Credit Repair Ontario: Your Rights, the Free Process and the Rules Companies Must Follow

By Salvador Bernardo, Credit Specialist at FixMyCredit.ca · Published September 18, 2026 · Last updated September 18, 2026

Credit repair Ontario residents can actually use runs on two provincial laws: the Consumer Reporting Act, which gives you a free copy of your Equifax and TransUnion files, the right to dispute anything on them at no charge, and a seven-year ceiling on how long negative information can be reported; and the Consumer Protection Act, 2002, which bars any credit repair company from charging you a cent before it delivers a real improvement and gives you ten days to cancel its contract. This guide walks through both, then the Ontario debt routes that sit behind most damaged files, so you know exactly what you can fix yourself, what a company can add, and what nobody can do.

What Credit Repair Means in Ontario

Credit repair Ontario law recognizes is the correction of inaccurate, incomplete or outdated information on your credit file, plus the rebuilding of a damaged file with new on-time history. It is not the deletion of accurate negative information, and no company, lawyer or software can do that anywhere in Canada. What makes Ontario different is that both halves of the process are written into provincial statute:

• The Consumer Reporting Act governs what Equifax Canada and TransUnion Canada may keep on an Ontario resident, what they must show you, how disputes work, and when items must come off.
• The Consumer Protection Act, 2002 governs anyone who sells credit repair services to Ontarians: what the contract must contain, when they may charge, and how you cancel.

Together they make Ontario the province where a consumer has the most leverage and a company has the least room to overpromise. Our national credit repair guide covers the mechanics that are the same everywhere; this page covers what is specifically Ontario.

Your Credit Repair Ontario Rights Under the Consumer Reporting Act

Under the Consumer Reporting Act, every Ontario resident has four rights that do the heavy lifting of credit repair, and none of them costs anything:

• A free copy of your file. A credit reporting agency must send you a copy of your report free of charge when you ask, by mail; both bureaus also offer free online access. Pull both files, because Equifax and TransUnion do not share data and errors usually sit on one and not the other.
• The right to dispute. If information is wrong, incomplete or cannot be verified, you can demand in writing that the agency correct or remove it, and you do not pay a fee. The agency must investigate, tell you what it did, and correct, supplement or delete what it cannot confirm. In practice both bureaus answer within about thirty days.
• The right to add your own statement. If you disagree with how something is reported and the agency will not change it, you can give the agency a written statement to keep with your file so anyone who pulls it sees your side.
• The right to know who looked. You can ask the agency for the names of everyone who received your report in the recent past, which is how you catch a lender pulling your file without consent.

The Act also lists what an agency may never report about you: your race, creed, colour, sex, ancestry, ethnic origin or political affiliation, and any criminal charge that was withdrawn or ended in a discharge or pardon. If you find any of it, the dispute is not a judgment call.

How Long Negative Items Stay on an Ontario Credit File

Ontario sets a legal ceiling and the bureaus run under it. The Consumer Reporting Act says an agency may not report most negative information once it is more than seven years old; Equifax and TransUnion apply their own shorter national schedules, so for an Ontario resident the practical dates are the bureau dates, with the seven-year rule as the backstop nothing may pass.

Item	Bureau purge date	Ontario legal ceiling
Late payment on an account	6 years from the date reported	7 years
Collection account	6 years from the first missed payment	7 years for collection proceedings
Judgment	6 years	7 years, unless the creditor confirms it is still unpaid
Consumer proposal	3 years after you finish paying, or 6 years from filing, whichever is first	7 years
First bankruptcy	6 years after discharge	7 years
Second bankruptcy	14 years	the single-bankruptcy limit does not apply
Unpaid fines or taxes	6 years	7 years
Hard inquiry	3 years	not addressed

Two credit repair Ontario tactics follow from that table. First, check the dates: an item still showing past its bureau purge date is the easiest dispute you will ever file, because the agency has no defence. Second, do not pay anyone to “speed up” a purge; the clock is set by law and by the bureau’s schedule, and no company can move it. If a collection is old but still inside the window, the section on limitation periods below matters more than the file itself.

Credit Repair Companies: The Ontario Rules Nobody Else Has

Ontario is the only province with a full statutory code for credit repair companies, written into the Consumer Protection Act, 2002. If you are considering paying anyone for credit repair Ontario law gives you these protections whether or not the company mentions them:

• No payment before results. A credit repairer may not charge or accept any fee until its services have led to a real improvement in your report, file, history or score. If a company takes money in advance anyway, the law requires it to refund the payment within fifteen days.
• A written contract, signed by you, before anything starts. It must show the company’s name, address and phone number, the date, a complete list of the services, the date they will be completed, the price of each, and statements of your rights under both Acts.
• Ten days to cancel, no reason needed. The cooling-off period starts when you receive your copy of the contract.
• One year to cancel if the rules were broken. If you never received a copy of the agreement, or it is missing required information, you can cancel within a year of signing.
• No false claims. Promising a specific score, a “new credit identity” or the removal of accurate information is an unfair practice under the Act.

The honest reading of those rules is that a company earning its fee in Ontario can only do so by achieving what you could also do free: disputing errors and unverifiable items through the same bureau portals. Where it may earn the money is persistence on a messy file with many errors. Where it cannot is a clean, accurate file, and our review of credit repair companies in Canada lists the seven questions to ask before you sign anything. Complaints about a company go to Consumer Protection Ontario at 1-800-889-9768.

Credit Repair Ontario, Step by Step

Done in this order, credit repair Ontario residents handle themselves takes about two hours of work and then patience:

1. Pull both files. Request your free report from Equifax and from TransUnion, online or by mail. Read every account, every address, every inquiry and every public record.
2. Sort every negative item into three piles. Wrong (not yours, wrong amount, wrong dates, paid but showing unpaid), expired (past the bureau purge date in the table above), and true. Only the first two get disputed.
3. Dispute in writing, with evidence. Use each bureau’s dispute form, one item per dispute, and attach the proof: the paid-in-full letter, the statement showing the real balance, the discharge certificate. The bureau must investigate and reply, and under the Consumer Reporting Act it cannot charge you.
4. Add a statement where the bureau will not budge. If an accurate item has a story behind it, a short written statement on the file is your right and it is read by human underwriters.
5. Rebuild with new history. A secured card or a small credit-builder loan reported to both bureaus, paid in full every month, is what moves the score once the file is accurate. Our guide to building credit in Canada covers the order that works.
6. Re-check both files in ninety days. Disputed items should be corrected or gone; new accounts should be reporting. Anything that reappears gets disputed again with the original result attached.

The Debt Side of Credit Repair Ontario: Limitation Periods, Garnishment and the Routes Out

Most damaged Ontario files were damaged by debt, not by errors, and three Ontario rules decide how that debt behaves while you repair the file:

• The two-year limitation period. Under Ontario’s Limitations Act, 2002, a creditor or collector has two years from the last payment or written acknowledgment to sue on most consumer debts. After that the debt still exists and can still be reported inside the bureau window, but it cannot be enforced in court, which changes every negotiation. Our guide to the statute of limitations on debt in Ontario covers the traps, including the payment that restarts the clock.
• Wage garnishment limits. Ontario’s Wages Act protects eighty percent of your net wages from ordinary creditors, so a garnishment for a consumer debt can take at most twenty percent (support orders can take up to half). Our wage garnishment Ontario guide explains how one starts and how a consumer proposal stops it.
• Collection agency conduct. Agencies collecting in Ontario must be registered and follow the Collection and Debt Settlement Services Act: no calls on holidays, limited call frequency, no contact with your employer beyond confirming employment. Our guide to dealing with a collection agency covers the letters that end the calls.

When the balances are the problem rather than the reporting, Ontario offers four routes, and each reports differently. A consolidation arrangement through a lender reorganizes what you owe with no negative mark, if your credit still qualifies. A debt management plan through a non-profit counselling agency freezes interest and repays in full, with an R7 rating while it runs. A consumer proposal through a Licensed Insolvency Trustee repays a portion, stops a garnishment already in motion, and carries an R7 for three years after completion. Bankruptcy is last, an R9 for six years on a first filing.

Ontario has no court-run debt program like Alberta’s, so those four are the whole menu; our debt consolidation guide compares them and the credit impact of each.

Does It Matter Where in Ontario You Live?

No. Every rule on this page is provincial, so the credit repair Ontario residents do in a Toronto condo is the same process as on a farm outside Thunder Bay: the same two bureaus, the same free dispute, the same seven-year ceiling, the same Consumer Protection Ontario complaint line. The bureaus, the non-profit counselling agencies and the Licensed Insolvency Trustees all work by phone and online across the whole province, and the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy keeps division offices in Toronto and Ottawa for the paperwork that ever needs one. Nothing in this process requires an office visit, and the free assessment that starts it is a phone call wherever you live.

Credit Repair Ontario Red Flags

Because Ontario’s rules are so specific, most bad actors reveal themselves by breaking one of them. Walk away from any credit repair Ontario offer that involves:

• A fee before any result. Illegal in Ontario outright. Setup fees, “file review” fees and monthly retainers charged before an improvement all count.
• No written contract, or one missing the completion date or the price of each service. Both are required, and their absence gives you a year to cancel.
• A promised score or a promised removal of accurate items. Nobody can deliver either, and promising them is an unfair practice.
• Advice to stop paying creditors while the company “negotiates”. That is the debt settlement model, it creates new negative items, and settlement services in Ontario have their own rules under the same Act.
• A “new credit identity”, a second SIN or a business number to borrow under. That is fraud, and the file it creates is the one the police read.
• Pressure to sign today. The ten-day cooling-off period exists because the law expects pressure; use it.

Credit Repair Ontario FAQ

Related reading: our guide to removing late payments from your credit report covers the most common dispute, and how long bad credit stays on your report walks through the purge dates item by item.

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. Ontario’s Consumer Reporting Act, Consumer Protection Act, 2002, Limitations Act, 2002 and Wages Act are summarized here in plain language and can change; confirm current details with Consumer Protection Ontario, Equifax or TransUnion. Content is general information, not legal or financial advice.