Canada has two national credit bureaus, Equifax and TransUnion, and you are entitled to your own file from each at no charge. They can hold different information, so it is worth getting both.
Getting it without paying
Both bureaus provide a free copy of your own report on request. They also sell monitoring subscriptions, and the paid options are generally the easier ones to find on their websites — look specifically for the free report, sometimes described as a consumer disclosure, rather than signing up for a trial that becomes a monthly charge.
Requesting your own report is a soft enquiry and does not affect your score.
What to look at
- Every account listed. Do you recognise all of them? An account you do not know can indicate an error or something worse.
- Payment history on each. Does it match what actually happened?
- Balances. Are settled accounts shown as settled?
- Public records and collections, if any are recorded.
- Personal information — addresses and employers. Errors here sometimes indicate files being mixed up with someone of a similar name.
If something is wrong
Both bureaus have a free dispute process. Submit the correction with whatever documentation you have, and follow up — investigations take time and are not always resolved on the first pass.
Do not pay a company to do this. There is nothing they can do that you cannot, and anyone promising to remove accurate information is not offering something legitimate.
Why bother during a foreclosure
Two reasons. It tells you what is actually recorded rather than what you fear, which is usually narrower. And if you are heading toward refinancing or renting, you will want to know what a lender or landlord sees before they see it — and to have corrected any errors first.
Questions people ask
General information about the Alberta foreclosure process — not legal or financial advice, and nothing here guarantees an outcome. Every file is different.