I am heading out to Ont soon - i received my Irish Police(garda) clearance cert during the week and, as expected, 2 skeletons from my closed jumped out....
neither was a violent, drug related crime, will it affect my PR application?. (Canadian born/bred wife & 2 Irish born kids)who are Canadian through mother)
It's really difficult to say for sure. The whole issue of offences is complicated. Any arrest and conviction can make a person inadmissible to Canada. It doesn't have to be a violent or drug related crime - something as "simple" as a DUI (not to minimize the seriousness of driving under the influence) can make someone inadmissible.
When a criminal conviction shows up on a police clearance, CIC will want all the pertinent documentation - so to save time, send it upfront. The info about this requirement is (inconspicuously) in the
Applicant's Guide, on page 9, right before the info about immigrating to Quebec. They will need to evaluate the offence(s) according to Canadian criminal code and, depending on the applicable penalties, a determination will be made as to whether or not enough time has passed for you to be "deemed rehabilitated". The time factor is 5-10 years, depending on the offence, from the date that all sentencing and restitution (including probation) was completed.
What gets confusing is that it's not well understood what's actually required to deem someone rehabilitated, even if enough time has passed. It seems that some officers are willing to make that determination themselves and approve the PR application, and others aren't. I remember one story of a guy who had a 30 year old offence and they refused his PR application, even though he was eligible to be deemed rehabilitated after 10 years. Others are flat-out refused, and others seem to get through. The good news is that as long as you apply outland, your sponsor can appeal a refusal on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. One member here recently won their appeal after a 2007 DUI - even without being eligible to be deemed rehab'd. But if that's the route you end up taking, you could be waiting a long time. It seems to take quite a while for the embassy to finally make a decision, even if it is a refusal, because they have to go through the whole exercise of evaluating the offence - and then an appeal can take up to a couple of years, depending on where you are.
Wish I could be more definitive about this but, as I said, how it works out seems to be pretty inconsistent.