Health committee  Mr. Chair and members of the standing committee, I am delighted to have this opportunity to speak to you in this first meeting of your historic study on LGBTQ2 health. My name is Lori Ross, and I'm an associate professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the Universit

Health committee  I would perhaps just add that different people within the LGBTQ2 community have differential access to those legal gains. It requires some resources to be able to take advantage of those gains in many cases. I think as with all health disparities, those who are most marginalized,

Health committee  I think that there are already some important gains under way. I know we have added a question on gender identity to one recent population-based survey and that there's intention to have that question or similar questions included in future Statistics Canada surveys. I think that

Health committee  So we don't all necessarily agree—

Health committee  —but I think it's important to consider that just the way in which this meeting was set up, intersex was not included. I didn't address that in my remarks, given that it wasn't included, but I think it's an important consideration. Are intersex issues within the purview of this s

Health committee  That's correct, yes.

Health committee  We've been doing some research to try to understand why, not only for suicide, but for other mental health outcomes as well, we see the same pattern where bisexual people have the poorest health outcomes. There does seem to be a major role for discrimination and associated lack o

Health committee  I do recommend that it needs an update. It has three options using language that is not necessarily the language that the community would use. I would suggest that some consultation would probably be warranted before deciding on specific wording, but we should look at adding ad

Health committee  I think there's a lot that can be done working through Statistics Canada. In Canada, our population-based data on sexual orientation and gender identity are greatly lacking compared to that in other countries. I feel it's a scenario in which we are quite behind. I think there's a

Health committee  One specific suggestion would be in terms of the homelessness point-in-time counts, which are done at the municipal level. Right now, it's patchwork. Some municipalities collect data on sexual orientation and gender identity and others don't That's a specific example where having

Health committee  Most often, we're going to U.S. datasets. That's because they ask a wide range of questions, not only on sexual identity, which is what we have so far, but also on sexual behaviour, which capture another segment of the community that may not self-identify but that may be engaging

Health committee  Yes. I think we're only beginning to understand those kinds of differences, because we've only started to ask those questions from the data. Particularly for conditions that have a relationship to the immune system, there's a strong argument that people's experiences of accumula

Health committee  I imagine there's probably room for intervention with youth in terms of providing resources and information around suicide prevention. I'm not aware of any that currently exist that are LGBTQ2-specific. I think we need to look carefully at directing interventions beyond the ind

Health committee  I would just add that many of the really important determinants of health within LGBTQ2S communities are social determinants of health such as poverty, housing and employment, areas where there's federal jurisdiction and federal opportunities, such as the national housing strateg

Health committee  I'm not that familiar with the data on experiences accessing health care, but more familiar with data about the impact on people's mental health of challenging relationships with faith communities—coming out in the context of a faith community and not having a supportive reaction