Genetic fairness Legislation PASSED!!! History made in Canada!

Yesterday 150 Parkinson Canada Ambassadors across the country along with countless others with the Canadian Genetic Fairness Coalition and Neurological Health Charities Canada helped make history!!!  Canada was the only country in the G7 that did not have laws in place to protect their citizens against DNA discrimination, but that all changed yesterday!!!

Here is a follow up interview with CBC Radio about the win!

And this was the previous CBC story:

A note to the Ambassadors from Parkinson Canada's Jacquie Micallef

Sr. Manager, Public Affairs & Partnerships:

Last night Canada made a big step towards ensuring Canadians can make‎ informed decisions about their health – without fear.  

Bill S 201,  an act to prohibit and prevent genetic discrimination, was passed last night in the House as it was presented by the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. 

Parkinson Canada has been identified by the Canadian Coalition for Genetic Fairness as a leading member of the genetic fairness movement. Since day one (many, many years and 3 bills ago) Parkinson Canada and the Ambassador Network has been advocating for this legislative change. In fact, genetic fairness was named as a pillar in Neurological Health Charities Canada’s original brain strategy document developed in 2010. 

Thank you to all of the Parkinson Ambassadors for being incredible champions in communities across Canada. Over the years, Parkinson Canada has logged hundreds of engagement points between Ambassadors and MPs about genetic fairness. In the last week alone Ambassadors contacted MPs over 200 times requesting them to vote in favour of Bill S201.

Bill S201 still needs to go back to the Senate, but all indications are it will be supported.

I’ll keep you posted!

Thank YOU for helping to make this historical change!

Best Regards,

Jacquie

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Today was a day of celebration!!!  Thank you to everyone that worked tirelessly on this initiative and to the MP's that did the right thing by voting YES to Bill S-201!!!

It was a pleasure to be a small part in helping protect Canadians and so very exciting when I finally heard the outcome!  I would personally like to thank my MP Lawrence MacAulay for doing his part in pushing for this legislation, he was a huge support of it from my first meeting with him face to face about it in June of 2015!

Thank you all!

Here's a previous post about this issue:  http://natashachronicles.blogspot.ca/2016/12/dna-discrimination-are-you-serious.html

Natasha

Thank you Hon. Lawrence MacAulay

I know you weren't in Ottawa for the vote as you were travelling on Agriculture business.  However I know you worked hard to push this through it's stages and were a great support all along!