Evidence of meeting #140 for Health in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was queer.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Jody Jollimore  Executive Director, Community-Based Research Centre
Joël Xavier  Administrator, Conseil québécois LGBT
Gabriel Girard  Researcher, Sociologist, Centre de recherche de Montréal sur les inégalités sociales et les discriminations
Rachel Loewen Walker  Executive Director, OUTSaskatoon
Martha Smith-Norris  Board Chair, OUTSaskatoon

5:05 p.m.

Conservative

Marilyn Gladu Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON

Jody.

5:05 p.m.

Executive Director, Community-Based Research Centre

Jody Jollimore

I think targeted programs are what we need currently, because we see gaps in the way care is generally delivered. The goal would be to get to a place where it doesn't matter if you're a physician in your riding or in the centre of Toronto; your competency would be sufficient enough that you could deliver care. Until then, of course, we need to invest in targeted programs.

Now, it's not one size fits all. Some folks will want to go to a very queer centre, one with rainbows and things like that, but others may want a discreet entrance. That may not change even once we deal with the stigma and shame; it's just a difference in terms of how we offer the services and the uptake.

5:05 p.m.

Conservative

Marilyn Gladu Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON

Okay.

Here's the next tough question. We've been talking about LGBTQ and all the health issues. Are there different health-specific concerns for lesbians versus trans people versus gay men?

5:05 p.m.

Executive Director, OUTSaskatoon

Rachel Loewen Walker

Yes, there are. I know that the committee has heard a lot about gay men, so I won't speak to that. We're starting some work on gender-based violence. That's one area, so I can speak to that. We're finding that trans women in particular are at greatest risk. I would not even use “risk” language; they experience the most gender-based violence, as do women. In fact, bisexual women experience heightened gender-based violence, which is something we need to figure out: Why is that going on?

There's also the invisibility. For women, bi women, trans women, gender non-binary and trans men there's greater invisibility, which includes, as you've already heard within testimony, less research on these populations and less services dedicated to these groups. So we know less about what exactly is going on and we need to know more.

5:10 p.m.

Conservative

Marilyn Gladu Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON

Gabriel.

5:10 p.m.

Researcher, Sociologist, Centre de recherche de Montréal sur les inégalités sociales et les discriminations

Gabriel Girard

I'll speak very briefly, because you've already heard a great deal about the concerns of gay men.

I want to add that gay men—I'll try to explain this by using the acronym MSM, or men who have sex with men—within the same category also have very different needs. This variety under the letter “g” must also be taken into account.

5:10 p.m.

Conservative

Marilyn Gladu Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON

Very good.

Now I have a tricky question on blood screening. It seems to me from the testimony we've heard that when it comes to HIV, I think 50% of the people who are getting HIV now are actually women who are with men who have sex with men. Is there a screening test? We talk about how we want to make sure that gay men can donate blood. The concern would be about the 130 times the risk of AIDS or HIV. I think that risk probably also exists in some percentage of the heterosexual population. Is there any screening test for that?

5:10 p.m.

Executive Director, Community-Based Research Centre

Jody Jollimore

I just want to get your sources on that one, Marilyn, sorry. The 50% of new infections are women who are having sex with men who have sex with men?

5:10 p.m.

Conservative

Marilyn Gladu Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON

I may be wrong about the number, but when we were going across the country, we heard testimony that when it comes to HIV infections.... And, in fact, I thought it was in Montreal that they were talking about how there's a large percentage now of women, actually, who are ending up with HIV.

5:10 p.m.

Executive Director, Community-Based Research Centre

Jody Jollimore

It's my understanding that gay, bi and other men who have sex with men still represent the majority of new infections in almost every jurisdiction, with maybe the exception of Saskatchewan.

5:10 p.m.

Executive Director, OUTSaskatoon

Rachel Loewen Walker

Yes, that is true.

5:10 p.m.

Executive Director, Community-Based Research Centre

Jody Jollimore

That is true. I know there have been stats thrown around about increases like one hundredfold, two hundredfold among women. That does happen in some areas, but we're still talking about relatively small absolute numbers.

5:10 p.m.

Conservative

Marilyn Gladu Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON

Okay.

5:10 p.m.

Executive Director, Community-Based Research Centre

Jody Jollimore

I can't speak to the number of infections coming from heterosexual sex as a result of the partner being infected with HIV, but we definitely know that happens. I would challenge folks to look at the stats. If you look at a city like Vancouver, you see that 60% of new infections are gay men; but then when you look at smaller Prince George, you see that only 2% are gay men, because there's this large heterosexual category that doesn't exist anywhere else.

Is it possible that these people are just not out, so they're not being recorded as having MSM infections? We know that's the case because we have data that says that up to 60% of guys are not out to their health care provider. If you're not out to your doctor, why are you going to tell this public health nurse who just told you you have HIV?

5:10 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bill Casey

Now we go to Ms. Sidhu.

5:10 p.m.

Liberal

Sonia Sidhu Liberal Brampton South, ON

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here.

In Brampton we have an organization called Youth Beyond Barriers and we heard from OUTSaskatoon and about Pride Home. Ms Walker talked about Enchanté Canada.

Can you talk about Enchanté Canada?

5:10 p.m.

Executive Director, OUTSaskatoon

Rachel Loewen Walker

Absolutely.

Enchanté Canada is new. It's two months old. The incorporation process is happening right now, but it's a network of LGBTQ2 centres and groups from across Canada.

In September last year, we brought 38 people from every province and every territory in Canada to Saskatoon to gather for our first-time meeting. It was an opportunity to say, what do you need? What's going on? What can we do to build this network and build our capacity? It's modelled off CenterLink, a network in the U.S. There are 280 LGBT centres in the U.S. and it's been operating for, I think, 25 years. I was attending their conferences, and so a group of folks in Canada decided that we needed something like that locally.

The LGBTQ2 secretariat was a great support in bringing us together and ESDC is the funding body from the federal government, and we receive support through that to bring people together. Our second meeting was in Ottawa in February.

5:10 p.m.

Liberal

Sonia Sidhu Liberal Brampton South, ON

We all know about stigma and discrimination, and OUTSaskatoon has some module to educate health workers or to train health workers.

Do you have a module for public awareness or anything that you can explain to us?

5:10 p.m.

Executive Director, OUTSaskatoon

Rachel Loewen Walker

Do you mean in terms of education models?

5:10 p.m.

Liberal

Sonia Sidhu Liberal Brampton South, ON

Yes.

5:10 p.m.

Executive Director, OUTSaskatoon

Rachel Loewen Walker

We have education modules geared for schools, businesses, corporations, the City of Saskatoon, the Saskatoon police department. We tailor it to our audience so we have many different modules. In terms of a provincial strategy, for example, what would be fantastic is a curriculum strategy. We don't have something like that, but it would be fantastic to build that in partnership with the province because it would enable all of us to get that education in at the ground level.

5:15 p.m.

Liberal

Sonia Sidhu Liberal Brampton South, ON

Can somebody talk about homophobia in homeless shelters?

5:15 p.m.

Executive Director, Community-Based Research Centre

Jody Jollimore

You run the homeless program.

5:15 p.m.

Executive Director, OUTSaskatoon

Rachel Loewen Walker

It's a big part of why we created Pride Home. Number one, there are no youth shelters in Saskatoon so there's that gap to begin with. For the shelters that do exist for adults, there are lots of trans women who are in those shelters and their treatment is despicable. They're treated very badly, so we're often navigating with workers and trying to do that health care navigation with them to make sure that trans women are safe in the shelter.

One of the biggest things for trans people and gender non-binary people is that shelters are gendered. There's a male building and a female building, and when you look at youth group homes, they're all gendered. Start looking around; they're all gendered. For non-binary youth, they're forced to fit into a home that doesn't reflect who they are. Their workers aren't using their correct pronouns and names. Having a home that's non-gendered takes that huge barrier out of the equation. We would say that for an adult shelter, if such a thing were to be created, having a similar strategy of not having gendered floors would immediately remove one of the biggest barriers.

5:15 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bill Casey

Now we'll go to Mr. Davies for our last question.