Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for being here today. Also, thank you for your moderation.
I have to start by saying that, 30 years after Canada lost a generation of the talents of gay men and the families lost their love, we're still dealing with the stigmatization. We're still having to organize as a community and come to Parliament to demand action from a government that is so slow to act.
I want to thank Mr. McClelland for bringing the testimony of those who are actually being impacted.
I'm glad we're here, I'm glad we have the directive and I'm glad we're doing the hearings, but I'm sad that it occurs at this point in a Parliament. We haven't even begun the process of figuring out how to reform the criminal law, so this will not happen until after the next election.
I hope one of the outcomes of these hearings is that members of Parliament are committed to this being an early piece of the agenda of the next Parliament.
I was recently in Whitehorse, meeting with Blood Ties, an organization that's a front-line service delivery group for those living with HIV. Their big concern was that, even though the prosecutorial directive is in place, there's been no education around that in the north. Therefore, the people most likely to be affected have no knowledge of the change in attitude of prosecutors.
I want to ask Mr. McClelland about that, in terms of those most likely to be affected.
Do they have knowledge that we're even moving in this direction, or is it still the stigmatization and the threat of prosecution that rules in their minds?