25 Years of Recognition: From the Benefits Act to Today’s Fight for Equality

In 2000, Canada passed the Modernization of Benefits and Obligations Act—a landmark law that formally recognized same-sex couples under federal statutes, a quiet but powerful shift that changed how queer relationships were seen and protected. In this episode, we meet writer and performer Steen Starr, whose art and activism captured the spirit of the time, and former MP Libby Davies, who was in Parliament when the Act was passed. Together, they reflect on the debates that shaped this milestone and the freedoms that came from it.

Listen to the episode:

Angela Misri 0:00 In 2000, Canadian law formally recognized a reality that many people had been living with for years, same sex couples in long term relationships. Parliament passed the Modernization of Benefits and Obligations Act, amending 68 different federal statutes to extend protections and responsibilities to common law partners and including same sex couples for the first time.

Angela Misri 0:30 Welcome to Canadian Time Machine, a podcast that explores key milestones in our country’s history. I’m Angela Misri.

Angela Misri 0:37 The Modernization of Benefits and Obligations Act wasn’t just a technical change. It affected everyday life, from pensions and hospital visits to tax and family benefits. It shaped families finances and the way relationships were recognized before we get into the legal and political debates that made this law possible, let’s hear from someone whose humour, art and perspective gives a window into how these things played out in her community.

Steen Starr 1:11 My name is Steen Starr. I live in Toronto. I’m an out lesbian. I have been for quite a few years now. I’m also a parent. I’m a writer, filmmaker, theater person, a landlord and self employed fundraising consultant.

Angela Misri 1:31 In the 1990s and 2000s, Steen was touring across Canada and the United States with a show called…

Steen Starr 1:37 Dr. Constance Cumming Wants To Help You Get Laid. It was a comedy show by as I described it, the world’s most arousing lesbian.

Angela Misri 1:46 Dr Constance Cumming started as a character that Steen would do at parties for fun, and she got such rave reviews that she turned Dr Constance into a more formal act.

Steen Starr 1:56 Dr. Constance is very, very, very clear about herself. She has extremely poor advice, misdirected advice, about how to have sex, how to find partners, where to have sex, and she’s very flamboyant. Yeah, she’s pretty funny. Actually, she’s been, she’s been back in the closet for a number of years.

Angela Misri 2:19 Steen actually brought Dr Constance back out of the closet, just for this episode.

Steen Starr 2:26 Well, well, I don’t know. It’s been years. Let’s see… one nice the one thing that many of you will think that lesbian sex is like lesbian humor, it does not exist. But I will assure you that having sex is one of the chief benefits of being lesbian, second only to learning how to farm organically, something like that…

Angela Misri 2:52 Writing and performing became a way for Steen to find her voice, share her perspective and engage with the world on her own terms.

Steen Starr 3:00 I read Agatha Christie a lot when I was young, so I began writing a murder mystery when I was very young. When I set out to write that, I sort of clearly thought that I need to write this from a male perspective, because that’s how things are written. That’s how you write a story. Maybe that’s why I didn’t finish it, to be honest. I really, really started writing after I came out. That was what I felt like, I have a voice now. I have something to talk about. I have an identity, I guess, and a politic around that.

Angela Misri 3:27 In the years leading up to the Modernization of the Benefits and Obligations Act, Steen was also a columnist for Xtra, a publication about LGBTQ2S+ news and culture.

Steen Starr 3:37 I was writing a column in Xtra about being a gay parent, and I used my column often as a place to speak out. So sometimes things would happen in my life, either related to being a parent or just related to being queer, where maybe I did get some backlash, and then I would write about it. I was a pretty feisty, out lesbian, pretty positive sexual perspectives in the world. So the women’s bathhouse was happening. I had gone to most of those, so that was a very active kind of community and friends for me.

Angela Misri 4:09 Bathhouses have roots that date back to ancient Greece and Rome, but they became quintessential to queer Canadian history around the 1970s. In cities like Toronto and Montreal, bathhouses hosted sex positive parties where queer people could exist, party, and love each other openly and without fear of judgment or harm. Police began raiding bathhouses in 1981. They used old “bawdy house” laws against queer spaces to invade their events and harass, violate and sometimes arrest their guests. In 2000, a queer and trans women’s bathhouse event at Toronto’s Pleasure Palace was raided, traumatizing the guests and sparking a class action lawsuit that eventually led to police reform.

Steen Starr 4:53 It happened to be the only one I was not at, because I was in San Francisco performing my Dr. Constance show. So there you go. You know, baked right into our civic structures was the homophobia that led the desire to go in and traumatize all those women. So, you know, a little less of that would have been good.

Angela Misri 5:12 Steen isn’t married and isn’t planning on getting married, but she’s always been committed to fighting for visibility.

Steen Starr 5:19 I think I was very happy and very inspired, maybe, by being on the sidelines in a way, even though I was fighting for visibility and for rights and be treated with dignity. I liked challenging things, I guess, for example. So I wasn’t interested in, you know, becoming an official couple sanctioned by the state, and having my marriage and my relationship recognized for me, there’s a different way of relating to people. There can be a different way of relating to children, to other important people in our lives. A lover may not be the be all and end all, and the one, number one person for whom you know everything relies in your life.

Angela Misri 5:56 And in the 25 years since the Modernization of Benefits and Obligations Act, Steen says she does encounter same sex married couples more and more often, and no matter your views on marriage, that’s certainly not a bad thing.

Steen Starr 6:08 There is a safety, a comfort, a freedom, obviously, in being able to be out in the world and not be worried about— not that many years ago, you know, somebody say, throwing an egg at me, or yelling at me, or, you know, even being, obviously, being violent, which you know still happens but, but I feel less of a threat of it now, for sure. Nothing’s ever perfect, but we certainly have a lot of freedom here that people in other parts of the world don’t have.

Angela Misri 6:36 Steen’s story shows what it means to live openly, to claim visibility and to fight for recognition, but those freedoms were hard won through years of advocacy and legal change. The Modernization of Benefits and Obligations Act didn’t appear out of nowhere. It followed a landmark Supreme Court case known as M v. H, where two Toronto women successfully challenged the definition of spouse under Ontario’s Family Law Act. The court ruled it was unconstitutional to exclude same sex couples from the rights and responsibilities of common law relationships. To help us understand the debates that were sparked and the rights that were granted, we spoke with former MP Libby Davies, Member of the Order of Canada, and longtime advocate for LGBTQ2S+ rights and social justice. Hi, Libby. It’s great to meet you. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you first became involved in politics and advocacy?

Libby Davies 7:39 Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you so much for inviting me on your podcast. I’m happy to be here. My name is Libby Davies, and I live in Vancouver, on the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Coast Salish peoples. Well, I’ve been an activist for 50 years plus. I first started as a young community organizer in Vancouver’s downtown East side when I was 19, when it was still called skid road, and we were literally fighting City Hall for better housing and community center and a library and parks and fighting against slum landlords. And it was kind of life and death issues, and it seems to be my trajectory to work on life and death issues. And then I became a city councilor. We eventually started running. We thought, well, if those guys at City Hall are ignoring us and not representing us, maybe we should run. So we did. Eventually got elected. So I was a city councilor for five terms, and then I later, I became a member of parliament for Vancouver East which includes the downtown East Side and East Vancouver, obviously, it’s a very amazing activist, vibrant community, and I was very honored to represent that federal riding in Ottawa for 18 years until 2015 when I decided not to run again. And so my motivation has always been fighting for people’s rights and equality and justice, social justice. And I sort of seem to be the kind of elected person who was always on something before it became mainstream. Like many of the issues I worked on, people who are unhoused and homeless, people who use drugs, sex worker rights, these were all issues that you know, nobody wanted to talk about. Nobody wanted to raise in Ottawa, and none of the ministers wanted to hear anything about it. So it was, even, it was an uphill battle, even within my own party, sometimes, to get these issues on the political agenda. But of course, now they’re much more mainstream, like when I got elected, people who use drugs and who are dying of overdoses were just simply seen as criminals and they were, you know, locked up and treated appallingly as subhuman. They were vilified and demonized. And so changing that narrative, changing the attitude in the public discourse, and then changing it politically, takes a few years, but eventually, you know, we’ve got the safe injection site open. And we got a National Inquiry on the missing and murdered women and many other issues. But I’ve always worked on queer rights, too, and then I came out myself in parliament in 2001 I guess I was the first lesbian. I don’t like labels, to tell you the truth, but there you go. I wear a label like everybody in 2001 and so that was an interesting experience, and that was just after the modernization of benefits. So it was about a year later.

Angela Misri 10:29 You were first elected as an MP in 1997 just a few years before the modernization of Benefits and Obligations Act was passed. What was the atmosphere like then, both in Parliament and across the country around queer rights?

Libby Davies 10:42 It’s really interesting to go back, because I just I’m today is my last day, on the Day of Pink tour. We’ve been moving across different communities in BC, Alberta and Manitoba, speaking to high school students and talking about this history of queer rights, particularly the modernization bill. And it’s fascinating, because today, what we sort of think of like, oh, yeah, okay, of course, people who are in same sex relationships should have the same benefits if they’re not married as straight couples. Of course we should. You should be able to marry the person you love, no matter what gender or sex they are, orientation and so on the one hand, while those things all feel normalized, which they should it to go back and look at what it was like 25 years ago. And that’s what I did. I actually went back and read the handset, the record of Parliament, because I was in the debate and I couldn’t quite remember what it was all about, you know, so 25 years ago, so I went back and read some of the handset, read my own speeches and what other people are saying. And I was like, whoa, this was pretty bad, the narrative, the stereotypes, and for the conservative, and I have to say, some liberal MPs too, who were opposed to that bill, the modernization of benefits. You know, before same sex marriage debate. They were very nasty. It was all that you’re threatening the family you’re threatening. You know, marriage. It was very negative. It was very personalized. It got even worse during the same sex marriage debate later, by the way, that would have been five years later, 2005 and so, you know, you’d expect Members of Parliament to be kind of respectful and representing their community, representing the public interest. This was a very nasty debate, and it reflected, I think, the fear, the division, the threat that people felt, you know. And I think I’m being generous, you know, and sort of saying, Oh yeah, we have to understand they felt threatened, but the way people lashed out because of that fear that they had. I mean, I think that still exists today. It’s sometimes more subtle, but we’re also seeing other fights going today, and maybe we can get on into that but, but back then, reading those debates in the House of Commons, they were pretty appalling. I don’t think that would happen today. Things have changed. Attitudes have changed. I don’t think you’d see elected reps saying the same kind of things in such a personalized way. I think it would be more subtle, but that homophobia, transphobia is still there, that fear of other. So yeah, it was very interesting to go back and now to go to schools today across the country and talk to younger people who never experienced any of that, and to hear from them, what is it like today.

Angela Misri 13:30 When the Act was introduced, what kinds of discussions or debates were taking place among MPs?

Libby Davies 13:35 That it was going to destroy marriage, the institution of marriage. It was going to destroy our values of the family. And of course, the evidence is the exact opposite. None of that happened. In fact, what happened is that, you know, our relationships, our families, are stronger because now we are recognized whether you’re a straight couple, whether you’re a same sex couple, or whether you’re a trans person. I mean, I think that issue is somewhat different, though. I think transphobia today is again on the rise, and we’re seeing that sort of backlash. It’s very nasty and very concerning. We certainly are seeing it in the US, but it’s creeping into Canada as well, and we certainly heard that when we were in Alberta. You know, the bills that have been passed in Alberta are quite frightful from Danielle Smith, so there’s still lots of battles before us, but I think overall, in terms of the general public, you know, there’s much more acceptance and openness.

Angela Misri 14:33 This law amended dozens of federal statutes. Can you walk us through what it meant in practice, what kinds of concrete changes it brought for same sex couples and common law partners.

Libby Davies 14:43 Well, it was an it was what we call an omnibus bill, which is usually a bill that amends many other bills. And they’re not that common in the parliament, because they’re usually very big. So this bill is actually very far reaching. It amended parliament. Possibly dozens and dozens, maybe even up to 100 other statutes around you know, health benefits, pension benefits, widower benefits, taxation, all kinds of things. So so it had all kinds of consequences for amending other federal laws that have to do with the application of benefits under federal jurisdiction. So from that point of view, it was incredibly far reaching. And you know, what’s been really interesting is that, of course, today nobody remembers the bill. It’s 25 years, and every place we’ve gone, you know, we say, Does anybody remember no, nobody remembers this bill. But it did have an enormous impact across the federal jurisdiction. So it was actually a very complicated bill. I remember at the time, that’s one of the narratives that the Conservatives and some of the Liberals put out, was like, Oh, this bill’s too big, it’s too complicated. We can’t understand this, right? I mean, that was just all window dressing. The real opposition was the threat that they saw to undermining their notion of what Canadian society was about. They were opposed to diversity and inclusion and equality for people. I mean, it’s, it’s that black and white, it’s either we have equality or we don’t. It’s it to me, it’s a legal question. It’s a question of human rights.

Angela Misri 16:23 Do you think the modernization of Benefits and Obligations Act helped to lay the groundwork for future equality legislation?

Libby Davies 16:30 It certainly would have set a precedent. But I don’t know if there’s another bill that, in and of itself, had a such far reaching impact on other federal jurisdictions. I mean, after the equal marriage bill we had, there was another bill. It was kind of interesting. When same sex couples started getting married, of course, as in heterosexual marriages, people started getting divorced. And so we had to have another bill, because it was sort of a glitch in that same sex marriage bill that you couldn’t get divorced. So that was actually kind of funny. I remember debating that and thinking, Oh, God, this is so weird, equal marriage, and here we are saying, yeah, it’s okay you get divorced too. It is about the equal application the law. That’s the foundation of this whole debate.

Angela Misri 17:16 You recently finished a tour speaking to students about the history of this bill. What are you hearing from them about how far we’ve come and the challenges that remain for the queer and trans communities today?

Libby Davies 17:26 Well, we heard from students who are quite young, and we heard very well heartbreaking stories really about how it’s still really hard to come out, especially in smaller communities. But what the students also told us is that, you know, they have faced instances where they do not feel safe in their school. They get bullied in the hallway, they get beat up, they get abused. They don’t feel safe at home, so sometimes school is the safest place, but if that environment is very kind of mixed, and they’re also facing abuse at school from other students so they don’t feel safe speaking with someone then, you know, that’s really, really very heavy for someone to go through. I mean, it’s really scary. So I think right now, there’s a lot of theater, and one of the messages that we gave to kids every day was that if we don’t stand up for our human rights, if we if we’re not vigilant, they slide away. Right? You can’t take it for granted, whether it’s in the queer community, whether it’s in the indigenous rights and dealing with colonization, whatever it is, if you’re not vigilant, it starts to disappear. And so that was a very strong and important message that I hope we brought to people’s attention, because we can see now there’s this second wave coming, and it’s being fueled by what’s going on in the States. But we even heard, for example, stories of trans people from the US who are hoping to come to Canada, and they’re finding it much harder now to get visas or to get into Canada than they did before. So that’s our federal immigration, right? You know, everybody thinks, oh, yeah, you know, everything’s okay in Ottawa. Well, it isn’t. The bureaucracy and the process makes it extremely difficult for people to assert their rights.

Angela Misri 19:12 Looking back 25 years later, what stands out to you most about this moment in Canadian history? What message do you hope young people take from the fight for equality that you helped lead?

Libby Davies 19:24 Yeah, well, I’ll give you another little example that was great that happened yesterday. I mean, first of all, to me, it’s not about hope. I’m actually fed up of hope. I don’t know what hope means to me. It’s about motivation. It’s let’s find out what motivates people and organize and mobilize and connect. The most important thing that we said to the students and to anyone we met is that we cannot allow ourselves to be isolated and disconnected. You know, we live in a world full of conflict. We live in a world that feels so scary to so. Many people, you know, I get that I can hardly bear to read the media every day. You know what’s going on in Gaza? You know, I’m a very strong advocate for Palestine, and have been for decades. It’s horrible out there. But if we allow ourselves to, kind of like, shrink back, if we don’t stand up and speak out, if we don’t take on injustice wherever it is, then we’re losing ground, and we have to stay connected, because it’s only by staying connected with each other that we can feel that sense of power and the strength of our voice. So to me, being out on this speaking tour, it affirmed it. For me, like being out there speaking, I felt stronger. I feel stronger now, right? And I’m hoping that the students and members of the public, because we did have quite a few community events too, that people went away feeling like, okay, we can take this on. We did have an amazing speaker yesterday who had been an RCMP officer. He said to the students, who’s heard about the purge, nobody. And of course, this was like the longest sort of witch hunt in Canada for homosexuals in the Foreign Service, the civil service, the military and RCMP went on for decades after McCarthyism and people were thrown out. He had been an RCMP officer. He had to resign because he was a homosexual, because he was seen in a gay bar. Oh, that was only two years ago that the apology for that happened by the federal government. So that’s something much more recent that a lot of people don’t even know about. So you’ll you’ll be hearing more about that, but to have these kinds of events where we talk about queer history, so that people can understand that what we do have today comes because of the struggles of the past. So people literally fought tooth and nail to change the law, to change attitudes and to assert those rights. And so, you know, that’s what I take away from all of this, that’s why we’re doing it, is to not take it for granted and to keep this struggle going so that those rights are upheld and maintained and are strong. It’s healthy that we can all be who we want to be. We should not be in a society where you feel ostracized or discriminated against or hated just because of who you are. Right? I mean, that is a terrible, terrible thing, and we have to just keep working to change that, to make sure that nobody feels that way.

Angela Misri 22:22 Thanks so much for joining us, Libby, and thank you for listening to Canadian Time Machine. This podcast receives funding from the Government of Canada and is created by the walrus lab. This episode was produced by Jasmine Rach and edited by Nathara Imenes. Amanda Cupido is the executive producer for more stories about historic Canadian milestones and the English and French transcripts of this episode. Visit the walrus.ca/canadian Heritage. There’s also a French counterpart to this podcast called Voyages dans l’histoire canadienne. So if you’re bilingual and want to listen to more, you can find that wherever you get your podcasts.