A recently hired school teacher in Coquitlam, B.C., says he can't start work for four months because of an RCMP backlog processing criminal record checks.

Last July the federal government changed the law for people applying to sensitive positions so that they are matched by birthdate and gender — but not by name — to a list of known sexual offenders.

Those criteria return a large number of false-positive matches when an applicant and an offender's birthdate match, regardless of their names. As a result, the RCMP has to spend longer sorting through all the data, creating a four-month backlog for applicants.

Doug Wilm says he recently graduated with his teaching certificate and was hired last Friday by the Coquitlam School District as a teacher-on-call. But then he was told he'll have to wait four months for the check to be done before he can start teaching.

"That means for four months I can't begin teaching in Coquitlam. I just have to sit with my wheels spinning waiting for the RCMP to do their job, which is taking money, and my opportunity to teach, away," said Wilm.

The married father of one says he'll have to find some sort of temporary employment or support himself from his savings while he waits for the check to be done.

Wilm says the government should have ensured the resources were in place before making the change.

The RCMP said Tuesday that the main reason for the backlog is that most detachments are still using ink-based fingerprinting and have not updated to electronic technology.

"The more police forces we get submitting to us electronically, it diminshes some of our work levels so that it allows us to process these in a more timely fashion," said Robert Murray, manager of the force's Civil Fingerprint Screening Services.

Murray said electronic submissions take only two or three days to process.

He said that high costs are the reason most detachments don't use the electronic method. The equipment costs about $15,000.