How to Get Your Free Credit Report and Dispute Errors Yourself

You can get a free copy of your credit report from each of Canada's two national bureaus, Equifax Canada and TransUnion Canada, read it line by line for items that are wrong or out of date, and file a dispute directly with the bureau that holds the error. Filing a dispute costs nothing, and no agency or credit-repair firm needs to be involved at any stage. The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada confirms that a free copy of your credit report is available from each bureau.

Why you have to check both bureaus

The two bureaus are separate businesses. Each keeps its own file on you, each receives data from lenders on its own reporting arrangements, and each calculates its own score. A bank, a telecom, a utility or a collection agency may report to one bureau, to both, or to neither.

That has a practical consequence: an account can be perfectly accurate at one bureau and wrong at the other. A dispute filed with one bureau has no effect on the other file. If the same wrong item shows up on both reports, you file two separate disputes.

Ask for the full report rather than a score alone. A score tells you that something changed; the report tells you what changed, which account it sits on and who reported it. Depending on how you request it, a score may or may not be included — the report itself is the document you need in order to verify accuracy.

Step 1: Get your free report from each bureau

• Directly online. Both bureaus accept report requests through their own websites. You will answer identity-verification questions drawn from your file — questions about accounts or addresses you may have had years ago. If you fail verification, the mail route is still available.
• By mail. Both bureaus accept written requests. You generally enclose copies of government-issued photo ID and proof of address. Send copies only — never originals.
• Not through a paid third party. Plenty of websites advertise a "free" report and then enrol you in a subscription. The free copy described by the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada is the one you request from the bureau itself.

Step 2: Read the report like an auditor

Every report breaks into the same rough sections. Go through them in order and note anything you cannot personally confirm.

• Identification. Names, addresses, employers, date of birth and phone numbers. An old address is normal. An address you never lived at, or a name that is not yours, can indicate a mixed file, where another person's data has been merged into yours.
• Accounts. For each account: the type of creditor, the date opened, the credit limit or original amount, the current balance, the month-by-month payment history, and the account status (open, closed, paid, written off, placed for collection).
• Inquiries. Who looked at your file and when. Hard inquiries, which follow an application for credit, can affect a score; soft inquiries, such as your own request for your report, generally do not, according to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada.
• Public records and collections. A bankruptcy, a consumer proposal, a judgment, or a debt that has been placed with a collection agency.
• Consumer statement. A short note you are permitted to add to your file when an item is accurate but needs context — for example, a disputed account that a lender closed in error.

Step 3: Separate real errors from things you simply dislike

A dispute is a claim that the file is factually wrong, not a request to remove history you regret. The table below shows the errors that genuinely qualify, the usual cause, and the evidence that moves a dispute forward.

Step 4: File the dispute

1. Mark up your report. For each item, write down the creditor name, the account number as shown, the bureau's own file reference, and one clear sentence explaining what is wrong.
2. Gather evidence. Disputes are decided on documents, not on how strongly you feel. Statements, payment confirmations and trustee paperwork do the work.
3. Contact the bureau. Both bureaus run their own dispute process, online and by mail. File one dispute per item, keep a copy of everything you send, and ask for a reference number.
4. Contact the creditor at the same time. The bureau asks the creditor to verify the item. If the creditor's own records are the source of the problem, fixing it there is the faster route.
5. Keep a file. Date filed, method used, documents sent, reference number, and any reply.
6. Re-check the report afterwards. A correction should appear on the next report you pull. If nothing has changed, follow up in writing and quote your reference number.

Where to escalate if nothing happens

If the problem sits with a federally regulated financial institution such as a bank or a federally incorporated trust or loan company, consumer complaints are handled by the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada. Most other lenders, and most collection agencies, are licensed and supervised provincially, and each province has its own consumer protection office.

If the item in question is insolvency information, remember that only a licensed insolvency trustee can administer a consumer proposal or bankruptcy, and trustees are regulated by the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy Canada. Your completion and discharge documents come from the trustee, not from the lender.

What a dispute will not do

An accurate item is not removable. Disputing a late payment that really was late, or a collection account that really exists, does not delete it, and no company can make it disappear. Two retention rules are worth knowing because they explain why old trouble lingers:

• A consumer proposal stays on your credit report for three years after completion, or six years from the date of filing, whichever comes first.
• A first bankruptcy stays on your credit report for six years after discharge.

This is where paid credit-repair firms earn their money: they send the same dispute letters you can send yourself for free, and they cannot lawfully remove accurate information. Treat any promise to erase accurate records, or to raise your score by a set number of points, as a warning sign rather than an offer.

Why this matters when you are looking at a loan on poor credit

Lenders price by risk. A lender considering a loan on poor credit is reading the same file you are, and the price it quotes reflects what that file appears to say about you. A wrong collection account, a duplicated debt or a stale credit limit can raise your reported utilization and lower your score, which pushes you toward more expensive products or a decline — for reasons that are simply not true.

It is also worth understanding how expensive the fallback options get. The Criminal Code sets the criminal rate of interest at 35% per year (s. 347), calculated using a defined method that aggregates interest and certain charges; that is a legal ceiling that makes an agreement criminal, not a target price. Where a province operates a licensed payday lending regime, federal payday lending regulations (SOR/2024-114) cap the cost of borrowing at $14 per $100 advanced, and some provinces set a lower cap, in which case the lower figure applies. Payday loans are generally up to $1,500 for a term of 62 days or less, and Quebec does not license payday lending, which effectively prohibits the model there. The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada publishes consumer guidance on credit and on where to take a complaint about a financial institution.

A cleaner credit file does not guarantee anything. Approval and pricing still depend on your income, your existing debts, your stability and each lender's own criteria. What a corrected file does is remove reasons for a lender to say no that were never yours to begin with. Decisions about debt consolidation, insolvency or how to restructure borrowing are individual, and for significant decisions it is worth getting regulated professional advice rather than relying on a general guide.

loanwolf.ca is a matching and comparison service, not a lender. We do not make loans, set rates or make credit decisions — we connect your request with providers who do. The lowest advertised rates are only ever available to the most qualified applicants, and your actual offer will depend on your own file and circumstances.