How long does negative information stay on your credit report in Canada? Province by province, explained

Our own explainer on the FCRA reporting clock covers the U.S. rule: one federal statute sets one number for the whole country, regardless of which state the debt came from. Canada runs this differently, the same structural pattern our own explainer on how Canadian credit reporting differs from the U.S. already describes for the governing law itself — there's no single federal retention rule, the actual number depends on which province's own statute applies, and even the two national bureaus don't apply an identical practice to each other.

The U.S. baseline: one federal number, everywhere

The Fair Credit Reporting Act sets a uniform national ceiling that doesn't change by state: most negative information — a late payment, a collection account, a charge-off, a civil judgment — can't be reported more than seven years after it occurred, and a bankruptcy of any chapter can be reported for up to ten years from the date of the order for relief (15 U.S.C. § 1681c). One statute, one enforcer, the same two numbers no matter where in the country the account was opened. Canada has no structural equivalent — the outer legal limit on how long something can sit on your file depends on which province's own statute governs it, the same pattern our own explainer on Canadian dispute rights already describes for the separate question of fixing an error.

Ontario: seven years by statute, fourteen for a second bankruptcy

Ontario's Consumer Reporting Act sets specific, numbered ceilings rather than a general practice. Section 9(3) bars a consumer reporting agency from including a civil judgment more than seven years after it was given, unless the creditor or the creditor's agent confirms it remains unpaid and that confirmation appears in the file; separately bars reporting a debt or collection account more than seven years after the last payment, or — where no payment was ever made — more than seven years after the default itself occurred; and separately bars reporting a consumer's bankruptcy more than seven years after the date of discharge, except where the consumer has been bankrupt more than once, in which case both bankruptcies can be reported for fourteen years from their own discharge dates. Ontario's statutory number matches the FCRA's seven-year figure for ordinary negative information — it's the bankruptcy side where the two diverge, since the FCRA allows a full ten years and Ontario's own Act allows only seven.

Alberta and British Columbia: the same six-year ceiling, from two different rulebooks

Alberta and British Columbia both cap out a year earlier than Ontario, though neither reaches that number through a dedicated credit-reporting statute the way Ontario's Consumer Reporting Act does. Alberta's Credit and Personal Reports Regulation, made under its Consumer Protection Act, bars a reporting agency from including unfavourable information about a debt more than six years after the later of the last payment or the date the debt was incurred; bars a judgment more than six years old absent confirmation it remains unpaid; and bars a bankruptcy more than six years after discharge, with the same fourteen-year extension Ontario uses for a second bankruptcy. British Columbia reaches the identical six-year ceiling for judgments and bankruptcy through section 109 of its Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act instead — and that number isn't just a paper rule: in 2012, Consumer Protection BC issued a compliance order requiring TransUnion of Canada Ltd. to purge data it was holding past the six-year mark; TransUnion refused, arguing it was entitled to keep reporting what it called "substantiated facts" for longer, and the Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled in 2014 that the compliance order was lawful — a real enforcement outcome, not just a theoretical ceiling.

A concrete example of the difference: a collection account with a final default six years and eleven months ago is still legally reportable today under Ontario's or Quebec's own seven-year ceiling (below), but has already aged out of what Alberta's or British Columbia's statute allows, since both cap at six years. A first-time bankruptcy discharged exactly seven years and one day ago has aged out everywhere in Canada — past Ontario's and Quebec's own seven-year limit, and a full year past Alberta's and B.C.'s six-year one — but would still be perfectly reportable for three more years under the FCRA's separate ten-year U.S. bankruptcy rule.

Quebec: no dedicated reporting statute, but its own seven-year number anyway

Our own explainer on Canadian dispute rights already covers the reason Quebec looks structurally different here: the province has no dedicated consumer- or credit-reporting act the way Ontario, Alberta, and B.C. each do. What it has instead is a specific duty built into its general private-sector privacy statute, the Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector, aimed at a defined category of business the Act calls a "personal information agent" — a category that includes a credit bureau. Under amendments that took effect September 22, 2023 as part of the province's broader Law 25 privacy overhaul, a personal information agent must destroy personal information it collected more than seven years earlier, with a narrow carve-out for information held in an investigation file opened to prevent, detect, or suppress a crime or other legal violation. The mechanism is different from Ontario's — a general destruction duty under privacy law, not a reporting statute's specific list of judgments, debts, and bankruptcies — but the number it lands on, seven years, matches Ontario's exactly, and runs a full year longer than what Alberta's and B.C.'s own statutes allow.

What the two bureaus actually do, day to day

A province's statutory ceiling is the outer legal limit, not necessarily what a bureau actually does in practice — and the two national bureaus don't handle this identically. The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada's own consumer guidance is direct about this: how long something stays on your file depends on the type of information, your province or territory, and which of the two bureaus is reporting it, not one fixed number. TransUnion Canada's own published consumer guidance describes matching its bankruptcy retention to each province's own statutory ceiling — seven years from discharge in Ontario and Quebec, matching the statutory figures above, and six years in the rest of the country — with a second bankruptcy extending retention to fourteen years, the same multiple-bankruptcy figure Ontario's and Alberta's own statutes use. Equifax Canada's own consumer-facing guidance describes a flatter approach: roughly six years for most negative information and a first-time bankruptcy, without describing a longer figure specifically for Ontario or Quebec the way TransUnion does. The practical upshot: for a consumer in Ontario or Quebec, the same account can plausibly drop off an Equifax file a year before it drops off a TransUnion file, purely from how each bureau chose to apply the same underlying provincial ceiling.

Don't assume a U.S.-style "seven years, and it's clean" rule. The actual answer in Canada depends on three things at once — the type of information, which province you live in, and which bureau's file you're looking at — not one federal number the way it works south of the border. If an item looks like it should have aged off and hasn't, check both your Equifax Canada and TransUnion Canada files (see our own explainer on requesting each one), and raise it through the process our own Canadian dispute-rights explainer describes, in the province whose statute actually governs your file.