Disputing an error on your credit report in Canada, province by province, explained

Our own explainer on how Canadian credit reporting differs from the U.S. covers which law governs your file — a federal privacy statute plus a separate, older provincial consumer-reporting act layered on top in most provinces. This page covers what that second layer actually gives you when something on the file is wrong: how long the bureau has to investigate, what happens if it can't confirm the item, and the right to attach your own written explanation if it won't budge. None of that is uniform either — the deadline and the word count both change depending on which province the statute comes from.

Step one is always the bureau itself, not a regulator

Equifax Canada and TransUnion Canada each run their own dispute intake — online, by phone, or by mail — and a consumer's first move is with the bureau reporting the error, not with any government office. Both bureaus publicly describe an investigation that typically wraps up within about 30 days of a complete submission, during which the bureau contacts the source that furnished the disputed information (a lender, a collection agency) to verify it. That 30-day figure is a bureau practice both companies describe on their own consumer-facing dispute pages; the actual legal floor underneath it depends on where the consumer lives, because — as the reporting-differences explainer above describes — there's no single federal statute setting one national deadline the way the FCRA does in the U.S.

Ontario: a 30-day statutory deadline, and a 200-word statement if the bureau won't change it

Ontario's Consumer Reporting Act puts an actual number on the bureau's obligation, not just a practice. A consumer reporting agency that receives a dispute must investigate and notify the consumer of the result within 30 days, and must correct, supplement, or delete any information it can't confirm, or confirms is inaccurate or incomplete, within that same window. If the bureau's investigation leaves the disputed item standing anyway, section 12.6 gives the consumer a separate, distinct right: deliver a written explanatory statement of no more than 200 words, which the agency must then include in every future report it furnishes about that consumer for as long as the report contains the disputed information. That's a right to have your side of the story travel with the file — not a way to force a removal the bureau's own investigation didn't support.

Alberta: a longer 45-day window, and a shorter 100-word ceiling

Alberta's Credit and Personal Reports Regulation, made under its Consumer Protection Act, runs the same basic two-step process on different numbers entirely. Once a consumer files a written statement disputing an item, the reporting agency must use its best efforts to check the disputed information and report back to the consumer, in writing, within 45 days — fifteen days longer than Ontario's statutory window. The explanation right is narrower in one specific way: Alberta calls it a "statement of protest," capped at 100 words rather than Ontario's 200, and that statement has to be included in every report on the consumer until the disputed information is confirmed, corrected, supplemented, or deleted. Two provinces, two different deadlines, and two different word counts for what is structurally the same right.

A concrete example of the difference: the identical disputed item — a collection account the consumer says isn't theirs — gives an Ontario resident 30 days and 200 words to work with if the bureau won't remove it, and gives an Alberta resident 45 days and 100 words for the exact same underlying dispute. Neither number is a national standard; each is specific to that province's own statute.

British Columbia: the same 100-word explanation right, without a matching fixed-day deadline

British Columbia's Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act regulates credit reporting through Part 6 of the same statute, and section 111 gives a consumer the right to deliver a written explanation or additional information of no more than 100 words relating to any information the agency keeps — the same 100-word ceiling Alberta uses, and the agency has to include it in any future report touching that information. Where B.C.'s Act differs from Ontario's and Alberta's is that it doesn't write a specific number of days for the reporting agency's own reinvestigation into the statute the way those two provinces do; a complaint about how an agency handled a dispute is instead a matter for Consumer Protection BC's general complaint-and-investigation process under the Act, on the facts of that complaint, rather than a fixed statutory clock.

Quebec: no separate reporting statute at all — the fix runs through privacy law

Quebec doesn't have a dedicated consumer- or credit-reporting act the way Ontario, B.C., and Alberta do — the reporting-differences explainer above covers why: Quebec's privacy statute, the Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector, does that job instead, giving a Quebec resident a general right to request that an enterprise (including a credit bureau) correct inaccurate, incomplete, or ambiguous personal information it holds. An enterprise that receives such a request has to respond within 30 days; if it doesn't respond at all within that window, the Act treats the silence as a refusal, which the resident can then bring to the Commission d'accès à l'information for review. It's a real, dated deadline — just one that comes from Quebec's general information-rectification law rather than from a reporting-specific statute the way Ontario's and Alberta's do.

If a bureau's own dispute process doesn't fix a genuine error: the next step is your own province's regulator, not a national one. In Ontario, that's the Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery, which can investigate a complaint and order the agency to correct or remove the information, restrict who can see it, or fine or shut down the agency itself. Alberta's equivalent is Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction, B.C.'s is Consumer Protection BC, and Quebec's is the Commission d'accès à l'information for a rectification refusal. Keep a dated record of what you submitted and when — the same documentation discipline our own Canadian debt collection rules explainer recommends before escalating any dispute with a Canadian regulator.