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Info in police background checks unfairly tainting innocent Canadians
Original Publication Date: September 17, 2012 5:14AM
Publication Updated: January 9, 2025 4:50AM
TORONTO – A prominent civil liberties group is warning that innocent people are being hurt by information disclosed in police background checks.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association says hundreds of thousands of Canadians are affected.
The problem is that police disclose non-conviction records when a background check is done.
Those records carry a stigma, even though the person was never convicted of any crime.
The association says people are being denied employment or run into border-crossing issues as a result, even though they have done nothing wrong.
The group recommends such records be deleted in most cases, and included in background checks only in “exceptional” cases.
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