State Involvement in LGBT+ Health and Social Support Issues in Canada

For the first time, the broad health issues, needs and concerns of LGBT+ people in Canada were taken up by the federal government’s Standing Committee on Health in 2019. The findings of their consultations with LGBT+ Canadians produced a report that at once captures the breadth of input received, and provides an opportunity for accountable state response to LGBT+ health needs in the form of research, education, policy, funding and programming, yet questions arise as to the socio-political approach that will ultimately be taken. This focus on the health of LGBT+ Canadians follows decades of grassroots and sometimes state-funded research on this very issue. This study undertook a critical content analysis, premised on the queer liberation theory of The Health of LGBTQIA2 Communities in Canada report issued by the Standing Committee on Health. Although the report, for the most part, covers a breadth of broad LGBT+ health issues (a noted shift from the predominance of HIV/AIDS), the depth to which the Standing Committee took up and absorbed such issues is far less apparent. The heavy emphasis on entry-level recommendations by which to take up important LGBT+ health issues undermines a more progressive, liberationist approach that would more effectively address these concerns.