Province blasted for AIDS ‘indifference’

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This article was published 01/12/2017 (2878 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — The provincial government doesn’t know how many Manitobans have AIDS, and did not issue a statement for World AIDS Day, prompting jeers from the Opposition and activists Friday.

“Add all of that up, and it sounds like a certain degree of indifference, frankly, to what is an ongoing public-health concern,” Richard Elliott, head of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, said. “I would hope and think that they could do better.”

In recent years, Manitoba has published its data of the previous year’s HIV transmissions, on or before Dec. 1, according to the provincial NDP. But not this year.

“There have been delays in producing the 2016 statistical update on HIV/AIDS. We hope to have it posted early in 2018,” reads the health department website.

The spokeswoman for Manitoba Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen provided no explanation for the delay, while his department would only say there was “a delay in the finalization of the report.”

NDP health critic Andrew Swan noted Manitoba has reported the second-highest per capita rate of HIV/AIDS, after Saskatchewan, for years — and Indigenous people in both provinces are far over-represented.

He said that provides plenty of reason to make a statement in the legislature, as the NDP had done before Friday (which was not a sitting day), and to make sure the data is available by then.

“It’s so important to make sure those statistics are gathered and shared. Those stats help inform public priorities and treatment options,” Swan said. “I don’t know if it’s staffing vacancies of the people who provide that, or if this government isn’t just interested.”

Goertzen’s spokeswoman said ministers posted support on social media for World AIDS Day, and claimed, unlike the NDP, all government MLAs had worn red ribbons to commemorate AIDS awareness.

“By the NDP’s own flawed logic… this would mean that they are not fully supportive of World AIDS Day initiatives,” she wrote. “There are a variety of ways to show support for a cause.

“Our government prefers to focus on working together to bring awareness to important issues such as HIV/AIDS.”

In Ottawa, Goertzen’s federal counterpart wouldn’t speak to Manitoba’s data collection, but said the feds keep an eye on each province’s trends.

“If we want to address the issue of HIV/AIDS, we certainly need to know what is going on,” said federal Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor. “We need to have good surveillance mechanisms.”

She also said: “World AIDS Day is a very important day for us to remember the lives that have been lost” as well as “amazing work” by activists and families.

On Friday, the federal Liberals published a report examining how Canada prosecutes AIDS transmission and exposure. The report slammed “disproportionate and discriminatory” persecution, and suggested provinces limit sentences for HIV-positive people who have a “negligible” risk of infecting their sex partner.

Elliott said this could mean fewer convictions where people use condoms, or take anti-retroviral drugs that produce an almost-impossible risk of transmitting the disease, and for activities such as oral sex.

Right now, those activities are giving people the same jail sentences faced by violent rapists, and advocates argue the stigma prevents people from getting tested for HIV.

“It’s doing a lot of harm to people with HIV, and it’s undermining the integrity of the law of sexual assault,” Elliott said.

“Intentionally infecting someone is a problem, and it’s defensible that the criminal-justice system treats it as such. But our current law has gone way far beyond that fairly limited and exceptional use of the criminal law,” Elliott said, noting few of the 200 prosecutions involved intentional transmission.

He said such changes are particularly needed in Manitoba.

In 2012, Canada deported Winnipeg resident Clato Mabior to South Sudan, after he had sex with nine women without telling them he was HIV positive. He was convicted with aggravated sexual assault, though none of the women had acquired the virus, and Mabior has been a low viral risk since taking treatments.

The Supreme Court clarified laws used to prosecute HIV exposure while hearing Mabior’s appeal.

More recently, the highest court in the land declined to hear another HIV-positive Manitoban’s case. In 2014, Marjorie Schenkels was found guilty of aggravated sexual assault by endangering life, after she had unprotected sex three times with a friend who didn’t know she was HIV-positive. He tested positive for the virus shortly afterward.

The Gimli woman argued there was no proof she transmitted HIV to the victim, and if she hadn’t, she didn’t endanger his life. She argued the jury should have been told the Crown had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the victim didn’t contract HIV from another source.

The Supreme Court declined to hear her case last week, and did not explain why.

Schenkels was the first woman in Manitoba to be convicted of sexual assault on the basis of failing to disclose her HIV status. As part of her conviction, she will be listed on the sex-offender registry for 10 years.

Elliott said cases such as hers illustrate the need for Manitoba to take up the reforms Ottawa suggested Friday.

“Now we have someone, who herself is a victim of sexual violence, is a registered sexual offender, spending time in jail,” he said. “I’m not sure that’s really, at the end of the day, helping anyone.”

He noted Schenkels, who reportedly had with drug issues, and the man she slept with, were inebriated during the encounters.

“Marjorie’s case really illustrates some of the messiness of our relationships as humans.”

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca