January

Advance listings of hearings in all criminal courts could be available online from next year, under an amendment proposed to the Criminal Procedure Rule Committee. At present, most court lists are distributed externally only to established newspapers under the so-called 'press protocol '. However, the Ministry of Justice 's crime and justice sector transparency panel, set up in 2011 to encourage wider access to data, has urged open publication. The panel heard that the Criminal Procedure Rule Committee is planning to enable publication as soon as courtroom IT systems are up to the task. A paper circulated to the panel reveals that the committee intends to amend rule 5.8 'to authorise and require the publication by Her Majesty 's Courts & Tribunals Service of basic details of cases listed to be heard in public in the criminal courts. ' Details, including the names and addresses of defendants, the nature of charges and whether reporting restrictions are likely to be imposed, would be available online for a limited period, expected to be two days. If approved by the rule committee, the amendments could be signed in December and come into force next April. However, a recent panel meeting heard that, because of the need to upgrade court IT systems, online results might not be available for at least a year after that.

Concerns about the amount and type of personal information disclosed in police record checks have prompted an investigation by B.C.'s privacy commissioner. Elizabeth Denham says citizens and civil society groups have raised questions about the scope and sensitivity of personal information that's accessed and disclosed to police, often for employment-screening purposes. Denham says thousands of record checks are processed every year by municipal police forces and the RCMP but the relevance of the information collected in the public and private sector needs to be scrutinized. While a criminal record check is a report of someone's prior convictions, penalties or outstanding charges pulled from a national police database, such information can also reveal details that have not been proven in court. She says some of the issues include a person's mental health, investigations that did not result in charges and charges that did not end up in a conviction. Last year, the commissioner issued a report saying the B.C. government did too many criminal record checks for employment-related purposes in March 2011 and that while some were valuable for people working with children, for example, others were an invasion of privacy.

This article covers some of the most common questions asked about employee background checks in Canada. Question topics include: Credit Checks, Drug and Alcohol Testing, Medical Examinations and Criminal Background Checks. Here are a few of the questions and answers: Is an employer allowed to perform a credit check on an employee or prospective employee? An employer may perform a credit check on an employee or prospective employee if the employer intends to use the information for employment purposes. Such purposes include considering new hires, granting promotions, reassigning employment duties or determining whether to retain someone as an employee. Who can be subjected to a drug|alcohol test? Any employee may be subjected to a drug|alcohol test, however, drug and alcohol testing that has no demonstrable relationship to job safety and performance has been found to be a violation of employee rights. Can an employer decline to hire a prospective employee or terminate an employee based on the results of the criminal background check? A decision not to hire someone based solely on the fact that he or she has a criminal record is discriminatory under the Code. However, an employer would not be discriminating if it makes the decision regarding employment based on a record of offence that closely relates to an important quality of the job. If a person has received a pardon for the crime that they committed, an employer cannot refuse to hire that person because of that crime.