Ontario police forces will finally be restricted on how much information they can share from background checks.

Thanks to legislation triggered by the Star series “Presumed Guilty,” the inappropriate release of non-conviction, carding or mental health information by police will be curbed.

What police can and cannot release in background checks will be standardized, correcting the existing patchwork of disparate policies across Ontario.

“It’s a very important piece of legislation,” said Community Safety Minister Yasir Naqvi after the Police Records Checks Reform Act unanimously passed third reading at Queen’s Park on Tuesday by a 93-0 vote.

“We worked very closely with both our policing partners and our civil liberties partners in developing a piece of legislation that really ensures that non-criminal or non-conviction information that is within a police (department’s) record is not disclosed to potential voluntary organizations or employers,” said Naqvi.

“Only criminal conviction records are disclosed.”

Naqvi said “there was vagueness in law,” which led to people losing jobs or being unable to find employment due to past incidents involving mental health contact with police.

The Star’s investigation, which emerged as an election issue during last year’s provincial campaign, uncovered a slew of civil liberties abuses.

It revealed that the sweeping disclosure of non-conviction records — including unproven allegations, withdrawn charges, and mental health calls to 911 — in police background checks undermines employment and volunteer service and limits travel to the U.S. for hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

A key change is a clear restriction against the release of such records in a vulnerable record sector check unless it meets a stringent test of relevance.

The new legislation defines three types of police record checks:

Criminal record check of criminal convictions and findings of guilt under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

Criminal record and judicial matters check of criminal convictions plus outstanding charges, arrest warrants, absolute discharges, and conditional discharges.

Vulnerable sector check for someone working with children or seniors. This involves criminal record and judicial matters checks as well as findings of not criminally responsible due to mental disorder, record suspensions or pardons related to sexually-based offences, and non-conviction information related to the predation of a child. This can include charges withdrawn, dismissed, stayed, or that resulted in acquittals.

To preserve privacy while also protecting kids and the elderly, the law limits what information can be released with each of the three types of record checks.

It also imposes disclosure standards to ensure a person can review the results of a check before the information is released to the third party such as an employer or voluntary organization requesting it.

Carding is the practice of stopping, questioning and documenting citizens not suspected of a crime. While random carding is being banned by the province information still exists in data bases.

Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown said the latest change was “the right thing to do.”

“We need to be respectful of people’s personal information. This was more an administrative clean-up of the process,” said Brown.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said too many people were having their information inappropriately shared.

“That’s not right. This was something that was long past due and needed to be fixed,” said Horwath.

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Toronto criminal lawyer John Struthers said it represents “a step towards a freer and fairer city and country.”

“The police serve the citizens and are not the judge, jury and executioner of people’s reputations,” said Struthers.

“From the guy who can’t coach his kid’s hockey team to the person who can’t get a job as a bank teller because of some old (non-conviction record), this takes away the scarlet lettering of people by police,” he said.

“The defence bar is particularly grateful to the Toronto Star for championing this effort to work towards a fairer system. Without their award-winning journalism this measure would not have been possible.”

Jacqueline Tasca, policy analyst with the John Howard Society in Toronto, said disclosures of non-convictions as part of employment and volunteer applications undermined “our cherished legal presumption of innocence” and “destroyed the hopes of countless people for jobs, housing, volunteering and education.”

“Thousands of Ontarians have non-conviction records and don’t even know it — nor would they until it is far too late. This legislation represents a tremendous step forward for all Ontarians, who have or could face discrimination, stigmatization and exclusion arising from the release of non-conviction records.”

Toronto lawyer Howard Rubel said it should have gone further by limiting what employers and organizations are allowed to demand from individuals seeking employment, volunteer positions or services.

“There’s no restriction or criteria on what type of check can be requested and no protection given to individuals who have their privacy rights extorted away by the offer of a potential job.”

While most legal and human rights advocates hailed the change, some Ontarians who have been the victims of non-conviction disclosures say it’s too late to fix the harm they’ve suffered.

Andrew Roden, a 44-year-old businessman with a mining parts and equipment company has lost his ability to travel to and do business in the U.S. because of a 25-year-old non-conviction record that has stuck with him and ended up in U.S. security databases.

“(This legislation) doesn’t do much for people like me. I’ve lost clients, I’ve missed two trade shows and had to completely restructure things. And I’m in the U.S. database forever. This is unequivocally wrong. I don’t even have a speeding ticket in the last 20 years.”

Mark de Pelham, 35, who says he lost two jobs in 2008 as a result of drug-related charges for which he was never convicted, calls the new legislation “a good first step.”

But he says there is a second legislative reform required to ensure the protection of Ontarians against discrimination.

“We should be amending the Human Rights Code to protect people with non-conviction records from discrimination,” said de Pelham. “There are still other ways people can find out about a non-conviction records and the Human Rights Code still allows for discrimination against people.”

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