Guide
Short answer
Vet a Canadian counterparty by confirming the legal entity and its registry standing, identifying directors and officers, checking litigation and judgment history, running PPSA and lien searches, checking the principals' prior insolvencies, and screening sanctions lists. The most common finding is that the entity on the contract is not the entity with the assets.
6 of 6 steps below you can run yourself for nothing. 4 things in this area cannot be done lawfully by anyone.
The situation
Someone wants your money, your signature, or your credit. They're persuasive and the paperwork looks fine. You want to know what the public record says before you commit.
6 steps
In order of yield. Every step marked “do it yourself” is one you can run without us, with the cost stated where there is one.
Step 01
A trading name is not a company. Search the exact legal name in the corporate registry and confirm it is active with current annual returns. Check the incorporation date against their claimed track record — a company incorporated last year while claiming twenty years of experience is the single most common misrepresentation in this category.
Step 02
Search the directors' names across every registry. A pattern of incorporating, accumulating liens, dissolving, and reincorporating under a new name is the classic phoenix pattern and it is highly visible in registry data once you look for it. Prior insolvencies by the same people are equally telling.
Step 03
In BC and Québec you can search dockets by party name directly. Elsewhere, CanLII covers reported decisions for free. A defendant history in contract and construction disputes tells you how this counterparty behaves when a deal goes wrong — which is precisely what you are trying to predict.
Step 04
These show who is already secured against the business, whether lenders of last resort are involved, and whether judgment creditors are actively enforcing. A cluster of construction liens in one period, or a writ of execution, materially changes the credit picture regardless of what the financials say.
Step 05
Free, fast, and a hit ends the transaction. Search variants rather than the exact string you were given, because sanctions evasion via alternate transliteration is routine. Screen the entity and every principal.
Step 06
Is the registered office a real place of business or a shared mail drop hosting hundreds of entities? Was the domain registered recently? Does the Wayback Machine show the site existing before this year? These are cheap checks that catch shell operations quickly.
Honest limits
Not a paywall and not a coverage gap. Each of these is either absent from every Canadian public record or unlawful to obtain — and anyone selling it to you is misrepresenting what they have, or committing an offence to get it.
Get their financial statements
Private Canadian companies have no public filing obligation for financials. Only reporting issuers file, on SEDAR+.
Get their credit score or credit report
Only a registered consumer reporting agency may furnish these, and only for a permitted purpose with the appropriate basis.
Find out who really owns a numbered company
Beneficial ownership is frequently not published in any Canadian registry. Québec's REQ names shareholders, which sometimes closes the gap.
See their bank balance or cash position
Not public anywhere, by any lawful means.
Everything we decline at every tier, with the reason for each
Before you pay
If you do need it
This tier will not include
Questions
Search the exact legal name in the federal and relevant provincial corporate registry. Confirm it is active with current annual returns, check the incorporation date against their claimed history, identify the directors and search their names for prior dissolved entities and insolvencies, and check whether the registered office is a real business address or a shared mail drop.
Annual returns in default. A recent incorporation date behind a long claimed track record. Directors with a trail of dissolved companies. A registered office shared with dozens of unrelated entities. PPSA registrations from high-cost lenders. Construction liens clustered in a single period. Prior insolvencies by the same principals. Each has innocent explanations; together they are a pattern.
No. Private Canadian companies do not file financial statements publicly. You can build a partial picture from public records — registered security interests indicate borrowing, liens and judgments indicate non-payment, property holdings indicate capital — but revenue and profit require the company's cooperation or an audit right in your contract.
The free checks cost nothing and catch a lot. A thorough multi-province search touching corporate profiles, PPSA, writs, court files, and insolvency records involves enough per-search fees that a bundled report is normally cheaper than running them individually — and considerably cheaper than the deal going wrong.
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