Employers have fast realized how important a background check on a candidate can be. Not only do they allow companies to make sure job seekers are telling the truth on their resumes and during interviews, but they also allow employers to avoid making potentially harmful and costly bad hires.

In the United States as of late, there has been an increase in background checks for several types of employees, including those who work with children, such as teachers, those who work with vulnerable people, such as caretakers in nursing homes, those in the church, those hired by state and city governments and even journalists.

And it's not just American employers that are noticing the positive results of completing background checks on potential employees. Last year, police officers in Ottawa, Canada, processed more than 40,000 criminal record checks and report that demand for the service is continuing to grow.

Most recently, the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario announced that it will require its 2,000 telethon volunteers to undergo a background check, which will temporarily greatly increase demand. The measure was put into place after an Ottawa man was charged with stealing credit card information from the CHEO telethon last year.

However, not everyone agrees with the idea. Will Coukell, executive director of Volunteer Ottawa, a group that pairs people with volunteer opportunities, told CBC News that agencies should stop relying so heavily on criminal background checks to ensure volunteers will not commit crimes.

"People rely on (police checks) because it is kind of shipping it out to someone else to solve your problem," he said, suggesting that CHEO staff record donors' credit card information during the telethon instead of colunteers. "What voluntary sector organizations have to do is to come up with better ways of doing business so they don't need those police reference checks."

Regardless of whether or not everyone agrees with the idea of increasing criminal background check efforts, employers are already doing just that.