What are Absolute and Conditional Discharges?
Discharges are criminal convictions that will automatically be removed from your record after a certain amount of time has elapsed, so long as you remain a good citizen. With an absolute discharge, the conviction will be removed one year after the conviction date. With a conditional discharge, the conviction will be removed three years after your conviction date, provided the conditions set out by the judge are satisfied. These conditions are usually simply a matter of keeping the peace. If you do a background check through the CPIC, discharges will appear. However, they can be neither purged nor pardoned during the one to three year period. A special case arises when a discharge was recorded prior to July 24, 1992. In this case, the record remains on CPIC and must be purged. When a conviction record contains both convictions and discharges, a pardon can have the entire record removed.
