Supporters of Toronto's gay community brave cold temperatures in February, 1982, to protest on the anniversary of police raids on bathhouses.John Wood/The Globe and Mail
People convicted under historic indecency and anti-abortion laws will be able to clear their records, after the federal government made a string of offences directed at women and the LGBTQ community eligible for expungement.
Indecency offences dating back to 1892 that targeted the LGBTQ community – including those used to justify police raids on gay clubs and bathhouses – are to be added to a list of “historically unjust offences” people can apply to have struck from their record.
They include the crime of putting on an “immoral, indecent or obscene play, opera, concert, acrobatic, variety or vaudeville performance” – and publicly exhibiting “a disgusting object” in a bawdy house.
The reforms will mean that people who were found guilty as recently as 20 years ago can apply to have their convictions erased.
Many of the indecency offences relate to keeping a “common bawdy house,” which until 2013 was defined as a place kept for the practice of acts of indecency or prostitution.
The police used the indecency part of the provision to justify raids on gay clubs and bathhouses, as well as swingers clubs. People transporting people to gay clubs could be charged, as could those performing “indecent acts” or taking part in “indecent exhibition.”
Between 1968 and 2004, there were around 38 police raids of gay nightclubs and bathhouses across Canada resulting in charges against customers, employees, performers, and owners under the indecency and “bawdy house” provisions of the criminal code, which included “nudity.”
A search of the RCMP National Repository of Criminal Records found 18,579 records relating to bawdy houses and indecent acts. In 2019, the “bawdy house offences” were repealed.
Helen Kennedy, executive director of Egale, said members of the LGBTQ community had “suffered horrendously,” with some committing suicide after being convicted. But she said reform was “too late for some” and “should have been done a long time ago.”
For those who have since died, family members and common-law partners can apply to the Parole Board for their records to be cleared posthumously.
Audrey Champoux, spokeswoman for Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino, said the reforms are aimed at “righting historical wrongs” toward the LGBTQ community and women, underlining the government’s commitment to “a compassionate, diverse Canada.”
The reforms, spearheaded by Mr. Mendicino, in consultation with Justice Minister David Lametti, will also apply to women who had abortions or helped women obtain them, when they were illegal.
They include doctors and nurses who helped women carry out an abortion, people who helped procure an abortion, or who supplied a drug or “noxious thing” to carry out an abortion.
Abortion has been legal in Canada since 1988, when the Supreme Court decided that a law criminalizing abortion was unconstitutional.
A 1969 reform by Pierre Trudeau’s Liberal government allowed for abortions in cases where a committee decided a woman’s life or health was in danger. But health service providers and women could still be subject to offences for participating in other abortions.
Women who were convicted of “procuring one’s own miscarriage” can now apply for the offence to be struck from their record, as with those convicted for selling or advertising a method for having an abortion.
But the expungement will only apply to those who provided “safe and voluntary abortion services,” according to explanatory notes to a government Order adding a list of offences to the schedule of the Expungement of Historically Unjust Convictions Act last month.
It will exclude people “who performed dangerous and harmful abortion procedures” or without the woman’s consent.
The RCMP National Repository of Criminal Records review found around 67 abortion-related convictions.