Health committee  I would add this: don't go back to the drawing board; take the very good work that's been done and work with it. Your idea about adding people who pay money for sex is definitely one of those tweaks that needs to be in place. I'm always looking for more resources to prevent the spread of any of these infectious diseases.

Health committee  I know from the information I've been privy to through some presentations that there was consideration of the American situation. One of the issues is that there's some—it's very limited, but there's some—suggestion of some cross-border transport of organs, in particular, and I know there's more around the tissue area, but there was an attempt to have some lining up with that.

Health committee  In terms of the tinkering, one of the issues that's been raised is with regard to moving to a risk assessment of the behaviour. One of the concerns, particularly in organ donation--and let's use liver as an example--is that you're usually getting consent from the family of the deceased.

Health committee  Yes, there is, in my opinion. There's fine tuning that needs to be done. Some parts of it are not as clear-cut as others. One of the particular issues is the amount of time from the behaviour to the date of the proposed transplant, but obviously my position is to err on the side of caution and inform the recipient of the best knowledge available, so that they can make the decision about receipt.

Health committee  Sure. I didn't want to mislead the committee. The restriction on my getting a liver is not codified. It's just the simple fact that no transplant program in this country at the present time will do the transplantations. We've been trying to understand and respond to those reasons.

Health committee  Yes, it will be very easy. I sat in a meeting and listened to the process that went into these regulations and recognized that, technically, my organs can be used. My organs can be used. The controversy is that there is no transplant surgeon in this country who will transplant a liver, from anyone, into me as a person who is co-infected with HIV and hepatitis C.

Health committee  Thank you, Madam Chair and all the members of the committee, for inviting me. I'm here today on behalf of the Canadian Hemophilia Society. It's an organization that represents people with bleeding orders that has chapters in each province of the country. In many ways, though, I am here to speak from my personal perspective on behalf of the organization.