Ontario's Police Record Checks Reform Act defines three checks, all available online from the Toronto Police Service: a Criminal Record Check (criminal convictions and findings of guilt), a Criminal Record and Judicial Matters Check (adding outstanding charges, court orders, and absolute/conditional discharges within their disclosure windows), and a Vulnerable Sector Check (adding, in narrow circumstances, non-conviction information — only for positions of trust over children or vulnerable persons). Most checks are processed electronically within days; vulnerable sector checks take longer. You see your own results and can dispute errors before anything goes to a third party.
- Ontario law defines exactly three checks — CRC, CRJMC, and Vulnerable Sector — with fixed disclosure rules for each.
- A basic Criminal Record Check shows convictions — not withdrawn charges, acquittals, or most discharges past their windows.
- Outstanding charges and court orders appear on the judicial-matters and vulnerable sector levels.
- Non-conviction records (withdrawn charges, police contacts) can appear only on vulnerable sector checks, in narrow, contestable circumstances.
- You apply online through the Toronto Police Service; you see your results first and can dispute them.
- Employers can only demand the level of check the position justifies — a VSC requires a genuine vulnerable-sector role.
The Law Behind Record Checks
Ontario's Police Record Checks Reform Act ended the wild west of police checks: it defines three permissible check types, dictates exactly what each may disclose, requires your consent before results reach anyone else, and gives you the right to see and dispute results first. Every check the Toronto Police Service issues fits one of the three boxes below — an employer cannot invent a fourth, and the difference between the levels is frequently the difference between a job offer surviving your past or not. The interaction between charges, outcomes, and what surfaces later is the theme of our companion article on criminal charges and background checks; this guide is the Toronto process manual.
Level 1: Criminal Record Check
The basic Criminal Record Check (CRC) discloses criminal convictions and findings of guilt — full stop. It does not show withdrawn charges, stayed charges, acquittals, outstanding charges, or absolute and conditional discharges outside their windows. It is the appropriate level for ordinary employment — retail, office, trades — and the level most Toronto employers should be requesting. If you completed diversion and your charge was withdrawn, a CRC comes back clean.
Level 2: Judicial Matters Check
The Criminal Record and Judicial Matters Check (CRJMC) adds the live legal landscape: outstanding charges, arrest warrants, court orders against you (peace bonds, probation, prohibition orders), and discharges within their windows — one year for an absolute discharge, three years for a conditional discharge, after which they are purged from disclosure. This is the level where a pending charge — even one destined for withdrawal — becomes visible to an employer, which is why timing job applications around an open file is a real strategic conversation to have with counsel, and why resolutions that end without conviction (withdrawal, peace bonds, discharges) still differ meaningfully from each other on paper. Our discharge eligibility calculator maps those windows.
Level 3: Vulnerable Sector Check
The Vulnerable Sector Check (VSC) exists for one purpose: positions of trust or authority over children or vulnerable persons — teachers, daycare staff, healthcare workers, coaches. It includes everything in the first two levels, plus two categories unique to it: pardoned sexual-offence convictions (via the federal vulnerable-sector query), and — in narrow, prescribed circumstances — non-conviction information: charges that ended in withdrawal, stay, or acquittal can be disclosed only where the record meets an “exceptional disclosure” test tied to the safety of the vulnerable. Even then, the Act gives you notice and a reconsideration process before the information goes anywhere. Employers cannot demand a VSC for a job that is not genuinely vulnerable-sector — the request itself must be justified by the position.
Applying Through the TPS
For Toronto residents, all three checks run through the Toronto Police Service's online record-check portal: create an account, verify identity, select the check type (VSC applications require the employer's vulnerable-sector attestation), pay the fee — reduced or waived for volunteers with agency letters — and receive results electronically. Routine CRC and CRJMC results typically arrive within days; VSCs take longer, and any file requiring manual review — common names, past police contact, fingerprint confirmation — longer still. Two practical notes: apply through the police service where you live (Toronto residents use TPS even for jobs elsewhere), and if a check requires fingerprint verification, book it promptly — that queue, not the check itself, is usually the delay.
What Shows & For How Long
The durable rules worth knowing. Convictions show until a record suspension (pardon) is granted — adult convictions do not age off on their own, a reality our record suspension guide covers in depth. Absolute discharges disclose for one year; conditional discharges for three. Withdrawn charges and acquittals do not appear on CRC or CRJMC checks at all — their only lawful appearance is the exceptional-disclosure path on a VSC. Youth records live under the Youth Criminal Justice Act's separate access windows (mapped by our youth record destruction calculator). And local police data — occurrence reports, mental-health apprehensions — is barred from all three check types, with narrow VSC exceptions: the Act specifically ended the era of mental-health contacts surfacing on employment checks.
Disputing What a Check Says
Checks come back wrong more often than people assume: another person's record matched to a common name, a withdrawn charge shown as outstanding, a purged discharge still displayed. Because the Act routes results to you first, errors can be fought before an employer ever sees them: TPS processes correction requests with supporting documents (court records, fingerprint comparison), and exceptional-disclosure decisions on VSCs carry a formal reconsideration right on request within the statutory window. Move fast — reconsideration timelines are short — and involve counsel where the stakes are a career: the difference between “disclosed” and “not disclosed” on one VSC line can be worth more than most legal fees. Where the underlying court record itself is the problem, the fix is upstream, at the courthouse — which is the next section.
Cleaning the Slate Permanently
A record check is downstream of the record — so lasting fixes happen at the source. Convictions need a record suspension from the Parole Board of Canada (waiting periods and eligibility run through our record suspension calculator, and the process through our eligibility wizard). Withdrawn and acquitted charges leave fingerprints and photographs in police holdings that are worth destroying proactively — the TPS application process our guide to fingerprint destruction in Toronto walks through — because destroyed records cannot resurface on the exceptional-disclosure path. And for anyone mid-case, outcomes should be negotiated with the future check in mind: withdrawal beats a peace bond on paper, a discharge beats a conviction, and the gap between them is precisely what a Toronto criminal lawyer negotiates for — the long game our criminal record risk wizard lets you preview.
A distinction that saves confusion: the police record check you hand an employer and what a border officer sees are different windows into different systems. U.S. Customs queries Canadian police databases directly — it does not read your Ontario-standard paper check — so entries long invisible to Toronto employers (old withdrawn charges whose fingerprints were never destroyed, dated convictions) can still surface at Pearson's preclearance line. The practical consequences: a clean Level 1 check is not evidence you are “clear” for travel; cleaning the underlying databases — fingerprint destruction for non-convictions, record suspension for convictions — is what actually changes both what checks show and what automated queries return; and anyone with a complicated history planning U.S. travel or immigration processes should get the record fixed at the source first, then order a fresh check to verify the result rather than assuming it. The same source-first logic applies to foreign police certificates for immigration applications: fix the Canadian databases before requesting the certificate, because amending a certificate after issuance is a slower fight than cleaning the record was.
Employers, Charges & Your Rights
The questions that fill our consultation inbox. Can an employer demand a check? Yes, with consent, at the level the position justifies. Can they see a pending charge? Only on CRJMC or VSC levels — and bail conditions may complicate specific jobs regardless. Must I volunteer a charge nobody asked about? Generally no legal duty, but regulated professionals and some contracts owe reporting obligations — check yours before deciding. Can I be fired or rejected over a record? Ontario's Human Rights Code protects against discrimination for convictions that received a record suspension and provincial offences — a real but bounded shield. The pattern across all of it: what a check shows is substantially manageable in advance — by the resolution you negotiate, the destruction applications you file, and the suspensions you pursue. The worst strategy is finding out what your record says at the same moment an employer does. A free consultation — with the charge documents or the old file numbers — maps your exposure and the sequence to fix it, the same record-protection work that runs through every file our first-appearance clients bring us.
Frequently Asked Questions
Under the Police Record Checks Reform Act: the Criminal Record Check (convictions only), the Criminal Record and Judicial Matters Check (adding outstanding charges, court orders, and discharges within their windows), and the Vulnerable Sector Check (adding pardoned sexual-offence convictions and, in narrow circumstances, non-conviction information — only for genuine positions of trust over children or vulnerable persons).
Through the Toronto Police Service's online record-check portal: create an account, verify identity, choose the check type, pay the fee (reduced or waived for volunteers with agency letters), and receive results electronically. Apply through the service where you live — Toronto residents use TPS even for out-of-town employers.
Routine Criminal Record and Judicial Matters checks are typically processed within days electronically. Vulnerable Sector Checks take longer, and any application requiring manual review or fingerprint verification — common with frequently shared names — adds time. Apply well ahead of employer deadlines.
Not on the first two levels — withdrawn charges, stays, and acquittals are excluded from Criminal Record Checks and Judicial Matters Checks. They can appear only on a Vulnerable Sector Check, and only where the record passes the Act's narrow "exceptional disclosure" test, which carries notice and a reconsideration right before release.
On a Criminal Record and Judicial Matters Check or Vulnerable Sector Check, yes — outstanding charges and court orders are disclosed at those levels. On a basic Criminal Record Check, no. This is why the timing of applications and the speed of resolving a charge have real employment consequences.
Within their windows: an absolute discharge discloses for one year, a conditional discharge for three, on judicial-matters and vulnerable sector levels. After the window, they are purged from disclosure. This built-in expiry is a core advantage discharges hold over convictions, which persist until a record suspension.
No — the reform legislation specifically barred mental-health apprehensions and general police occurrence data from all three check types, with only narrow vulnerable-sector exceptions. The era of mental-health calls surfacing on employment checks is over in Ontario.
Because results come to you before any third party, errors can be corrected first: TPS processes disputes with supporting court records or fingerprint comparison. Exceptional-disclosure decisions on Vulnerable Sector Checks carry a formal reconsideration right with a short window — move immediately, and involve counsel where a career is at stake.
At the source: convictions require a record suspension from the Parole Board of Canada after the waiting period; withdrawn or acquitted charges leave fingerprints and photos in police holdings that can be destroyed on application to TPS; and youth records expire under their own access windows. Each path has eligibility rules worth checking with counsel or our calculators.
Often yes — but with limits: the Human Rights Code prohibits discrimination based on convictions that have received a record suspension and on provincial-offence convictions. Practically, the strongest protection is managing what the check shows in the first place: negotiated non-conviction outcomes, destruction applications, and suspensions.