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 wage garnishment rules

How wage garnishment works in Canada, province by province, explained

Our own explainer on what actually happens when you're sued for a debt covers the U.S., where one federal law caps an ordinary wage garnishment at the same formula no matter which state the debt was incurred in. Canada has no equivalent federal statute for an ordinary private debt. Once a creditor has actually won a judgment — the step our Canadian debt-lawsuit limitation-periods explainer covers — how much of your paycheque that judgment can reach, and how the protected amount is even calculated, depends entirely on the province you live and work in.

No federal wage-garnishment law for an ordinary debt

Wage garnishment enforcing a private civil judgment is a matter of provincial property and civil-procedure law in Canada, not federal law — there's no Canadian counterpart to the U.S. Consumer Credit Protection Act's nationwide 25%-of-disposable-earnings cap. Even a federal government employee doesn't get a separate federal exemption formula: the Garnishment, Attachment and Pension Diversion Act only waives the Crown's own immunity from garnishment as an employer, so that a federal employee can be garnished at all; the actual exempt amount is still calculated under whichever province's garnishment law issued the underlying order. Provincial law is the whole answer here, not a partial one.

Four provinces, four different formulas

Ontario's Wages Act sets the exemption as a flat percentage: section 7(2) exempts 80% of wages from an ordinary garnishing order, meaning a creditor can reach at most 20% of disposable earnings, though a judge can adjust that percentage on a debtor's motion if the standard exemption would cause hardship (or, on a creditor's motion, if the debtor's income makes 20% unreasonably low). Alberta's Civil Enforcement Act runs a completely different, tiered dollar structure instead: the Civil Enforcement Regulation exempts the first $800 of net monthly employment income entirely, exposes only 50% of the next band up to $2,400, and leaves everything above $2,400 fully exposed to garnishment — with both the $800 floor and the $2,400 ceiling rising by $200 for each of the debtor's dependents. British Columbia's Court Order Enforcement Act goes back to a flat-percentage model, but a different one than Ontario's: 70% of wages is exempt (so up to 30% is garnishable), subject to a minimum protected amount of $100 a month for a debtor with no dependents or $200 a month for one with dependents. Quebec runs a third structure entirely: article 698 of the Code of Civil Procedure makes only the portion calculated as (A − B) × C seizable, where A is the debtor's income, B is a base exemption published in the government's own table (varying by pay-period frequency and number of dependents, and adjusted annually — check the current figure directly rather than assuming last year's), and C is a rate fixed by regulation at 30% for an ordinary debt — but 50% for a support obligation, a family-patrimony division, or a compensatory payment. Even above the exempt floor, a Quebec creditor only ever reaches 30% (or 50%, for the exceptions above) of what's left, not the full remainder the way Alberta's and B.C.'s formulas allow once their own thresholds are crossed.

A concrete example of the difference: the same debtor earning $3,000 net a month, with no dependents, would have $600 exposed to garnishment in Ontario (20% of $3,000, since 80% is exempt), $900 exposed in B.C. (30% of $3,000, since 70% is exempt), and $1,400 exposed in Alberta under its tiered formula ($800 of the $800-$2,400 band at 50%, plus the full $600 above the $2,400 ceiling) — nearly two-and-a-half times Ontario's exposure on identical income. Quebec's exposure depends on that month's published base exemption, but is capped at 30% of whatever remains above it, structurally lower than Alberta's formula allows once its own $2,400 ceiling is crossed. Four provinces, four genuinely different amounts left in the same paycheque.

Two collectors that skip the ordinary rule entirely

Two carve-outs override every provincial formula above. A family-support order (child or spousal support) is treated differently under most of these same statutes — Ontario's Wages Act, for one, drops the exemption to 50% specifically for a support order, rather than the 80% that applies to an ordinary debt. And the Canada Revenue Agency doesn't need a judgment, a lawsuit, or any of the provincial garnishment machinery above at all: under section 224 of the Income Tax Act, the CRA can send a "Requirement to Pay" directly to an employer or bank, which is legally binding without a court ever being involved. The Income Tax Act itself sets no statutory exemption percentage for this tool — the commonly cited limits of up to 50% of net employment income, or up to 100% of amounts owed to a self-employed person, come from the CRA's own internal collections policy, not from a right written into the statute the way Ontario's, Alberta's, B.C.'s, or Quebec's exemptions are. That distinction matters: a debtor can't enforce the CRA's 50% figure in court the way they could challenge a provincial garnishment that exceeded the statutory exemption, because it's the CRA's own administrative practice, not a legal entitlement.

Garnishing wages still starts with a judgment, for everyone else

Outside of a support order or a CRA Requirement to Pay, an ordinary creditor — a credit card issuer, a debt buyer, a former landlord — still has to do what our limitation-periods explainer describes: sue within the applicable window and actually win a judgment, then take that judgment to a court registry to obtain a garnishing order under whichever province's formula above applies. Nothing about a private debt going unpaid lets a private creditor reach into a paycheque on its own — the CRA's no-court-order power is the exception in this area, not the rule.

This page describes the general exemption formula for an ordinary garnishing order in each jurisdiction — it isn't legal advice for your own situation. A court can adjust the standard exemption up or down based on individual hardship in several of these provinces, and a garnishment dispute is enforced through the same court that issued the underlying judgment, not a single national regulator. If you believe a garnishment against you exceeds what your province's law actually allows, that's a question for a paralegal or lawyer licensed in that province, not a national complaint line.

References

  1. Wages Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. W.1, s. 7(2)-(4) (Ontario) — 80% exemption from an ordinary garnishing order (20% garnishable), 50% exemption specific to a support/maintenance order, and judicial discretion to vary the exemption on motion.
  2. Civil Enforcement Act, R.S.A. 2000, c. C-15, and Civil Enforcement Regulation, Alta. Reg. 276/1995, Part 2, ss. 36-40.2 (Alberta) — $800 monthly base exemption, 50% exemption on the band between $800 and $2,400, full exposure above $2,400, and a $200-per-dependent increase to both the floor and ceiling; independently cross-checked against the Alberta Court of Justice's own public guide, "Getting and Enforcing Your Judgment in Alberta."
  3. Court Order Enforcement Act, R.S.B.C. 1996, c. 78, s. 3 (British Columbia) — 70% wage exemption from an ordinary garnishing order, with a $100/month minimum exemption (no dependents) or $200/month (with dependents), and a reduced exemption for a family-maintenance debt.
  4. Code of Civil Procedure, CQLR c. C-25.01, art. 698 (Quebec) — seizable income calculated as (A − B) × C, where C is fixed at 30% for an ordinary debt and 50% for a support obligation, family-patrimony division, or compensatory payment; and the Government of Quebec's own public "Table of exemptions for calculation of the seizable portion of your income" (Quebec.ca), which publishes the current base exemption (B) by pay-period frequency and number of dependents and states it is adjusted annually — independently cross-checked against Légis Québec's own published text of article 698 for the 30%/50% rate distinction.
  5. Income Tax Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. 1 (5th Supp.), s. 224 (Requirement to Pay) — CRA authority to compel an employer, bank, or other third party to pay CRA directly, without a court judgment; the commonly cited 50%-of-net-pay/100%-of-self-employed-income limits are Canada Revenue Agency internal collections policy, not a statutory exemption written into the Act itself, independently cross-checked against multiple accounting-firm summaries of CRA's own collections practice describing this same policy-vs.-statute distinction.
  6. Garnishment, Attachment and Pension Diversion Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. G-2, and its Garnishment and Attachment Regulations — waives Crown immunity so a federal employee's wages can be garnished, expressly binding the Crown "according to the garnishment laws of the province" that issued the underlying order, rather than creating an independent federal exemption schedule.

Related