An Important Message to Pride Toronto Members, Community Partners, and Sponsors
Earlier this week, a Pride Toronto member circulated allegations with respect to three of our 2018 and 2019 grant applications, including the use and reporting of those funds that have negatively impacted the Indigenous community.
Under the leadership of our new Board and our new Executive Director, we have devoted the better part of the past year getting to the bottom of these legacy issues, and fixing our processes to ensure the integrity of our work is of the highest calibre.
As part of our system-wide review, in October 2021, Pride Toronto engaged KPMG to undertake a “Grant Compliance Review” to investigate and provide us with recommendations to ensure our processes going forward meet the highest standards. It is important to note that KPMG’s work included meeting with the member referenced above and reviewing all documents he provided.
We have kept in close contact with our funding partners and will continue to do so as the KPMG review, which is almost complete, is finalized over the next few weeks.
We will release KPMG’s review publicly. When we do so, we won’t sugar coat what went wrong – and unfortunately, things did go wrong. We will be accountable to our members and funding partners and, most importantly, we will make this right, especially for the Indigenous and marginalized people and groups we work with.
On behalf of the Board of Directors,
Grant Gonzales (he/him)
Co-Chair, Board of Directors
Yuri Hernandez (they/them)
Co-Chair, Board of Directors
