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How Long Does the Process Take?

Records Checks are processed in approximately 3-5 weeks,  assuming timely response from other police services and depending on request volumes. However, the Ottawa Police Service would like to advise Ottawa residents who require a Police Records Check that they may experience some delays in the processing of their request. Find out more about possible delays in Police Record Check requests.

The Background Clearance Section strives to serve you in a timely manner. Please help us meet our deadlines by filling out your forms carefully.

To check the status of your request, please contact contact 613-236-1222 ext.5485

What Can Cause a Delay in the Process?

  • The Background Clearance Section must contact other police agencies to request local information of an applicant who has resided outside Ottawa in the last five years. We allow two weeks for the outside agency to respond to our inquiry.
  • If applications are received and information is missing, we attempt to contact the applicant. If there is no response, we must mail it back to either the applicant or the non-profit agency. Applications with errors or omissions to the current address, such as missing apartment numbers, often end up being returned to the Ottawa Police Service by Canada Post. This results in delays to your service.
  • The Background Clearance Section will often receive influxes of large numbers of Police Records Checks needing to be processed due to special events being held in Ottawa.
  • The following are the statistics for the number of record checks received and processed by the Background Clearance Section from January 2007 to December 2008:
2007 Police Records Check for Service with the Vulnerable Sector 2008 Police Records Check for Service with the Vulnerable Sector
January 2550 January 3157
February 2695 February 2996
March 3149 March 2002
April 2822 April 3240
May 3632 May 3170
June 3781 June 2712
July 2811 July 2992
August 2267 August 3393
September 3186 September 3960
October 2707 October 5162
November 4682 November 4129
December 2171 December 3972
Total: 36453 Total: 40885

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