Parole Board of Canada

The Parole Board of Canada (PBC) is an independent administrative tribunal that has exclusive authority under the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to grant, deny, cancel, terminate or revoke day parole and full parole. The PBC may also order certain offenders to be held in prison until the end of their sentence.  This is called detention during the period of statutory release. In addition, the Board makes conditional release decisions for offenders in provinces and territories that do not have their own parole boards. Only the provinces of Ontario and Quebec have their own parole boards that have authority to grant releases to offenders serving less than two years in prison.

An offender or a person acting on behalf of an offender may appeal a Board decision by sending a written notice stating the grounds for the appeal (as well as supporting documents) within two months after the original decision. The appeal is conducted by way of a file review.

The Appeal Division has jurisdiction to reassess the issue of risk to reoffend and to substitute its discretion for that of the original decision makers, but only where it finds that the decision was unreasonable and unsupported by the information available at the time the decision was made.

The Board is also responsible for making decisions to order, refuse to order, and revoke record suspensions under the Criminal Records Act and the Criminal Code of Canada. A record suspension is a formal attempt to remove the stigma of a criminal record for people who, having been convicted of an offence, have satisfied their sentence and remained crime free. The Board also makes recommendations for the exercise of clemency through the Royal Prerogative of Mercy.