Short answer: A bankruptcy stays on your credit report in Canada for about six years after the date of discharge. Equifax Canada removes a first bankruptcy six years after discharge; TransUnion Canada keeps it seven years in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Quebec. A second bankruptcy stays 14 years. Nothing takes it off early, and your score can recover long before it goes.
How long does bankruptcy stay on your credit report in Canada?
Six years after discharge at Equifax Canada, and six or seven years at TransUnion Canada depending on your province, as of 2026. The clock does not start when you file. It starts on the date you are discharged, which is why two people who filed in the same month can have the entry drop off a year apart.
A bankruptcy is a federal insolvency proceeding filed through a Licensed Insolvency Trustee under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, in which your assets above the provincial exemptions are surrendered and most unsecured debts are erased. A discharge is the order that releases you from those debts and ends the bankruptcy itself. A first-time bankrupt who completes their duties is usually eligible for an automatic discharge nine months after filing, or 21 months if surplus income is payable — which means a filing in January 2026 typically produces a 2026 or 2027 discharge, and a removal date six years after that.
According to Equifax Canada, a bankruptcy "stays on your Equifax credit report for 6 years after the discharge date," and where the file carries no discharge date at all, Equifax Canada keeps it for seven years from the filing date instead. That second rule catches people who never completed their duties and so were never discharged: the entry sits there a year longer, and no amount of disputing changes it. You can read the bureau's own list of retention periods in Equifax Canada's guide to how long information stays on a credit report.
Why does TransUnion keep a bankruptcy for seven years in some provinces?
Because TransUnion Canada applies a seven-year retention period in four provinces — Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Quebec — while Equifax Canada uses six years after discharge across the country.
According to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, "usually, both Equifax and TransUnion remove a bankruptcy from your credit report 6 years after you're discharged," and TransUnion removes it seven years after discharge in those four provinces. The FCAC's page on how long information stays on your credit report is the plainest statement of this anywhere, and it is worth reading if you live in one of the four.
The practical effect is small but real. An Ontario file can show a clean Equifax report and a TransUnion report that still carries the bankruptcy, for a full year. Which one a lender pulls then decides what they see. AvenaCredit reports to Equifax Canada only, and most Canadian tenant-screening services and auto lenders pull Equifax too — the pattern for one province is set out in the Ontario credit-building page. Judgments follow their own clock: Equifax Canada keeps a court judgment on file for six years.
How long does a second bankruptcy stay on your credit report?
Fourteen years. According to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, "if you declare bankruptcy more than once, credit bureaus keep the information on your credit report for 14 years," and Equifax Canada adds a detail most people miss: when a second bankruptcy is filed, the first one reappears, and both then remain on file for 14 years after their respective discharge dates.
That is the longest-lived entry a Canadian consumer credit file can carry, which is why a second filing is a materially different decision from a first rather than a repeat of it. A second bankruptcy also has no automatic nine-month discharge — the earliest is 24 months, or 36 with surplus income — so the entry can be visible for close to 17 years from the filing date.
What does an R9 rating mean on your credit report?
An R9 rating is the credit-report code for a revolving account that was written off, placed for collection or included in a bankruptcy — the bottom of Canada's R1 to R9 scale. Every unsecured account included in your bankruptcy normally carries it.
A tradeline is a single credit account on your report, with its limit, balance, payment history and rating. Canadian reports rate each one with a letter for the credit type — R for revolving, I for instalment, M for mortgage, O for open — and a number from 1 to 9, where R1 means paid as agreed within 30 days and R9 means the debt was never going to be repaid on its original terms. Scores run from 300 to 900, and the five factors behind them are weighted roughly 35% payment history, 30% utilization, 15% length of history, 10% credit mix and 10% inquiries.
Two things follow from that weighting. First, the R9 accounts are closed and frozen, so they stop generating new damage the day the bankruptcy closes them. Second, payment history and utilization together account for about 65% of the score, and both respond to accounts opened after the discharge. If you want to see exactly where the entry sits on the page, the public-records section is covered in our walkthrough on reading your Equifax credit report line by line.
Can you remove a bankruptcy from your credit report early?
No. An accurately reported bankruptcy cannot be removed before its retention period expires, by you, by a lawyer or by any paid service. What can be corrected is wrong information attached to it, and that is worth doing properly.
Four errors are common enough to check for on both bureau reports, every time: an included account still showing a balance instead of zero; a discharge date that is wrong or missing, which moves or extends the removal clock; a collection agency still reporting a debt that was discharged; and a duplicate file created by a name, address or SIN mismatch. Each of those costs real points while it sits there, and each is fixable in writing with a copy of your certificate of discharge attached. Keep that certificate permanently — it is the only document that proves the discharge date the whole timeline depends on.
What you can add is new, accurate, positive information, and that is the part under your control: an account that reports an on-time payment every month puts recent payment history on a file whose accounts were all closed by the bankruptcy. The month-by-month version of that sequence is in our guide to rebuilding your credit after a bankruptcy discharge.
Is a bankruptcy a public record in Canada, separate from your credit report?
Yes, and the two records have nothing to do with each other. Equifax Canada and TransUnion Canada hold the credit-report entry under the retention rules above. The Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy holds the federal insolvency record in its own searchable register, the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Records Search, which is not governed by the bureaus' six-year or 14-year periods at all.
That register is a pay-per-use service rather than a public listing: an estate-specific search under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act costs $8 per request, and the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy ended free access for most users on 2 December 2024 under the Public Record Disclosure Policy that took effect in July 2024. The current rules are published in the OSB's notice on its public record disclosure policy and process.
So when the bankruptcy comes off your Equifax report, the federal record of the filing does not disappear with it. In practice almost nobody searches it — landlords, card issuers and auto lenders pull a credit report, not an insolvency register — but it is why "it's gone after six years" is true of your credit file and not of the filing.
Bankruptcy, a second bankruptcy and a consumer proposal: the timelines side by side
This table compares how long each insolvency option stays on a Canadian credit report, what rating it puts on the accounts it includes, and whether a separate federal record survives it, as of 2026.
| Insolvency route | Rating on included accounts | Equifax Canada removes it | TransUnion Canada removes it | Separate OSB record? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First bankruptcy | R9 | 6 years after discharge (7 years from filing if no discharge date) | 6 years after discharge; 7 years in NL, ON, PE and QC | Yes |
| Second bankruptcy | R9, and the first bankruptcy reappears | 14 years after discharge | 14 years after discharge | Yes |
| Consumer proposal | R7 | 3 years after you pay off the included debts, or 6 years from signing, whichever is first | 3 years after payoff, or 6 years from signing, whichever is first | Yes |
| Late payments and collections (no insolvency) | R2 to R9 | Up to 6 years from the date reported | Up to 6 years from the date reported | No |
The gap between the second and third rows is the one that matters if you still have a choice to make. A proposal can clear in as little as three years after the final payment and rates included accounts R7 rather than R9, and the rebuild sequence that follows one is in the guide to rebuilding after a consumer proposal. Which route is right depends on your debts, your assets and your income, not only on the retention table. That is a conversation for a Licensed Insolvency Trustee, and we are not one.
What the rebuild looks like, month by month after a discharge
Most of the score recovery happens in the first 12 to 24 months after discharge, while the bankruptcy is still fully visible on the file. Here is the order the months actually run in.
- Discharge to day 30. Collect your certificate of discharge from the trustee. Pull both the Equifax Canada and TransUnion Canada reports. Confirm the discharge date, confirm every included account reads zero, and dispute anything wrong in writing with the certificate attached.
- Month 1. Open one account that reports every month. Your bankruptcy closed every unsecured account it included, so the file now has negative entries and nothing current — the fix is a new reporting account, not a better score on an old one.
- Months 2 to 6. Pay on time, apply for nothing. A first reported payment appears on Equifax 30 to 45 days after the first payment, so month three is the earliest a new tradeline shows anything at all.
- Month 6. Pull the report again. You are checking that the new account is reporting, that no discharged debt has resurfaced with a collector, and that the number is moving in the right direction.
- Months 7 to 12. Add a second account if you can, and keep any card balance under 30% of its limit on the statement date. Two accounts with a year of clean history is the file a bank reads as a recovery.
- Year 2 onward. An unsecured card with a modest limit becomes realistic. Prime mortgage lenders generally want the bankruptcy at least two years behind you with two years of re-established credit on two tradelines; alternative lenders will move sooner at a higher rate.
One observation from our own side of this, since it is the only thing here we can say that a bureau cannot: across AvenaCredit members, the average gain is 71 points after 12 months. What that figure does not mean is that a discharge is worth 71 points, or that anyone is promised a number. It is an average across files that started in very different places, and in the reporting we see, the members who move most are the ones whose files had nothing current on them before — which, after a bankruptcy, is almost everyone.
That is the specific problem AvenaCredit was built for: a file with no open accounts to carry new payment history. Each monthly membership payment is reported to Equifax Canada as an on-time payment on a real tradeline, with no hard credit check and no borrowing. For a post-discharge rebuild the plan that fits is Build at $34.99/month, which reports a $1,500 tradeline plus your rent and utility payments, sends monthly balance alerts, and includes the dashboard and the free ebook; you can cancel anytime. Adding the optional secured card for $9.99/month puts a second tradeline on the same file, with a refundable deposit you choose between $250 and $5,000 — how that works is set out in the guide to a secured credit card with a refundable deposit. See what each of the three AvenaCredit plans reports and pick the one that matches your file.
And the honest caveat: if you came out of the bankruptcy with an account that survived it — a car loan you kept, a mortgage, a card that was never included — you already have something reporting, and paying that down is worth more than adding anything new. A paid product earns its keep when the file has nothing current on it, which is the usual case after a discharge, but not every case.
Next step: If your bankruptcy is discharged and nothing on the file is reporting, the action that fits is a secured card used for everyday spending: groceries, gas, bills. A bankruptcy does not prevent getting the AvenaCredit secured card, a Mastercard at $9.99 a month with no credit check, only an identity check, reported to Equifax Canada monthly. Join the launch list there to get the card at launch.
Common questions
Does a bankruptcy come off exactly six years after discharge?
At Equifax Canada, yes — six years from the discharge date, as of 2026. At TransUnion Canada it is six years in most of the country and seven years in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Quebec. Removal is automatic; you do not have to ask either bureau for it.
What happens if my credit report shows no discharge date?
Equifax Canada keeps the bankruptcy for seven years from the filing date when no discharge date is recorded. That usually means the bankruptcy was never discharged, so the fix is completing your duties with your Licensed Insolvency Trustee. If you were discharged and the date is simply missing, dispute it with a copy of your certificate of discharge.
Can a credit repair company get a bankruptcy removed early?
No. No company can remove accurate information from an Equifax Canada or TransUnion Canada file, and a bankruptcy that happened is accurate information. A paid service can only dispute errors, which you can do yourself for free. Anyone promising early removal of a real bankruptcy is selling something that does not exist.
Does the bankruptcy hurt my score for all six years?
No. It stays visible for the full period, but its weight in the score fades as it ages and as newer payment history accumulates. Payment history and utilization are about 65% of the calculation, and both are driven by accounts you open after discharge. Most of the recovery happens in the first 12 to 24 months.
Is a bankruptcy worse on a credit report than a consumer proposal?
On retention and rating, yes. A first bankruptcy stays six years after discharge and rates included accounts R9; a consumer proposal clears three years after you finish paying, or six years from signing, and rates them R7. Which route suits your situation is a question for a Licensed Insolvency Trustee, not a credit-report comparison.
If you are still deciding between the two routes, read how long a consumer proposal stays on your credit report; if the discharge is already behind you and you want the full sequence from a closed file to a usable one, read how to build credit in Canada from a standing start. When you are ready to put a reported on-time payment on your Equifax file every month, compare the three plans and start with month one.
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