Record Suspensions (Pardons)

Do I need to pay a pardon company?

No. The government fee is $50 and the Parole Board publishes a step-by-step application guide; the work is gathering documents, which the companies make you do anyway while charging hundreds more. Their files receive no priority. The genuine case for paid help is complexity — multiple jurisdictions, lost records, eligibility questions — and for that an hour with a lawyer beats a form-mill subscription every time.

Will a record suspension let me travel to the United States?

Not by itself. US border authorities keep their own records and do not recognise Canadian record suspensions — a record they already know about can still ground refusal, suspension or not. The US fix is its own process: an entry waiver (I-192), with its own fees and timelines. If US travel is your driver, plan both tracks — and never lie at the border, which converts an inconvenience into a permanent bar.

My charge ended in a discharge. Do I need a suspension?

No — discharges self-clean. An absolute discharge purges from the national database after 1 year, a conditional discharge after 3; no application or fee. Two practical follow-ups are worth doing: confirm the purge actually happened before a big employment check (records errors occur), and ask the arresting police service about destroying fingerprints and photos, which is a separate, local process.

What if I reoffend after getting the suspension?

The suspension can be revoked — a new conviction (and even misleading statements in the application) leads the Board to revoke, and the old record returns to visibility alongside the new one. A suspension is best understood as sealed-while-you-stay-clean rather than erased. The upside is symmetrical: decades of clean living after a youthful record, protected by the suspension, is exactly the outcome the system intends.

Employers keep asking about criminal records. What can I say once it's suspended?

In most contexts you may truthfully answer "no" to questions about a criminal record for which a suspension has been granted — and human rights legislation (federally, and in provinces like Ontario and BC) protects against discrimination over suspended records. Vulnerable-sector roles are the carve-out where sealed sexual-offence records can still surface. If an employer's check wrongly surfaces a sealed record, that is a records error worth correcting formally — and a moment to get advice.