Justice committee  Thank you for raising that issue. I didn't want to veer too far away from what we are here to talk about, but CATIE absolutely similarly sees criminalization—our drug policy and in terms of sex work—as having an impact on access to HIV services across the continuum of care, from

Justice committee  There are many gaps. Actually, for a high-income country with a strong health care system, Canada is surprisingly doing pretty poorly in terms of access to testing, treatment and care. Just to compare, Robin had mentioned earlier that we have committed ourselves to the global str

Justice committee  It's hard to speak to that, because I don't have the full document in front of me. However, at the time that document was written, for example, supervised injection sites were not available in prisons. Prisons are where HIV and hepatitis C transmission is at some of its highest l

Justice committee  What we can say is that for sex with a condom with or without viral suppression, there is no possibility of this if the condom is used consistently and correctly. In the context of oral sex as well, there are no confirmed cases of HIV transmission. There's very limited evidence,

Justice committee  Many of the elements of the federal directive regarding prosecutions of HIV non-disclosure cases, which was issued in December 2018, were welcome news for those of us who appreciate evidence-based policy. For example, the directive to not prosecute where the person living with HI

Justice committee  With this knowledge at our disposal, it is clear that targeting people living with HIV with criminal sanctions should not be our approach. Our efforts to curb the spread of HIV should instead be focused on increasing awareness—increasing access to testing and increasing access to

Justice committee  Thank you. Good morning and thank you to the chair and members of the committee for inviting us to share our expertise on HIV transmission and public health. We hope that our comments this morning will help your deliberations on this very important issue. My name is Andrew Bret