{"id":3476,"date":"2020-06-07T22:53:22","date_gmt":"2020-06-07T22:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cmg.ca\/toronto\/cbc\/?p=3476"},"modified":"2020-06-07T23:13:04","modified_gmt":"2020-06-07T23:13:04","slug":"june-is-pride-month-a-history-lesson-in-how-our-the-cmg-was-instrumental-in-gaining-rights-to-same-sex-benefits-for-lgbtq-canadians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cmg.ca\/toronto\/cbc\/june-is-pride-month-a-history-lesson-in-how-our-the-cmg-was-instrumental-in-gaining-rights-to-same-sex-benefits-for-lgbtq-canadians\/","title":{"rendered":"June is Pride Month: A history lesson in how the CMG was instrumental in gaining rights to same-sex benefits for LGBTQ Canadians"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Denis-Martin Chabot in 2005.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Denis-Martin Chabot along with a CBC colleague at work in 1993.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Denis-Martin Chabot in 2016.<\/p><\/div>\n

June is Pride Month in Toronto.  Like so many community events, Pride festivities this June have been cancelled due to the ongoing pandemic.  But that doesn\u2019t mean we can\u2019t celebrate equality and remember the victories we\u2019ve won in the past for our LGBT colleagues.    <\/p>\n

In 2016,  Denis-Martin Chabot retired from CBC Radio-Canada after 32 years working as an anchor, local and network reporter.<\/p>\n

His important legacy lives on for all gay and lesbian employees at CBC Radio-Canada. In 1993, Chabot was a legislative reporter in Edmonton.  His partner had Huntington\u2019s disease.  Chabot wanted to get spousal health benefits and pension survivor benefits for him. But CBC Radio-Canada refused.  So he decided to fight.<\/p>\n

Chabot says it wouldn\u2019t have been possible without the backing of the Canadian Media Guild.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew I had job security. I knew I was privileged to have a job and knew they couldn\u2019t fire me because I had a union. I had to do it for those who couldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

CMG filed a grievance asserting that by refusing to grant same-sex benefits, CBC Radio-Canada was discriminating based on sexual orientation — a violation of the collective agreement.  At the time, employers were taking the position that granting benefits to people who were legally single would cost money because, by extension, they argued benefits would have to be extended to people in all types of relationships. The grievance went to arbitration and, in February 1995, the arbitrator, Donald Munroe, decided firmly in the Guild\u2019s favour. <\/p>\n

Within months, CBC Radio-Canada announced it would provide same-sex benefits for health, dental and life insurance plans. The great victory is a case cited in legal histories of gay rights in Canada and a superb example of how union contracts can change lives. But the fight wasn\u2019t over.  The bigger battle was over the CBC\u2019s refusal to grant survivor pension benefits despite the arbitrator\u2019s orders to do so.  Pension issues are more complicated because they involve the Income Tax Act, which didn\u2019t recognize same-sex couples.  CBC-Radio Canada (and other employers) said it would be more expensive to pay for pension benefits for same-sex couples as a result.<\/p>\n

CBC-Radio Canada applied for a judicial review of the arbitrator\u2019s ruling. In July 1998, the judge at the Court of Queen\u2019s Bench in Alberta sided with the Guild \u2013 Again.<\/p>\n

The corporation continued to fight hard against allowing same-sex pension survivor benefits. Senior CBC managers threatened to take the case to the Supreme Court of Canada, but ultimately the law overtook them and they found themselves on the wrong side of history.<\/p>\n

With similar cases winding their way through courts and human rights tribunals, the Liberal government introduced the Modernization of Benefits and Obligations Act (MBOA) in 2000.<\/p>\n

That gave same-sex common-law partners the same benefits as opposite-sex common-law partners, at last.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking at it now with 2016 eyes, it was a big deal to come out publicly back then,\u201d Chabot says. \u201cI didn\u2019t like my life exposed. But I would not hesitate to do it again. I would do it in a Heartbeat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that same-sex marriage has been legal in Canada for over 15 years, it\u2019s hard to believe this was the hard-fought battle it was. It was a case of union leadership being ahead of the law when it comes to human rights. That\u2019s something about which we should all be proud.<\/p>\n

Updated from the <\/em>original story wri<\/em>tten in 2016 by former CMG national president Lise Lareau<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\" <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

June is Pride Month in Toronto.  Like so many community events, Pride festivities this June have been cancelled due to the ongoing pandemic.  But that doesn\u2019t mean we can\u2019t celebrate equality and remember the victories we\u2019ve won in the past… Read more »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmg.ca\/toronto\/cbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmg.ca\/toronto\/cbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmg.ca\/toronto\/cbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmg.ca\/toronto\/cbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmg.ca\/toronto\/cbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3476"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cmg.ca\/toronto\/cbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3486,"href":"https:\/\/cmg.ca\/toronto\/cbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3476\/revisions\/3486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmg.ca\/toronto\/cbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmg.ca\/toronto\/cbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmg.ca\/toronto\/cbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}