90-90-90 endorsed by Canadian Government (part two: Julio Montaner speaks out)

On December 1, The Canadian Government endorsed 90-90-90 but the long awaited announcement went virtually unnoticed until reported by PositiveLite.com. Today Bob Leahy interviews B.C.’s Julio Montaner about what this announcement means for Canada

JULIO MONTANER FROM THE BC CENTRE FOR EXCELLENCE IN HIV/AIDS TALKS ABOUT HOW 90-90-90 CAME TO BE ENDORSED, HIS DEALINGS WITH JUSTIN TRUDEAU, HIS THOUGHTS ABOUT THE FUTURE OF PHAC AND THE VALUE OF INDEPENDENT VOICES

Bob Leahy: I wanted to talk to you about the government’s 90-90-90 statement on World Aids Day. It was very interesting that few picked on up on it. What’s your observation about why it didn’t get out properly?

Julio Montaner: There is no way I can answer that question – – but let me go back a little bit further. As you know, I’ve been trying to get national attention to 90-90-90 and the need for Canada to take an ownership role, given that this is largely based on our work. In that context when it came time to go to the United Nations in September, I sent a letter to each one of the leaders of the parties – this was during the elections – and I explained the whole thing and argued that Canada needed to take a positive stance towards 90-90-90 and I was hoping that I would have the support of the government to lobby for an End To AIDS as a sustainable development goal, and the 90-90-90 strategy as part of that. The Harper government did not engage. I talked to the bureaucracy at the time and basically was told that they would not oppose me but they could not support me.

Anyway, I had a supportive statement from the NDP and most interesting, as for the Liberals, Hedy Fry, who is my local MP, brought Justin Trudeau to my office and we had a long meeting. We talked about everything from treatment as prevention to drug policy law reform and he went on to write the letter that I sent you. He made a commitment there that I thought was very good.

Before we go on, your meeting with Trudeau sounds interesting. Tell me what you thought of him.

I found Justin Trudeau extremely interested, extremely knowledgeable, very sensitive to the issues we are concerned about and honestly I did not expect the letter and I was surprised by the candour of the language. I was very impressed by the grasp he had of the issues. Much had been made of the fact that he may be too young or not ready, but I found him extremely capable, very articulate and very sophisticated in the way he approached all the issues we were talking about.

So what happened between then and World AIDS Day?

Lo and behold when he won the election with a majority government, I immediately wrote him a letter and I followed up with my contacts in Ottawa – and was told that the Prime Minister had been busy since the election. So it came to me as a very gratifying surprise that despite the fact that the government was distracted with so many other things, that they issued the very specific statement on World AIDS Day (endorsing 90-90-90) from Jane Philpott, the federal Minister of Health.