Dr. Bruce Halliday, MP, was a 1975 Canadian Family Physician of the Year. He was well-loved in Tavistock, Ontario and, in Ottawa, he exemplified the best of our democracy. Working quietly in Committees, Dr. Halliday inspired people to principles, to dignify their personal involvement in matters at hand.
Through politics and the public service, gathering input from constituents and from national organisations, including the Canadian Medical Association, Dr. Halliday enabled John Davies and others to start the rescue of people with sensitivities from misconceptions and harmful attitudes, in some cases lethal abuse in health care.
Dr. Halliday invited the following testimony:
At the Parliamentary Committee on Health:
1988 – Human Ecology Foundation
1988 – Chris Brown
1988 – Health Canada officials
1989 – Health Minister Perrin Beatty and Deputy Minister Maureen Law
At the Standing Committee on Human Rights and Disabled Persons
1990 – Chris Brown
Dr. Halliday also encouraged the health minister through correspondence.
Chronic disease epidemiologist John Davies is the unsung public servant who shepherded most of Health Canada’s workâaddressing attitudes and reducing abuse in health care. He was appointed file manager on the issue shortly before coming out as a person with sensitivities in 1987.
Health and Welfare kicked off their work with a workshop designed to address attitudes. From the workshop, a publication was distributed to 3,000 Canadian targets including other federal departments, relevant provincial ministries, medical organizations and journalists.
During the same period, public servants with disabling sensitivities began to be accommodated in the public service. Increased attention was paid in procurement processes to ensure that materials used by public servants would be less likely to cause reactions. Even the Canadian Human Rights Commission was helping, then.
Canadian health officials realized that sensitivities are hugely under-diagnosed, and realized that people with psychiatric sequelae would be experiencing the most horrific forms of abuse. As this is also an area where there is a clear duty of care, the federal health department sponsored another conference in 1992, intended to begin a process of rescuing such psych patients from misdiagnosis and consequent abuse.