REGINA — High HIV infection rates were a concern raised this week at the Legislature after news that Manitoba had declared a public health emergency over the issue.
During question period on Wednesday, the NDP’s Nathaniel Teed noted Manitoba declared the emergency due to its HIV [human immunodeficiency virus] rates rising to 19.5 patients per 100,000, the highest in Canada.
“It caused the Government of Manitoba significant alarm to discover they were the worst in Canada for HIV rates,” Teed said, as recorded in Hansard.
“But it never seemed to bother the Sask Party. Every single year prior, Saskatchewan has always been the worst in Canada. We have a crisis, and it’s killing people.”
Teed called for “a bipartisan working committee to work on solutions to this crisis” and asked if the Sask Party would work with them on “solutions to this public health emergency.”
In response, Minister for Rural and Remote Health Lori Carr acknowledged that “Saskatchewan’s HIV rates are too high, Mr. Speaker, and our government is committed to addressing this issue.”
She said the government had been receiving regular updates through coordinated calls with the Saskatchewan Health Authority, Indigenous Services Canada and the Northern Inter-Tribal Health Authority in response to increased HIV transmission in the province.
She also said new positions have been funded and filled to strengthen local capacity, and that the government is focused on efforts to improve awareness, expand access to testing, offer medication and support timely initiation of treatment.
“In Saskatchewan we listen to the advice of our medical professionals to make informed decisions, not political reactions that risk further stigmatizing those who actually need the support, Mr. Speaker,” Carr said.
Following Question Period, Saskatchewan Chief Medical Health Officer Dr. Saqib Shahab spoke to reporters on what Saskatchewan had been doing.
He noted that in June 2025, the province published a refreshed STBBI (sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections) testing policy, and in October 2025 they published a multi-year action plan for sexually transmitted infections and blood-borne pathogens.
Dr. Shahab said that over the last 15 years, “we had great success with many STIs,” including effective treatments and a marked reduction in hepatitis C.
Up until around 2020, Dr. Shahab said Saskatchewan saw stable HIV rates and low rates of syphilis, and high rates of more common STIs like chlamydia and gonorrhea.
But he said post-COVID, Saskatchewan and other provinces and many parts of the world have “seen a bit of a resurgence in many STIs,” including syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhea, which the province has since been addressing and bringing numbers back down.
As for HIV, Dr. Shahab called HIV “unique because it has no vaccine, it needs lifelong treatment, but there's very effective treatments.”
He said for HIV, “the one thing to remember is, first of all, for our STI policy that we launched, it's test for all and treat for all… We encourage people, based on the risk factors, to get tested for all STIs.”
Dr. Shahab said otherwise healthy people who may not be sexually active or may not have other risk factors, such as substance use, should get tested at least once. He added that people who are in stable relationships may only need testing every few years, while those with multiple partners or substance use risks may need more frequent testing.
“But again, we all should know our risk, and we should be able to talk to our health care providers freely and openly about our risk. There's no stigma, no judgment in that,” Dr. Shahab said.
As for Manitoba declaring a public health emergency for HIV, Dr. Shahab was asked if that was something Saskatchewan was looking at.
Dr. Shahab said he listened to the technical briefing from his counterpart in Manitoba and was “reassured that we already have many of those things in place.”
“We have full access to medications at no cost. We already, like I said, we re-established our testing policy in June 2025. We published a multi-year action plan in Oct. 2025. So we feel that given our rates that, similar to Manitoba, similar to many other provinces, many other countries, we were seeing a bit of an increase post-COVID. We already have taken steps already to try to address this. And we'll keep evaluating.”
Dr. Shahab said that at this point in Saskatchewan, the way the Public Health Act and regulations are set up, the declaration of emergency “won't give us any additional tools. We already have those tools.”
“But the work happens at the ground level, person by person. And public health teams go out to individuals who may not want to access public health or health services because they may have had an adverse experience previously. There may be many reasons, but you have to reach out and engage and retain in treatment. And I think that's the patient-to-patient work that is important and critical that's happening right now. But we'll continue to evaluate. I think we continue to adjust our approach based on what we see on the ground.”
