Bill 75 Is Law: What Ontario's Keeping Criminals Behind Bars Act Means for Your CRJMC
As of June 2, 2026, Ontario's Bill 75 - the Keeping Criminals Behind Bars Act - is law. Buried inside a sprawling public safety bill covering everything from bail reform to animal research, Schedule 6 quietly rewrites the rules on what criminal convictions show up when someone orders a CRJMC. If you are applying for a licence, a job, or just want to know where you stand, your CRJMC from crjmc.net may now look different than it would have six months ago.
Here is the short version. Hybrid offences - charges like assault, theft under $5,000, and impaired driving that prosecutors can take either the summary or indictable route on - used to fall off a CRJMC five years after conviction, as long as the Crown had gone the summary route. That five-year grace period is gone. Those convictions now stay on your record until you get a record suspension. You can check yours at crjmc.net for $54.99 in about 15 minutes.
Below, we walk through exactly what the law says, who it hits hardest, and what you can do about it.
What changed - and why one word matters
Ontario's Police Record Checks Reform Act, 2015 (PRCRA) has always controlled what shows up on a police record check. A table inside the Act - the Authorized Disclosure Schedule, Item 1 - spells out which convictions get disclosed and which ones do not.
Before Bill 75, Item 1 worked like this: if your offence was prosecuted by summary conviction and more than five years had passed, the conviction would not appear on a CRJMC. Simple enough. And because most hybrid offences end up prosecuted summarily - the Crown elects the less serious track when the facts warrant it - a lot of people saw their old convictions drop off after five years.
Bill 75's Schedule 6 swaps one sentence in that table. The new version says convictions are not disclosed for "an offence that may be prosecuted only by way of summary conviction proceedings" after five years. See the difference? That word only is doing all the work. It means you need to have been charged with something that can never be prosecuted by indictment - a pure summary offence - to benefit from the five-year window. Hybrid offences, no matter how the Crown actually handled them, are out.
The commencement clause ties it to Royal Assent: "This Schedule comes into force on the later of January 1, 2026 and the day the Keeping Criminals Behind Bars Act, 2026 receives Royal Assent." Royal Assent came on June 2, so that is the date the change went live.
Which offences lost the five-year window?
More than you might think. Hybrid offences are by far the most common type of criminal charge in Canada - the Crown picks the track, and most of the time picks summary. Here are the ones that come up again and again:
Assault (Criminal Code, s. 266) - Canada's single most frequently laid charge
Theft under $5,000 (s. 334(b)) - shoplifting, petty theft
Impaired driving / DUI (s. 320.14) - includes drug-impaired
Mischief under $5,000 (s. 430(4)) - property damage
Fraud under $5,000 (s. 380(1))
Uttering threats (s. 264.1)
Criminal harassment (s. 264)
Possession of a controlled substance (certain CDSA charges)
What still gets the five-year window? Pure summary offences only - things like causing a disturbance (s. 175) or trespassing at night (s. 177). Those are relatively minor and relatively rare compared to the hybrid list above.
The bottom line: a conviction that was invisible on your CRJMC last month might be back. If you ran a check in May 2026 and plan to run another one now, do not assume the results will match.
No grandfathering - this kicked in overnight
There are no transitional provisions in Schedule 6. None. The new disclosure rule applies to every conviction on the books, not just future ones.
Picture this: you picked up a summary-track assault conviction in 2018. By 2023, it had been five years, and the conviction stopped showing on CRJMCs. You applied for jobs, got your security licence, passed your background checks. Then June 2 rolled around, and that conviction reappeared - with no warning and no phase-in period.
Ontario's Information and Privacy Commissioner flagged exactly this problem before the bill passed (more on that in a moment).
What you should do now
Check your own record first. If there is any chance you have a hybrid-offence conviction in your past - even a minor one from years ago that you assumed was gone - order a CRJMC on yourself before someone else does. Seeing the result first gives you time to prepare an explanation for an employer, talk to a lawyer, or start a record suspension application. Order yours at crjmc.net - $54.99, about 15 minutes after ID verification.
Employers and licensing bodies, take note. CRJMCs you pull after June 2 may show convictions that never appeared before. A "new" conviction on a returning employee's check does not mean they reoffended - it may be a years-old conviction that Bill 75 brought back to the surface. Update your screening policies accordingly.
Record suspensions still clear the slate. Nothing in Bill 75 changes how record suspensions (formerly called pardons) work. A granted suspension still removes a conviction from CRJMC disclosure. If an old hybrid-offence conviction just surfaced on your record, this is the mechanism for getting it off again. You apply through the Parole Board of Canada; the process typically runs 6 to 12 months.
The privacy pushback
The Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner (IPC) opposed this part of the bill. In an April 14, 2026 letter to the Standing Committee on Justice Policy, the IPC called the hybrid-offence amendment "neither justified, nor rational or proportionate" and urged the government to scrap section 4 of Schedule 6 altogether.
The IPC's core argument comes down to prosecutorial discretion. When a Crown attorney looks at a hybrid offence and decides to proceed summarily, that is a professional judgment call that the conduct falls on the less serious end. The old five-year window respected that call. Bill 75 overrides it - the conviction now follows you regardless of how the Crown categorized it. In the IPC's words, the change "rolls back existing privacy protections, undermines the Crown's election-related decision-making authority, and revokes an individual's current right to return to a state of privacy five years post-conviction."
The government went ahead anyway.
Worth noting: other parts of Bill 75 are already facing legal trouble. An Ontario court suspended the cash bail provisions in September 2026 pending a constitutional ruling. The PRCRA changes have not been challenged in court yet, but the IPC's opposition makes clear that the debate is far from settled.
Quick Q&A
What is Bill 75?
An Ontario law (S.O. 2026, Chapter 7) that covers bail reform, tougher impaired driving penalties, restrictions on animal research, and - the part that matters here - changes to police record check disclosure. The record check changes sit in Schedule 6.
When did the changes kick in?
June 2, 2026, the day the bill received Royal Assent.
What exactly is a hybrid offence?
A charge where the Crown gets to pick whether to proceed summarily or by indictment. Assault, theft under $5,000, impaired driving, fraud under $5,000 - all hybrid. Most criminal charges in Canada fall into this category.
Does this affect basic CRCs (Level 1 checks) too?
Yes. The same amendment applies to all three check levels under the PRCRA: CRC, CRJMC, and Vulnerable Sector Check.
I had a summary-track conviction from years ago that stopped showing. Is it back?
Almost certainly, if the offence was hybrid. There are no transitional provisions - the new rule applies to all existing convictions.
Can I still get a record suspension?
Absolutely. A record suspension (pardon) still pulls the conviction off your CRJMC. Apply through the Parole Board of Canada once you have completed your sentence and waited the required period - 5 years for summary offences, 10 years for indictable.
How do I see what is on my CRJMC right now?
Order one on yourself at crjmc.net - $54.99, results in about 15 minutes. That is exactly what an employer or regulator would see.
Does this affect Vulnerable Sector Checks?
Yes. The amendment to Item 1 covers all three check levels. Hybrid-offence convictions now appear on VSCs too.
What about other provinces?
The PRCRA only applies in Ontario. Other provinces run their own frameworks. But since hybrid offences are defined in the federal Criminal Code, the offence categories are the same everywhere - what differs is whether and when they get disclosed.
Where is the actual text of the law?
The full bill, including Schedule 6, is on the Ontario Legislative Assembly website. The PRCRA is at ontario.ca/laws/statute/15p30.
Get your CRJMC
Whether you need a background check for a security licence, real estate registration, condo manager application, or just want to see where you stand after Bill 75 - you can get it done right now.
Start your CRJMC - 15 minutes, $54.99
Results come back in about 15 minutes after ID verification. Accepted by Ontario regulators and employers province-wide.
Sources: Bill 75, Keeping Criminals Behind Bars Act, 2026 - Legislative Assembly of Ontario (ola.org/en/legislative-business/bills/parliament-44/session-1/bill-75); Ontario Gazette Volume 159, Issue 24, June 13, 2026 (Royal Assent) (ontario.ca/document/ontario-gazette-volume-159-issue-24-june-13-2026); IPC Comments on Schedule 6 of Bill 75 (ipc.on.ca/en/media/6258/download); Police Record Checks Reform Act, 2015 (ontario.ca/laws/statute/15p30); Ontario Police Record Checks (ontario.ca/page/police-record-checks); crjmc.net.