The pandemic of AIDS is a gender-based disease.

She named Stephen Lewis as one of her top seven. In 2007 Lewis received the World Citizenship Award from the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts as well as the Health and Human Rights Leadership Award from Doctors of the World-USA. In 2006 two new secondary schools in the Toronto area were named after Lewis: one in Mississauga Ontario Stephen Lewis Secondary School and one in York Region.

In the mid-1980s he was appointed as Canada's United Nations ambassador by Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. He quit in 1988 and worked at various United Nations agencies during the 1990s.