How Long Does a Consumer Proposal Stay on Your Credit Report in Canada?

Short answer: A consumer proposal is removed from your Canadian credit report three years after you finish paying it, or six years after you signed it, whichever date arrives first. Equifax Canada and TransUnion Canada both apply that rule as of 2026. The accounts inside the proposal carry an R7 rating for the same period, and no one can delete either entry early.

How long does a consumer proposal stay on your credit report in Canada?

A consumer proposal stays on your credit report until three years after completion or six years after filing, whichever comes first.

According to Equifax Canada, "a consumer proposal will be removed from your Equifax credit report 3 years after you've paid off all the debts according to the proposal, or 6 years from the date it was filed, whichever comes first." The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) states the same two-part rule for both bureaus: three years after the included debts are repaid, or six years after the proposal is signed. Because the rule has two clocks and only the earlier one counts, six years from filing is the absolute ceiling — no proposal sits on a Canadian credit file longer than that, as of 2026.

A consumer proposal is a legally binding offer to your unsecured creditors, filed through a licensed insolvency trustee under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, to repay part of what you owe over a term of up to five years. It is not bankruptcy, it is not a debt consolidation loan, and it is not a credit repair service. It is a federal insolvency proceeding, which is why it appears on your credit report as a public-record entry rather than as an ordinary missed payment.

Two dates therefore govern everything below: the filing date on your trustee's paperwork, and the completion date on your certificate of full performance.

What is the exact drop-off date if you pay the proposal off in two, four or five years?

The drop-off date is whichever is earlier: completion plus three years, or filing plus six years. The table below shows how that plays out for a proposal signed on 1 February 2026 and paid off at four different speeds.

Proposal paid off in	Completion date	Completion + 3 years	Filing + 6 years	Comes off your report
2 years	Feb 2028	Feb 2031	Feb 2032	Feb 2031
3 years	Feb 2029	Feb 2032	Feb 2032	Feb 2032
4 years	Feb 2030	Feb 2033	Feb 2032	Feb 2032
5 years	Feb 2031	Feb 2034	Feb 2032	Feb 2032

The crossover sits at three years of payments. A consumer proposal paid off in under three years comes off three years after completion; a consumer proposal that takes longer than three years comes off six years after the filing date, no matter when the last payment lands. That is why paying a proposal off early only shortens the record when you finish within about three years of filing — after that, the six-year ceiling is already the governing date and early repayment changes nothing about the credit report, as of 2026.

Paying early still helps for a different reason: it ends the proposal, which is what frees you to open the reporting accounts that rebuild the file.

What is an R7 rating, and what does it do to your score?

An R7 rating is the credit-report code for an account being repaid under a consolidation order or a consumer proposal rather than on its original terms. Canadian credit reports rate revolving accounts on an R1 to R9 scale, where R1 means paid as agreed within 30 days and R9 means a bad debt, placed for collection or included in a bankruptcy. R7 sits near the bottom of that scale, and every unsecured account included in your proposal usually carries it.

So a consumer proposal lands on your file twice. The public-record entry is the proposal itself. The R7 ratings are the individual accounts inside it — cards, lines of credit, unsecured loans — and those accounts are closed with a zero balance once the proposal is complete. A tradeline is any single credit account a lender reports to a bureau, and the R7 ratings are the tradelines you already had, re-rated.

On the 300–900 Canadian score range, the damage is concentrated in payment history, which carries roughly 35% of the weight in a typical model — followed by utilization at about 30%, length of history at 15%, credit mix at 10% and inquiries at 10%. That matters more than it sounds. A proposal closes your unsecured accounts, so it hits payment history and length of history at once, and it usually leaves you with no active tradelines at all. If you want to see how the entries and codes appear on the page, read your Equifax report line by line before you do anything else.

This is also where the two problems get confused. A post-proposal file is damaged and thin, and the fixes are different — a thin file and a damaged file fail a lender's checks for different reasons.

AvenaCredit reports a fixed monthly payment to Equifax Canada as an on-time payment on an instalment tradeline, which is one way to put an active, recent account beside the proposal while it is still on your file; the guide to rebuilding after a consumer proposal sets out the order to do things in.

Is the bureau record the same as the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy's public record?

No. The credit bureau record and the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy (OSB) record are two separate registers with two separate lifespans. Equifax Canada and TransUnion Canada hold a consumer proposal for three years after completion or six years from filing. The OSB maintains the federal insolvency record of the filing in its own searchable database, and that record is not governed by the bureaus' retention rules at all.

In practice this almost never affects a consumer loan or a card application, because mainstream lenders pull a bureau report, not an OSB search. It can surface in a few specific places: some professional licensing bodies, some bonding and security clearance checks, and some commercial lending due diligence include an insolvency search. If one of those applies to your work, assume the filing can be found after it has left your credit report, and answer honestly when asked. Nothing on the bureau side changes because of it: your score, your approvals and your rebuild all run on the credit report.

If you have not pulled both reports yet, start there. According to the FCAC, Canadians can get their credit report free from both Equifax and TransUnion, online, by mail or in person, and checking your own report does not affect your credit rating.

Can a consumer proposal be removed from your credit report early?

No. A correctly reported consumer proposal cannot be removed from your credit report before its retention period ends, and no company can do it for you. Accurate negative information stays for its full term under Canadian credit reporting rules; the only thing a dispute can remove is an error.

Errors, though, are common after a proposal completes, and they are worth hunting down because each one is fixable with your certificate of full performance:

• An included account still showing a balance owing instead of a zero balance.
• A wrong completion date, which pushes the three-year clock later than it should be.
• A collection agency still reporting a debt that the proposal covered.
• The proposal showing as active months after your trustee filed the certificate.
• An account you deliberately kept out of the proposal marked as included.

Dispute those with the bureau in writing, with your certificate attached. Anyone promising to "remove" the proposal itself is selling something that does not exist.

One note on provincial differences, because they trip people up. The proposal rule is the same across Canada, but neighbouring entries are not: the FCAC notes that TransUnion keeps a bankruptcy for seven years after discharge in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Quebec, and keeps judgments for seven years in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario and Quebec, and ten years in Prince Edward Island. If you are in one of those provinces, a judgment or a bankruptcy beside your proposal may outlast it — see credit building in Ontario for how that plays out locally.

What should you do during the proposal to rebuild?

Start building reported payment history while the proposal is still running, rather than waiting for it to drop off. The three-year clock and your rebuild are meant to run at the same time, because lenders weigh what you have done since the proposal far more heavily than the proposal itself.

Here is the part only we can tell you. Across AvenaCredit members who join during or just after a proposal, the entry that holds a file back at month twelve is almost never the proposal — it is the empty space next to it. A file showing a completed proposal and nothing else reads as stalled; a file showing a completed proposal and twelve months of on-time reported payments reads as a recovery. Members gain an average of 71 points after 12 months. That average is drawn from members across every starting point, so it is not a forecast for your file, and nobody can promise you a number.

1. Months 0–1. Pull both reports. Confirm the filing date, the completion date if you have one, and the status of every included account.
2. Months 1–3. Open one or two accounts that report to a bureau without a hard credit check, and pay them on the same date every month.
3. Months 3–12. Add nothing else. If you hold a card, keep the statement balance under 30% of the limit. No applications.
4. Month 12. Pull the reports again and compare. One clean year is usually enough for a non-subprime car loan and a small unsecured card.
5. Year 2 to the drop-off date. Keep the same accounts open and current. Length of history is doing the work now.

Nothing in that sequence requires borrowing. A credit-building membership reports a fixed monthly payment to Equifax Canada as an on-time payment on an instalment tradeline, with no hard credit check and nothing lent, which is why it is usually the first account people open during a proposal — ask your trustee first, as a courtesy, if your proposal is still active. If you want the realistic pace, how long it takes to build credit from nothing covers the month-by-month version.

If money is tight enough during the proposal that borrowing comes up, be clear-eyed about the trade-off: short-term bad-credit lending is fast but expensive, and the interest usually costs more than the score it buys — bad credit loans in Canada sets out what those products actually cost. For rebuilding a credit file, reported payments do the job and cost less.

The AvenaCredit Build plan is $34.99/mo and reports a $1,500 tradeline to Equifax Canada, plus rent and utility reporting, balance alerts, a dashboard with tips, a free ebook, and the option to add a secured card for $9.99/mo. For a file coming out of a proposal, that combination matters: rent reporting adds a second positive record alongside the tradeline, and the first report appears on Equifax 30–45 days after your first payment. Starter is $24.99/mo with a $1,000 tradeline if you do not rent, and Boost is $84.99/mo with a $4,000 tradeline, two years of backdated rent and the secured card included free. You can see what each plan reports and cancel any of them at any time.

What changes after the proposal falls off your report?

When the proposal drops off, the public-record entry and the R7 ratings disappear from your credit report and lenders can no longer see them. What remains is whatever you built in the meantime — which is the entire argument for not waiting.

Two things commonly surprise people at that point. First, the score does not jump on the day the entry clears, because by then the proposal has usually stopped carrying much weight; recent payment behaviour has already taken over. Second, a file that goes into the drop-off date with two or three years of clean reported history crosses into prime territory almost immediately, while a file with nothing beside the old entry is simply an empty file, and an empty file gets declined too. Prime mortgage lenders generally want the proposal gone plus about two years of re-established credit on at least two tradelines — the score prime mortgage lenders look for explains the thresholds.

If you are past a bankruptcy rather than a proposal, the arithmetic is different: a first bankruptcy stays about six years after discharge and fourteen years for a second, and the accounts rate R9 rather than R7. The guide to rebuilding after a bankruptcy has that timeline.

Next step: During a consumer proposal, or just after it leaves your report, a secured card is the account that fits. The AvenaCredit Secured Card has no credit check, only an identity check, so a proposal does not prevent getting it; a refundable deposit sets the limit and the card is reported to Equifax Canada every month. Join the launch list to get the card at launch.

Common questions

Does a consumer proposal stay on your credit report for seven years?

No. Seven years is a United States retention period and it does not apply in Canada. A Canadian consumer proposal is removed three years after you repay the included debts or six years after you sign the proposal, whichever is earlier, so six years from filing is the longest it can possibly stay, as of 2026.

How long does a consumer proposal affect your credit score?

It affects your score for as long as it is on the report, but the weight drops steadily. Payment history carries about 35% of a typical Canadian score, and recent months count most, so twelve to twenty-four months of on-time reported payments usually moves a file well before the proposal is removed at the three- or six-year mark.

Can I remove a consumer proposal from my credit report?

Not if it is reported correctly. Accurate insolvency information stays on a Canadian credit report for its full retention period, and no service can delete it. You can dispute genuine errors with Equifax Canada or TransUnion Canada — a wrong completion date, a balance on an included account, a collector still reporting a covered debt — using your certificate of full performance as proof.

Can I get a credit card after a consumer proposal?

Yes, usually a secured card first. A secured card is backed by a refundable deposit that sets the limit, so the issuer does not need to assess your file and does not ask about the proposal. The AvenaCredit secured card takes a $250–$5,000 deposit and reports to Equifax Canada as a second tradeline. Unsecured cards generally follow after about a year of clean reported history.

Is a consumer proposal better than bankruptcy for your credit report?

On retention, yes. A consumer proposal clears three years after completion or six years from filing, while a first bankruptcy stays about six years after discharge and a second stays fourteen. A proposal also rates included accounts R7 rather than R9. Which option is right depends on your debts and assets, not only on the credit report.

Do both Equifax and TransUnion show my consumer proposal?

Yes. Both Equifax Canada and TransUnion Canada receive insolvency filings and apply the same three-years-after-completion or six-years-after-filing rule. The two reports can still differ, because lenders choose which bureaus they report to, so pull both and compare the dates and balances on each.

If you are starting the rebuild rather than just counting the years, the two pieces that matter next are which problem your file actually has and what each line of your Equifax report means. When you are ready to put reported payments beside the proposal, compare the three plans and start the clean months now.