Can landlords perform criminal checks?

[Edison Reis]

As far as performing our due diligence can we perform criminal checks or should we keep as far as credit checks ?

I believe is USA is legal to perform both but in Canada looks like is illegal to perform criminal checks on tenants.

Any suggestions to avoid issues with potential tenants from hell?

Thanks I'm advance 

Edison 

[Roy N.]

@Edison Reis

It is not illegal to request a criminal background check in Canada, however, due to the nature of our privacy law, the process is different than in the U.S.A. and the results reported back to you are not as detailed.

In Canada, you cannot request a criminal background check on a tenant applicant yourself.  You may require the tenant to request a report on her/himself and authorize the police to share the results with you.    In such situations, the police will quite likely only tell you whether the applicant has a record and {perhaps} the nature of the offence(s) {misdemeanour, property crime, capital offence, etc}.  They may also tell you whether there are any current charges or whether the applicant is on parole.   They will not divulge details of the offences to you.

If you go to the RCMP website, you can lookup the process for requesting a background check and a description of what will be disclosed.

Typically, if we feel a criminal check is warranted on an applicant, we probably already have a reason to decline their application.  If not, usually the act of asking the applicant to request a criminal background check and authorise the results to be disclosed to you will result in their withdrawal.