Police Clearance Certificate

[Sabeen99]

Hello lovely people,

Currently, I am in Canada. I need to get a police clearance certificate from my home country. IRCC website states that "Police certificates must be scanned copies of the original certificate(s) in colour. Certified true copies or unauthorized copies won’t be accepted and will result in your application being rejected." My home country provides online PCC for the citizen living out of the country, so I will only have an electronic copy (in pdf). I am worried if that can create a problem with my application?

 

[aamool]

Hello lovely people,

Currently, I am in Canada. I need to get a police clearance certificate from my home country. IRCC website states that "Police certificates must be scanned copies of the original certificate(s) in colour. Certified true copies or unauthorized copies won’t be accepted and will result in your application being rejected." My home country provides online PCC for the citizen living out of the country, so I will only have an electronic copy (in pdf). I am worried if that can create a problem with my application?

I imagine the reason the IRCC states this, is to make it harder to doctor certificates. It's slightly harder, for example, to conveniently erase the part of your police certificate with criminal records on a color scan.

Since in your case, the original is electronic you should not worry about it. The IRCC should already have experience with your country (people from practically everywhere apply, after all). At most, they might reach out to the agency to confirm (which should be no issue either). And in any case, it's unlikely that you will be able to convince your country to do things differently

All the best.

 

[yiso91]

It is perfectly acceptable to have the original as an electronic document. Many foreign agencies only issues their PCC in this format and thus an applicant for Express Entry won't be held liable to providing only one format. IRCC are perfectly capable of verifying both formats since most agencies that do issue them will usually have an online query tool to check for authenticity.

So go ahead and request yours and don't worry about.

 

[Sabeen99]

It is perfectly acceptable to have the original as an electronic document. Many foreign agencies only issues their PCC in this format and thus an applicant for Express Entry won't be held liable to providing only one format. IRCC are perfectly capable of verifying both formats since most agencies that do issue them will usually have an online query tool to check for authenticity.

So go ahead and request yours and don't worry about.

I imagine the reason the IRCC states this, is to make it harder to doctor certificates. It's slightly harder, for example, to conveniently erase the part of your police certificate with criminal records on a color scan.

Since in your case, the original is electronic you should not worry about it. The IRCC should already have experience with your country (people from practically everywhere apply, after all). At most, they might reach out to the agency to confirm (which should be no issue either). And in any case, it's unlikely that you will be able to convince your country to do things differently

All the best.

thank you guys for your prompt response. One more thing that I want to ask. I boarded on the plane from my country on May 8, 2015. So in my passport date of departure is May 8, 2015. However, in my country, in PCC they would write "he has no criminal record until May 7, 2015" They told me that they can only write one day before departure. Technically, I was in my country on May 8, 2015 too.

 

[yiso91]

thank you guys for your prompt response. One more thing that I want to ask. I boarded on the plane from my country on May 8, 2015. So in my passport date of departure is May 8, 2015. However, in my country, in PCC they would write "he has no criminal record until May 7, 2015" They told me that they can only write one day before departure. Technically, I was in my country on May 8, 2015 too.

Write an LOE to explain this situation. If this information is mentioned somewhere on their website also include it on your LOE as a screenshot so it would better collaborate your story.