Take Action as an Individual – Canadian Coalition to Reform HIV Criminalization (CCRHC)

Take Action and Make Your Voice Heard !

At the International AIDS Conference held in Montreal in 2022, the Government of Canada announced its intention to launch public consultations on law reform, ostensibly to end the harms of the criminalization of HIV non-disclosure in this country. This is a decades-long issue in Canada, a country long known as a global “hot spot” for HIV criminalization.

Those federal consultations ended in January 2023. But, to date, no bill has been introduced in Parliament to stop criminalization and end the harms endured by people living with HIV. The Government of Canada’s unacceptably slow pace in adopting meaningful law reform is in full view as the world gathers for AIDS 2024 in Munich from July 22-26.

As we heard clearly during our own, earlier consultations that informed the Coalition’s 2022 community consensus statement, the criminal law must be used only as a measure of last resort and must be strictly limited in its scope and application.

We need action, and we need it today, to:

Remove non-disclosure, exposure, or transmission of HIV or other STBBIs from the reach of sexual assault laws, including the current mandatory designation as a sex offender.
Enact reforms to ensure that any other provisions in the Criminal Code are not used to further stigmatize and discriminate against people living with HIV and STBBIs. Prosecution under any offence in the Criminal Code should be limited to cases of actual, intentional transmission.
End the deportation of non-citizens following conviction.
Review past convictions so that people living with HIV previously criminalized under these harmful and stigmatizing laws no longer have to live with the label of a sex offender and criminal.

With your help we can make this happen!

Send a letter to government officials demanding the end of discriminatory and unscientific laws that criminalize people living with HIV.

A Canada where HIV is not a crime

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Minister for Women and Gender Equality: The Honourable Marci Ien marci.ien@parl.gc.ca  
Minister of Justice: The Honourable Arif Virani arif.virani@parl.gc.ca 
Minister of Health: The Honourable Mark Holland mark.holland@parl.gc.ca
Prime Minister: The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau justin.trudeau@parl.gc.ca

Dear Ministers; Dear Prime Minister,

I am writing to you as someone concerned with Canada’s discriminatory non-disclosure laws targeting people living with HIV. I urge the Government of Canada to limit HIV criminalization in accordance with international recommendations and informed by the best available scientific evidence. It’s time for Canada to become a positive leader on HIV non-disclosure law reform. At this time, it is especially important to come together and show our support for people living with HIV and AIDS, as well as those groups that are most disproportionately affected by the epidemic, including GBMSM, people who use drugs, BIPOC communities, sex workers, and migrants.

It has been two years since the International AIDS Conference in Montreal where the Government of Canada announced its intention to launch public consultations on law reform, ostensibly to end the harms of the criminalization of HIV non-disclosure in this country.  Those federal consultations ended in January 2023 and, to date, no bill has been introduced in Parliament to stop criminalization and end the harms endured by people living with HIV.  Your government’s unacceptably slow pace in adopting meaningful law reform is in full view as the world now gathers for AIDS 2024 in Munich.

This government inaction means that people living with HIV in Canada can still be charged for not telling their sexual partners their HIV status in certain circumstances. With more than 220 prosecutions for alleged HIV non-disclosure since 1989, Canada has the shameful distinction of being a world leader in HIV criminalization. Canada’s approach to criminalizing HIV non-disclosure is unscientific. As Justice Canada has recognized, it disproportionately affects Black, Indigenous, and gay communities, undermines public health efforts to stop the spread of HIV, contributes to HIV stigma, and imposes significant harms on people living with HIV.

People accused of HIV non-disclosure are most often charged with aggravated sexual assault — one of the most serious crimes in the Criminal Code — even when they did not intend to transmit HIV, the risk of HIV transmission was low, they did not actually transmit HIV, and they engaged in otherwise consensual sex. The compounding stigma of HIV and a sex offender label means that many people criminalized for HIV non-disclosure experience barriers to housing and employment, social exclusion, increased risks of violence and abuse, and psychological harms, including post-traumatic stress.

The Canadian Coalition to Reform HIV Criminalization (CCRHC) has long advocated for law reform, and has previously outlined necessary changes to HIV non-disclosure laws in a 2022 Community Consensus Statement advocating that the criminal law must be used only in cases where there was actual and intentional transmission of HIV or another sexually transmitted or bloodborne infection (STBBI). Furthermore, the law should never be used when someone engaged in activities that, according to the best scientific evidence, posed no significant possibility of transmission. The Canadian government asked people living with HIV to participate in consultations in good faith, and many were given some hope by the announcement made by the government at the International AIDS Conference in Montreal two years ago. People living with HIV deserve better than false hope — they deserve a government that will honour the promise made to them and end the criminalization of HIV non-disclosure in this country.

We need action, and we need it today, to:

1. Remove non-disclosure, exposure, or transmission of HIV or other STBBIs from the reach of sexual assault laws, including the current mandatory designation as a sex offender. 
2. Enact reforms to ensure that any other provisions in the Criminal Code are not used to further stigmatize and discriminate against people living with HIV and STBBIs. Prosecution under any offence in the Criminal Code should be limited to cases of actual, intentional transmission.
3. End the deportation of non-citizens following conviction.
4. Review past convictions so that people living with HIV previously criminalized under these harmful and stigmatizing laws no longer have to live with the label of a sex offender and criminal.

People living with HIV have waited for far too long. It has been years since the Department of Justice and previous Ministers of Justice recognized the harms of HIV criminalization, harms which have been inflicted upon people living with HIV over several decades. It is beyond time for change.

Canada must end the criminalization of people living with HIV now!

Sincerely,

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Download the Consensus Statement
Community Consensus Statement: July 2022 (0 downloads)

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Community Consensus Statement 2022 - Frequently Asked Questions (0 downloads)