Many have already died, Elliott said, and the survivors are growing old waiting for Canada to acknowledge they were wronged—hounded, harassed, persecuted, and robbed of their livelihood, security, and dignity.
The campaign to identify and purge gays and lesbians from the military and public service emerged out of the paranoia of the Cold War starting in the 1950s, according to files obtained by researchers in the past two decades.
According to government records, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) spent decades following World War II investigating, surveilling, and questioning suspected gay and lesbian public servants, including members of the military, about their sexual orientation. At one point, the RCMP amassed a list of 9,000 people deemed suspect and subject to investigation. The Canadian government would often employ a device that would measure sweat and sexual reaction to certain words, phrases, and images—dubbed internally as the 'fruit machine'—to vet suspected LGBTQ government employees. The project was created through a government grant at the Carleton University Psychology Department.
LGBTQ Canadians were dismissed, sanctioned, or demoted.
Even after Pierre Trudeau famously decriminalized homosexuality—"there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation"—the government deemed LGBTQ Canadians unfit to serve in the military, at the RCMP, and even at arms-length branches like the National Film Board, the CBC, and Canada Post.
The stated purpose of the ban was Ottawa's fear that the Soviets could blackmail closeted gay and lesbian public servants for sensitive government information, even if that fear ultimately proved unfounded. The campaign continued in one way or another until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
The ban on LGBTQ service in the military itself wasn't overturned until 1992 after the courts ruled the ban violated the Charter.
Last month, the House of Commons defense committee voted to suggest the feds amend the service records of ex-military dishonorably discharged for their sexual orientation. If approved, up to 1,200 service members would be affected, according to an estimate from the military ombudsman.
Martine Roy is one of them.
She was targeted in the mid-1980s and is the plaintiff named in the lawsuit filed in Quebec Superior Court on Monday.
Roy was 20-years-old in 1984 when she was dishonorably discharged from the military after hours of interrogation and being labeled a "sexual deviant" for being a lesbian.
According to her statement of claim, Roy "experienced severe emotional trauma, which continues to this day. She struggled for years with drug addiction, underwent intensive therapy, had difficulty maintaining relationships, and lived with the constant fear and anxiety that she could not be her authentic self, lest the same thing would happen again."
The case is expected to be assigned to a judge and a schedule announced in the next few weeks.
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