGBT people at a disadvantage because many of them do not live within the traditional family unit. Many LGBT individuals tend to be forced from the living situations of their family due to prejudice and stigma. The same prejudice can prevent LGBT individuals from living with their families from accessing adequate material aid due to bias within the household.
Even in the absence of disasters, LGBT people are more vulnerable to homelessness and low-income situations. As a result, they are more vulnerable to homelessness and loss of income that often afflicts the victims of disasters than the rest of the population (Gorman-Murray, Dominey-Howes, & Mckinnon, 2014). Despite this vulnerability, Canadian emergency management plans both at the national and provincial level distribute resources to victims equally, but often focusing on families that have children even though LGBT individuals have the highest likelihood of remaining homeless long after relief efforts have ceased (Public Safety Canada, 2018). Staff at the shelters rarely implement this discriminatory distribution of material aid and other support services willingly. In most cases, they are merely uninformed of the unique needs of LGBT people. Programs tend to contribute to this challenge by failing to collect data on non-conventional gender and sexual identities. Key forms, such as intake forms that victims need to fill before receiving services often lack LGBT identities, especially transgender and non-binary gender identities (Gorman-Murray, Dominey-Howes, & Mckinnon, 2014).
Additionally, social programs in most Canadian provinces fail to recognize the fact that LGBT individuals are more vulnerable to unemployment in the wake of natural disasters than the rest of the population. LGBT individuals often require greater material support than other groups of people until they can regain their financial footing because discrimination and stigma make it harder for them to get jobs than other people. For instance, Alberta’s Income Support program gives priority to disabled individuals and families with children in the financial support of victims who lost their income generation capabilities due to disasters. Similarly, Alberta’s Housing First program gives precedence to the groups mentioned above and fails to recognize that LGBT individuals are just as vulnerable to homelessness and loss of income (Alberta Government, 2017).
How to make LGBT Communities feel that they belong in times of Disaster
Although current policy on emergency preparedness is relatively non-inclusive of the needs of the LGBT community, lobbying by LGBT activist groups is bringing the issue to the attention of policymakers. Changes taking place in Alberta serve as good examples of the policy remediation that has emerged from these lobbying efforts. The government of Alberta recently initiated a Youth Plan to end homelessness among the youth within its jurisdiction. This plan is outstanding in its scope because it recognizes the exceptional vulnerability of LGBT youth to unemployment and homelessness. The Plan, titled Supporting Healthy and Successful Transitions to Adulthood: A Plan to Prevent and End Youth Homelessness, prioritizes subpopulations of youth who have a disproportionately high representation among homeless individuals, including LGBT youth (Alberta Government, 2017). One of the initial stages of the plan involved the convening of a youth homelessness symposium which drew together stakeholders from the social services sector, the health sector, and youth workers. Questions, surveys, and group activities that were undertaken during the symposium helped to establish that the frequency and type of LGBT cultural competency training that healthcare workers, shelter workers, youth-serving agencies, and housing providers receive during emergency management training is considerably inadequate to facilitate the provision of services that meet the unique needs of LGBT individuals.
The outcome of the symposium was the establishment of a working group with representation from all parts of Alberta province whose purpose is to develop policy recommendations regarding the adoption of strategies that allow emergency management programs to respond to the needs of LGBT youth adequately. One of the policy recommendations of the working group is the provision of specific training to all emergency responders that instills them with the cultural competency that allows them to meet the unique needs of LGBT youth (Alberta Government, 2017). Undoubtedly, these efforts will help LGBT youth to feel they belong in times of disaster and, hopefully, sets the stage for other provincial governments, as well as the state government, to adopt emergency management policies that are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community.
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