I was fortunate to receive my pardon just before our current government decided to have the Parole Board of Canada (PBC) re-introduce 'pardon' as 'record suspension' and the subsequent user fee hike from $150 to $631. Anyone who filed before the changeover took effect, was given the option of waiting in cue for the originally requested pardon, or withdrawing his or her application and submitting a new request for a record suspension. Com'on, who in their right mind would do that? Well as it turns out, this may have been a worthy strategy for some.
First, PBC made a decision to process only pardon applications for summary offences in the backlog (indictable offences are not being processed). Second, because of the full-cost recovery model (the $631 user fee) the Board felt it more appropriate to give priority to the higher paying record suspension applications.
Initially scheduled to be cleared by March 2014, the backlog of original pardon applications is moving forward slower than ever, with no final clearance date in sight. PBC finally updated its backlog status. It is now expecting to have close to 70 per cent of it cleared by March 31, 2015. This isn’t actually good news. Demande de pardon? Maybe in someone else's lifetime...
How to get a pardon in Canada? http://pbc-clcc.gc.ca/prdons/servic-eng.shtml
Welcome to the government of Canada. Citizenship and Immigration Canada also has similar processing times and they are only getting longer. Then again, if you look at other governments around the World we are doing better than most so I guess we should not complain? Economic theory would suggest it might actually be profitable for the government to speed up pardons... many people can't land a good paying job until they get a record suspension granted so that extra tax revenue should be an incentive to move quicker.
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