Canada Company Register: How to Search Corporations Canada and Verify Canadian Companies (2026)

1. What is the Canadian company register?

A Canadian business chooses where to incorporate: federally, under the Canada Business Corporations Act (CBCA), or under the corporate law of a province or territory. That choice decides which register holds it. Federal corporations are registered with Corporations Canada, the branch of ISED that administers the CBCA, and searched through Search for a Federal Corporation, in French Recherche d'une société de régime fédéral. Everyone else is in a provincial or territorial registry. The federal government's own count is 14 business registries in Canada: the federal one plus one per province and territory.

The federal database covers more than business corporations. It also holds federal not-for-profit corporations, cooperatives, boards of trade, pension fund societies, and corporations created by a Special Act of Parliament. It does not hold corporations created under financial legislation, such as financial institutions, insurance companies, and loan and trust companies, and it does not hold provincial, territorial, or foreign corporations. A federal corporation that wants to do business in a province or territory may also have to register there, which the register calls an extra-provincial registration, so a well-known federal company can show up in several registries at once.

In short: the federal record tells you a corporation exists, who directs it, who controls it, and whether it keeps up with its filings. The provincial registries tell you the same about everyone else, each in its own way.

2. How to search Corporations Canada step by step

Searching is free and needs no account. The service runs in English and French, switched from the Français link at the top of the page. Corporate names stay as filed, and the CBCA allows a corporation to set out its name in English, in French, in both, or in a combined form.

1. Open Search for a Federal Corporation

   There are three fields: corporate name, corporation number, and business number (BN), and you can search on any of them. A name search takes all or part of the legal name, and it also retrieves corporations that had that name before and have since changed it.

   

2. Enter the number in the form the register expects

   For a corporation number, enter the digits. For a business number, enter only the first nine digits and leave off the program account (RC0001 and the like). For a name, enter the full legal name to narrow the search, or its most distinctive words: a common phrase returns a long list, the distinctive part of the name a short one. If the name uses initials and you are not sure whether periods or special characters sit between them, try several spellings, such as BG, B&G, and B-G.

3. Narrow it down with the additional options

   Under "Additional Search Options" you can filter by the province or territory of the registered office, by status, and by governing legislation. The result list stops at 200 corporations, so a common word without filters will not show you everything. Note that choosing "Active" also returns corporations with an intent to dissolve filed, a dissolution pending for non-compliance, or a discontinuance pending.

4. Open the federal corporation record

   The overview gives you the corporate name, status, corporation number, business number, and governing legislation with its date. Below it sit the registered office address, the directors, the individuals with significant control, the annual filings, and the corporate history.

   

5. Read the history, then order what you need

   The corporate history lists every earlier name with dates. Shopify's runs from 4261607 CANADA LTD. (2004 to 2006) through Jaded Pixel Technologies Inc. (2006 to 2011) to SHOPIFY INC., followed by each certificate and filing, including its proxy circulars. From the "Order copies" panel you can request copies of the filed documents, a corporate profile, or a Certificate of Compliance or Existence.

3. What data is public and what it costs

Reading the federal register costs almost nothing. The record, the corporate profile, and uncertified copies of filed documents are all free online. You only pay when you need Corporations Canada to certify something. The prices below are for business corporations and come from Corporations Canada's own services, fees and processing times page.

Two things stand out. Canada publishes directors with their addresses and, for CBCA business corporations, the individuals with significant control, free and without a login. And the Certificate of Compliance is a useful CAD 10 product: it confirms that the corporation exists, has filed its annual filings, and has paid its fees, and any person can order one.

What you will not find: revenue, employee counts, industry codes, or contact details. A federal record has no field for any of them. Financial statements are mostly absent too. Corporations Canada states that most corporations do not need to file financial statements with it. Only distributing corporations with more than one shareholder do, and only when they have not filed similar information with a provincial or territorial securities commission. Statements that are filed are public, but Corporations Canada is only required to keep them for six years.

4. Canadian legal forms, briefly

In Canada the legal form and the register go together: the statute a body was created under decides where it is registered, and the federal search can filter on it. A CBCA business corporation must carry one of the legal elements in section 10 of the Canada Business Corporations Act in its name: Limited, Incorporated, or Corporation, the French Limitée, Incorporée, or Société par actions de régime fédéral, or the abbreviations Ltd., Inc., Corp., Ltée, and S.A.R.F.

One distinction cuts across the business corporations: distributing or non-distributing. A distributing corporation typically files documents with a securities commission and sells shares on a stock exchange; a non-distributing corporation typically does neither. The record shows which one you are looking at under "Type of corporation", and it matters, because it decides whether there are any financial statements to find.

5. How to verify a Canadian company: a practical checklist

1. Find the right register, then confirm the number and status

   Search the corporation number or name on the federal register first. If nothing comes up, the company is probably provincial and you need its province's registry. Once you have the record, check that the name, number, and registered office match what you were given. For a quick first pass, our free company lookup finds the registration and revenue data in one search.

2. Read the status precisely

   Status is the legal state, not proof that the business operates. "Active" covers corporations with an intent to dissolve filed and those with a dissolution pending for non-compliance. "Inactive - Amalgamated" means it merged with another body corporate to form a new one, so the entity on your paperwork may no longer be the one you are dealing with.

3. Check the annual filings

   Every active business corporation must file an annual return within 60 days of its anniversary date. If one is overdue, the record flags it and the corporation cannot get a Certificate of Compliance. Corporations Canada's policy is to dissolve a corporation that has not filed for two years, after a final notice that gives it another 120 days.

4. Verify the directors

   The record lists every current director with an address, which may be a residential address or an address for service: Shopify's directors are all listed care of the registered office. Active business corporations must report a change within 15 days. Check that the person signing for the company is on the list. At least 25% of the directors of a CBCA corporation, or at least one if it has fewer than four, must be resident Canadians. If the list looks wrong, you can tell Corporations Canada, which will inform the corporation of its reporting obligations.

5. Find out who controls it

   Since 22 January 2024, CBCA business corporations file information on their individuals with significant control: anyone who holds 25% or more of the voting shares or of the shares by fair market value, or who has control in fact. The record shows the name, an address, the dates the control started and ended, and a description of the control. Publicly listed corporations, like Shopify, are excluded and say so on the record.

6. Order a Certificate of Compliance before a large deal

   For CAD 10 online, Corporations Canada certifies that the corporation exists, has filed its annual filings, and has paid its fees. If you need proof that it existed on a specific date or during a specific period, order a Certificate of Existence instead.

7. Check where else it is registered

   Follow the link under the overview to see the corporation's extra-provincial registrations on Canada's Business Registries. A federal corporation that does business in another province or territory may have to register there, so a missing registration in the province you deal with is worth asking about.

6. Limitations of the official register

To be clear: for checking a federal corporation, the Corporations Canada database is free and unusually open. The limits show up when you need the whole country, financial data, or scale:

• Federal corporations only. Provincial and territorial companies, financial institutions, insurance companies, and loan and trust companies are not in it. Canada counts 14 business registries, and this is one of them.
• No trade names. Operating or trade names that differ from the legal name are not in the database. A business you know by its storefront name has to be searched under its legal name, which may be a numbered name such as 1234567 Canada Inc.
• Almost no financial statements. Most corporations file none with Corporations Canada. The exceptions are distributing corporations that have not filed similar information with a securities commission, and Corporations Canada is only required to keep those for six years.
• No firmographics. Revenue, employee counts, industry codes, and contact details are simply not part of the federal record.
• 200 results per search. A search returns at most 200 corporations. For a full list, the official route is the open data file, which covers federal corporations only.
• The API looks up, it does not search. The Federal Corporation API needs an account and an API key, accepts only a complete corporation number or a 9-digit business number, and allows 60 hits per minute.
• Ownership data has gaps. The filing requirement only covers CBCA corporations. Publicly listed corporations, reporting issuers, Crown corporations, and their wholly-owned subsidiaries are excluded. And the individual or the corporation can apply for a decision to not make an individual's information public, for example when publishing it would threaten their safety.
• Status is not activity. An active status means the corporation has not been dissolved or otherwise legally terminated, not that it trades.

If you check one Canadian supplier a quarter, none of this matters. If you onboard hundreds across several provinces, it is the whole problem.

7. Access Corporations Canada data programmatically

CompanyData maintains a normalized database of all 4,287,728 Canadian businesses, federal and provincial, so you do not have to work out first which of the fourteen registries holds a company. Records are enriched with revenue, employees, industry codes, and contact data that the federal register does not publish.

Our Company Data API lets you look up any Canadian company by corporation number, name, or address and get structured JSON back in real time, with 150 free lookups to start. It is used by developers, banks, and insurers across 190+ countries, so Canadian checks work exactly like checks anywhere else.

GET /v1/companies?country=CA&registration_id=4261607

{
  "name": "SHOPIFY INC.",
  "registration_id": "426160-7",
  "business_number": "847871746RC0001",
  "governing_legislation": "Canada Business Corporations Act",
  "governing_legislation_date": "2004-09-28",
  "status": "active"
}

Every field above is what the overview of the Corporations Canada record shows. Revenue, employees, and industry codes come back on the same record where we hold them, and are absent here for the reason this guide keeps running into: the federal register does not publish them.

8. Canada vs other company registers

Canada's federal register gives away more than most, including directors and ownership data for free and an official lookup API, but it is one register out of fourteen. For context: