Good morning, Honourable Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the invitation to present today.
My name is Haran, and I am the Executive Director at the Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention, also known as ASAAP since our humble beginnings in 1989. Today our programs are inclusive of not just South Asian communities but also a very diverse Middle Eastern community. This year marks ASAAP's 30th year of service to a now broader demographic of racialized individuals living with, affected by and at risk of HIV and AIDS. That was really our primary purpose in forming ASAAP.
In our nascent year, tragedy struck when a South Asian couple died from AIDS-related complications. Their deaths were the direct result of not being able to access life-saving treatment, medical attention and care linked to a language barrier and a lack of ability to navigate our health care system.
In response to their loss, a group of South Asian LGBT activists founded ASAAP to ensure a crisis like this would never happen again. We have a very high rate of success, with 95% of our clients maintaining a suppressed viral load, which means that HIV cannot be passed on during sexual intercourse. Moreover, HIV is considered a manageable chronic health condition by the Public Health Agency of Canada, which is excellent news.
However, attitudes toward people living with HIV have not kept pace with the science. There is widespread stigma and accompanying discrimination against people living with HIV, and people living with HIV regularly face heightened legal issues because of their HIV positive status. Although 95% of ASAAP's clients have a suppressed viral load, every one of them has faced HIV discrimination, including loss of jobs, abandonment by family, eviction, denial of health or dental care, treatment as criminals even when no crime has been committed, physical assaults after disclosing their HIV status, denial of immigration status and being outed as HIV positive by family members and former partners.
Within the past two years, amidst the cheering for undetectable equals untransmittable, ASAAP's tight-knit group of long-term survivors have attended the community memorials of several of their beloved peers, half of whom have died by suicide or by refusing to take treatment and medical care. Imagine that. In the age of U=U, people are still dying of AIDS-related complications.
Criminalization of HIV is making things worse. In addition to blatant cases of individual injustice, the over-criminalization of HIV is hampering the HIV response in Canada. We know that people in South Asian and Middle Eastern communities are avoiding getting tested because they fear that, once diagnosed with HIV, they will face further repercussions in the form of stigma and discrimination, criminalization, incarceration, rejection and severe isolation.
Criminalization of HIV promotes and maintains the stigma. It reinforces fear and ignorance of HIV and those living with it. Clients of ASAAP have repeatedly stated that it was not HIV but the stigma that killed their peers too soon, long before the current life expectancy of people living with HIV.
Clearly, people living with HIV and AIDS in Canada are not living the improved quality of life they should be living as members of one of the richest countries in the world. This is despite the availability of highly effective HIV drugs that have minimized the long-term side effects. If Canada, as a signatory to the UNAIDS 90-90-90 goals, wishes to honour its commitment, there must be immediate Criminal Code reform in order to remove the offence from the realm of sexual assault law and have it focus on intentional and actual transmission.
As of 2016, 86% of Canadians were tested for HIV; 81% of Canadians were on treatment and 91% of Canadians achieved viral suppression. While we are all well on our way to achieving the 90-90-90 goals, with the elimination of criminalization of HIV—a significant root cause of stigma that hinders care, treatment, support and prevention—Canada would be well positioned to reach, if not surpass, the 90-90-90 goals.
The federal Attorney General's directive on limiting HIV non-disclosure prosecutions in the territories where federal prosecutors handle Criminal Code cases was a step in the right direction, but more is needed, including reforms to the Criminal Code to further limit the currently broad scope of HIV criminalization in Canada.
Using the MIPA principles, the meaningful engagement of people with AIDS, it is imperative that reform take place in consultation with meaningful engagement of those living with HIV along with leaders in the legal, scientific and AIDS services organizations endorsed by the broader HIV community. Those reforms should achieve two things. First, they should put an end to the use of sexual assault law as the means of criminalizing HIV non-disclosure; and second, limit any use of the law to cases of intentional, actual transmission of HIV to another person.
Intentional insightful deliberations will yield the community- and government-led initiative to address the criminalization of HIV and in what section of the Criminal Code this law would rest. As a government who has continued to demonstrate care for the well-being of all, I encourage you to now strive to be the first country to implement a nationwide educational policy against HIV stigma and discrimination.
You will be well informed and will monitor their health with regular testing, and due to the use of widespread educational campaigns, our youth as tomorrow's leaders will model a more positive outlook on HIV that could release the shame, secrecy, and fear people may have when they were first diagnosed.
I'm grateful to you for affording me the opportunity to speak on behalf of ASAAP and advocate for the people who continue to come back day after day to our office trusting us to represent them with dignity, care and grace.
I now pass on to you that same hope that in your deliberations about this issue you will acknowledge that the overuse of criminal law against people living with HIV has greatly impeded the progress we have made and will continue to strip those living with HIV of the very things that promote life, liberty, and health.
Thank you very much.