The Government of Canada has been growing less and less understanding of the problems that they’ve created with recent changes to laws surrounding criminal records, the Canadian pardon process and record suspensions.
The law makes a lot of things fairly black-and-white: if you don’t have a criminal record, you can get a good job, you can volunteer for your child’s school trips and you can travel over the border.
If you have a criminal record, you can’t.
Some might think that criminals shouldn’t be around kids, or that they don’t deserve a good job. Did you know that one in eight Canadians has a criminal record?
There are about 4 million Canadians living with a criminal record, which is about 13% or one in 8 people.
Are they all monsters? No. Most of those 4 million Canadians broke a window twenty years ago or drank a bit too much when they were sixteen.
And yet more than 50% of employers conduct criminal record checks including those that require almost no special training like McDonald’s, Tim Hortons, Metro, The Source and Lowe’s.
More than 50% of employers now conduct criminal record checks.
Now, for millions of Canadians, life is deeply affected by a tiny mark on their record. Employment, travel, time with their children and more are regularly challenged because of something so small.
The effect on their lives is stressful, suffocating and embarrassing.
But it doesn’t have to be.
The Canadian pardon process still exists, here’s how it works.
What Does a Pardon Do For Me?
A pardon hides your criminal record from employers (making you bondable), and a US Entry Waiver hides it from border guards. You effectively seal your record from everyone except for people who should actually have it: Police officers and the courts.
Getting a record suspension (the new word for pardon) is just like filing your taxes except it’s far more complicated and specialized. You can do it yourself–all of the documents are avaiable from the Canadian Government.
Here’s why you might not want to file yourself though:
- Unlike taxes, if you make a mistake filing your pardon you slow the process down immeasurably; it already takes between 6 and 24 months to process a record suspension.
- Like filing your taxes, it’s a time-consuming process. If you have the time to learn how to file well enough to avoid making a mistake, you’re sacrificing time that may have been better spent.
- It’s stressful to wait to see if you’ve gotten all of the paperwork right; it’s a load off of your back to have a professional making sure that you’re going to be OK.
The 7 Steps to Get a Pardon
We start with an intake call. Basically, you get in touch with us. We want to ask you about your day, how your dog is doing and whether or not we can guarantee your pardon.
Next we send you all of the required documents for you signature. All of the hard parts are done; we just need your scribble.
Behind the scenes we ask different government services for all of the documents we need to process your record suspension. These all get destroyed at the end because we wouldn’t want someone holding onto our personal information either.
We prepare your application and have two separate experts review it before sending it off. We don’t always make mistakes, but when we do we catch them before they get sent you.
A month later we get a response from the Parole Board. They’re just confirming that they’ve gotten the application, but sometimes they have additional questions that are specific to your case.
This is kind of like the intake step where we give you a call and make sure we get the right answer together for the Parole Board. We run the Parole Board’s questions by you, put together the answer, and send it off.
Finally we get a decision from the Parole Board. This is a stressful moment, because you might be part of the 1% of people who we don’t help get accepted. Honestly, our success rate is over 99% and we guarantee our results; don’t stress.
Give us a call, let us help you out.
1-866-972-7366
Apply for a Record Suspension , or book your free consultation today, and see what new opportunities await you!