Mr. Speaker, I have had the pleasure of serving with the hon. member for the better part of a decade, and I want to thank him for a powerful, emotionally affecting and very courageous speech that really spoke to the profound importance of this bill. It also highlighted how damaging and dangerous stigmatization is.
I want to pivot to something else. In another piece of federal legislation or policy, there is a ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men, which is not based on science but on stereotype. We allow a sexually promiscuous heterosexual man who engages in dangerous activities to donate blood, but two gay men in a loving, stable, monogamous relationship are not allowed. The government still maintains a ban that stops men who have sex with men from donating blood, based on the most base stigmatization.
I wonder if the member would agree with me that it is time to end this discriminatory ban.