The Real Cost of a Background Check in BC — and Who Pays It

"Background checked" is one phrase covering several different products at several different prices with meaningfully different scope. Worth pulling apart, because the differences decide what the check is actually worth.

**Figures below are approximate and change.** Confirm current fees with the Criminal Records Review Program directly rather than treating a blog post as a price list.

The two things people mean

**The provincial CRRP check.** British Columbia's Criminal Record Review Program, run through the Ministry, is the vulnerable-sector screening required for people working with children and vulnerable adults. It is the one designed for this purpose. The fee is modest — **around $28** at the time of writing.

**A commercial or vendor check.** A general criminal record check bought from a private screening company. Faster and easier to arrange, more expensive — commonly in the **$60 to $90** range — and not the same product. General checks are not built around the vulnerable-sector question the CRRP is designed to answer.

The cheaper one is the more relevant one. That is unusual and worth stating plainly.

Why the total is higher than the fee

The fee is not the cost. Around it sits identity verification, the administrative work of submitting and tracking, waiting time before someone can start, and the fact that some checks come back needing follow-up.

**All-in, Puffin's cost per caregiver is roughly $80–90.** That figure is the fee plus the process around it, and it is per caregiver, including caregivers who then do not join.

Who pays, and why it changes the outcome

This is the part that actually matters.

**When the worker pays**, screening becomes a barrier to entry. A caregiver applying to several agencies and platforms cannot pay repeatedly, so some will be screened and some will be listed on the strength of a check that was cheaper, older, or somebody else's. Cost pressure pushes toward the general check rather than the vulnerable-sector one.

**When the family pays**, it becomes optional in practice. Some families will, and some will look at $80 on top of an hourly rate and decide the reference call was enough.

**When the organisation pays**, it becomes a fixed cost of operating, applied to everyone, without anyone deciding case by case whether this particular caregiver is worth checking.

That third arrangement is the only one where "every caregiver is checked" is structurally true rather than aspirational. It also costs the organisation money on people who never work a shift, which is exactly why it is a real signal rather than a marketing line.

The questions to ask

Not "are your caregivers background checked" — everyone says yes.

Where Puffin sits

**Puffin absorbs the cost — roughly $80–90 per caregiver — and uses the provincial CRRP vulnerable-sector check.** Every caregiver, before any placement, including caregivers who complete the process and never take a booking.

It is a deliberate structural choice rather than a generosity: paying for it centrally is what makes it universal, and it removes any incentive to skip a check on a caregiver who is needed at short notice.