Justice Committee on May 7th, 2019

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you very much, Mr. Garrison.

Now we're going to go to Mr. McKinnon.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you all for coming here today.

Ms. Williams, you said that the directive doesn't go far enough. I understand, of course, that the directive only applies in certain jurisdictions. I don't want to talk about the jurisdictions where it doesn't apply, but on the directive itself, could you give us more specifics? I know it's been talked about already, but maybe you could drill further into that.

[Shelley Williams]

Again, I think the directive is absolutely a step forward and is extremely welcomed and positive. The fact that we haven't reformed so that it actually removes it from the law, from the sexual assault components of the law, is problematic, as is that it's not based on transmission.

Because it doesn't go far enough and there are elements of vagueness to it, we, HIV Edmonton, feel that it needs to be stronger.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you.

I have another question here from Mr. Boissonnault. I'll get to that shortly.

There's no time left in this Parliament to change the law, but there is potentially time to change the HIV directive. If we had some specific changes that you could recommend, that might be something we could act on more proactively. Is that something you can respond to or anyone can respond to at this point?

[Dr. Kristopher Wells]

Again we talk about what was mentioned by all the speakers, the modes of transmission. We know specifically, for example, the use of condoms virtually gives zero chance of transmission. We heard about oral sex as well. I think those are immediate things that we can do. We can make sure that we're clarifying with the most recent scientific data following, for example, the June 2018 international scientific consensus on criminalization. I think that's a good starting point to make sure that those guidelines are in keeping with the international scientific expert consensus.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you.

Ms. Williams, could you speak about the availability of rapid testing?

[Shelley Williams]

Do you mean point-of-care testing? Rapid testing, it's just not around enough. At least, I don't think it's consistent across the country. It needs to be absolutely accessible and available to people so that individuals who want to get tested right away can get tested right away and know the results quickly.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

I understand there are no kits available for that in Canada.

[Shelley Williams]

There aren't kits available in terms of your take-home testing kits. Some health areas are looking at kits that people can pick up, take and then take that to a lab, but they're still not accessible everywhere and they're not at-home, take-home testing. I think all of them should be available because it will move us forward.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Drs. Tyndall and Wells, would you care to comment as well?

[Dr. Kristopher Wells]

I can give an example. In the United States, in Fort Lauderdale, if you go out to the LGBT community and you go out to a bar, you can walk into a van, walk out the other side and know your status before you even enter a nightclub. That's immediate rapid testing.

I think it's incredibly important that those options are available because, as we've heard, knowing your status is one of the core ways that we can address this issue so that we don't get to the route of criminalization or supporting people with disclosure as well.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Dr. Tyndall.

[Dr. Mark Tyndall]

I would agree that we need to increase the access to testing but part of the drive to have anonymous testing and rapid testing is because of the stigma and criminalization part of it. As I stated in my remarks, it should be like a diabetes test or a cholesterol test. We're not blaming people for it. People need to know their status. They need to be in care. We like the testing to really link closely to treatment, so we actually want to encourage a lot of people out there who know their status to be in care and treatment.

I'm all for increasing capacity for people to get easy, accessible testing, but we also want to try to connect people as best we can to the treatment that they need. I think it needs to be part of our whole approach to people who are at risk of HIV.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

I think some of you have commented that this is the only communicable disease that is criminalized in this way. Of course we see the problem in that. I'm wondering about other communicable diseases. Are there cases where they should be prosecuted in some manner under the criminal law?

[Dr. Mark Tyndall]

From a public health standpoint, there are quite a lot of regulations that are at the disposal of public health officials in each province and territory that will allow public health to put sanctions on people who are knowingly spreading communicable disease. TB is probably the most used. There are cases. There are two or three people in British Columbia right now who have sanctions because they have active TB and they were not being treated. From a public health point of view, there are ways to corral them and to make sure they're followed very closely and required to take treatment. There are tools like that in public health, rarely necessary, but TB would be one example where we don't need a criminalization. We don't need to send police out and try to find all the contacts. We just need to work with those people and put them in a situation where they can consistently take their medications.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you, Mr. McKinnon.

I just want to say again, just for record, that HIV is not the only disease that is criminalized. I just want to keep putting that back on the record. There have been people prosecuted for the transmission or reckless behaviour that potentially leads to transmission of syphilis and hepatitis C. It's just that HIV has been overly prosecuted and disproportionately prosecuted, and that's what has been clear. Again, I share everyone's concerns about the sexual assault rules related to HIV and the over-criminalization.

I want to thank all the witnesses. As Mr. Boissonnault pointed out, this is the first panel we've had in a long time in which everybody is from western Canada. We thank the participants from that part of the country in our deliberations.

I wanted to share with members that you received two documents yesterday. One was the schedule for the committee for the rest of the year until June. If anybody has any concerns about that schedule, could you please share it with the clerk and me today or tomorrow, before Thursday's meeting?

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

One item that I would like to bring up is something that arose from the PROC committee. At PROC, a request was made by our members, which was supported by the NDP, to hear from the commissioner of Elections Canada. The Liberal members on the committee opposed hearing from the commissioner of Elections Canada simply on the basis that, under the estimates, it actually falls under the director of public prosecutions, and therefore, it falls within the realm of the justice committee.

Consistent with that, I would request that we set aside time to hear from the commissioner of Elections Canada in light of the position of the Liberal Party.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Since I'm not aware of that, could you just send an email today to us? I'll share it with the committee, so it doesn't have to be translated, if you don't have time to translate it—but if you can, that's great. Just explain what that is and we'll deal with it on Thursday, because I'm not aware.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Other than that, could everyone look at the schedule that we've provided? There are a few days when, because we're doing reports and the analysts need really quick instructions because we're getting close to the end of term, we've scheduled witnesses and then the briefing of the analysts for reports. There are four days when we would be going longer than two hours. If everybody could just look at that, we'd really appreciate it.

The second thing is that we also circulated the proposed letters to the CEOs of Facebook, Google, Reddit and Twitter to invite them to our online hate study. If anybody has any comments on those letters as well, could you please send them today? If not, we'll be asking the chair and vice-chairs to sign those tomorrow.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

I have no objection.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you again to the witnesses. We really appreciate it.

The meeting is adjourned.