The head of Rainbow Collective is happy Thunder Bay is considering making Council meetings more inclusive.
Jason Veltri is going to speak to Council Monday to support a motion that includes calling everyone at the meetings by gender neutral terms.
The motion from the City Clerk is an update to Council’s procedural by-law, which was last replaced in 2012.
The rules for meetings would require attendees to address staff, the Mayor and Councillors by their job title and last name, and people appearing before Council would be called Deputant or Presenter instead of Mr. or Ms..
“It’s really important, the work that the City Clerk has undertaken, to really establish the corporation as working toward a much more inclusive work environment for everyone,” says Veltri.
Veltri adds the motion goes further than some would have expected, but shows the community and other municipalities that it can be done.
The new motion on the agenda also includes rules for conducting virtual meetings post-pandemic.
Veltri brought the topic of gender-neutral language up to Council at a meeting in 2019, and is glad to see the city has explored the idea.
“They are listening,” notes Veltri. “[A suggestion] may not happen as quickly as many people want it to, but at the end of the day, we’re very happy to see the movement to put this procedural by-law on the floor, and we’re hopeful that Council will accept the recommendations from the City Clerk.”
The city also recently removed “Transgender/Transitioning” as a separate gender identity option from its Get Involved site, at the request of members of Rainbow Collective’s Trans Leadership Council. The objection was that transgender is not a separate gender identity, but an adjective that describes genders like male or female.
