Canada - No charges, no trial, but presumed guilty

[S.J.B.]

No charges, no trial, but presumed guilty
Robert Cribb
Toronto Star
May 17th, 2014

It was to be Gordon Sinclair’s last chance.

At 46, after decades of getting by on contracts in the animation industry and then working long hours as a chef, he decided to pursue a career that matched his abilities to his passion. He enrolled in George Brown College to become a nurse.

“I was excited,” says Sinclair, now 50. “I wanted to go to Africa and work with Doctors Without Borders. Those plans have all been ruined.”

In 2011, with thousands of dollars spend on tuition and two semesters on the Dean’s Honour List, Sinclair was forced out of the program when charges from 20 years before showed up on a mandatory police check.

The charges — he had been rounded up in a raid on the comic book store where he worked — were never proven and were dismissed by a judge. By any measure, Gordon Sinclair was and is innocent.

Read the full story here.

This is so incredibly unfair. Instead of "innocent until proven guilty," it's "guilty even if proven innocent." Do background checks work like this in the United States too?

 

[neversickanymore]

absolutely its total crap.

 

[my3rdeye]

They didn't mention that contact with a Canadian police force due to a mental health call is information that is also available to the US border patrol. People who were convicted of nothing are refused entry because we share this private health information with a foreign government. The US could sell that information to drug companies and you could not do anything. The only thing that should be on these data bases are convictions that is it, period.


"n August, 1991, when Sinclair was working as a part-time clerk in the now-defunct Dragon Lady Comics store, then on Queen Street in Toronto, police arrived one August afternoon and gathered comics they deemed to be obscene. "


I grew up in Toronto and the Dragon Lady was a fantastic store. The police were dicks back then and charged alternative type establishments for no reason other than they didn't like them. Gay book stores were raided and got the same obscene materials trumped up charges thrown at them, always dismissed. Drug books were banned then even high times (all that did was increase ignorance on drugs). You couldn't even screen a movie in Ontario with approval from the ratings board and art house movies got seized all the time. There was a law banning "crime comics" (still on the books) and even classic EC comic reprints from the 50's couldn't be sold and vice cops actually snooped around comic stores all the time. Its crazy that was only the 90s too seems like the dark now ages what with the internet making censorship impossible.

 

[neversickanymore]

The canadian border patrol won't allow people with DUI's in.. its funny cause I bet there are allot of drunks in canada and I know the US is full of mental health issues, so like so many things i dont see the fucking point.

 

[paranoid android]

That is fucked but I'm not surprised really. The Canadian border patrol is even worse then the US one from what I've heard from people. That's the good thing about Cuba though is that as long as you can get a Canadian passport your allowed in.