TORONTO - National AIDS organizations called Thursday on the next federal government to restore supports for people living with the disease, saying the incumbent Conservatives cut funding and shifted money toward research at the expense of social programs.
The Harper government has redirected $5.2 million to the development of an HIV vaccine and cut $6.57 million from AIDS funding overall, according to the The Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network.
That's had a crippling effect on Canada's AIDS fight, the organization said.
A 2005 all-party agreement committed Ottawa to $84 million in social supports. Over the past two years, funding has been cut by about 15 per cent a year, said Monique Doolittle-Romas, executive director of the Canadian AIDS Society.
"Funding for vaccines should not be at the expense of community programs," Doolittle-Romas said at a news conference in Toronto.
Advocates are disappointed the issue has not surfaced during the federal election campaign, she added.
"We have been stunned by the silence surrounding HIV."
The coalition of AIDS organizations contacted the five main political parties and asked about their stance on issues involving the disease. Four of the parties backed harm reduction programs, like Vancouver's safe injection site, and addressed the need for funding of community programs, said Doolittle-Romas said.
The Conservatives, she said, did not respond.
Doolittle-Romas insists they're not taking aim at any particular party.
"It's the work that has to be done. I'm saying we have a position from four parties," she said.
Before the election, Health Minister Tony Clement said Vancouver's supervised injection site had created "a slippery slope."
The Vancouver facility, where injection drug-users can shoot up under supervision of a nurse, is the only of its kind in North America.
It was initially approved as a pilot project by the Liberals in 2003.
Clement has said the clinic's $3-million annual budget would be better spent funding drug-treatment centres, and the federal government is currently fighting a court battle to shut the facility down.
Earlier this year, a B.C. Supreme Court judge struck down laws prohibiting possession and trafficking of drugs by those seeking help at supervised injection sites.
The ruling gives the federal government until June 30, 2009 to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.
Some 60,000 people in Canada are infected with HIV, the society says.
