When Stephen DeVoe talks about his frustrations with the criminal record withholding process, he keeps thinking of two women.
The women wanted to participate in the nursing program. However, they were barred from applying because of their past conviction records and small unpaid fines associated with those convictions.
They came to DeVoe seeking assistance in stopping the records. He is a case manager for Pardon Me, a free service based in Dartmouth, New South Wales. Last year, the service began offering peer support to people going through the record suspension process.
But Mr. DeVoe had to tell them they were not eligible.
“When you have these barriers, you’re actually keeping people out of the workforce. It’s very discouraging to see where the momentum was for them to change their lives.”
Canada’s record suspension process is long and complex, and many Canadians continue to face barriers to work, school and housing. Changes are being made to streamline the process, but advocates say there’s more work to be done.
“Let’s stop giving people life sentences,” DeVoe said. “Because that’s what we’re doing, right? We’re giving people in the community a life sentence.”
“The stigma is… huge.”
In Canada, suspension of a criminal record, also known as a pardon, requires waiting five years for summary offenses and 10 years for more serious convictions. This timer only starts after the sentence has been completed, including the payment of all fees and fines, even if the fine is as small as $15 or less, as was the case with the women DeVoe tried to help. will be done.
A record suspension does not erase a conviction, but it does prevent information from being shared.
In 2022, the government reduced the fee to apply for a record suspension from $650 to $50 and allocated $18 million in funding to organizations like Pardon Me that help with the process. However, other reforms to the records suspension process – part of the federal Liberal Party’s promise after being elected in 2015 – have not materialized.
Pete Brown, national program manager for the Seventh Step Society of Canada, the charity that runs Pardon Me, said criminal records continue to prevent people from working. As more landlords require prospective tenants to check their criminal records, records are increasingly becoming a barrier to housing.
“There’s a huge stigma against people with criminal records.”
Since launching a little more than a year ago, Pardon Me has five people working in its Dartmouth office and two in Alberta, and has helped about 10 people obtain pardons, with about 150 cases currently in the system. An application has been registered.
“There are various complaints.”
Samantha McAleese is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Brock University. Based in St. Catharines, Ont., it is also a member of the Fresh Start Coalition, which includes approximately 90 organizations across the country. She said many people are abandoning their applications without receiving support.
“People are going to experience a lot of frustration and end up abandoning the process.”
Additionally, many of the first results that appear when searching for “Canadian amnesty” are for-profit companies that operate official websites.
“So they’re going to go to these companies thinking they’ll get amnesty if they do that, because that’s how they market themselves and that’s where they do it.”
2022 CBC Survey One of these companies, Canada Pardon Services, was discovered to have received $1,200 from a Quebec man without completing his pardon application. McAleese said concerns with for-profit companies have repeatedly come up in discussions with the federal government and in his doctoral research.
Brett Anderson has experienced these frustrations firsthand. In 2011, Anderson was convicted of marijuana possession and trafficking charges dating back to his late teens.
In 2019, the Trenton, N.S., resident decided to seek a suspension of his record in order to be able to travel outside of Canada.
Anderson applied through an organization called Pardons Canada, which she thought was a government agency.
In 2021, the Canada Pardons Service told him he could not proceed with his application because fines related to the charges were unpaid. For Anderson, the fine was upsetting. Although he has been to Pictou court several times to pay the outstanding amount, he said he was never informed of the remaining fine.
After paying the fine, he asked the Canadian Pardons Service in 2023 why the process took so long. Especially since his record suspension could be expedited by Bill C-93, which would simplify record suspensions for simple marijuana possession charges. And because the company told him to. to the Parole Board of Canada.
When he discussed his application with his supervisor, he discovered that the company had never submitted an application.
“They’re drawing their own conclusions and not actually submitting the application for review by an actual government agency.”
“Back to square one”
Anderson said the company has closed his file and is refusing to refund the $850 he paid.
Pardon’s Canada director Andrew Tannenbaum said in an interview that Pardon’s Canada removed Mr. Anderson as a customer because of his rude and abusive behavior.
Mr. Tannenbaum said the company returned Mr. Anderson’s documents, but that the money he paid will go towards work already done on Mr. Anderson’s behalf.
“We’re not making it up,” Tannenbaum said. “We don’t submit it to the parole board because the parole board might reject it.”
As for Anderson, he said it’s back to square one.
“It’s been 12 years since the conviction and I’ll have to start over again.”
Complex processes cause problems
Ultimately, advocates say these problems are caused by a complex record suspension process, which McAleese and other members of the Fresh Start Coalition say is a system that automatically shuts down people’s records after a certain period of time. This is why we are seeking an automatic suspension system that will be sealed.
Public Safety Canada is consulting with groups about automated systems, and independent senator Kim Pate introduced legislation in 2020 for an automated records suspension process.
McAleese said advocates are currently in a “wait-and-see” mode as to how these developments will go.
As for “Pardon Me,” DeVoe said that as long as people have to apply for record suspensions, they need support to get them through that process. That is underlined by his experience in his own 72-page application.
“We have to support people on this journey. I couldn’t do it alone,” he said. “It was just a weight lifted.”
DeVoe said a poignant example of why lifting this weight is important is the fact that many of the people he helps are elderly.
“That said, it’s pretty incredible when you think about something like this following people throughout their lives and how it affects their happiness, their self-esteem, their self-esteem,” he said. Ta. “Always a criminal, never a human being.”
