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Memo Essay

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The purpose of this memorandum is to provide guidance to the Swiss government regarding criminal records of Canadian citizens who want to apply for a Swiss citizenship. We will cover the following issues in the Province of Ontario only:

• Criminal records from Minor Courts or from similar authorities
• Criminal records based on the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA)
• Information on civil litigation
• Criminal records for individuals from the local police departments

This memorandum is intended to provide only an overview of the main issues; we are happy to provide more detailed information on any issue or other topic that may arise.

A. Criminal records from Minor Courts or from similar authorities

In Ontario, there is no special …show more content…

Record on civil litigation

According to sec. 137 (1) of the Courts of Justice Act (CJA), on payment of the prescribed fee, a person is entitled to see any document filed in a civil proceeding in a court, unless a statute or an order of the court provides otherwise, e.g. in case of confidential information.
In addition to that, on payment of the prescribed fee, a person is entitled to see any list maintained by a court of civil proceedings of actions commenced or judgments entered (sec. 137 (3) CJA).
Apart from that there is no ‘civil litigation record’ in relation to a person that you can request from a single authority that would cover all courts in Ontario. Instead you have to request the information as to whether a person is or was involved in a lawsuit from every single courthouse in Ontario. There is no established way to handle such a request. Every courthouse will handle this request the way it considers appropriate, as there is no standard for that. This means, that a courthouse will probably refuse to ‘certify’ that kind of information and might only provide ‘informal’ reference on ongoing or past lawsuits, as the risk of mistaken identities is too high. In Canada a person can sue another

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