The federal government recently announced its intention to amend the Expungement of Historically Unjust Convictions Act to expand the list of offences Canadians can apply to have struck from their criminal records. The list now includes abortion-related offences and indecent acts in a bawdy house.
We are a group of gay and lesbian historians who study the criminalization of queer communities in Canada. While we applaud changes that allow women and abortion providers to apply to have their records expunged, we question the partial and historically faulty way the government has added bawdy-house offences to the act.
