Activists call for more HIV funding from Ottawa as numbers creep up

MONTREAL – As an international AIDS conference begins in Montreal this week, Canadian HIV and AIDS organizations say Canada's response to the disease at home has stalled.

Advocates say federal funding for addressing HIV and AIDS has been frozen since 2008 even though the number of people in Canada living with the virus has risen by 25 per cent since then.

"The number of new infections continues to remain fairly static, rather than decreasing," Richard Elliott, with the HIV Legal Network, a Toronto-based organization that advocates for the rights of people living with HIV, said in an interview Tuesday.

Elliott, scheduled to deliver a speech at the Montreal conference, said his organization is part of a coalition of groups calling for federal HIV funding to be increased from around $73 million a year to $100 million – a figure recommended by a parliamentary committee in 2003.

"If this overall envelope of $100 million (was) actually delivered, we could up our research game," he said.

AIDS 2022, the 24th international AIDS conference, is scheduled from July 29 to Aug. 2 in Montreal. It brings together researchers, health-care practitioners and people living with HIV.

About 1,500 people were infected with HIV in Canada in 2020, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada. More than 62,000 Canadians are living with HIV.

Not only has funding been frozen but money dedicated to AIDS research has been diverted to fight other sexually transmitted diseases, Elliott said. Recently, several hundred thousand dollars was transferred to organizations responding to the monkeypox outbreak, Elliott said, adding that while it's great those organizations are getting more funding, it shouldn't come at a cost to HIV organizations.