Credit repair in Canada means three legal things: correcting errors on your Equifax and TransUnion reports through a free dispute, making sure outdated items fall off on schedule, and rebuilding a damaged file with new on-time history. It does not mean deleting accurate negative information, because no company, lawyer or software can do that. This guide walks through each step of credit repair the way a specialist would, shows what a paid company can and cannot add, and lays out the rules that protect you when you hire one.
What Credit Repair Means in Canada
Credit repair is the process of getting a Canadian credit file to reflect the truth, and then giving it new positive history to outweigh the old damage. Everything legitimate in the field fits inside those two ideas, whether you do the work yourself or pay someone to do it for you:
- Accuracy. Equifax Canada and TransUnion Canada are required to investigate any item you dispute and to correct or remove information that cannot be verified. Wrong balances, accounts that are not yours, a paid collection still showing as unpaid, and items that should have aged off are all fixable.
- Recovery. A file with real late payments, a consumer proposal or a bankruptcy is repaired by time and by new behaviour: on-time payments on active accounts, low balances, and no new missed payments while the old marks age out.
What credit repair is not is a shortcut around either idea. The bureaus do not remove accurate information because someone asks nicely, argues persistently or pays a fee, and Canadian law gives no company a power you do not already have yourself. That is the single fact that makes the rest of this page useful: once you know what can move, you can spend your effort, and your money if you choose to spend any, on the parts that actually change a score.
What Credit Repair Can and Cannot Do
Every honest credit repair conversation in Canada comes down to this table. The left column is where scores actually move; the right column is where money gets wasted.
| Credit repair can | Credit repair cannot |
|---|---|
| Remove accounts that are not yours, including identity-theft accounts | Remove an account you opened and defaulted on |
| Correct a wrong balance, limit, status or date of last activity | Change a payment that really was 30 or 60 days late |
| Get a paid collection updated to paid, or removed if the collector cannot verify it | Erase a verified collection before its six-year purge date |
| Remove a duplicate of the same debt reported twice | Delete a consumer proposal or bankruptcy early |
| Force an item past its legal retention period off the file | Reset the retention clock or hide an item from lenders |
| Add a consumer statement (up to 800 characters at Equifax) explaining a dispute | Create a new credit identity, which is fraud in Canada |
| Rebuild the score with new on-time history and low utilization | Raise a score overnight or by a promised number of points |
If a company’s pitch lives in the right-hand column, walk away. If it lives in the left-hand column, it is describing work you can do free, and the only question left is whether its convenience is worth its fee. Our guide to what credit repair can legally do in Canada goes deeper on the legal side.
Credit Repair Step 1: Pull Both Reports for Free
Credit repair starts with both of your credit reports, because Equifax and TransUnion hold different data from different lenders and an error at one bureau often does not exist at the other. Every Canadian can get both files at no cost:
- Equifax Canada. A free online account at equifax.ca shows your report and lets you file disputes online; you can also request a free copy by mail or phone.
- TransUnion Canada. A free consumer disclosure is available online through its consumer portal, by mail or by phone; Quebec residents can also request it in person.
- Your bank or a fintech app. Many banks and free apps show one bureau’s score and a summary; useful for monitoring, not a substitute for the full report when you are repairing.
Print or save both reports and go through them line by line, because credit repair is a paperwork exercise and the paper has to be in front of you. Note every account, its status, its balance, the date of last activity and the date it was opened. Then check the personal information block: a wrong address, a misspelled name or a merged file with a relative of the same name is the most common source of accounts that are not yours.
Credit Repair Step 2: Find the Errors Worth Disputing
The work pays off fastest on genuine errors, and Canadian files carry more of them than most people expect. Work through your two reports with this checklist and flag anything that fits:
- Accounts you never opened. An unfamiliar card, loan or phone account is either a merged file or identity theft. Both come off with a dispute, and identity theft also needs a fraud alert on both bureaus and a police report.
- Wrong balances or limits. A card showing a higher balance or lower limit than reality inflates your utilization and drags the score for no reason.
- Paid debts still showing unpaid. A collection you settled months ago that still reads as owing, or a closed account shown as open with a balance.
- Duplicate collections. The same debt sold from one collector to another and reported twice, which doubles the damage from one default.
- Items past their purge date. A late payment older than six years from the date of last activity, or a bankruptcy still showing years after it should have dropped, is removable on request.
- Wrong dates. A date of last activity that a collector “re-aged” to keep the item alive longer is a classic error worth fighting.
- Status errors. An account included in a completed consumer proposal that still shows as an active default, or a co-signed loan reported as your primary debt.
Anything accurate stays on the list only as a rebuilding target, not a dispute. Late payments you made, collections you owe and an insolvency you filed belong in step four. Our detailed guides cover the two heaviest cases: removing collections from a credit report and removing late payments, including the narrow situations where an accurate item can legitimately come off.
Credit Repair Step 3: Dispute With Equifax and TransUnion
Disputing is free at both bureaus, and it is the core mechanism of every repair plan, paid or not. Here is how the process runs and what to expect:
- File the dispute. Equifax takes disputes online through your account, with up to three supporting documents attached, or by mail to its Montreal consumer relations office. TransUnion takes them through its online investigation request, by mail or by phone. Dispute each item separately and say exactly what is wrong.
- Attach proof. A paid-in-full letter, a bank statement showing the payment, a discharge certificate, a police report for fraud, or the creditor’s own letter admitting the error. Disputes with documents win; disputes with a paragraph of frustration usually do not.
- The bureau verifies with the creditor. If the bureau can correct the item from your documents it does; otherwise it asks the reporting creditor or collector to confirm the information. The bureau cannot keep an item that the source fails to verify.
- Wait for the result. Equifax says online disputes typically take 15 to 20 days and mailed ones 20 to 25; TransUnion investigations generally close within about 30 days. You get the outcome by email or mail, and a corrected report if anything changed.
- Escalate if the answer is wrong. Go back to the creditor directly with your proof, re-dispute with the new evidence, add a consumer statement of up to 800 characters to your Equifax file, and complain to your provincial consumer protection office if the creditor keeps reporting something it cannot prove. Our bureau-specific walkthroughs cover the forms: how to dispute with Equifax and how to dispute with TransUnion.
Two habits make disputes work. Dispute at both bureaus, because a correction at one does not travel to the other. And keep a dated file of everything you sent and received, because the second dispute on a stubborn item is won by the paper trail from the first.
Credit Repair Step 4: Rebuild the File
Credit repair on accurate negatives is a rebuilding job, and the rebuilding levers are the same five factors the scoring models weigh. In rough order of impact:
- Payment history. The heaviest factor. One active account paid on time every month, for months in a row, is the engine of every recovered file. Set every minimum payment to autopay so the streak never breaks.
- Utilization. Keep balances under 30% of each limit, and under 10% if you can, on the statement date the lender reports. Paying a card down before the statement closes moves the score within a cycle.
- Age of accounts. Keep old accounts open even if you rarely use them; closing your oldest card shortens your history and raises utilization at the same time.
- New credit. Space out applications. Each hard inquiry sits on the file for up to three years and a cluster of them reads as distress.
- Credit mix. A revolving account plus one installment account, paid on time, beats several of one kind.
If your file has no open accounts left to report, you need a starter product before any of the levers can move. A secured credit card is the standard first step, a small credit-builder loan is the second, and our guide to credit cards to rebuild credit ranks the realistic options for a bruised file. For the full month-by-month plan, our 500 to 700 rebuild guide shows the order that works.
How Long Negative Items Stay on a Canadian Credit Report
Planning depends on the purge dates, because an item that falls off in eight months may not be worth a fight, while one wrongly scheduled to stay for six years is. The bureaus publish these retention rules, and they run from the date of last activity, not the date the account was opened:
| Item | How long it stays |
|---|---|
| Late or missed payments | 6 years from the date of last activity on the account |
| Collection accounts | 6 years from the date of last activity |
| Consumer proposal | 3 years after completion or 6 years from filing, whichever comes first |
| First bankruptcy | 6 years after discharge (7 if never discharged) |
| Second bankruptcy | 14 years, with the first re-reported for the same period |
| Hard inquiries | Up to 3 years at Equifax, up to 6 at TransUnion |
| Judgments | 6 years from the filing date in most provinces |
Two details matter here. First, the date of last activity on a collection is when you last paid or acknowledged it, so an old debt that a collector convinces you to make a small payment on can be re-aged; know the date before you pay anything. Second, the purge is automatic in principle but not always in practice, and an item that outstays its date is a dispute you will win. Our guides on how long bad credit stays on your report and when collections fall off cover the exceptions by province.
Credit Repair Companies: What They Charge and What the Law Says
Credit repair companies in Canada sell time and persistence, not powers: they pull your reports, file the disputes described above, chase creditors for verification and coach you through the rebuilding steps, typically for a setup fee plus a monthly charge that runs into the hundreds of dollars over a program. Whether that is worth paying depends on your file and your schedule, and the honest answer for most simple files is no. Our review of credit repair companies in Canada and the blunt answer to do credit repair companies work cover the market in detail.
The law is clearest in Ontario, where the Consumer Protection Act, 2002 treats credit repair as a regulated consumer agreement. In plain terms, an Ontario credit repairer must give you a written agreement, may not take any payment before it has produced a material improvement to your credit file, must let you cancel within ten days of receiving your copy without a reason, and cannot enforce an agreement that never met the written requirements; you can cancel one of those within a year.
A promise to remove accurate information or to deliver a specific score is a false representation under the same Act, and false representations give you a right to cancel and recover what you paid. Complaints go to Ontario’s consumer protection ministry.
Outside Ontario the specific credit repair rules are thinner, but every province’s consumer protection law bans deceptive and unconscionable practices, which is where a guaranteed-results pitch or a hidden fee lands. Alberta and British Columbia enforce through their consumer protection statutes and agencies, and Quebec’s Office de la protection du consommateur handles credit-related complaints under its Consumer Protection Act. Wherever you live, the federal Competition Act also covers false advertising, and the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada publishes the same five improvement factors listed above, free, which is the honest benchmark for anything a company offers to sell you.
Credit Repair Red Flags: 7 Signs to Walk Away
The market attracts operators who sell the impossible, and they are easy to spot once you know the pattern:
- Any fee before results. Illegal in Ontario and a warning sign everywhere. A legitimate firm bills after it has done something you can see on your report.
- A promised score or a promised deletion. Nobody can guarantee either. “Remove all negatives” and “100 points in 30 days” are marketing, not services.
- Advice to dispute everything. Blanket disputes on accurate items clog the process, get flagged as frivolous by the bureaus, and change nothing.
- A new credit identity. Applying for credit with a different number or a “credit privacy number” is fraud under Canadian law, and the client is the one who gets charged.
- Secrecy about the method. If the company will not tell you exactly which items it will dispute and on what grounds, it is selling the dispute form you can file yourself.
- Pressure to sign today. Ontario gives you ten days to cancel for a reason; a firm that fights the cooling-off period knows what you will find in it.
- Pay-for-delete promises to collectors. Offering a collector money to remove an accurate collection is a grey area the bureaus prohibit in their reporting agreements, and it rarely sticks.
One test covers all seven: ask the company to name a single thing it can do that you cannot do yourself for free. The honest ones say “nothing, but we will do it for you”; the rest change the subject.
Do-It-Yourself Credit Repair vs a Paid Company
Both routes file the same disputes with the same bureaus and rebuild with the same five levers, so the choice is about your file and your time, not about access. Here is the honest comparison:
| Question | Do it yourself | Paid credit repair company |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Nothing; both bureaus dispute for free | Setup fee plus monthly charges over the program |
| Best for | One to five clear errors, a straightforward rebuild | Identity-theft cleanups, files with many collections, disputes that keep bouncing |
| Speed | Same bureau timelines, 15 to 30 days per dispute round | Same timelines; the company cannot skip the queue |
| Legal power | Full: the dispute right is yours under provincial credit reporting law | None beyond yours; it acts as your agent |
| Risk | Missing a deadline or a follow-up | Paying for work you could do, or hiring a company that disputes accurate items |
A middle path exists: a non-profit credit counsellor will review your reports with you for free or a nominal fee, and FixMyCredit’s own free assessment tells you which items on your file are disputable errors and which are rebuilding targets before you spend anything.
A Realistic Credit Repair Timeline
The work runs on the bureaus’ clocks and the scoring models’ memory, so the honest timeline looks like this for a file with a few errors and some real late payments:
- Week 1. Both reports pulled, every item checked, disputes filed with documents at both bureaus, a secured card or credit-builder loan opened if nothing is reporting.
- Weeks 3 to 5. Dispute results arrive. Corrected balances and removed errors show in the next score refresh, often a visible jump when a wrong balance or a duplicate collection comes off.
- Months 2 to 6. The rebuild takes over: on-time payments accumulate, utilization stays low, no new inquiries. Scores in the 500s commonly move into the low 600s in this window when the file was thin rather than heavily defaulted.
- Months 6 to 24. Old late payments lose weight as they age even before they purge, the newest items on the file are all positive, and lenders start to read the file as recovering rather than risky.
- Years 3 to 6. The last accurate negatives purge on their six-year clocks, and the file reflects only the rebuilt history.
Anyone promising a faster version is either describing an error-heavy file, where corrections genuinely move fast, or describing something that will not happen. Our guide on how to fix my credit step by step turns this timeline into a month-by-month checklist.
Credit Repair in Canada: Key Takeaways
- Credit repair is two jobs: correcting errors through free disputes at Equifax and TransUnion, and rebuilding with on-time payments and low utilization while accurate negatives age off.
- Nobody can remove accurate information early; late payments and collections purge six years from the date of last activity, a first bankruptcy six years after discharge.
- Disputes are free, take about 15 to 30 days, and are won with documents; file at both bureaus and keep a dated paper trail.
- Companies can only do what you can do yourself; in Ontario they cannot charge before a material improvement and must give you ten days to cancel.
- Walk away from any promised score, promised deletion, advance fee or new credit identity.
- The FixMyCredit assessment is free and tells you which items are disputable before you pay anyone.
Credit Repair FAQ
Is credit repair legal in Canada?
Yes. Disputing inaccurate, outdated or unverifiable information on your Equifax or TransUnion report is a legal right, and rebuilding a file with new on-time history is simply good credit behaviour. What is not legal is removing accurate information, creating a new credit identity, or, in Ontario, charging a credit repair fee before a material improvement has been delivered.
How much does credit repair cost in Canada?
Doing it yourself costs nothing: both bureaus provide free reports and free disputes. Paid companies typically charge a setup fee plus monthly fees over a program lasting several months, which adds up to several hundred dollars or more, for the same disputes you can file yourself.
How long does credit repair take?
Each dispute round takes about 15 to 30 days at the bureaus. Corrected errors show in the next score update. Rebuilding a file with real late payments or collections takes months of on-time history to show meaningful movement, and the accurate negatives themselves purge six years from the date of last activity.
Can a credit repair company remove accurate late payments or collections?
No. Canadian credit bureaus only remove information that is inaccurate, outdated or cannot be verified by the creditor. A late payment you made or a collection you owe stays for its retention period no matter who disputes it. Companies that promise otherwise are describing disputes they hope the creditor will fail to answer.
Does disputing an item hurt my credit score?
No. Filing a dispute is not recorded as a negative event and does not affect your score. While an item is under investigation it may be flagged as disputed, and some lenders pause decisions on files with open disputes, so time your applications for after the results arrive.
What is the fastest way to repair credit in Canada?
Correct genuine errors first, because a removed duplicate collection or a fixed balance can move the score within one reporting cycle. Then pay revolving balances below 30% of their limits before the statement date and keep every payment on time. Those three moves produce most of the movement a file can show in the first 90 days.
Are credit repair companies regulated in Canada?
Ontario regulates credit repair agreements directly under the Consumer Protection Act, 2002, with a written-agreement requirement, a ban on payment before a material improvement, and a ten-day cancellation right. Other provinces rely on their general consumer protection laws against deceptive and unfair practices, enforced by each province’s consumer protection agency.
Should I use a credit repair company or a credit counsellor?
For errors, do the disputes yourself or use a company only for a heavy file you cannot manage. For real debt problems behind the credit damage, a non-profit credit counsellor addresses the cause and can review your report at little or no cost, which a repair company does not do.
If debt rather than errors is what damaged the file, the debt relief hub compares every route from a repayment plan to a consumer proposal, and our guide to rebuilding credit after bankruptcy covers the recovery timeline after an insolvency.
About the Author
FixMyCredit.ca is a free information and referral service, not a lender, credit bureau, credit repair company or law firm. We never charge fees, never promise outcomes, and never ask you to pay anyone in advance. Bureau retention rules, dispute timelines and provincial consumer protection laws change; confirm current details with Equifax, TransUnion or your provincial consumer protection office. Content is general information, not legal or financial advice.
