TORONTO - George Smitherman, the country's only gay health minister, went on the attack Wednesday against an "offensive" Health Canada advisory penned by "wonky bureaucrats" that seeks to exclude homosexual men from becoming organ donors.
The directive, which agency officials defended as a reiteration of existing policies that was drafted with the help of medical professionals and the provinces, caught many health professionals off guard when it was issued with little fanfare last month.
"To have these wonky bureaucrats up in Ottawa write that kind of nonsense, based on some long-standing bias within their department, ignoring the front-line people that actually do this stuff, that was the part that was most offensive," Smitherman said in an interview.
Over the course of five years as a member of the Ontario cabinet, Smitherman has lobbied aggressively -- along with the Trillium Gift of Life Network, the province's organ and tissue donor agency -- to raise the profile of organ donation in the province.
Not only has he signed every organ donor card he's ever received, he said, but he still carries all of them around in his wallet because he believes so strongly in the principles and the importance of organ donation.
"The Trillium Gift of Life network will work aggressively in the gay community to let them know that opportunities are still available (to donate organs)," he said.
"We're going to work hard to reach out to the community and make sure they know opportunities are not lost, notwithstanding the impressions created by Health Canada."
Federal Health Minister Tony Clement's office wasted little time Wednesday defending the Health Canada directive, which was drafted with input from professionals and scientists from all over Canada, including Smitherman's own ministry.
"These regulations do not constitute a change in policy. They are formalizing a practice that has been ongoing for many years in Canada that has to do with risk assessment," Clement's press secretary, Laryssa Waler, said in an e-mail.
"As minister of health for Ontario, George Smitherman is well aware of this."
But Smitherman said it would be wrong to prevent sexually active gay men like himself from proceeding to the rigorous screening process that already exists for potential organ donors, which he said has built-in failsafe mechanisms to assess any possible health risks.
"I think it was a bit silly, really, and very insensitive, the way that they make these blanket determinations about risk on the basis alone of my sexual orientation," he said.
"So because I'm a gay man, they make it seem like we're not sophisticated enough to ask the next range of questions to really determine what the risk is. That was the stupid part about it."
Trillium chief executive Dr. Frank Markel said he's confident there was no intent on the part of the health professionals who helped draft the Health Canada directive to slight or otherwise offend the gay community.
"I've personally learned from what's happened (and) I think our organization has learned," Markel said in an interview.
"We will be reaching out to the gay community in a variety of ways to . . . make clear they're welcome as potential donors and that we will treat them in a non-discriminatory way."
Ontario doesn't exclude anyone from being an organ donor because of the long waiting list for a life-saving transplant, he added.
"We need every donor we can get," Markel said. "We have 1,650 people on the waiting list, so we would not deny anybody the chance to be a donor if their organ can be used."
