CATIE Blog | HIV and hepatitis C news and opinions

Inside B.C.’s decriminalization pilot as experienced by people who use drugs

January 26, 2026 • By Matthew Bonn

On January 31, 2023, British Columbia was granted an exemption from Canada’s Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to implement a time-limited pilot project, in effect until January 31, 2026. The exemption allows people over the age of 18 to possess a total of 2.5 grams of certain specified unregulated drugs for personal use. The drugs included in this exemption are opioids (such as heroin, morphine and fentanyl), crack and powder cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA. The pilot exemption has been subject to strict rules and regulations since its inception. Notably, the places where possessing drugs is decriminalized have been modified several times...

What does it take to build a successful digital STBBI testing service?

January 15, 2026 • By Hsiu-Ju Chang and Mark Gilbert

Access to testing for sexually transmitted and blood borne infections (STBBI) can be difficult for many people due to long travel distances, stigma, privacy concerns and lack of culturally safe services. Digital STBBI testing programs that let people request a lab form or self-collection kit online without seeing a healthcare provider are one way of overcoming these barriers. However, there isn’t a lot of practical guidance available about how to develop complex digital health services like these. The Digital & Sexual Health Initiative team at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) and University of British Columbia has tried...

U=U should mean reproductive freedom — but many fertility clinics haven’t caught up yet

December 1, 2025 • By Mona Loutfy and Amy Ly

Someone living with HIV calls a fertility clinic to ask about booking a consultation. They may have spent months planning for this moment, choosing the right time, the right support, the right words. But instead of a clear pathway to care, they are told that they need to be referred somewhere else. Or that the clinic is “not sure” whether they can provide services. Or they are met with silence on the phone while someone tries to decide how to respond. For many people living with HIV who want to build families, this is still a familiar experience. For people...

Silence is not neutral: Canada’s leadership has stalled on HIV criminalization reform and communities are paying the price

November 25, 2025 • By Chad Clarke

It has been nearly a decade since Canada first acknowledged that the criminalization of people living with HIV was harmful, outdated and rooted in stigma rather than science. In 2015, when a new government took power at the federal level, there was hope. Momentum. A promise of modernizing the law, of ending the era of prosecuting people living with HIV based on fear instead of facts. I know, because I was there. As a member of the Canadian Coalition to Reform HIV Criminalization, I have spent years in meeting rooms, Zoom calls, consultations and roundtables. We worked with Ministers of...

Estimating how many people in Canada inject drugs

November 17, 2025 • By Public Health Agency of Canada

People who inject drugs that are not prescribed to them often experience complex health challenges and have a difficult time accessing healthcare. To make sure we can provide the services and resources that better support this community, we first need to know how big the community is and where they live. That’s why the Public Health Agency of Canada has created the report, Estimating the population size of people who inject drugs in Canada, which estimates, in 2021: The process for creating these estimates involved several steps, so let’s review them in greater detail. How we estimate the number of...

Advancing awareness: Canadian Positive People Network’s U=U Task Force and the fight against HIV stigma

November 11, 2025 • By Breklyn Bertozzi

At the Canadian Positive People Network (CPPN), we strive to end HIV stigma. We also recognize that people living with HIV provide the movement’s strongest guiding voices. That’s why our U=U Task Force is led by people living with HIV and is dedicated to sharing one of the most groundbreaking messages in public health: Undetectable = Untransmittable. U=U means that when a person living with HIV is on effective treatment and has an undetectable viral load, they cannot transmit the virus to their sexual partners. It’s a message that transforms lives, dismantles stigma and redefines what it means to live...