Montreal police were wrong to reject a would-be police officer just because she once pleaded guilty to theft and received a conditional discharge, the Supreme Court of Canada says.
The woman, identified only as S.N., was caught shoplifting in 1990 at the age of 21; she pleaded guilty in 1991 and applied to join the police force in 1995.
In a 6-2 decision joined by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, the Supreme Court confirmed two lower-court rulings and a decision by the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal, which awarded the woman $5,000 in damages after she gave up on becoming a police officer.
The court said the force was entitled to consider whether she was of good moral character but had to base that judgment on more facts than just the guilty plea.
The case turned partly on the nature of a conditional discharge, one of the gentlest sentencing options available to a judge. No conviction is registered as long as the accused abides by conditions specified in a probation order.
The woman told a police personnel officer she had been pardoned, and she was right, the court said.
Under federal law, the woman had effectively been pardoned before she applied to the force, it said. The Criminal Records Act bars federal agencies from disclosing "the existence of the record or the fact of the discharge" if "more than three years have elapsed since the offender was discharged."
But it is not that simple, the judges went on.
"Under the Police Act, being of good moral character and not having a criminal record are separate criteria. The facts giving rise to a conviction are therefore on their own an insufficient basis for rejecting a candidate for not being of good moral character. However, a pardon does not erase the past."
The force was entitled to consider the facts that led to a finding of guilt but couldn't base its decision solely on finding itself, the majority decision said.
"No further inquiry or interviews were conducted that would have made it possible to counter the presumption that the pardon had restored N’s moral integrity," it said.
In a dissent, justices Ian Binnie and Louise Charon said the force was justified in refusing to hire the woman strictly on the basis of her guilty plea because her crime was deliberate and she was an adult at the time.
