If you apply for College certification, you must provide a Canadian Criminal Record Check (CRC) Report in the original format that was given to you by the police.

A vulnerable sector check is not required but will be accepted.

All CRC reports must:

  • not be older than six months
  • include first, middle and last names, as well as any former names.

If the police department gave you a paper CRC Report, please mail it to:

Ontario College of Teachers
101 Bloor Street West
Toronto ON
M5S 0A1

If you have a digital CRC Report, follow the guidelines below to upload your document via our Member and Applicant File Upload Portal. A digital CRC Report must meet the following criteria for the College to accept it.

Digital CRC report requirements

Digital CRC Reports must:

  • be issued in a digital format by a police department within Canada
  • remain in the original format issued to you by the police department. The College will not accept digital CRC Reports that have been saved in another format, including screenshots or pictures of a CRC Report that was issued in paper format.

PDF Digital CRC Reports must:

  • not be changed or altered
  • be accompanied by a password if it is password-protected.

Digital CRC Reports Accessible by weblink must:

Sterling Backcheck

You may be able to satisfy the criminal record check requirement by requesting Sterling Backcheck to submit one on your behalf.

This option is only available to applicants who:

  • have a home address in Canada
  • have no former names
  • do not have a commonly used name (examples: John Smith, Mei-Lin Lee, Amir Ibrahim)
  • declare that they have no criminal history.

Applicants who do not meet the above criteria must obtain and submit a criminal record check to satisfy the requirement.

To request a Sterling Backcheck report, select the Online Criminal Record Check option when completing your College application.

You will then receive an email from Sterling Backcheck. Follow the instructions in that email to complete your request. Sterling Backcheck will send your report directly to the College so you won’t need to take any further action.

Applicants are responsible for paying any service fees to Sterling Backcheck. Additional questions about Sterling Backcheck, their processes, or issues related to any individual requests should be directed to Sterling Backcheck.