Collection Agency Rules in Canada

Who the Rules Apply To

Debt collection is regulated province by province. Each province licenses collection agencies and their collectors and then sets out, in the statute or its regulations, when they may call, how often, who else they may speak to, and what they have to disclose before asking for money. A collector who breaches those rules risks the agency’s licence, which is what makes the conduct rules worth knowing.

Two limits on the scope of these rules matter. First, they attach to the province where the person being contacted is, not to where the agency is based. Second, in most provinces they apply to licensed collection agencies rather than to a business chasing its own account, although several provinces impose parallel duties on creditors collecting for themselves; Nova Scotia does so through its Consumer Creditors’ Conduct Act. Ontario also exempts a creditor collecting under its own name where the money is no more than 60 days overdue.

The rules that follow are conduct rules. None of them decides whether the debt is owed. That is a separate question, dealt with in the sections on statute-barred debts and on disputing a debt below.

Contact Frequency and Hours

In Ontario the sequence is fixed by regulation. Before any demand for payment, the agency has to send a private written notice setting out the creditor’s name, the type of product that incurred the debt, the amount when it was first due and the amount now owing, a statement that a breakdown is available on request, the identity and authority of the agency and collector, and the agency’s full mailing address and toll-free number. No contact may be made before the sixth day after that notice is sent, and the debt may not be reported to a credit bureau until that period has elapsed.

Once contact begins, Ontario Regulation 74 permits telephone and personal calls between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. local time on any day other than Sunday, between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. on Sunday, and not at all on the holidays the regulation lists, which include New Year’s Day, Family Day, Good Friday, Victoria Day, Canada Day, the Civic Holiday, Labour Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and 26 December. Contact is capped at three times in a seven-day period on behalf of the same creditor. Three qualifications on that cap are easy to miss: ordinary mail is not counted, contact the person asked for is not counted, and the cap does not begin to run until the collector has actually spoken to the person on a telephone or personal call.

Every other province sets its own window, and only Nova Scotia matches Ontario’s numeric cap. The table below sets out all ten.

Prohibited Practices

The prohibitions are close to identical across the country, which is unsurprising: the federal, provincial and territorial Consumer Measures Committee published a harmonized list of prohibited collection practices that the provinces drew on. In Ontario they sit in sections 22 to 25 of Regulation 74.

• Threatening, profane, intimidating or coercive language
• Undue, excessive or unreasonable pressure, or any communication amounting to harassment
• Publishing or threatening to publish a failure to pay
• False or misleading information, including references to the police, a law firm, prison, a lien or a garnishment that does not exist
• Documents dressed up to look like court forms, or presenting the collector as a legal collector or part of a law firm
• Threatening a legal proceeding the agency has no written authority from the creditor to bring, or recommending one without first telling the debtor
• Collecting from a person the agency knows is not liable, or continuing to call someone who has said they are not the debtor
• Adding the cost of collection to the debt: in Ontario those charges do not form part of the debt at all
• Contacting the debtor by a method that costs the debtor money once the agency has been told it does
• Using an automatic dialling or predictive dialling device, bulk texting or similar technology (Ontario)

Quebec adds a prohibition on disclosing information likely to cause undue injury to the debtor, their surety, their spouse or their families, and on representing that judicial proceedings will be instituted. Nova Scotia adds a prohibition on giving or threatening to give an employer or a household member information that may adversely affect the debtor’s employment or employment opportunities.

Collection Rules by Province

Every row below comes from the statute or regulation named in it, and each of those is linked in the sources at the foot of this page. Where a column says “no numeric cap”, the province regulates frequency through the harassment standard instead of a count, which means the question is one of fact rather than arithmetic.

The three territories are not included because their collection regimes were not verified for this table. Calling hours are stated in the local time of the person being contacted wherever the instrument says so, which is the case in Ontario, British Columbia and New Brunswick.

The Written Notice That Stops Contact

Ontario.Section 22(1) of Regulation 74 is the operative rule. Where a debtor sends the agency or collector, by verifiable means including personal service, certified mail, courier, fax or e-mail, a notice stating that the debtor disputes the debt and suggests that the matter be taken to court, the agency may not afterwards contact or attempt to contact the debtor unless the debtor consents to or requests the contact. Section 22(2) provides the second route: a notice naming the debtor’s lawyer or licensed paralegal, with that person’s address and telephone number, confines all further contact to that lawyer or paralegal.

Two things survive the notice. The agency may still recommend to the creditor that a legal proceeding be commenced, and section 23(2) in fact requires it to give the debtor notice of its intention to make that recommendation first. The debt may also continue to be reported to a consumer reporting agency, which is why Consumer Protection Ontario pairs its description of the notice with a warning that the debt can still affect a credit score.

Elsewhere.British Columbia, Alberta, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick all recognise the same dispute-and-take-it-to-court notice; Nova Scotia and New Brunswick require it by registered mail. British Columbia, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia also recognise a notice requiring communication in writing only or through a lawyer, provided an address is given. Alberta’s equivalent redirects contact to a named representative, but only for so long as that representative makes and keeps reasonable arrangements to discuss the debt. Quebec’s written-communication-only request is valid for three months from the date it is sent and covers every debt that permit holder is collecting from that debtor for the same creditor, so it has to be renewed.

A notice of this kind is a statement of position, not a form. What the provisions require is that it be in writing, that it be sent by a means that can be proved, and that it say the two things the rule turns on: that the debt is disputed, and that the creditor may take the matter to court. A short version follows.

[Date]

[Collection agency name]
[Agency mailing address]

Sent by registered mail and by e-mail to [agency e-mail address]

Re: Account [account number] — [original creditor name]

I am writing about the account above.

I dispute this debt. I do not agree that the amount claimed is owing.

If the creditor wishes to pursue the amount, I suggest that the matter
be taken to court so that it can be decided there.

This notice is given under [Ontario: section 22(1) of R.R.O. 1990,
Reg. 74 made under the Collection and Debt Settlement Services Act].

[Optional — where a lawyer or licensed paralegal is acting:]
Please direct all further communication about this account to my
lawyer, [name], at [address] and [telephone number].

[Full name]
[Mailing address]

The statutory reference in square brackets changes with the province: British Columbia section 116(4) of the Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act, Alberta section 12(k)(ii) of the Collection and Debt Repayment Practices Regulation, Nova Scotia section 20 of the Collection and Debt Management Agencies Act, New Brunswick section 14(1)(l) of N.B. Regulation 84-256. Keeping the registered mail receipt and a copy of the notice is what makes it provable later.

Debts That Are Statute-Barred

A limitation period sets how long a creditor has to start a court action. Once it has run, the debt is described as statute-barred: the creditor can no longer obtain a judgment, but the underlying obligation is not erased, the account may still appear on a credit report for its own separate period, and in most provinces a collection agency may still ask for payment so long as it does not misrepresent its position or threaten a proceeding it has no lawful authority to bring.

Most provinces have moved to a two-year period running from the day the claim was discovered. Two have not, and one province changed direction recently enough that older guidance is still wrong about it: Manitoba replaced its six-year rule with a two-year basic period from discovery.

The detail that most often catches people is what restarts the clock. Prince Edward Island’s Statute of Limitations says it directly: where a person acknowledges the debt in writing signed by them, or makes a part payment of principal or interest, an action may be brought within six years from that promise, acknowledgement or part payment. A small payment made to end a difficult call can therefore hand the creditor a fresh limitation period. In the provinces that measure from discovery, the analysis runs through the discovery rules instead, but the practical point is the same.

Disputing a Debt You Do Not Owe

Mistaken-identity and already-paid accounts are common enough that the collection rules deal with them separately from harassment. Several provisions are worth knowing.

The initial notice carries the information needed to check the claim. Ontario requires the written notice to state the original creditor as well as the current one, the type of product that incurred the debt in enough detail to distinguish it from other products of the same creditor, the amount when first due and the amount now owing, and a statement that a breakdown of the difference is available on request. British Columbia and Nova Scotia require materially the same disclosure. Asking for that breakdown in writing is the ordinary first step where the amount does not match the person’s own records.

Collecting from someone who is not liable is prohibited outright.In Ontario a collection agency may not collect from a person it knows or reasonably ought to know is not liable, and may not keep contacting someone who has said they are not the person being sought unless it first takes all reasonable precautions to confirm identity. British Columbia, Alberta, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have equivalents. Prince Edward Island separately prohibits including a debtor’s spouse in a court action or another collection attempt where only one party is liable for the debt.

A dispute notice and a credit-report dispute are different things.The notice described above governs whether the agency may keep contacting the person. A credit report that shows an account which is not the person’s is corrected through the credit bureaus, and the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada sets out how errors on a credit report are challenged. Where the account was opened fraudulently, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre collects reports of identity theft.

The regulator enforces, it does not adjudicate the debt.Each provincial regulator in the table above receives complaints about a licensed agency’s conduct and can act against the licence. None of them decides whether the money is owed. Where the amount itself is in dispute, that question belongs to a court, and the small claims thresholds are set out on the warranty claim denied page.

How to Respond

A contemporaneous record is what turns a complaint into something a regulator can act on. That means the date and time of each call, the name the collector gave, the agency named, the creditor named, and what was said. In every province the agency must identify the creditor, the balance and its own identity and authority on a demand for payment, so a collector who will not answer those questions is already outside the rules.

Complaints about a licensed agency’s conduct are received by the regulator named in the table above, and where the conduct is serious the licence may be suspended or revoked. A separate civil claim for damages may also be available, and it is a separate route from the regulatory one: the regulator disciplines the agency, it does not compensate the person contacted.

Where the underlying purchase is the real dispute rather than the collection conduct, the refund rights guide sets out when a refund is required across the provinces, and the warranty rights guide covers goods that failed.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many times a day can a debt collector call in Canada?

Two provinces put a number on it. In Ontario a collection agency may not contact a person more than three times in any seven-day period on behalf of the same creditor, and the count starts once the collector has actually spoken to that person; contact by ordinary mail and contact the person asked for are not counted. Nova Scotia uses the same three-in-seven-days rule. Everywhere else the limit is qualitative: British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island each prohibit communicating in a manner or with a frequency that amounts to harassment, and Quebec prohibits harassment, threats and intimidation outright. A pattern of daily calls will usually engage that standard even where no number appears in the statute.

What hours can a collection agency call in Canada?

The windows differ by province. Ontario, British Columbia and New Brunswick allow 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., permit Sunday calls only between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m., and bar calls on listed holidays. Manitoba allows 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. but no Sunday or holiday calls at all. Alberta is the widest at 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island allow 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Saskatchewan also excludes Sundays and holidays. Nova Scotia allows 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. and no Sunday calls. Quebec allows 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and no Sunday or holiday calls. Newfoundland and Labrador simply bars contact between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. In several provinces the hours are measured in the local time of the person being contacted, not the collector's.

Can a collection agency call my employer or my family?

Only within narrow limits, and never to discuss the debt. The common pattern is that an employer may be contacted once to confirm employment, business title and business address, and that relatives, neighbours, friends and acquaintances may be contacted only to obtain the debtor's own address or telephone number, or where that person guaranteed the debt. New Brunswick goes furthest and prohibits communication with any person other than the debtor about the debt, and bars contact at the workplace without the debtor's approval. Newfoundland and Labrador bars workplace contact outright and requires the debtor's consent before the employer is contacted. Nova Scotia separately prohibits giving or threatening to give an employer information that could affect the debtor's job.

How do I stop a collection agency from contacting me?

Two written routes exist in most provinces, and they do different things. A notice sent by verifiable means stating that the debt is disputed and that the matter should be taken to court ends contact with the debtor in Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. A separate notice naming a lawyer, or in Ontario a licensed paralegal, and giving that person's address redirects all contact through them. British Columbia, New Brunswick and Quebec also recognise a request to communicate in writing only, though the Quebec version lasts three months and then has to be renewed. None of these notices cancels the debt: the creditor may still sue, and the debt may still be reported to a credit bureau.

Does a debt disappear after two years in Canada?

No. What expires is the creditor's ability to win a court action, not the debt. The basic limitation period is two years from discovery in Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, three years in Quebec, and six years in Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island. A collection agency may generally still ask a person to pay a statute-barred debt, and the entry may remain on a credit report for its own separate period. A written acknowledgement of the debt or a part payment can restart the clock, which is why Prince Edward Island's statute deals with acknowledgements and part payments expressly.