This Village Stands with Palestine

Queers for Palestine Ottawa Statement on Pride 2025

28 August 2025 • Occupied Algonquin Land

This statement is being hosted by CSO on behalf of Queers for Palestine - Ottawa (Q4P). If you have any questions, please contact Q4P at q4pottawa@proton.me

This year’s Capital Pride Parade was led by Grand Marshall Patience Plush, who invited Queers for Palestine - Ottawa (Q4P) as the Honoured Group. We were joined by two past Grand Marshalls and a vibrant cross-section of our Village: queer and trans leaders, drag performers, artists, frontline service providers, small business owners, and workers and community members of every kind.

For the second year in a row, our contingent was the largest in the parade. We marched in solidarity with the people of Gaza, including our queer Palestinian kin everywhere. Our colours, keffiyehs, chants, and music filled the streets with both celebration and resistance. We danced. We sang. We claimed joy. But we also made something else clear: Pride is not just a parade, Pride is our protest. We refuse to let our flags, our names, or our identities be co‑opted by politicians who enable genocide abroad and oppression at home.

In August 2024, Capital Pride released a statement in solidarity with Palestine, naming and condemning pinkwashing and the Israeli genocide in Gaza, and committing to further action. In response, Sutcliffe and other officials and corporations boycotted Pride and withdrew support from our community. Supported by its 2SLGBTQIA+ community, Capital Pride stood its ground and our city saw its most well-attended Pride in its history.

In late July 2025, Capital Pride quietly removed any trace of their 2024 solidarity statement from their web page and socials.

In response, Q4P brought together 70+ organizations, 50+ local drag performers, and more than 1,400 community members to demand that Capital Pride reaffirm its 2024 statement of solidarity with Palestine and take concrete steps toward Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS).

Capital Pride leadership have publicly and privately expressed that they still stand by the guiding values of their 2024 statement of solidarity with Palestine. Executive director Callie Metler and board member David Breault encouraged us—performers, vendors, and other participants—to be loud and proud in our solidarity with Palestine. But due to unspecified pressures from the Mayor’s office and other actors, they now refused to make their “guiding values” public.

On August 24th, at Wellington and O’Connor at 1:40pm, the Grand Marshal and Q4P called a stop to the parade. We played music, danced, chanted, and canvassed through the Parade inviting others to join us. And we demanded that Capital Pride stand publicly by the pro‑Palestine values they support privately, and that Sutcliffe apologize to the community for last year’s boycott.

At the Q4P truck, Capital Pride’s ED told Q4P negotiators that they were ready to immediately announce next steps on adopting PACBI and holding a BDS townhall - although neither have gone live to date. Breault received our demands for the Mayor and claimed he would relay them. Now Mark Sutcliffe had a choice: apologize and take accountability for his repeated attempts to coerce Ottawa’s queer community into silence on the issue of Israel’s ongoing genocide, or leave the parade.

In further discussion, it was agreed that the Q4P contingent would split off and finish its own separate Parade, down Bank Street and into our historic Village, allowing the corporate Pride Parade to continue down O’Connor Street as planned. As this message was being relayed through the large contingent of 500+ queer, trans, and allied community members, Capital Pride abruptly announced the parade’s cancellation on Instagram.

With Capital Pride’s backing, Sutcliffe chose to cancel the entire parade rather than face accountability for his anti-Palestinian racism, his bullying of queer and trans organizations, and his complicity in silencing criticism of Israel.

But hundreds more joined us as we reclaimed Wellington and Bank and finished our own Parade with our Grand Marshall, into our historic Village. Our unions, allies, and community members linked arms to keep us safe as we marched together. We filled the streets with chants, music, and celebration. Joyful. Defiant. Free.

What happened on Sunday was simple: queer and trans people reclaimed Pride from straight politician Mark Sutcliffe and his friends at Capital Pride. For two years now, Mayor Mark Sutcliffe, a cis straight man with a powerful platform and a long record of conditional allyship, has tried to dictate what Ottawa’s queer community can and cannot say. By refusing to take accountability and pressuring Capital Pride to cancel the parade rather than stand with its community, he has made it clear that he cares more about silencing criticism of Israel than he does about queer and trans people.

These are shameful decisions that demand accountability. Sutcliffe and other boycotters cannot be welcome in our community’s spaces until they apologize. And Capital Pride must be accountable to the 2LGBTQIA+ community, not to politicians and lobbyists.

Our solidarity cannot and will not be silenced. Pride has always been a protest, and that means it doesn’t belong to politicians, corporations, or unelected boards. Pride belongs to the people. Pride belongs to the Village.

This year, we marched forward with our true allies including labour unions, social movements, and community members standing shoulder to shoulder for justice. Together, we exposed false allies, rejected pinkwashing, and reclaimed Pride as a space of resistance, solidarity, and liberation.

We are building a fighting queer movement: one that stands against genocide, resists co‑optation, and struggles for freedom for all oppressed peoples.

The Village this year will be remembered as a story of queer communities claiming a Pride that is for the people and not for profit - exposing false allies like genocidal politicians and complicit corporations, and forging alliances on the streets with social and labour movements.

The people united will never be defeated

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.

With love and solidarity,

Queers for Palestine Ottawa