What Shows Up On A CPIC Police Check?

You’ve applied for a position as a volunteer, and the organization quite properly, asks you for a police check, a CPIC check, a Canadian Police Information Center check, it’s called because they want to know well, if you’ve got a criminal record or matters before the court or outstanding orders against you in the criminal court, etc., Very important, because we have to protect our children and volunteers, of course, in the sense of we don’t have problems with kids, for example if your volunteering for kids. So that’s a great question.

What shows up on a CPIC check in Canada, and what are the different levels of this? Very important and welcome back to the channel today. This is Mike Kruse here, and we try and break down common questions in criminal law in very easy words. So thanks for joining me today.

So, let’s kind of break this down. So first of all, the thing to look at, if you go online and you look at the Police Records Check Reform Act. That’s a very good act. Scroll to the bottom of that act there is a fantastic chart. I’m not going to go through the whole chart, but it’ll really break it down for you.

There are essentially three different levels of criminal record checks in Canada. The first is a simple criminal record check. A lot of employers will just ask for a criminal record check, which is good because that’s the least disclosed things, which I’ll get to on that. The second is judicial matters and criminal record check, which is level two, and then a vulnerable sector check is level three. Like, for example, you want to be a baseball coach or hockey coach, or maybe be bonded at a bank, they’ll check that.

What the chart shows in the police records check reform act at the end. Great chart. It’ll show all what’s disclosed in each one. So, let’s take a criminal record check, then the level one, which, hopefully that’s the only one you’re facing in employment law. So, they’re going to disclose criminal records that have not been pardoned or record suspended. That’s very clear. They’re not going to disclose after a certain time period of three years for conditional discharge. Conditional discharge is not a criminal record, but it may be initially disclosed. They’re not going to disclose pardons. They’re not going to disclose other court orders or peace bonds or things like that. There might be a short waiting period before that drops off. So fairly easy level to get by if you obviously have a conditional discharge or not necessarily can be disclosed because it’s not a record. But clearly, any criminal record is going to be disclosed.

But as we escalate up to the next one, they disclose more information. Unfortunately, they’re going to disclose conditional discharges for about a three-year period, they might disclose in exceptional circumstances, some garbage that’s on your CPIC. Because there’s all sorts of things on CPIC. I’ll tell you the stuff I’ve seen there is crazy. I mean, I’ve seen comments, “hates police”, things like that.

So, as you escalate up and a vulnerable sector check is the worst. It’s going to disclose more and more things. So just a quick recap. Then most employers just have a simple record check, which is the easiest to pass. But if you’ve got some messy things on your CPIC, your Canadian police Information Center, that may be disclosed for vulnerable sector check, and incidentally, I think I did a video about this some time ago.

This Act came into play in 2018 because before then, each county, each police force, they were just doing their own thing. They do a criminal record check and disclose crazy things that they shouldn’t have been so they finally did it uniformly. Supposedly. I’m not fully convinced they’re doing that, but it seems to be much better amongst the counties, we do have legislation in place, and they should follow that chart at the back of the Police Record Check Reform Act. So, you should consult that, it’ll break down. There are all sorts of permutations and combinations that you can look at. It’ll break it down for you. Just find that act online. Scroll right to the end and you’ll see a beautiful chart which goes to disclose whatever you have on CPIC for the different levels of record checks. Thanks for joining me today. Stay safe, stay protected and know your rights.