Background Checks in Ontario: What’s Legal, What’s Available, and What the Police Record Checks Reform Act Changed

Clients ask for “a background check” and mean one of two different things. Some want a criminal record search. Others want everything that can lawfully be established about a person: whether the degree is real, whether the company they claim to direct exists, whether they are who they say they are.

Those are different products, produced by different parties under different statutes. Confusing them costs employers money and occasionally costs them a human rights application.

Short answer: in Ontario a police record check is a regulated product. Only a police service or an authorized provider can produce one, it requires the subject’s written consent to a specific type of check, and the Police Record Checks Reform Act, 2015 (S.O. 2015, c. 30) restricts it to exactly three types with a closed list of what each may disclose. Since the Act was proclaimed in force on 1 November 2018, non-conviction information (charges withdrawn, dismissed, stayed, or ending in acquittal) is off the table entirely, except in a vulnerable sector check that clears a narrow three-part test. A background investigation is the other thing: identity, credentials, employment history, licensing, corporate directorships, civil litigation, judgments, bankruptcy, and open-source records, none of which requires a police database. Most clients who ask for a criminal record check actually need the second product.

This turns on statutory interpretation across six Acts. Treat it as orientation, and have an employment lawyer review the specifics before you build a screening policy or decline a candidate on a record.

A police record check and a background investigation are two different things

A police record check searches the Canadian Police Information Centre databases, or another police database maintained by a police service in Canada, to screen someone. Section 2(1) sets that scope, and it is wide: employment, volunteer work, a licence, an office, membership in a body, providing or receiving goods or services, and applications to an educational institution.

Who may produce one is fixed. Section 1(1) lists a chief of police, a designated member of a police service, an entity the RCMP permits to access CPIC, an authorized body under section 6.3 of the Criminal Records Act (Canada), and third party entities operating under agreement with a police service. A private investigator is not on that list.

A background investigation is the rest: corporate registrations, court files, land registry, insolvency records, regulator registers, institutions, former employers, open-source material. If your concern is fraud, misrepresented credentials, or an employment history that does not survive a phone call, a police record check tells you nothing. That is not a gap in the law, it is the wrong tool.

The three checks, and exactly what each one returns

Section 8(1) names three and only three: a criminal record check, a criminal record and judicial matters check, and a vulnerable sector check. Anything sold as a “full check,” “level 3,” or “police clearance” is one of these three under wording the statute does not recognize. Section 7(4) requires the request to specify the type and section 8(3) requires written consent to that type, so consent to one is not consent to another.

Section 9 makes the Schedule a closed list: a provider shall not disclose information unless the Schedule authorizes it.

Read the first row twice. Even a plain criminal record check does not return everything.

Who qualifies for a vulnerable sector check

Not everyone, and this is where employers overreach. What makes this check different is a federal query under section 6.3 of the Criminal Records Act (Canada) for a notation of a record-suspended sexual offence. Section 6.3(3) permits it only where the position is “one of trust or authority” towards a child or vulnerable person, and only with the applicant’s written consent. It is not a premium tier for any employer who wants more.

What the reform actually changed

Before 1 November 2018, an Ontario employer could routinely receive non-conviction information: withdrawn charges, stayed charges, acquittals, and at some services records of police contact where no charge was laid, including apprehensions under the Mental Health Act. A person acquitted at trial could carry that charge into every job application for life.

Section 1(1) now defines non-conviction information as information that an individual was charged with a criminal offence where the charge was dismissed, withdrawn, or stayed, or resulted in a stay of proceedings or an acquittal. Under the Schedule it is not disclosable on either of the first two checks at all, and on a vulnerable sector check only if it clears section 10.

Employers who used to receive it as a matter of course no longer do. That is the purpose of the statute, not an inconvenience to be worked around. A withdrawn charge is not evidence of anything.

The exceptional disclosure test

Section 10(2) permits non-conviction information on a vulnerable sector check only where all three criteria are met:

1. The charge is for a specified offence. The list is O. Reg. 350/18, specifying 121 provisions from the Criminal Code, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, and historical offences such as rape as it read before 4 January 1983.
2. The alleged victim was a child or a vulnerable person.
3. There are reasonable grounds to believe a pattern of predation indicating a risk of harm to a child or vulnerable person, having regard to whether the individual appears to have targeted such a person, whether the behaviour was repeated and directed at more than one, when it occurred, the number of incidents, and why it did not lead to a conviction.

The bar is high by design, and a single withdrawn charge does not establish a pattern. Section 10(3) requires any disclosed record to reproduce the Act’s definition of non-conviction information and flag the material clearly.

Your rights as the subject of a check

You see the result before anyone else. Section 12(1) requires the provider to disclose results to the individual and “shall not disclose the results to any other person.” Only after you receive them and give written consent under section 12(2) may a copy go to the employer.

You can request reconsideration of non-conviction information. Section 10(4) gives the provider 30 days. O. Reg. 348/18 supplies the mechanics: request in writing within 45 days of receiving the record (s. 2(1)); the provider applies the section 10(2) criteria, considers your submissions, and must consult at least three other members, one senior to them (s. 3); the decision comes back in writing (s. 4). Information failing the criteria is not disclosed (s. 10(5)).

You can request a correction. Section 15 requires every provider to maintain a correction process. Section 19 backs all of it: wilful contravention of sections 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, or 13 is an offence carrying a fine of up to $5,000.

What never appears on any of the three checks

• Withdrawn, dismissed, and stayed charges, and acquittals, outside the narrow vulnerable sector exception.
• Mental health apprehension and crisis contact. Section 9 closes the list to the Schedule, and this is not on it. Mental Health Act court orders are excluded even from the two higher checks. This was one of the reform’s principal targets.
• Being a victim or a witness of a crime.
• Youth records outside the access period. Section 119(2) of the Youth Criminal Justice Act sets those periods, including three years after a completed summary conviction youth sentence and five years after an indictable one. Within the period, section 11 requires a separate record carrying a notice, mandated by O. Reg. 349/18, that the Act “restricts you from sharing this information, and no one may require you to provide it.”
• Foreign records. Section 2(1) scopes the Act to databases maintained by a police service in Canada.
• Provincial offence convictions. Highway Traffic Act and similar matters are not criminal offences under section 1(1).

What employers cannot lawfully require or use

Several of these are common enough to read as standard practice.

• Requiring a vulnerable sector check for a role that is not a position of trust or authority. Section 6.3(3) of the Criminal Records Act (Canada) conditions the query on the position.
• Requiring the youth-record portion. O. Reg. 349/18’s mandated notice says it directly: no one may require you to provide it.
• Having results sent straight to the employer. Section 12(1) does not allow it.
• Using a check for another purpose. Section 13 binds the recipient to the purpose it was requested for, so a check obtained for hiring is not available for a later disciplinary matter.
• Asking the candidate to supply a self-requested check instead. The disclosure rules bind the provider, so it returns the same closed list. All this does is move the fee and route around section 12.
• Requiring consent broader than the role justifies. PIPEDA section 5(3) allows collection only for purposes a reasonable person would consider appropriate, and clause 4.3.3 of Schedule 1 prohibits requiring consent beyond what the specified legitimate purposes need.

The Human Rights Code problem, and its limits

The Ontario Human Rights Code lists “record of offences” as a prohibited ground in employment under section 5(1). Employers hear that and assume criminal records are off limits. Read section 10(1) first: the ground means a conviction for an offence pardoned under the federal Criminal Records Act and not revoked, or an offence under a provincial enactment. That is all of it. An unpardoned Criminal Code conviction is not covered.

Where the ground does apply it bites. Section 23(2) makes it a breach to use an application form or inquiry that directly or indirectly classifies qualifications by a prohibited ground, so a blanket “any convictions?” question capturing pardoned or provincial convictions is itself exposure. Section 24(1)(b) offers a defence only where a clean record is “a reasonable and bona fide qualification because of the nature of the employment,” and section 24(2) bars a tribunal from accepting that unless the circumstances cannot be accommodated without undue hardship.

One more exposure: screening on non-conviction information often functions as screening on mental health disability, since much of the police contact at issue arose from mental health crises.

What a licensed investigator can verify instead

A background investigation does not touch a police database. Under written consent it establishes:

• Identity, including variant names or dates of birth used to separate a person from their history.
• Education and credentials, verified with the institution rather than taken from the resume. Credential fraud is more common in executive screening than criminal history, and it is trivially checkable.
• Employment history: dates, title, and reason for departure, confirmed with the employer.
• Professional licensing status, including restrictions and, on many registers, discipline history.
• Corporate directorships and ownership, which surface companies a candidate did not mention.
• Civil litigation, judgments, bankruptcy, and insolvency, from court and federal records.
• Public and open-source records, dated and corroborated rather than screenshotted and assumed. See what OSINT means for a business.

Three constraints govern it. Investigation for remuneration is licensed: section 2(2) of the Private Security and Investigative Services Act, 2005 defines a private investigator as a person performing work, for remuneration, consisting primarily of conducting investigations to provide information; section 6 requires a licence, section 31 prohibits employing an unlicensed investigator, and section 30 requires insurance. Before handing over a candidate’s personal information, confirm the licence.

PIPEDA governs the information collected, which is why a properly run file opens with a signed consent naming what will be verified. See our guide to PIPEDA and investigative privacy.

Where the report is a consumer report, Ontario’s Consumer Reporting Act applies on top. Section 3 requires registration of both a consumer reporting agency and a “personal information investigator,” a person who obtains or reports personal information to such an agency for hire or reward. Section 9(3) caps the contents, including a seven-year ceiling on convictions, judgments, and bankruptcies and an outright bar on dismissed, set aside, or withdrawn criminal charges (clause (j)). Sections 10(2) and 10(7) require written notice before the report is requested and again where a benefit is denied because of it.

International and cross-border checks

An Ontario police record check searches Canadian police databases, full stop. Anyone with meaningful history abroad has a gap no domestic check will close, and foreign checks are slower and thinner than clients expect:

• Most countries release criminal record information to the subject, not to third parties, so the route runs through the candidate’s cooperation and timeline.
• Many require in-person attendance or fingerprints.
• Some have no centralized national repository, so a “national” check is a set of regional searches with uneven coverage.
• Translation, apostille, and authentication add weeks after the record issues.
• Some jurisdictions release nothing to a foreign employer, at any price.

Plan on several weeks to several months and build it into the offer timeline. Where a Canadian record must be certain rather than name-matched, the confirmatory route is a fingerprint-based check through the RCMP’s Canadian Criminal Real Time Identification Services.

How to read a clean result honestly

A clean police record check means one thing: no disclosable record. It does not mean “no record,” and it does not mean “safe.” Every category listed above is one the statute deliberately excludes, so a clean result is silent on all of them.

Two failure modes follow. The first is treating a clean check as clearance: it is one narrow negative result, silent on competence, credentials, financial exposure, and conduct that never produced a charge. Most workplace harm is done by people with clean records. The second is treating it as a substitute for judgment. The question is not “is there a record” but “is this person suitable for this role.” Where the exposure is fraud or internal theft, the useful preparation is procedural: see combating employee fraud.

Report the honest version: the check disclosed nothing the Act permits to be disclosed.

What to do next

If you are an employer, settle three things first. Decide what question you are actually trying to answer, because it is usually not “does this person have a criminal record.” Match the check type to the role instead of requesting the deepest one on offer. Write down what you will do with the result, because section 13 binds you to that purpose.

If you are the subject, request your own copy, read it before consenting to release it, and use the reconsideration process within 45 days if non-conviction information appears. If you think a screening decision crossed a line, that is a question for an employment lawyer, not an investigator. One currency note: a 2026 amendment added section 14.1, requiring providers to comply with prescribed service standards, in force 2 June 2026.

If the real question is credentials, corporate interests, litigation history, or whether a candidate’s account of themselves survives verification, that is a background investigation, run under written consent and delivered as a documented, sourced report. To discuss a file, contact us or assign a case.

This article is general information about investigative practice in Ontario, not legal advice. Laws change and every situation is different. For advice about your specific circumstances, consult a licensed Ontario lawyer or contact a licensed investigator directly.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a police record check and a background check in Ontario?

A police record check is a regulated search of Canadian police databases. Only a police service or authorized provider can produce one, it needs the subject’s written consent, and the Police Record Checks Reform Act, 2015 fixes what it may disclose. A background investigation is everything else a licensed investigator can verify: identity, credentials, employment, licensing, corporate records, and litigation.

What are the three types of police record check in Ontario?

Section 8(1) of the Police Record Checks Reform Act, 2015 names exactly three: a criminal record check, a criminal record and judicial matters check, and a vulnerable sector check. The first returns unpardoned convictions only. The second adds outstanding charges, warrants, court orders, and certain discharges. The third adds not criminally responsible findings and, rarely, non-conviction information.

Do withdrawn charges show up on an Ontario police record check?

Almost never. A withdrawn, dismissed, or stayed charge, or one ending in acquittal, is non-conviction information under section 1(1). It cannot be disclosed on a criminal record check or a criminal record and judicial matters check at all, and appears on a vulnerable sector check only if it meets all three criteria in section 10(2).

Can I see my police record check before my employer does?

Yes. Section 12(1) requires the provider to release results to the individual who is the subject of the check and to no one else. Only after you receive them and consent in writing under section 12(2) may a copy go to the employer. If non-conviction information appears, request reconsideration within 45 days.

Can an employer refuse to hire me because of a criminal record in Ontario?

Sometimes. The Ontario Human Rights Code protects record of offences in employment under section 5(1), but section 10(1) defines the ground narrowly: pardoned or record-suspended convictions and provincial offence convictions only. An unpardoned Criminal Code conviction is not covered. Where it does apply, the employer must show under section 24(1)(b) that a clean record is a genuine job requirement.

How long do international background checks take?

Longer than clients expect, and less complete. An Ontario police record check searches Canadian databases only, so foreign records fall outside its scope. Overseas checks follow each country’s own release rules, which often require the subject to apply personally or give fingerprints. Several weeks to several months is normal, and some jurisdictions release nothing to third parties.