Hello. On behalf of the EMHC, thank you for addressing this important issue and for inviting us to participate. To provide context for my remarks, in addition to my role with the EMHC, I am co-chair of Alberta's sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections strategy and a national director with the Community-Based Research Centre.
I must admit to the committee that I never really planned to do this type of work. At four, I wanted to be a paleontologist. At 12, I'm pretty sure I just wanted to be Shania Twain. I believed I could be anything, but at the age of 23, when I was diagnosed with HIV, those possibilities no longer seemed endless. I'll never know for certain if I would be HIV-positive if I weren't gay, but I do know that as a gay man, I was 131 times more likely to be infected than my straight counterparts were. As long as Canada has been a country, its queer people have had to start from several steps behind the rest. Whereas others have had the opportunity to thrive, so often we've had to fight to simply stay alive.
Inspired by early HIV activism, the EMHC was founded in response to the extreme health disparities facing our community and the lack of an effective response from the institutions tasked with our well-being. In just three years, the EMHC has grown from an informal gathering of community members in a living room—over a cheap case of beer, because we had no money—to a robust organization with a budget of $250,000, staff and a variety of innovative strategies that address the unique needs of our community. This is despite the fact that up until a few months ago, all of our work was 100% volunteer-powered, with many of our efforts requiring us to circumvent the health system instead of being supported by it.
As I look back on the early figures who inspired our work, I think perhaps they too did not plan to do this work, but they instead selflessly answered the call to serve those they loved, their communities and their country. The impact of their service is apparent throughout every part of Canadian society, not least in the lives they have saved, including the nearly 70,000 people living with HIV in this country who will live and not die, because of their contributions. I am one of them.
Today this committee has the opportunity to honour that legacy and to ensure that someone's sexual orientation or gender identity doesn't require them to start life at a disadvantage, compromise their health or limit their possibilities. This study is not business as usual. It's the righting of an injustice that has robbed us of countless lives and reduced the quality of so many others.
While we agree with many recommendations before this committee, we recognize the challenge of trying to address every issue that has been raised. We will reinforce four that we believe could have significant structural and sustained impact.
One, though there are many ways in which quality of life is reduced for queer people in this country, for some people these issues are particularly urgent. This is especially so for trans and gender-diverse Canadians, many of whom experience significant barriers to gender-affirming care, such as hormone therapy or gender-affirming surgeries—care that will not simply improve their lives but in some cases save them. We urge the committee to take comprehensive action, working with all levels of government, to ensure that transpeople across Canada have equitable access to gender-affirming care regardless of where they reside or their financial means.
Two, while we acknowledge the government's current investment in queer health, detailed in several submitted briefs, one glance at the extreme disparities shared with this committee shows us that in terms of both scale and application, the current investment is insufficient. We recommend the establishment of queer-specific funding streams within any department that addresses issues that disproportionately impact the health of queer communities.
Three, deficits in queer medical knowledge and cultural competency amongst health care providers remain primary barriers to queer health access, resulting in many individuals either not disclosing their sexual or gender minority status or delaying access to care. We recommend that the government invest funds in and work with all relevant stakeholders to ensure that health care providers are adequately trained to provide knowledgeable and culturally competent care to sexual and gender minority individuals across this country.
Four, much of our work involves the correction of existing systems that fail to address our needs. However, with the government's new commitment to move forward on three foundational elements of a national pharmacare plan, we have the opportunity to get it right from the beginning. As the government moves forward, it must engage experts in queer health to ensure that our unique needs are addressed, including access to HIV medication for treatment and prevention, HPV immunization and access to hormone therapy.
To conclude, once again I'd like to thank the committee for having us and we are happy to answer any questions you have.
I will now pass it over to Jeff Chalifoux, harm reduction coordinator at the EMHC and co-chair of Edmonton's 2 Spirit Society.