Can You Get a NEXUS Card with a Criminal Record?

A NEXUS card is an electronically equipped piece of ID designed to speed up border crossings from Canada to the U.S. and vice versa. The program is jointly run by the Canada Border Services Agency and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Members of the NEXUS program typically avoid the long waits that can frequently occur…

How Long Does a Peace Bond Stay on Your Record?

Peace bonds are protection orders created by the court under section 810 of the Criminal Code. Typically, peace bonds are used if the authorities feel someone is likely to commit a criminal offence, yet there are no reasonable grounds to believe that an offence has been committed. Essentially, a peace bond is a promise not…

How Long Does it Take to get a Pardon in Ontario?

A Pardon (now called a Record Suspension) allows you to be free of the stigma involved with having your past mistakes hinder your chances at an ordinary life. With a Record Suspension in Ontario, your convictions will not be revealed on a criminal record check. A Record Suspension does not erase a criminal record but…

Pardons Canada – Public Consultation to Amend Pardons Laws

Please click on the link below to respond to the government survey about possible changes to the pardons laws. In 2012 the Conservative Government made changes to the pardons laws that made it harder to get a pardon with higher fees and longer eligibility requirements. Summary offences were changed from a 3 year waiting period…

Do I Have a Record If I’ve Been Charged but Not Convicted?

The average perception of a person’s legal reputation or record is usually pretty simple. Most people think that they only have to worry about a problem with their record if they are charged, tried and convicted of a criminal act. It’s true that for anyone with an actual criminal conviction, this does mean that there…

Tips for Getting a Free Criminal Record Check In Canada

Running a criminal record check on someone should not be automatically construed as an act of mistrust or paranoia. There are plenty of good reasons why a criminal record check may be a good idea, and in some cases, it may even be a legal requirement, rather than a declaration of opinion that says “I…

Reasons to Get a Criminal Record Check In Edmonton

For some, the province of Alberta has been easy to perceive as simply the “Texas of Canada,” thanks to cowboy culture being alive and well combined with the abundance of natural resources—especially oil—that turned the region from merely an agricultural economy to an industrial powerhouse. But even in these years when there are both political…

Pardons Canada Review – Removing a Stayed Charge in Canada

www.pardons.org When you are charged with a criminal offence and you go to court, if its your first offence, the outcome in court can be that the criminal charge is stayed, peace bond, diversion, withdrawn, dismissed, or discharged.  This results in a non-conviction. Many people believe that if their criminal charge was completed as a…

Why a Pardon Is Now Called a Record Suspension In Canada

For many years in Canada, if you wanted to get a criminal conviction sealed, you would undergo a process that was called getting a pardon. Officially, a pardon was defined as a government act that sealed a criminal conviction if the person with the conviction had served a sentence without incident, and had gone on…

Pardons Canada – Travel to Canada with a US Criminal Record

www.pardons.org American travelers visiting Canada can get a shock at the border if they have a criminal record (even if it was a misdemeanor like a DUI), they can be denied entry to Canada. At Pardons Canada we receive numerous calls and emails each month from Americans who were denied entry to Canada due to…