We have a program that is accredited through the Université de Montreal. It's run by the province. It's called “Sexes, genres et orientations sexuelles : comprendre la diversité”.
It's offered free of charge to any health care professionals, community organizations or educational establishments that want to ask for training. It's voluntary, which means that someone is not obliged to take it, and it's voluntary mostly in terms of registration, so the people who come are generally people who want to follow it. One of the problems we have in promoting it is that it's often seen as being soft. Some health care professionals will take training on pharmacology, for example, but they won't agree to take training on sexuality or gender diversity because they see it as being much less important to their practice.
It's a two-day training. Depending on how long ago they were trained, they often come with worries about the notions that they have, knowing or thinking that these notions are incorrect, but they don't know what to replace them with so they just stay silent. They'll often say to people who say they're gay or lesbian or trans, “I don't deal with that. I can't work with that. I don't know anything about it.”
What we try to do is to reassure them that it doesn't take an awful lot of training to become more comfortable with these issues. It's a question of motivation. What we hear back from the community is that people educate their health care professionals. It's hard to educate your professional when you're in a vulnerable situation and when you don't necessarily have all the answers yourself.
It would be really important to make sure that at the college and university level this content is integrated across the board in health and social services, and education.