Health committee  Thank you.

Health committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the Standing Committee on Health. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to you here on the traditional territory of the Algonquin first nations. My name is Jody Jollimore and I'm the executive director of the Community-Based Research

Health committee  Thanks. Maybe not, actually. Is that a compliment, though?

Health committee  We know that as their home communities become safer and more accepting, fewer queer people are migrating to urban centres. It's much more common for LGBT2Q people to live in the suburbs and maybe spend the rest of their lives there, or to live in other smaller places in the count

Health committee  I was probably talking about a funding program with the Public Health Agency of Canada. They have a mental health fund. They recently did a call for LOIs—letters of intent—and they're currently deciding on who will get funded in that program. It's an excellent example of the fede

Health committee  There is not a specific part.

Health committee  Right now, the fund—

Health committee  Certainly, like everybody else, we can apply to the fund, but there's no specific stream. That's my argument. There should be a specific stream, because of course then we would be more apt to have queer reviewers reading it, and we wouldn't have to go into the general stream.

Health committee  I appreciate that background research. There are a couple of things. One of the barriers is being out to your health care provider. As I said, we have research outside of Vancouver that shows us that in smaller communities up north, upwards of 60% of people are not out to their

Health committee  Certainly there is a push to get more testing options approved in Canada. I think you heard some of that testimony by Dr. Mark Gilbert a couple of weeks ago, and I know there is a brief coming forward that will also talk about the various testing options. Self-testing or home te

Health committee  You can't get them here. It's my understanding that there are a couple of obstacles. One is the market. The companies behind it don't necessarily see it as marketable option to go through the regulatory regime in Canada. The federal government could expedite that regulatory regim

Health committee  The data has not yet been made available, but it should be within a couple of weeks. It was a major part of our last Sex Now survey, which was actually funded by Canadian Blood Services to study just this question. I can tell you, without giving away anything, that overwhelmingly

Health committee  When you say drugs, I'm assuming you mean prevention drugs or treatment for HIV?

Health committee  It depends on the province. Some provinces have co-pays. Others have completely free access to medications. For instance, in British Columbia we have a very robust, well-funded program that allows anyone with HIV to access medications free of charge. There are actually some other

Health committee  Absolutely, yes.