Digital criminal record check tips sheet

All applicants to the College must provide an original Canadian Criminal Record Check (CRC) Report, either in paper or digital format.

If you have a digital version, please refer to the guidelines below and upload your document via our file upload portal If you have an original printed version provided by a police department, you can mail it to :

Ontario College of Teachers
101 Bloor Street West
Toronto ON
M5S 0A1

Here is a list of all criteria a digital CRC must meet for us to accept.

All CRCs must

• Not be older than six months
• Include all names – applicants must disclose all current and former names

Digital CRCs must

• Be issued in an electronic/digital format by a police department within Canada
• Remain in the original format that it was issued in by the police department (i.e., it has not been resaved into another format; is not a screenshot or picture of one issued in paper format)

For digital CRCs that are issued in PDF format, it

• Cannot be changed or altered
• Must be accompanied by a password if it is password-protected

For digital CRCs that are accessible to third parties by weblink, applicants must forward

• The original email from the police department which includes the link to download the CRC
• The instructions for accessing the document and password, which were received from the police department, ( i.e. the password is either your date of birth or specific code, typically a numeric sequence)

From here, our Records team will either

• Download the CRC

• Not download the CRC
  • This occurs when the password to the third party portal has expired.
  • Applicants must then return to the CRC provider for access.
  • Note: when applicants save the CRC to their own device, the access does not expire.

For digital CRCs that are accessible to the applicant by weblink

• The applicant must download and forward the CRC. The Records team will not use a password to enter the applicant’s portal because of privacy and access concerns.