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CHCH News has learned that there could soon be extensive changes to police background checks in Canada. The RCMP is proposing a system that would require fingerprint scans for everyone applying for any kind of police check. Charities who have been consulted say they are worried this will make it harder and harder to find volunteers, because the process will become unreasonably time consuming and expensive.
Volunteers from Big Brothers-Big Sisters of Hamilton-Burlington are shivering in the wind outside Ikea, selling Christmas trees for their annual fundraiser. Executive Director Marianne Noakes says she’s concerned about finding and keeping hard workers like these under new rules the RCMP is considering: “The new system as we understand it, every individual will have to submit to fingerprinting. Our concern is that it will take longer, and will cost more money.”
Right now only about 10 per cent of 12 million annual Canadian police checks require fingerprints.
Noakes: “My best guess is one in 200 that come through our door.”
They are people like George Geczy whose birthdate and gender match someone who is on the sex offender list: “So the fingerprints are used to exactly identify that I’m not that person.”
He volunteers on the library board, and several other places, like Children’s Aid. Some places require a new check every year: “I think in the last 15 years I’ve had at least 20 police checks. What I’ve been seeing over the last few years is the rates are going up, its been costing more to get police checks and fingerprints done in Hamilton, that has definitely been a discouragement for a lot of volunteers.”
Volunteer groups have been told the RCMP has delayed the change because of backlash. But one source tells CHCH all volunteers will require fingerprints by 2016 and all employment checks will require them by 2017.
The RCMP will only say at this point that they’re consulting with stakeholders and have no timeline. But they’re looking at this as a way of increasing safety.
Right now most people go to a police station for fingerprinting. And there is a concern local police will have to absorb the costs of fingerprinting 90 per cent more people.
It looks like they won’t be able to process any applications online after the change.
But police don’t have to accept the responsibility, and it may instead fall to private operators, or maybe even the post office to provide fingerprinting services. That scenario has people concerned about the security of their private information.
