I have been arrested and charged with a criminal offense s. 266 ccc x 2, subsequently plead guilty to a lesser charge and sentenced to a CONDITIONAL DISCHARGE (one year probation). I am a first time offender. My criminal attorney says it will not show up on my record which I find hard to believe, correct?
In terms of immigration, how can/will this affect my eventual app for permanent residence (my wife wants to sponsor me)? If it is on my record, can she still sponsor me after I successfully completed my probation period or do we need to wait another 3 years to get a pardon and my record to get expunged?

Canada amended the Criminal Records Act in 1992 to establish that discharged offenders may no longer apply for a pardon. Instead, the Act now provides that all references to a discharge granted after July 24, 1992, must be removed from the active files of CPIC one year after the grant of an absolute discharge and three years after the grant of a conditional discharge.
At the end of those periods the RCMP and other federal agencies are prohibited from disclosing “the existence of the record or the fact of the discharge.” Offenders who received discharges before July 24, 1992, can now write to the RCMP to request that records of their offense be treated likewise.
Even though discharged offenders can no longer apply for a pardon, records of their offense are still recorded on an automated retrieval database in CPIC. Those records will be separated from active files after the periods specified in the Criminal Records Act, but until then they can be accessed by police forces in Canada, the United States and other allied countries.
The RCMP points out on its website that foreign authorities may save records retrieved from CPIC onto their own files. Thus, records of discharged offenses that are no longer accessible to law enforcement authorities in this country may remain available indefinitely to law enforcement authorities in the U.S. and other countries from their own databanks.
As a result of further amendments to the Criminal Records Act in 1992, discharged offenders may no longer apply for a pardon. That restriction could prove costly to them — and to thousands of others in the same position — particularly in terms of traveling to the U.S. and abroad or finding future employment that requires a pardon as evidence of a criminal offender’s rehabilitation. Hence, a background search in the USA may well turn up a criminal record that was sealed in Canada