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Michelle Hawker stands in front of Chief Jimmy Bruneau school in Behchoko in late July - still waiting for a clear criminal record check enabling her to work as a substitute teacher. - photo courtesy of Michelle Hawker

BEHCHOKO/RAE-EDZO - It's been more than seven months since she got hired, but Michelle Hawker has yet to work a day as a substitute teacher in Behchoko.

In late January, she got the job at Chief Jimmy Bruneau school in the Edzo portion of the community - all that stood in her way was a RCMP criminal record check.

"I was told it would take only 15 days," she said.

But Hawker is still waiting for the green light to teach because a few weeks later there was a problem with her results.

"It said I might or might not have a criminal record," said Hawker. "But I don't have a criminal record."

The hit on her background check involved an Alberta weapons charge attached to a person with a different name.

"This isn't me," she declared. "I've never even been to Grande Prairie," which is where the offence was to have occurred.

Regardless, Hawker hasn't been able to work until the matter was cleared up.

She had to be fingerprinted and in April refiled her application for another check. She was told to mail her paperwork to Ottawa and that's the last she's heard about the matter.

Hawker tried to get an explanation for the delay several times.

"A while back, I joked with my husband that this wouldn't get cleared up until the end of the school year," she said.

"But now, another school year is about to begin and I'm still waiting on this."

Still waiting in August, Hawker decided too much time had passed, so she decided to contact the commission for complaints against the RCMP to voice her concerns.

"This has obviously had a tremendous affect on her life," said Nelson Kalil, a commission spokesperson. "I don't think this kind of situation requires a formal process, but it sounds more like what happens to people with a credit agency; you end up jumping through hoops to get the thing cleared up."

Kalil said he would pass the information along to his superiors, but before the commission could contact Hawker a spokesperson for the RCMP in Ottawa told News/North NWT that files like these are buried in a backlog of cases that number in the hundreds of thousands.

Cpl. Greg Cox, a media relations officer with RCMP national headquarters in Ottawa, said at the beginning of 2008 there was a backlog of 269,223 fingerprint-related identification cases that had to be cleared up.

"The backlog is a result of an ever-increasing demand for fingerprint services and manual processing that can not meet that demand," said Cox, adding the system will allow the RCMP to clear up the backlog of files by around the time the system is in full operation in 2010.

In the meantime, Hawker is still waiting for the results of her paper-based fingerprint identification application.

Cox said the current waiting period is around 16 weeks.

"If she refiled in April, that's still within that period of time, so hopefully it won't be much longer," he said.