Example Criminality Assessment
What a written criminal inadmissibility opinion actually looks like
In our guide on Criminal Records and Entry to Canada, we explain that the safest way to approach a visa or permanent residence application with a past offence is to have the offence assessed before you apply, and that this assessment is delivered as a written legal opinion citing the specific provisions of Canadian law. That description can feel abstract until you actually see one.
This page reproduces a complete criminality assessment so you can see exactly what that document looks like – how the facts are summarised, which statutes are quoted, how the inadmissibility analysis is built, and how the available remedies are set out at the end.
This is an example only. The applicant, dates, court cases, and offences below are entirely fictional and are included purely to illustrate the structure and reasoning of a real assessment. Nothing on this page is legal advice, and no part of it describes an actual client. Your own situation will turn on your own facts and on Canadian law as it applies to them.
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What the Example Shows
In this sample, the fictional applicant has five foreign convictions – one for driving while his licence was revoked, and four tax-related offences. The opinion works through each one, asking the central question from our guide: if this offence had been committed in Canada, what would the maximum possible punishment be?
The driving offence is matched to operation while prohibited under the Criminal Code, which carries a maximum of ten years. That single equivalence is enough to make the applicant inadmissible for serious criminality under paragraph 36(1)(b) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The tax offences map to the Income Tax Act and separately support a finding of criminality under paragraph 36(2)(b).
The opinion then turns to relief. It explains why deemed rehabilitation is unavailable (too many convictions, and a ten-year-maximum offence), why individual rehabilitation cannot yet be applied for (the sentence on the last offence has not been completed, so the five-year clock has not started), and why ministerial relief does not apply to section 36 inadmissibility. It closes on the two options that remain open: a Temporary Resident Permit, and humanitarian and compassionate relief in the context of a permanent residence application.
That is the shape of every assessment we prepare: the facts, the Canadian-law equivalents, the category of inadmissibility, and a clear-eyed account of which remedies are realistically available.
Download the example assessment (PDF)
A real version of this document, prepared for your own facts, is what we deliver as part of a criminal record assessment. Lawpoint Immigration has over fifteen years of experience with Canadian immigration law, including criminal inadmissibility and the remedies available under Canadian legislation.