Health committee  I don't know the exact process they went through. I just know they have, especially with blood donation, moved from a population criterion to a risk-behaviour criterion. There has been documentation also on solid organ donation in that area.

Health committee  It would be interesting to see who the 900 were that were consulted. The Canadian AIDS Society was not, nor any of our member agencies, or it would have been brought to our attention. Surprisingly enough, Dr. Levy wasn't consulted or didn't know, according to his testimony. It would be interesting to see who they were.

Health committee  Like our colleagues from Egale, we prefer to be present at the table and to dialogue on these issues. We also are the organizations that have the transmission guidelines. We have the empirical and scientific data about HIV that we can share. We have the lived experiences of folk that we can share.

Health committee  There are particular ways in which HIV is transmitted, and they are all risk- or activity-oriented. It is not person-oriented. All the science in the world shows that. That science should be the basis on which we base some of our judgments.

Health committee  I don't know. There were many groups that were not consulted. It could have been the process. It could have been the difficulty in navigating through systems to get to the documentation you needed to know that this was coming about. It could have been knowing that to consult would end up with these discussions and therefore slow down the process that was wanting to be done more quickly.

Health committee  The philosophy of ensuring a safe blood supply and a safe organ supply remains the same throughout. The philosophy of using the gay population and targeting them as vectors of disease, however, drastically needs to change. In a day and age where the gay fight has come from being viewed as a mental disorder to where we now are supposedly equal people in society can be vastly undermined by such targeted exposure and criteria that really put a negative slant on being gay.

Health committee  Going back to what was originally there prior to December, or January of this year, it was a set of guidelines where there were questionnaires and surveys for the donor, if living, or if it was cadaveric, of the family, and it went through all the scientific and empirical testing for disease.

Health committee  Unfortunately, I'm not in a position to comment on how things are done in Spain or in Portugal. During the course of our discussions last spring with Canadian Blood Services, we were told that Italy had adopted a system where the focus was on people's sexual behaviour, not on their sexual orientation.

Health committee  As I said in my presentation, if we were to move to an equitable process, whereby all donations were subject to risk categories as opposed to population categories, then, yes, we can solve this problem. There are other countries in the world that are moving towards this, both with their organ and blood donation processes.

Health committee  Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thank you to the standing committee for the invitation for the Canadian AIDS Society to be present at this table and in these discussions. The Canadian AIDS Society is a national coalition of over 125 community-based AIDS organizations dedicated to strengthening the response to HIV/AIDS across all sectors of society.