Independent. No paid placements.Reviewed as findings changeEditorial policyNewsletter
The Credit RecordAn independent record of credit repair and debt settlement companies

Last reviewed: 15 September 2026

Home › The Library › Canadian debt collection rules, explained

How debt collection is regulated in Canada, province by province, explained

Our own debt collector call and text limits explainer covers the U.S. Fair Debt Collection Practices Act's "7-in-7" rule and its federal opt-out right. Canada has no statute that plays the same role. Debt collection is provincial ground in Canada — the same structural pattern our Canadian credit reporting explainer describes for how your file itself is regulated — so the actual rule on when and how often a collector can contact you depends on which province you're in. One federal rule cuts across all of it anyway: a Criminal Code cap on the interest rate itself, which applies no matter which province the debt was incurred in.

No federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act

The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) is Canada's closest thing to a national financial-consumer regulator, and its own public guidance on debt collection is direct about the limit of its own authority: FCAC's oversight runs to federally regulated banks and other federally regulated financial entities, not to the day-to-day conduct of a collection agency chasing a debt. There is no Canadian statute that defines what a "debt collector" is nationally, sets a uniform contact-frequency rule, or gives a consumer a single federal complaint channel the way the FDCPA does in the U.S. Instead, each province regulates collection agencies under its own consumer-protection or dedicated collection-agency statute, enforced by that province's own regulator.

The one federal rule that reaches every province anyway

Separately from any provincial contact rule, the Criminal Code sets a national ceiling on the interest rate a lender can charge at all, regardless of province. Section 347 makes it a criminal offence to enter into an agreement to receive interest above the "criminal rate," and a set of amendments phased in through the 2023 and 2024 federal budget-implementation acts lowered that rate: as of January 1, 2025, the criminal rate of interest is 35% annual percentage rate (APR), down from the previous effective ceiling of roughly 60% on an annual basis. The amendments also broadened the offence itself to cover not just charging or agreeing to a criminal rate, but advertising or offering one. A separate, narrower exemption applies only to a business-purpose loan of more than $10,000 to a borrower that isn't an individual person: between $10,000 and $500,000 that kind of loan is still capped, just at a higher 48% APR, and only above $500,000 does no criminal-rate cap apply at all. Neither tier of that exemption reaches an individual's ordinary consumer debt. This is a rate cap, not a collection-conduct rule, but it matters here because it applies regardless of which province's collection rules otherwise govern how you're contacted.

Contact hours and frequency: four provinces, four different answers

Where provinces do regulate collector conduct directly, the specific windows aren't uniform. Ontario's Collection and Debt Settlement Services Act and its general regulation permit a collector to contact a debtor Monday through Saturday between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m., and on Sunday only between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m., with no contact at all on a statutory holiday — and no more than three contacts in seven days once the collector has actually spoken with the debtor, without the debtor's consent to more. British Columbia's Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act and its Debt Collection and Repayment Regulation set the same 7 a.m.-to-9-p.m., Monday-through-Saturday window and the same restricted 1-to-5-p.m. Sunday window, also with no statutory-holiday contact. Alberta's Collection and Debt Repayment Practices Regulation takes a different shape entirely: it allows contact every day of the week, including Sunday and statutory holidays, within a single flat 7 a.m.-to-10 p.m. window, and caps contact at three times in seven days the same way Ontario and B.C. do — but, unlike Ontario, B.C., or Quebec below, it doesn't carve out statutory holidays as a no-contact day at all.

A concrete example of the difference: Ontario, B.C., and Quebec all treat a statutory holiday as an automatic no-contact day, whatever else differs between them. Alberta's regulation simply doesn't include that carve-out — a collector there can legally call on a day every other province on this page bans entirely, as long as it's within the 7 a.m.-to-10 p.m. window. Four provinces, four genuinely different rulebooks for the same basic question of when a phone can legally ring.

Quebec runs it through a separate, dedicated statute — with a rule most provinces don't have

Quebec doesn't fold debt-collection conduct into its general Consumer Protection Act the way most provinces fold collection rules into a general consumer-protection statute. It has a second, purpose-built law: the Act respecting the collection of certain debts, which runs alongside the Consumer Protection Act and is administered by the same regulator, the Office de la protection du consommateur (OPC). Under this statute and its regulation, a collection agent may contact a debtor Monday through Saturday between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., with no contact on Sunday or a statutory holiday at all — narrower than Ontario's, B.C.'s, or Alberta's windows on both ends. Quebec also requires something none of the other three provinces above do as a first step: the very first communication to a debtor about a debt must be made in writing, not by telephone, before any call can follow. On top of that, an individual acting as a collection representative on a licensed agency's behalf must hold their own certificate from the OPC under the Act — a personal, revocable certification layered on top of the agency's own permit, not just a corporate license.

If a collector in Canada breaks these rules: the complaint goes to your own province's regulator, not a federal one — Consumer Protection Ontario, Consumer Protection BC, Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction, or Quebec's Office de la protection du consommateur, depending on where you live. Keep a dated log of every call, text, and letter (time, date, what was said) before you file — the same basic documentation discipline our warning-signs checklist recommends before dealing with any debt-relief provider, in any country.

References

  1. Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, "Debt collection: know your rights," canada.ca (describing FCAC's supervisory authority as limited to federally regulated banks and financial entities, not to collection-agency conduct generally, which is provincially regulated).
  2. Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-46, s. 347, as amended by the Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1 and the Budget Implementation Act, 2024, No. 1, together with the Criminal Interest Rate Regulations, SOR/2024-114 — 35% APR criminal rate of interest effective 1 January 2025, replacing the prior roughly-60%-effective-annual-rate ceiling; a two-tier business-purpose-loan exemption for non-natural-person borrowers (48% APR cap between $10,000 and $500,000 advanced; no criminal-rate cap above $500,000); independent corroboration via McMillan LLP, McCarthy Tétrault, Dentons Canada, Bennett Jones, and Bishop & McKenzie client alerts on the amendments' coming into force and exemption structure.
  3. Collection and Debt Settlement Services Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. C.14, and R.R.O. 1990, Reg. 74 (Ontario) — permitted contact days/hours and the three-contacts-per-seven-days limit absent consumer consent.
  4. Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act, S.B.C. 2004, c. 2, and Debt Collection and Repayment Regulation, B.C. Reg. 295/2004 — matching contact-hour structure to Ontario's, administered by Consumer Protection BC.
  5. Collection and Debt Repayment Practices Regulation, Alta. Reg. 194/1999, s. 12 (Alberta) — single 7 a.m.-to-10 p.m. contact window applicable every day including Sunday and statutory holidays (Alberta's regulation, unlike Ontario's, B.C.'s, or Quebec's, contains no statutory-holiday no-contact carve-out); administered by Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction.
  6. Act respecting the collection of certain debts, CQLR c. R-2.2, and its regulation, CQLR c. R-2.2, r. 1 (Quebec) — Monday-to-Saturday 8 a.m.-to-8 p.m. contact window, no Sunday or statutory-holiday contact, written-first-contact requirement, and individual collection-representative certification under s. 44.1; Office de la protection du consommateur's own collection-agent training manual describing these requirements and its dual administration alongside the Consumer Protection Act, CQLR c. P-40.1.

Related