A gay man who was dismissed from the Canadian Armed Forces in 1994 says he has mixed feelings about the federal governmentâs apology to LGBTQ people who faced discrimination between the 1950s and 1990s.
Simon Thwaites was working on a naval ship when his superiors learned that he was HIV positive. Still reeling from the diagnosis, his security clearance was lowered and he was reassigned to tasks like sweeping and washing dishes.
âI just got sort of pushed to the side and isolated from my peers,â he told CTV Power Play on Tuesday, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
âMy shipmates ⌠I was told not to communicate with them,â he added.
The military issued a guideline in 1994 stating that military personnel exhibiting symptoms of HIV be categorized as medically unfit. Thwaites was
He lost his medical benefits, making life with a chronic illness more difficult. Heâs now part of a class-action lawsuit that the government has agreed in principle to settle for more than $100 million.
Thwaites points out that while heâs around to tell his story, many others didnât survive -- hence his mixed feelings.
âIf you look at the numbers that have applied for the class action ⌠itâs mainly women,â he said. âThereâs only a few of us guys, and thatâs mainly because my peers, a lot of them, are dead.â
Thwaites says he was happy to hear Tuesday that the federal government intends to expunge criminal records like his. He also wants to know if heâll get the pension and medical benefits that he missed out on.
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale told Power Play that while people will need to apply to have their records expunged, there is also a process for relatives of those who have died to have names cleared posthumously.
Svend Robinson, who was Canadaâs first openly gay MP, said that he was thinking about the people who died before they could witness the apology delivered by Trudeau.
âI know personally people who took their own lives just because of the shame they felt,â he said.
âItâs very important that this happened,â he added. âMany Canadians donât have a clue about this.â
Gary Kinsman, a sociologist and activist who pushed for the apology and compensation, says Trudeauâs speech left him wanting to both âcelebrate and cry at the same time.â
âThis was an important part of Canadian history that most people donât usually know about it,â he said. âItâs really important that the government has finally acknowledged it and taken responsibility for it.â
Kinsman added, however, that the apology took too long. He says people have been pushing for it since the 1990s.
âOver those decades, lots of the people who needed to be apologized to have died,â he said. âSo thatâs why I want to cry. This should have happened decades ago.â