The National Pardon Centre™

If you haven’t heard already the US Department of Homeland Security is adding yet another headache to Canadian travelers, even those who have no intention of stopping on US soil.

The new Secure Flight regulations mean that any flight going over US soil will be subject to homeland security checks. And while they are not specifically looking for your average Canadian with a criminal record the smart money says they will have a lookout for that group anyway.

For quick review any Canadian with an active criminal record attached to his/her name is prevented by law from entering the United States. So what does this mean for travelers who are not entering US soil but are still subject to reviews from American Customs? Well, I have yet to read anything concrete on the matter but I do know that when the border guys are doing their reviews they will certainly be looking at criminal history. And if you have a criminal record (no matter how minor it may be) then the safe money bets that the information will be downloaded into American files where it will remain put forever after. And of course once that happens a US entry waiver is required in order to cross the border into the United States.

This certainly makes travel more difficult for anyone with a criminal record. Not being allowed to enter the United States is one thing. Not being allowed to fly anywhere that might be going over US soil is quite another.

If you have a criminal record please contact us and learn about what you can do to avoid being flagged by American customs for the rest of your life. It is certainly worth a phone call.

 For more information here are a few news sources covering the topic:

The Gazette

Ottawa Citizen

And finally the Globe and Mail:

For some reason the BBB does not allow a company to have one accreditation for multiple locations. Instead we need individual accreditations that apply specifically to each office location, even though it is one company. This is fine it just means that I have to have another blog entry linking to the specific BBB page.

Here you are then: the BBB west profile for National Pardon Centre.

Sometimes these little community databases are a great source of advertising for us. You wouldn’t think so but this page ranks pretty high in Google and we have had more than a few clients call and say they found our information here.

So in the interest of acknowledging that local community resources play a big role in community well-being I am linking to this page as an unofficial thank you.

Thanks to KFL&A Community Resource Database for helping spread the word on Canada’s pardon program and the National Pardon Centre.

If you have been following this blog you might be aware that I held a little competition recently written in a post called Letter Blogging: Time Frames for a Pardon. I honestly didn’t expect that the competition would be won so soon mostly because I didn’t think that the blog was read as much as it seems to be. But within a week the competition was won and Louis earned himself a pardon at half price.

So, congratulations Louis. Obviously I am not going to include your full name because any sensible person would not want that information published. And since I am still not in the business of slandering my competition I am not naming the company in question (which may be a perfectly fine pardon service for all I know). But I am very happy to know that at least a few people are reading this blog.

Sincerely,

Michael Ashby
Communications Director
http://www.nationalpardon.org/