Year of the Queer: Coun. Tim Stevenson was political catalyst for B.C.’s globally admired life-saving HIV treatment

It’s a story that’s not well known to many residents of the city

Vancouver city councillor Tim Stevenson will be in the spotlight on Wednesday (May 23) when the City of Vancouver raises flags at Vancouver City Hall to designate this as the Year of the Queer.

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At the 25th-anniversary dinner for Positive Living B.C. in 2011, famed HIV doctor and researcher Julio Montaner gave credit to the city and the province for their ongoing support.

“Without them stepping in and saying, ‘Yes, we’re going to commit to this fight,’ there would have been no St. Paul’s [B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS],” Montaner said. “There would have been no AIDS program. We would have been just like VGH or the UBC hospital at the time. ‘You are on your own and God save you.’ Thanks to them, we stepped up to the plate.”

B.C. was the first province in Canada that virtually eliminated the transmission of HIV from mothers to their children. B.C. drove down HIV-transmission rates through the B.C. centre’s innovative treatment-as-prevention approach, which was later adopted by the governments of China, France, the United States, and Brazil.

Countless lives have been saved as a result.

The program that the Glen Clark government initially funded continued to receive strong support from B.C. Liberal health ministers, including Colin Hansen, George Abbott, Kevin Falcon, and Terry Lake.

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During the Canada Post strike announced September 25, 2025, the following measures will be undertaken to minimize service disruption to BC-CfE clients and providers.

  • The BC-CfE Laboratory has transitioned to private courier for delivery of outgoing reports and documents. Results required urgently can be faxed upon request. (Lab Contact Information: Phone 604-806-8775; FAX 604-806-9463)
  • The BC-CfE Drug Treatment Program (DTP) will fax outgoing forms and documents to the provider’s office. (DTP Contact Information: Phone 604-806-8515; FAX 604-806-9044)
  • St. Paul’s Hospital Ambulatory Pharmacy has transitioned to private courier for delivery of medications. We recommend requesting medication at least 2 weeks in advance in case of delivery delays, particularly to rural/remote parts of BC. (Contact Information: Phone 1-800-547-3622; FAX 604-806-8675)

During the Canada Post strike, we recommend that documents be faxed or couriered to our sites, versus utilization of regular mail service

The BC-CfE Laboratory is streamlining reporting processes for certain tests in order to simplify distribution and record-keeping, and to ensure completeness of results. Beginning September 2, 2025, results for the ‘Resistance Analysis of HIV-1 Protease and Reverse Transcriptase’ (Protease-RT) and ‘HIV-1 Integrase Resistance Genotype’ tests will be combined into a single ‘HIV-1 Resistance Genotype Report’.
For more details and example reports, please click on the button below

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