Justice committee  Absolutely. With a whole missing person's case, it's actually police officers, front-line officers, who don't understand how people come in to report something that's happening. Then when they go out there, they're using laws that they might not understand, that have changed, an

Justice committee  That actually has a huge impact, because it takes the severity of the law away. A lot of people are afraid of going to jail. A lot of people are afraid of interacting with the justice system from a criminal perspective. If we can remove that fearmongering language, that would a

Justice committee  As I said, the whole “auntie works there” phenomenon happens in South Asian and Middle Eastern communities as well, especially if they're new to the country or they're trying to figure out their ways. Oftentimes a barrier to testing, especially for international folks and intern

Justice committee  Those are things that we're constantly dealing with on a daily basis. A lot of folks who we work with have engaged in the sex trade in the past, or are active drug users, for various reasons. It's the whole criminalization aspect of it instead of looking at the individuals and th

Justice committee  As Eric mentioned, there is a stereotype in terms of who gets HIV, how they got HIV, and how they spread HIV. Those are, unfortunately, the historical accounts that have happened since the early epidemic, and they still maintain their way through. With the whole notion of crimina

Justice committee  Just from working in the HIV sector for the last 19 years, I can say that a significant majority of our folks living with HIV don't want to transmit. In fact, when they find out their HIV diagnosis, they actually go backward. Very few individuals are intentional. I think in a cou

Justice committee  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 progr