Overview
For people living with HIV, discrimination in employment can make it difficult or impossible for many of them to stay at work when they are ill, or to return to work when their health improves. As a result, they often rely on income security programs to meet their basic needs for food, housing, and medication.
We bring a legal and policy focus to this issue by analyzing and recommending reforms to the laws and policies that underpin income security programs, such as:
- Employment Insurance sickness benefits;
- Canada Pension Plan or Quebec Pension Plan disability benefit;
- Private long-term disability insurance; and
- Provincial and territorial social assistance programs.
Federal, provincial and territorial governments and the private insurance industry need to rethink and restructure disability income and related benefit programs. Income support programs must meet the needs of people living with HIV and AIDS and other disabling illnesses in a coordinated and comprehensive way.
Learn more:
Rights Within Reach: Strategic Plan 2022-2027
The HIV Legal Network promotes the human rights of people living with HIV or AIDS and other populations disproportionately affected by HIV and criminalization, in Canada and internationally. In 2021, we undertook a planning process that would shape the strategic goals and priorities for the organization’s next five years (2022-2027). To do this, we sought … Read more
Rights Within Reach: Strategic Plan 2022-2027, Executive Summary
In 2021, the HIV Legal Network undertook a planning process that would shape the strategic goals and priorities for the organization’s next five years (2022-2027). To do this, we sought the input of a broad range of stakeholders, from partner organizations to people living with and affected by HIV and criminalization, to staff. All identified … Read more
Respect, Protect, Fulfill: Supporting the HIV Legal Network
Respect. Protect. Fulfill. You can help challenge wrongs, advance rights, and transform lives. Denied basic healthcare. Criminalized and vilified for love. Unfairly targeted by police. These abuses, and more, are too often the experience of people living with HIV and of communities affected by HIV. At the HIV Legal Network, our mission has always been … Read more
A Moment of Breakthrough: Annual Report 2020-2021
Seizing the moment to push for concrete and lasting change.
Our History, Our Future: Annual Report 2019-2020
Guided by the past and working toward the future as we challenge wrongs, advance rights, and transform lives.
FLATTEN INEQUALITY: Human rights in the age of COVID-19
In the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic, law- and policymakers are taking and contemplating drastic measures to minimize the spread of the virus. But hasty and broad punitive measures may perversely undermine public health objectives while also violating human rights — so it is essential that any measures be appropriately narrow and comply with … Read more
Housing rights case dismissed — but a door remains open
February 4, 2015 It is estimated that 1.3 million people have experienced homelessness in Canada over the past five years. The country’s streets are host to some 235,000 people on any night, and many more struggle in inadequate or unreliable housing. Yet despite these unconscionable numbers, Canada does not have a federal housing strategy — … Read more