Markham employers have two practical routes to a background check: send the candidate to York Regional Police for a police record check on themselves, or order a full pre-employment screen through a screening provider, which wraps the criminal check in identity, employment, and education verification with the candidate's consent. Which route fits depends on what the role actually needs.
We know this market well: our parent company, Quality Credit Reporting, has operated in Markham since 1992. Here is how local hiring teams get screening done, and how to choose.
Because of who hires here, and how fast. Markham brands itself Canada's high-tech capital with some justification:
Household names like IBM, AMD, Honda Canada, Honeywell, and Johnson & Johnson run Canadian operations out of Markham, and around them sits a deep bench of startups, professional firms, and logistics and life sciences companies. The common thread is roles with access: to source code, to customer data, to finances, to regulated products. Those are exactly the roles where a resume-only hire is a gamble, and where a right-sized screen is cheap insurance.
York Regional Police, which serves Markham and the rest of York Region, runs an online police record check service for residents. Candidates apply at yrp.ca, verify their identity electronically through Equifax eIDVerifier (a verification step, not a credit check), and receive results electronically when eligible. Fingerprinting, when a name-based search needs resolving, is handled by appointment.
Two things to understand about this route:
Ontario law shapes both routes equally: the three permitted check types, named consent, and candidate-first disclosure all come from the Police Record Checks Reform Act, which we unpack in what Ontario law lets employers see.
The honest summary: the police route suits volunteer positions and roles where a conviction search truly is the only question. The moment the role carries financial authority, data access, or a title worth inflating, the full screen is the defensible choice, and our guide to which background check package a role needs walks through matching depth to risk.
Plan for the screen the way you plan for reference calls: start it at the offer stage, conditional on results. A name-based criminal record check often returns within days, while employment and education verification depend on how quickly past employers and institutions respond. Police-route checks move on the police service's queue, which an employer cannot see or expedite; a managed screen at least makes the waiting visible.
Mostly, no: a verification is a verification wherever the desk sits. But there are two real advantages, and we say that as the interested party. First, familiarity with Ontario's rules is not optional here, and a provider that lives under the Police Record Checks Reform Act daily will not be surprised by candidate-first disclosure or named consent. Second, accountability has a different texture when the company verifying your candidates has operated in the same city since 1992 and answers its phone locally. Our own story, and how a Markham credit reporting agency came to run an employment screening service, is told in who is behind Quality Screening Reports.
If you hire in Markham or anywhere in York Region and want a second opinion on your screening setup, we are around the corner, and happy to compare notes.
Place an order in the portal, or talk to us about a screening program.
Since November 2019, every police record check in Ontario runs under one statute. Here is what the Police Record Checks Reform Act actually lets an employer see, and the two-consent process that gets it to you.
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