I have been getting complaints about pardon application time frames recently. I have to be honest. Some are from my own clients.  But a lot are from clients of other companies. The problem right now is that, as a result of the Conservative crime policies, pardon applications are backed up quite severely.
The two main challenges to processing pardon quickly at the moment are the RCMP and the Parole Board. Courts and local police requests are about as inefficient as they ever were.
So here is my honest estimate of how long a pardon should take. This assumes that you are currently eligible for pardon.
Our expedited service is currently taking between 8 – 12 months. In all truth 8 is not impossible but I would certainly not tell you to make plans based on it. And 12 months is not the maximum. You never know in the business when you will hit a snag with a local police station or a court house. But most of our expedited files are falling within those times frames.
Most of the pardon processing companies have some version of an expedited service. Some call it an express pardon. Some call it an accelerated pardon. You get the idea.
Expedited service in this business means we do it as fast as we possibly can. There are zero delays as far as in house processing and procedures are concerned. If you send us your fingerprints they get sent to the RCMP that very say day. When the prints come back your record is analyzed that day, etc. I want to make this point clear because some companies will claim they are able to “leverage†these agencies due to their extensive experience. This is a patent lie and any company selling you a service in this way should be avoided.
On the other hand our standard service is normally suggested for clients who are not currently eligible for a pardon. In these cases it normally depends on the client’s eligibility date. So if you start your pardon two years early your file will be prepared and ready to go the day you are eligible. In other words it will take two years plus whatever amount of time the Parole Board takes to review your file. You will save some money by being proactive.
If you are currently eligible and choose the standard service we will simply take an additional 6 months on top of the expedited time frames to process the paperwork. If you can give us a little leeway on the time, you will save some money. That’s how the expedited service works. We never claim to have any control whatsoever over the various government agencies involved in these procedures. Anyone who does is committing fraud.
The final thing to mention is that it is very possible pardons will soon become record suspensions. For the most part this is a symbolic name change but it is essentially what’s causing the current delays in processing a pardon application.
If you have any questions feel free to get in touch. I can be reached by email.