Credit Repair in Canada: What You Can Fix, What the Law Allows and Free Help

By the FixMyCredit.ca editorial team · Published February 17, 2023 · Last updated October 12, 2026

Credit repair in Canada means three things: disputing information on your Equifax and TransUnion reports that is wrong, outdated or not yours (free, directly with each bureau), resolving the debts behind the damage, and rebuilding with on-time payments. FixMyCredit.ca is a free Canadian referral service that explains every step and connects you with a debt specialist when the debt itself needs one.

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How does credit repair work in Canada?

Credit repair in Canada works in three moves, and the first two are free: pull both reports, dispute what is wrong, then deal with the debt behind the damage.

1. Pull both credit reports. Equifax Canada and TransUnion Canada each give you your file free, and the two files differ more often than people expect. A lender that reports to one bureau only leaves a gap on the other.
2. Dispute what is wrong. Errors, duplicates, accounts that are not yours and entries past their purge date come off through a free dispute, usually inside about 30 days.
3. Deal with the debt behind the damage. Collections, proposals and consolidations each mark your file differently, and the order matters. This is the step where a free assessment earns its keep.

Our part: you fill in the form above, a Canadian partner reviews your situation and calls you, and the call costs nothing. We do not repair credit ourselves and we do not lend.

Is credit repair legal in Canada?

Yes. Credit repair is legal in Canada because federal and provincial law gives you the right to see your Equifax and TransUnion files and to dispute anything that is inaccurate, outdated or not yours. The bureaus must investigate and must correct or remove what cannot be verified.

What is not legal is hiding the truth. Disputing an accurate debt as fraud (so-called credit washing), applying for credit under a number that is not your Social Insurance Number, or lying on an application is criminal fraud. The line is easy to hold: correcting a genuine error is your right; erasing accurate history is a crime.

Four layers of law make the legal side work, and knowing which does what makes you harder to mislead:

• Provincial consumer reporting law (Ontario’s Consumer Reporting Act, Alberta’s Consumer Protection Act and its reports regulation, Manitoba’s Personal Investigations Act and the equivalents elsewhere) gives you access to your file, the right to dispute, and the roughly six-year purge rules.
• Provincial rules for companies that sell credit repair, where they exist. Ontario and Quebec have them written out; most provinces rely on general unfair-practice law. The table below goes province by province.
• PIPEDA, the federal privacy law, gives you access and correction rights over personal information held by any business, the bureaus included, and is the main law in the three territories.
• The Criminal Code covers the other side of the line: fake identities, SIN misuse and credit washing.

What can credit repair fix, and what can it never remove?

Credit repair can remove anything on your report that is wrong, outdated, duplicated or fraudulent; it cannot remove accurate information before its purge date, whoever files the dispute.

Accurate negatives leave on a fixed clock. These are the retention periods both bureaus publish, checked against the FCAC’s own table; no province runs a late payment longer than six years.

What rights do you have, spelled out?

Canadian law gives you eight credit repair rights, every one of them free to use, and no company has access to a lever you do not.

1. Free access to your file. Both Equifax and TransUnion must show you what they hold on you at no charge.
2. The right to dispute any entry, any time, at no cost, with an investigation that usually closes inside about 30 days (Alberta’s regulation allows 45).
3. Correction or deletion of anything the bureau cannot verify as accurate.
4. A consumer statement, a short explanation attached to a disputed item that stays on your file.
5. Notice of corrections sent to lenders who pulled your file recently, on your request.
6. Consent before access. With narrow exceptions, your report can only be pulled with your consent and for a permitted purpose.
7. Privacy rights under PIPEDA: access, correction and the right to withdraw consent.
8. The right to complain to your provincial consumer office about a bureau or a credit repair company, and to the Privacy Commissioner about data handling.

How do you dispute an error with Equifax and TransUnion?

A dispute that works names the exact entry, says precisely what is wrong, attaches proof, and goes to the bureau directly; both Equifax and TransUnion take disputes online, by mail and by phone at no charge.

1. Pull both reports and mark the account, the field (date, amount, status) and what it should say.
2. Gather proof: statements, payment confirmations, a settlement letter, a police report for fraud.
3. File with the bureau that shows the error. If both show it, file with both; each investigates on its own.
4. Wait out the investigation. The bureau contacts the lender or collector; what cannot be verified comes off.
5. Escalate if it stays: add a consumer statement, write to the lender directly, and complain to your provincial consumer office. Keep every reference number.

A written dispute needs five things and no legal language: who you are, which entry (creditor and account number as printed), what is wrong in one precise line (“reported as R9 unpaid; settled in full on March 14, 2025”), what you want (a stated status, or deletion), and the proof attached. Never claim fraud on a debt you incurred, and never deny an account that is yours.

When a company says it has a proprietary dispute process, this is the process. The Equifax Canada dispute page and the FCAC’s guide to improving your credit score are the two official starting points.

Which provinces regulate credit repair companies, and how?

The right to dispute is the same everywhere in Canada; the rules for companies that sell credit repair are provincial, and only Ontario and Quebec have written a code for them. Everywhere else, a company that only files disputes for you answers to general unfair-practice law and the ordinary law of contract, which puts the burden of judgment on you.

In Ontario and Quebec, a company that asks for money before your file has improved is breaking a written rule and you can cancel. Everywhere else the red flags below are your only protection, so search your province’s consumer office for the company name before you sign.

Should you pay a credit repair company or do it yourself?

Every step a paid credit repair company takes is a step you can take yourself for free, because the bureaus must treat your dispute exactly as they treat one filed on your behalf.

What you are buying from a legitimate company is time and organization, never special access. That can be worth paying for in an identity-theft cleanup spanning many accounts, or when errors at both bureaus keep reappearing. Walk away on any of these seven signs:

• Payment demanded before any work. Illegal in Ontario and Quebec, a warning everywhere.
• A promised score increase. Nobody controls the bureaus’ outcomes; a promise is a sales script.
• A promise to remove accurate items. Legally impossible; disputes only correct errors.
• Pressure to sign today. Manufactured urgency is a tactic, not a service.
• No written contract or cancellation terms. A missing contract erases the rights your province gives you.
• Advice to dispute everything blindly. A flood of unsupported disputes can be treated as frivolous and wastes the process.
• No physical address or verifiable reviews. You cannot hold an anonymous website to account.

One question sorts the honest firms from the rest: which items will you dispute, and on what grounds? A vague answer means a template letter.

How long does credit repair take?

Genuine errors usually clear inside the first 30-day investigation; a score rebuilt on accurate history moves over two to four quarters, and nobody can compress that part because it is pure payment history.

• Months 1 to 3: both reports pulled, every genuine error disputed with proof, letters sent to the lenders behind any collection. The bureau answers around day 30: corrected, deleted or verified. The fastest wins a company claims are usually this stage working as designed.
• Months 4 to 6: corrections settle, balances trend down, and a rebuilding account starts reporting on-time payments. This is where scores begin to move for most people.
• Months 7 to 12: clean months stack behind the old entries, older negatives lose weight, and the file starts telling a recovery story. No company in Canada can shorten this stage.

Anyone promising a dramatic jump inside a few weeks is selling the calendar back to you. If a verified item is still wrong after day 30, persistence with paper wins: consumer statement, a written dispute to the lender, a complaint to the provincial office. Keep every number and letter in one folder.

What happens after you send the free assessment form?

The form takes about two minutes, nothing on it is pulled against your credit, and the next step is a phone call from a Canadian partner who reviews your file with you at no charge.

1. What the form asks. Roughly how much credit card and other unsecured debt you carry, your contact details and province, your housing and employment situation, whether you have filed a proposal or bankruptcy before, and where you think your score sits. Nothing is verified with a bureau at this stage.
2. What happens next. Your request goes to the partner best placed for your province and situation, a debt specialist, a licensed non-profit counsellor or a Licensed Insolvency Trustee. They call or email you, usually within one business day, to talk through the options on your file.
3. What it costs you. Nothing. The partner pays FixMyCredit.ca a referral fee; you pay nothing for the call, and there is no obligation to go further. Any service you later choose is agreed in writing with that partner, under the rules of your province.

One honest limit: the partners reached through this form are debt specialists, so they are the right call when the problem is the balances behind the score. If your file is clean apart from one or two errors, the free dispute above is your fastest route, and the call will tell you so.

Credit repair, credit counselling, debt settlement or a consumer proposal: which one fits?

These four get marketed as if they were one thing; the law treats them differently, and the right one depends on whether your problem is the report or the debt.

• Credit repair works on your report: disputes, corrections, rebuilding. Free when you do it yourself; regulated in Ontario and Quebec when a company charges for it.
• Credit counselling works on the debt through budgeting and a debt management plan, usually with a non-profit agency, with an R7 notation while the plan runs. See debt management and your credit.
• Debt settlement negotiates lump-sum payoffs for less than you owe; the most heavily restricted of the four, with several provinces capping or sequencing fees. See debt relief and your score.
• A consumer proposal is a legal arrangement filed only through a Licensed Insolvency Trustee; it stops collection and garnishment and leaves your report 3 years after you finish paying. See consumer proposals and your credit and rebuilding after bankruptcy.

None of the four can touch an accurate entry; a company that claims all four plus deletions is the warning. For collections, start with when collections fall off your report and how to remove collections that should not be there; for a late payment reported in error, this is how to remove it.

Which credit repair scams should you walk away from?

Three pitches end the conversation on sight: a promise to remove accurate negatives, a large fee before any work, and an offer of a new credit identity.

• “Section 609 letters.” A section of the US Fair Credit Reporting Act; Canadian bureaus are not bound by it, and an ordinary dispute does the same job.
• CPNs or a “fresh start file.” A US scam product with no Canadian equivalent; any number in place of your SIN is fraud.
• “The 7-year rule.” The American clock; most Canadian items purge around six years.
• Pay-for-delete on a debt you owe. A grey-zone tactic the bureaus discourage; for an account you still hold it has no mechanism at all.

If you have already paid one: stop payments and dispute recent charges with your card issuer; report the company to your provincial consumer office and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre; place a fraud alert with both bureaus if you shared your SIN; and if the company filed false fraud disputes on real debts, correct the record before it compounds.

Where to start: the guides Canadians use most

From collections and disputes to life after insolvency, every guide below is written for Canadian credit reports: Equifax and TransUnion, the R-rating system, and the six-year purge rules that actually apply here.

• Fix My Credit: The Full Plan9 steps, in the right order
• Credit Repair in Canada: The Long GuideCosts, timelines and what no company can do
• Rebuild After BankruptcyRecover your score after discharge
• Consumer Proposals & CreditLighter impact than bankruptcy
• Debt Consolidation & CreditHow it affects your score
• Cards That Rebuild CreditWhat shows up on your report

Good to Know

Why FixMyCredit.ca

FixMyCredit.ca is free, Canadian and plain about its limits: no promised results, ever.

• Free and no obligation. Checking your options never costs anything or affects your credit.
• Canadian rules only. Equifax Canada, TransUnion Canada and the provincial acts above, not recycled US advice.
• Education first. Our guides give you the full do-it-yourself path; the referral is there when the debt behind the damage needs a professional.

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Frequently Asked Questions

FixMyCredit.ca is a free information and referral service, not a lender, credit repair company, credit counsellor, trustee or law firm. We never charge fees, never promise outcomes, and never ask you to pay anyone in advance. Partners we refer to operate under Canadian consumer protection and cost-of-borrowing laws. Content is general information, not legal or financial advice.