Thank you to the committee for having me today. I stand before you first as a warrior, secondly as a survivor of HIV non-disclosure.
The Right Honourable Pierre Elliott Trudeau once famously said, “There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation”, and yet Canada is a world leader in convicting people for HIV non-disclosure.
I am one of those 200 plus people who were convicted, sentenced. My life came to a stop on February 12, 2009. That was the day I received a life-changing phone call telling me I had a Canada-wide warrant for aggravated sexual assault. My knees buckled.
I'm a father. I'm a grandfather. I'll get to that after because right now, with what's going on, I don't get to see my grandson. How do I tell a 22-year-old who googles everything that I don't have that vulnerable person...? I'm a family man.
I want to take you back to who I was before these charges were brought into my life. I worked for Parker-Construction in Windsor, Ontario, where I had recently been promoted to fire tear out lead hand. I worked 60 hours a week, at $22.50 an hour, with company benefits and a gas allowance card. I was set in my life, a father of two kids, Tyler and Kayla, who were 14 and 13 at the time, the important time in a teenager's life. How was I going to break the news to them that their dad was leaving?
I turned myself in on this charge the next day. I was denied bail, and we know in Canada that when you're denied bail you have to wait 90 days before you can go to high court bail. I got myself a lawyer. I went to high court bail. I was once again denied bail.
I would attend court over the next 13 months while I was being held in custody. I want to bring you back to when I turned myself in and I was denied bail. Upon going into the correctional system, I did not receive my medication for two weeks. The only time I've ever become detectable is when I was in the prison system. I'm now going on 15 years living with HIV and I'm undetectable. I was undetectable at the time that these charges were brought against me.
I would attend court over the next 13 months while I was being held in custody. I was told I was facing 10 to 15 years. I didn't have my blood tested for 28 months, so how were they assuring me that I was getting the best health care while I was in the prison system?
You may not know this but when you're on the remand side, awaiting trial or waiting to be set free, there is no health care. I couldn't see a dentist until I was sentenced, so I sat there with an infection to the point where the dentist inside the prison could not go any further without going into my nasal cavity.
I'm now figuring out life after prison as Chad Clarke, the convicted sex offender. I've been given a second chance in life. I'm the proud grandfather to a four-year-old grandson named Gavin, which is Gaelic for “hawk of battle”. When I first met the round table, I was told I would get to see my grandson because we were going to do something. I'll keep going and going even to my last breath to tell you guys that we need to do something.
I don't even need to look at this; I'm just going to talk from my heart. If I went through this, and the 200 people we were able to connect with in Canada went through this, how many others are there out there?
There have been many times when my PTSD has gotten to me, when I wish I would have gotten the 25 years and walked out with a clean slate rather than having to walk into society as a registered sex offender. That's the part I have a problem with—the part where the mental health issues I had before going into prison have accelerated since being in prison.
I isolate myself a lot. I've lost a lot of family members. I have one brother, out of three brothers, who gets it, who is willing to sit and forgive and forget what I did to the rest of the family. As I said, I'm a family man. My family is well known in the southwestern Ontario area. I live five minutes up the road from my family—my mom and dad. They don't wave to me when they drive by. They won't even acknowledge me.
I'm sorry I'm taking so much time. This is my life. I live every day with that title of aggravated sexual assault. My son is 24. He has a mild intellectual disorder, but he gets it. My son has come to me many times saying, Dad, if I could drain all my blood out today and give it to you so that we could all forget about this once and for all, I would do that for you. That's why I'm going to sit at this table and many more tables until we get this right.
I had the opportunity to speak in Amsterdam at the International AIDS Conference. One of the things that was asked of me was what Canada can do. I'll be honest with all of you in this room that I was a little upset. I wanted to say what I really felt we could do. I said if Canada is serious about getting to 90-90-90, stop criminalizing people for HIV and become the test block.
Second, why are there only four provinces in Canada where antiretroviral medication is readily available? That tells me right there that we have an issue.
We heard the federal health minister in Amsterdam after I said if Canada is serious about doing this, don't endorse U equals U; sign on, since Canada is a world leader in convicting people. That's the first step. The science proves that after three months.... I became undetectable after being on medication for three months when the charge was brought before me. I was on medication for only eight months. I didn't know the longevity of HIV. I had no clue what was coming next. What I did know was that I was going to jail because there was the phone call.
I reached out to the Byng clinic, and got on medication and I've adhered to my medication all the time. I speak to intravenous drug users. I've given them an entity, because you have to build trust with them. I've been there myself in some of the poor choices I made as a young 18-year-old who ran away from a town of 2,500. I was an altar boy, raised on a farm.
When you give those people a voice, with regard to the sex they're having or the drugs they're doing, and you allow them to, they will tell you what the problem is, what barriers they face and what they need in order to fix things and to get medication.
I strongly suggest that we do legislative reform, because this is wrecking lives. It's one thing to have HIV, but it's another thing to be criminally charged, convicted, sentenced and now have to be on a sex registry for the rest of my life. I cannot travel for longer than seven days without having to notify the police, or it's a breach, which happened to me.
There's one thing I'd like to mention to you guys now. As I stand before you, I'm now homeless. I received an eviction notice on Easter Monday and had 12 hours to vacate my home as there was a person paid to be in my home to make sure I left. Once again—