Canadian debt recovery is provincial, not national — there's no directive to cite, only your contract and the courts where your debtor operates. We verify, demand, and enforce province by province. First results typically within 20 days. You pay only when money moves.
We act for your creditor. Our client has instructed this office to recover the above sum, now materially overdue under the terms of your agreement.
Payment in full is required within ten days of the date of this letter. Absent payment or a written proposal acceptable to our client, we are instructed to proceed without further notice: filing of a statement of claim in the appropriate court of the province where your business operates, seeking judgment, costs, and interest as provided in your agreement or, in its absence, under the Interest Act.
Our local counsel is already in possession of the file.
This is what your Canadian debtor receives — from a firm with local standing in the debtor's own province. There's no national directive to invoke here; the leverage comes from the contract itself. Hover the black bars — that is where your debtor's name goes.
Canadian debt collection is provincial from the second stage onward — there's no national directive behind it, only your contract and the courts where the debtor operates. Tap a stage — see what the debtor receives, what it costs them, and what the law hands you next.
"Our records show invoice ████ for CAD ██,███ remains unpaid, now ██ days overdue…"
"We act for your creditor. Payment of CAD ███,███ is required within ten days of this letter…"
"The plaintiff claims CAD ███,███, plus costs and interest, for goods sold and delivered…"
"Judgment for the plaintiff in the amount of CAD ███,███, plus costs…"
"Writ of seizure and sale issued. Notice of garnishment served on ██████ Inc.'s bank…"
Cosmodca runs this ladder for overseas creditors every day — a debt collection agency for Canada that files, serves, and enforces province by province while you follow the case in one dashboard. There's no single national procedure here, which is exactly why getting the contract terms right matters more in Canada than almost anywhere else we cover. Debtor in the US instead? See the USA desk.
Creditors in the US, UK, Germany, France, and beyond place Canadian cases with one desk — lawyers admitted province by province, one dashboard in your language.
Atradius publishes no Canada-specific B2B payment survey — Canada sits inside a North American report whose extractable figures are US-specific, and we won't relabel them as Canadian. What we can verify:
Atradius has no Canada-specific B2B payment practices barometer; its North America 2025 regional figures (43% of credit-based B2B sales overdue, bad debts at 5% of long-overdue invoices) are United States-specific and are not shown here as Canadian data. If your case involves a US debtor instead, see the USA desk. Sources: Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy, Q4 2025 · US Census Bureau, Trade in Goods with Canada
Debt collection in Canada is the recovery of overdue invoices from Canadian businesses on behalf of the creditor — a demand letter, and, where unresolved, a statement of claim filed in the province where the debtor operates. For an overseas creditor, a debt collection agency for Canada runs the entire ladder province by province while you keep one contact.
Your case reaches a Canadian collector the same day. The debtor's corporate registry and trading address are confirmed first.
Live entity confirmed in the province where the debtor operates.
Demand letter and final notice, referencing the terms of your contract. Most Canadian commercial cases settle here.
Filed in the appropriate provincial court — small claims or superior court, depending on the amount and province.
Default judgment where undefended, summary judgment where the defence is thin.
Garnishment, writ of seizure and sale, or funds transferred with a full report. No recovery, no fee.
Three models cover nearly every Canadian commercial case. The percentage depends on claim age, size, province, and complexity. Legal costs are quoted and approved by you before any filing.
A flat-fee Canadian demand sequence under your name — demand letter and final notice. Escalates only if the debtor stays silent.
A success fee on the amount actually recovered. Nothing upfront. Nothing on failure. Your contract's own interest clause, where one exists, helps offset the cost.
Statement of claim and enforcement through lawyers admitted in the debtor's province. For urgency, the fast debt collection service; for contested claims, attorney-based debt collection from day one.
Unlike our European pages, there's no directive to cite and no single national procedure — civil debt recovery in Canada is provincial, and the creditor's leverage comes from the contract itself, not a court stamp. What moves a Canadian debtor isn't a form letter, it's a demand from a firm that already knows which province's court the case belongs in and what the contract actually says. Specialist B2B debt collection puts that machinery behind your receivable on a success-fee basis, with industry desks for manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, aviation, maritime, and technology.
Debt collection in Canada is provincial rather than national: a demand letter and final notice, followed — if unresolved — by a statement of claim filed in the court of the province where the debtor operates, small claims or superior court depending on the amount. Where the claim is undefended, default judgment follows; where the defence is weak, summary judgment. Enforcement then runs through garnishment or a writ of seizure and sale, administered by that same province.
A Canadian business that ignores a demand faces a statement of claim in its own province's court, and — absent a real defence — a default or summary judgment that opens the door to garnishment of bank accounts or a writ of seizure and sale against its assets. There's no federal insolvency presumption to fall back on; enforcement runs through the ordinary civil courts.
Canada has no equivalent of the EU's Late Payment Directive or a single Corporations Act-style national instrument. Civil debt recovery, court procedure, and limitation periods are all set at the provincial level, and there's no general federal entitlement to statutory late-payment interest for B2B debts. That makes the contract — not a statute — the primary source of a creditor's leverage.
On the contingency model, nothing upfront: the success fee is a percentage of the amount actually recovered, quoted in writing before you place the case. Because Canada has no statutory late-payment interest to fall back on, we review your contract's own interest and fee clauses early — they're often the difference between a fee that's fully offset and one that isn't.
Whatever your contract specifies, if anything. Absent a contractual interest clause, the federal Interest Act supplies a fallback, though it's a narrower tool than the automatic statutory interest available on our European pages. This is one of the first things we check when we review your invoice and contract.
Yes, directly. There's no requirement to obtain a US or UK judgment first — a statement of claim can be filed straight into the appropriate Canadian provincial court. Where you already hold a foreign judgment, our Canadian lawyers assess whether recognition and enforcement is faster than starting a fresh claim.
The longer read for creditors doing their homework: how Canadian collection actually runs, why the contract carries more weight here than a statute, default versus summary judgment, what interest you can actually claim, and when placing a case is the wrong move. Open what matters.
A debt collection agency working Canada for an overseas creditor does four things you cannot efficiently do from abroad. It verifies the debtor against the corporate registry of the province where it operates. It applies pressure with a demand letter and notice of default built around your contract's own terms — there's no national statute to cite instead. It escalates through a statement of claim filed in the correct provincial court. And it enforces — garnishment, a writ of seizure and sale — through lawyers admitted in that province.
The alternative is instructing a Canadian law firm directly at hourly rates and coordinating it yourself, province by province, without a unified view of the file. A specialist debt collection agency for Canada runs the same ladder on a success-fee basis, and you deal with one contact and one dashboard.
Every other jurisdiction on this site gives us a statute to anchor the Exhibit A letter to — the Late Payment Directive somewhere in the EU, the Corporations Act in Australia. Canada doesn't. Civil debt recovery is provincial, there's no federal fast-track payment order, and there's no general statutory entitlement to late-payment interest for B2B debts.
That's not a gap in our research — it's the genuine shape of Canadian law, and we'd rather tell you plainly than paper over it with an EU-style promise we can't back up. What it means in practice: the contract you signed with your Canadian debtor is doing more of the legal work than in almost any other country we cover, which is exactly why we read it closely before the first letter goes out.
If a Canadian defendant simply doesn't respond to a filed statement of claim within the applicable time, the court can enter default judgment without a hearing on the merits. If the defendant responds but the defence is weak or unsupported, the creditor can instead move for summary judgment — a mechanism that exists in most provinces, with Ontario's Rules of Civil Procedure rule 20 as one well-known example, though the precise test and procedure vary by province.
Either route produces an enforceable judgment without a full trial, which is what makes an undefended or weakly defended Canadian claim move faster than the province-by-province structure might suggest.
Unlike the EU pages on this site, Canada has no automatic statutory late-payment interest for B2B invoices. The first place we look is your contract: a properly drafted interest and recovery-cost clause is enforceable and is often the single biggest lever on the file. Where the contract is silent, the federal Interest Act supplies a fallback rate, but it's a narrower and less generous tool than a directive-backed statutory rate.
Industry data puts the recoverable share of a receivable near 94 percent at 30 days past due and below 30 percent past a year, in Canada as everywhere else — one more reason the demand letter goes out immediately rather than after a polite delay.
Candor is cheaper than a wasted mandate. If the debtor is already in formal insolvency proceedings under the BIA or CCAA, an ordinary civil claim is the wrong tool — the file belongs with the trustee or monitor, and we will tell you so at assessment. If the debtor genuinely disputes what you delivered, a strong contract still helps, but the case needs a defended-claim strategy from the start. And if the claim is past the applicable limitation period — commonly around two years in most common-law provinces, and different in Quebec — no collector revives it.
Everything else — the silent Inc., the debtor who "never received" the invoice, the customer betting an overseas creditor won't instruct local counsel — is exactly what this desk exists for. The assessment costs nothing and tells you which category your case is in. Debtor actually in the US? See the USA desk or the global coverage hub.
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