Past Imperfect

They ask on the application form: “Have you ever been convicted of a criminal offence for which a pardon has not been granted?” And: “Have you ever been charged, fined, ticketed, or convicted of an alcohol-related driving offence?”

The application form in question is the Commercial Driver Registration Program application for the newly launched Customs Self Assessment (CSA) program. The Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (CCRA) officially flipped the CSA switch on Dec. 3, 2001, aiming to provide CSA importers, CSA carriers, and registered drivers with the benefits of a streamlined clearance option for eligible goods. Carriers must use a registered driver to transport CSA-eligible freight.

Great. Trouble is, the second question above seems to be at odds with the first. A driver wrote me a while back wondering why he’d have to declare an offence for which he had in fact been granted a pardon.

“My argument,” he wrote, “is that I did commit a crime involving both a motor vehicle and alcohol 20 years ago, but I have since received a pardon. The way the second question is phrased doesn’t take into consideration that I had received a pardon. The first people I spoke with said I had to declare my criminal past, which is wrong, because it contradicts the whole purpose of granting pardons.”

To make matters worse, CCRA seems to want to know about any incident in which you might have only been charged. I thought there was still a bit of ground between being “charged” and being “convicted.”

Be that as it may, I guess drivers had better get used to it. The American Trucking Associations are trying to gain government approval for some sort of universal security card that would allow truck drivers access to airports, seaports, distribution centres, loading docks, and any freight area where heightened security measures are in effect. To qualify for the card, drivers would have to be cleared in a government-conducted criminal background check. The way it’s been described, the card would also contain the results of the driver’s drug and alcohol screenings, his address, and other “pertinent” information.

The U.S. Dept. of Transportation is presently discussing, with the FBI, ways to conduct more thorough background investigations on truckers. We’ve also heard Lewis MacKenzie, retired Major General and security advisor to the Ontario government, suggest that Ontario establish some sort of a tamper-proof ID card for truck drivers, embedded with biometric identifiers such as fingerprints or retinal scans. Even shippers are demanding IDs for drivers in order to access their yards.

To go back to my reader’s question, if he had been pardoned for his indiscretion, why should he now be required to reveal those details? The purpose of a pardon, by the way, is not to erase your criminal record completely. Rather, a pardon seals the record from view; it prevents you from having to reveal all the sordid details, while acknowledging the fact that you have a record. In having been pardoned for the original offence, your record will have been thoroughly checked for other violations. If you’re clean, and have stayed clean since the original offence, you’ll probably be granted the pardon, and nobody should need to know any more.

So, if CCRA can ask questions such as, “Have you ever been charged, ticketed … ,” etc., what sort of questions do you suppose the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service will be asking? Or the FBI? Or the RCMP, for that matter? And at the end of the day, with our checkered pasts exposed for all to see, how many Canadian drivers might be stripped of the privilege of crossing the U.S. border on company business?

There’s a thought. I’ve heard it said that perhaps one in every five Canadian truck drivers has a disqualifying skeleton in his closet. What if the existing U.S.-qualified driver pool here in Canada were reduced overnight by 15,000 drivers?

If you’ve got a criminal record, being pardoned in Canada is just the beginning of the process of re-gaining entry into the U.S. You’ll need a waiver to re-establish the privilege, and that involves a lengthy applications process. With all the attention to security matters down south, I suspect they’ll be taking a longer and harder look at everyone with a past, including drivers.

CCRA describes its CSA program as being an advantage to the carrier, the shipper, and the driver. I wonder if carriers will see it that way and pay a premium for CSA-qualified drivers? I wonder if the drivers will see this as advantageous, and use “U.S. entry-qualified” and “CSA-eligible” as bargaining chips? This could get interesting.