Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for being here.
I particularly want to thank Mr. Peck, as a gay man of a certain age, for reminding people that there are some positive things here to work on. I think that's very important. It also helps attack stigmatization, by noting those positive things we've done. I do include the directive in that case, even though it's narrow.
Now, of course, as a gay man of a certain age, I'm always impatient with our response to HIV/AIDS. I've said before in this committee that I'm glad we're doing these hearings. My concern is that we're doing them late in the Parliament. It's important that the initiative coming out of these hearings not be lost over an election period, and that we continue this work.
Having said all that as a kind of preface, I want to go back to something that was raised indirectly a few times in the presentations. This is the justice committee. I'd like to be talking about various forms of testing, but this is probably not the forum for that, except with regard to criminalization as a barrier. All of you, or almost all of you, mentioned other barriers in the criminal justice system to combatting the HIV/AIDS epidemic. I want to go back to Dr. Mercure. You talked in particular about criminalization of sex work. Can you talk more about other aspects of using the criminal law in ways that inhibit our ability to address this crisis?