Your credit after a consumer proposal or bankruptcy: R7, R9, and the honest answers

What happened to my record

Two different things called credit

Almost every confused answer online comes from blurring two different things.

Your credit report is a file. Each of Canada’s two national credit bureaus, Equifax Canada and TransUnion Canada, keeps one on you: your accounts, your payment history, and certain public and legal events. When you file a proposal or a bankruptcy, an entry is added to that file, and it stays for a set period fixed by each bureau’s own policy.

Your credit score is a number. It is calculated from the report at the moment someone pulls it. It is not stored anywhere, and it moves as the report changes. It can begin to recover while the proposal or bankruptcy is still on the report, because new on-time payments feed the same calculation.

So “how long does this stay on my credit” has two honest answers. The report entry has a fixed removal date. The score has no removal date at all; it responds to what you do next.

One more record exists, and it is not your credit report: the public registry of insolvency filings kept by the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy, the federal regulator. That registry follows its own rules about who can see it, and the consequences hub answers that worry directly; the short version is that the record that touches your daily life is the credit-file entry, not the registry.

R7 and R9: what the codes on your file mean

Canadian credit reports rate each account. The scale runs from R1, meaning you pay as agreed, up to R9, the worst code, meaning a debt written off, placed for collection, or gone bad. There is no R6 on the scale at all, and R8 means repossession.

A consumer proposal is commonly reported at R7. That is the code for debts being repaid through an arrangement rather than on their original terms, and it is not the bottom of the scale. A bankruptcy is commonly reported at R9, and it also appears as its own entry in the report’s public-records section. One honest note: “commonly reported” is the accurate phrase, because the bureaus themselves do not publish a rule that says proposal equals R7 and bankruptcy equals R9; that is uniform practice in the industry, and this site will not dress practice up as a published rule. Whether the difference between R7 and R9 matters to a lender is really the question of whether a proposal is better for you than a bankruptcy, and the comparison page weighs that whole decision honestly; the credit half of the answer is that the proposal’s code is lighter and can clear sooner.

How long a consumer proposal stays

The short answer: three years after you finish at the earliest, six to seven years at the outside, and the exact date depends on which bureau and on your own dates. Here is why no single number exists.

The length is not set by any law. The Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act says nothing about credit-report removal, and provincial law only sets an outer ceiling. The actual timelines are each bureau’s own policy, and the two bureaus use different rules. That is why you see conflicting numbers everywhere.

Equifax Canada removes a consumer proposal, in its own words, “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” (Equifax Canada’s published retention policy, re-verified 2026-07-18).

TransUnion Canada removes the proposal, and the accounts satisfied through it, in its own words “three (3) years from the date you satisfied the proposal or (6) years after the date you defaulted on the account, whichever date comes first” (TransUnion Canada’s published policy, re-verified 2026-07-18).

Both rules take the earlier of two dates, but they count from different events, so the entry can clear one bureau before the other. Paying off a consumer proposal early genuinely helps at both bureaus, because each one’s three-year clock runs from the day you finish; the difference is the backstop date, six years from filing at Equifax and six years from your accounts’ default at TransUnion, and whichever date arrives first wins at each bureau. There is no single number that fits every file.

These rules describe a proposal you complete. If a proposal is annulled or fails partway, neither bureau publishes a separate rule for it. On the best reading of the rules they do publish, the entry then runs on the six-year clocks (from filing at Equifax, from your accounts’ default at TransUnion), because you never reach the completion date that would start the three-year clock. That is a careful reading of the published rules, not a rule either bureau states. Whether a failed proposal can be revived or changed is answered on the cancel-or-change page.

How long a bankruptcy stays

The same structure, different numbers, and the bureaus differ more.

Equifax Canada removes a first bankruptcy 6 years after the discharge date (or 7 years after filing if there is no discharge). TransUnion Canada removes a first bankruptcy 6 years from discharge in most provinces, but 7 years from discharge in Ontario, Quebec, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador. If you have been bankrupt more than once, both bureaus keep each bankruptcy for 14 years from its discharge. (All from the bureaus’ published policies, re-verified 2026-07-18.)

Notice what the clocks run from: discharge, not filing. A bankruptcy’s removal clock cannot start until you are discharged, which is one of the quiet reasons a completed proposal can leave your file sooner.

The accounts inside the proceeding do not simply vanish

The debts that went into your proposal or bankruptcy are re-coded on your file, not erased. At TransUnion, the accounts satisfied through a proposal come off on the same rule as the proposal itself, each on its own dates, so an account can even clear before the proposal entry does; Equifax publishes no such linking rule, so those accounts age off on their own schedule there, generally six years from their own dates. This is worth knowing for one practical reason: a completed proposal that still shows as active, or an included debt still showing a balance owing, is an error, and errors can be fixed. The next section is about exactly that.

Getting it off early: the honest answer is generally no

The straight answer to “how do I remove a consumer proposal from my credit report” is that you generally cannot, and you should be careful with anyone who says otherwise. An entry that is reporting correctly is accurate information, and accurate information comes off on the bureau’s schedule, not on request. No company, no fee, no subscription can lawfully delete a true entry. The federal consumer regulator’s alert warns, in substance: no company can quickly fix your credit score, accurate information cannot be erased, and it is against the law for a company that does not employ a Licensed Insolvency Trustee to claim it can manage your proposal or bankruptcy (Financial Consumer Agency of Canada consumer alert, 2025-10-14). [VERIFY-AT-BUILD: the alert’s exact wording quoted verbatim at the publish build.]

The one real exception is inaccuracy, and insolvency files collect real errors. From a trustee’s desk, the patterns I actually see, described here as illustrations rather than any client’s file:

A proposal reported as a bankruptcy. You did a proposal; the file says bankruptcy. They are different proceedings with different codes and different clocks. Dispute it, with your filing documents and, if completed, your certificate.

One debt, three entries. A lender sends an unpaid account to a collection agency, which opens its own entry under its own file number; the debt moves to a second collector, which opens another. One debt now looks like three. The bureaus have trouble tracing that these are the same debt; you, looking at your own file, can.

You have a legal right to dispute wrong information. That right sits in provincial consumer-reporting law. In Ontario, once you dispute an item, the bureau must use its best endeavours (its best efforts) to confirm or correct the information (Consumer Reporting Act, section 13(1)). Other provinces’ consumer-reporting laws provide dispute routes of their own. The practical steps are the same everywhere: get your file from each bureau separately, because an error can sit on one and not the other; dispute in writing with your documents; and if the bureau will not move, go to your province’s consumer-protection regulator. The directory at the end of this page has the doors.

Who fixes your file, and why your trustee has no lane to do it

Here is a structural truth almost nobody tells you, and it explains a moment that surprises many of my clients. Your trustee cannot fix your credit file for you, because the system gives a trustee no lane to do it in. A Licensed Insolvency Trustee’s federal licence carries no authority at the privately owned, provincially regulated bureaus; no law assigns the task to anyone; and the bureaus’ own privacy rules mean they deal with the file’s owner, you, or a lawyer or agent the bureau accepts. When a trustee’s office tries to help on a call as a courtesy, the bureau rightly insists the file’s owner be on the line. My own engagement papers include a signed acknowledgement that I do not provide credit-repair services, precisely so nobody is surprised later.

The same structure governs the happy ending. When you complete your proposal, your trustee issues you a certificate of full performance. Under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, that certificate goes to you and to the government’s official receiver, and to nobody else; there is no automatic pipeline that tells the credit bureaus you finished. The regulator’s own guidance (a page last updated in 2015, still its current published instruction) is to send a copy of the certificate to the bureaus yourself. So do that, at both bureaus, through each bureau’s dispute or update channel; each bureau will tell you where to send the copy. Then pull your file after a few weeks, and again later if needed, to confirm the update took; no published standard says how fast the bureaus must act. Keep the certificate permanently; it is the document that proves the proposal completed, and you will want it every time an error needs disputing.

Why say all this so bluntly? Because the gap between what a trustee has no lane to do and what you need done is exactly where unregulated credit-repair operators pitch paid services. Most of what they sell is either this page’s free instructions or the impossible promise the regulator’s alert warns about.

A wider word about the good guys, because this page has been hard on the credit-repair industry and the distinction matters. Financial literacy in Canada has long been an area of concern. Encouragingly, governments have begun strengthening financial-literacy education in school curricula, an important step in the right direction. Whether those changes alone will be enough is another question. For many Canadians today, the mandatory financial counselling sessions that accompany an insolvency proceeding remain the first time they have ever sat down with someone to systematically discuss budgeting, credit, debt management and personal financial planning. That should not be anyone’s first experience with financial education, and it certainly should not be their last. Accredited non-profit credit counsellors perform an important role in providing financial education, budgeting assistance and ongoing support. They are not the operators this page warns about. An honest credit counsellor will tell you exactly what this page tells you: accurate information cannot be removed from a credit report for a fee. What they can provide is education, structure, accountability and practical financial skills that can benefit people long after an insolvency proceeding has ended. I do not place accredited credit counsellors in the same category as unregulated debt-consultant firms, and neither should you. The directory at the end of this page is intended to help you find those legitimate resources.

What happened to my score

Your score took a real hit; there is no honest way around that. Filing moves your file into the group of files carrying a recent insolvency mark, and the higher your score stood before, the farther it fell, because a pristine score rests on an unbroken history that the filing ends. What you may have heard beyond that, that the score lands in some particular range, is field folklore; no Canadian bureau publishes post-filing score numbers, and no honest page invents them.

Here is what is genuinely true, and hopeful, about life after a consumer proposal or bankruptcy.

The score is calculated fresh every time someone pulls your file. It is not a stored number, and it is not frozen while the proposal runs. New on-time payments, low balances, and a file that slowly thickens all feed the calculation even while the entry holds the ceiling down. The proposal years are not dead time; they are building time, and the building is invisible until the entry leaves.

When the entry finally comes off at each bureau, on the clocks above, the file that remains is whatever you built. Build nothing, and the file is clean but thin, and thin files score poorly for lack of evidence, not for badness. Build steadily, a secured card paid in full every month, every bill kept current, and the file that emerges is clean plus years of on-time history that already has age on it. That difference, not the proposal itself, is what separates the people who recover quickly from the people who stall.

Will the score jump the day you complete? You may have heard it will. The honest answer: no published Canadian evidence supports a completion jump, and anyone quoting you a number or a date for score recovery is guessing or selling. No bureau, no regulator, and no professional body publishes a recovery timeline; that absence has been checked directly. What completion actually does is start the removal clocks and, at TransUnion, start them from your finish date, which is why finishing matters and finishing early can matter more.

When can I borrow again

Yes, you will borrow again. That is a verdict, not a hope: credit is available in Canada after an insolvency, usually sooner than people fear. The real questions are which credit, in what order, and at what price.

Start with a secured credit card, usually while the proposal is still running. You place a deposit, the card reports to the bureaus like any other card, and every on-time month builds new history beside the old mark. This is the standard first tool, recommended by the federal consumer regulator itself for people rebuilding after credit trouble. One caution before you take one on, and it is the one interaction that genuinely matters. A new card means a new monthly payment sitting beside your proposal payment, and a consumer proposal is automatically cancelled by law (the legal word is annulled) if you fall behind by the value of three payments, which puts you back where you started with your creditors. A card that fits your budget helps you; a card that strains it can cost you the proposal. Clear the timing with your Licensed Insolvency Trustee first.

Keep everything else current: rent, utilities, phone, any loan you kept. Payment history is the largest single input to a score in the factor breakdowns the regulator and the bureaus publish. (Rent and utilities usually reach your credit file only through opt-in reporting services, but falling behind on them can reach it fast, through collections.) Use a small amount of the card and pay it in full each month; the regulator’s guidance is to keep balances under about 30 percent of your limit, and lower is better. Paying in full does not hurt you; the carry-a-small-balance tip is a myth.

You do not need to buy anything to rebuild. Paid credit-builder products and rent-reporting services exist, and some can add real history to your file, but none is necessary, none is endorsed here, and any product that promises a score outcome is promising what nobody can promise. The same honesty applies to the best credit card after a consumer proposal: no such ranking exists, and the right card is the secured card that fits your budget. There is no trick and no algorithm hack; there is only new evidence, arriving month after month, on a file that is aging past its worst day.

What about a mortgage? A mortgage is possible after a proposal or bankruptcy, and the decision will be made on your whole file, not your score alone: income and its stability, down payment, debt service (how much of your income already goes to payments), and how your file has behaved since the filing. Lenders and mortgage insurers (the companies that insure low-down-payment mortgages) publish no waiting period and no score cut-off for a borrower after a consumer proposal; those rules live in each lender’s and insurer’s own internal policy, applied file by file, which is why the specific numbers you see quoted online are guesses. If you already own your home and the mortgage itself is up to date, the law bars a lender from taking it away only because you filed, and renewing with your existing lender during a performing proposal happens routinely in practice. The mortgages page walks through buying, renewing, and switching during and after a proposal, lender tier by lender tier.

And a car? Financing exists at every stage of rebuild; the earlier you are, the higher the price. Which brings us to the last concern, the one almost nobody asks out loud.

What will borrowing cost me

More than it used to, for a while, and less with every clean year you put on the file. Credit remains widely available in Canada after an insolvency; the real question is at what price. In the years right after an insolvency, lenders that serve rebuilding borrowers price the file’s history into the rate rather than refusing it: that is the honest trade, access now at a premium. In my experience the premium is temporary when the file is being built, because each year of clean history moves you toward ordinary pricing; it lingers when nothing on the file changes. Before you take any rebuilding-era loan, look at the total cost over the loan’s life, not the monthly payment; expensive credit compounds, and compounding is the arithmetic that brought many of us to a trustee’s desk in the first place. The Consumer Proposal Calculator on this site shows what minimum payments really cost, and the same arithmetic governs subprime borrowing.

One free-of-charge item belongs in every rebuild: your own file. You can get your credit report from each bureau at no cost, and you should, at least yearly and at every milestone (completion, one year after, the expected purge dates). The free score you see in an app is real but approximate: Borrowell shows you an Equifax-based score, Credit Karma and ClearScore show TransUnion-based scores, none of these companies is a credit bureau, and the number a lender pulls may differ from the number the app shows. Use the app score as a trend line, not a promise.

One duty runs the other way while your proceeding is open. Borrow $1,000 or more in total before you are discharged or your proposal completes, and the law requires a bankrupt to tell the lender about the proceeding; my instruction to proposal clients is to do exactly the same, in writing, even a text message. It reaches further than loan applications: a $750 muffler job that lands over $1,000, with a kindly pay-me-next-month, is credit for the whole amount, and the duty is triggered. Tell him, in writing, and keep the message.

The directory: who to actually call

Unanswerable questions deserve real doors, not guesses. These are the doors. [VERIFY-AT-BUILD: every number and link on this list is verified live before this page publishes, and re-verified at each six-month site review; unverified entries are held from print.]

**The bureaus**

– Equifax Canada, your file and disputes: 1-800-465-7166 (verified 2026-07-19), and the myEquifax online service at my.equifax.ca (verified 2026-07-19). – TransUnion Canada, your file and disputes: 1-800-663-9980 (verified 2026-07-19 at the Government of Canada’s credit-report guidance page), and the online Consumer Disclosure at transunion.ca/product/consumer-disclosure (URL verified 2026-07-19 at the same government page). [VERIFY-AT-BUILD: click both details once in a browser; TransUnion’s own site blocks automated checks.] – Accord Credit Group Inc. and Credifax Atlantic Limited, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia: both confirmed as licensed consumer-reporting agencies on Nova Scotia’s official registry (verified 2026-07-19). Your personal file still lives at the two national bureaus above: Credifax describes itself as a commercial bureau and directs consumers seeking their personal report to Equifax or TransUnion, and Accord publishes no consumer channel. These names are here so you recognize them if they ever appear in your file’s access record.

**Government**

– The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, the federal consumer-finance regulator: 1-866-461-3222 (verified 2026-07-19); free, plain guidance on credit reports, scores, and the credit-repair alert quoted on this page, at canada.ca/en/financial-consumer-agency/services/credit-reports-score.html (verified 2026-07-19). – The Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy, the federal insolvency regulator: 1-877-376-9902 (verified 2026-07-19), at ised-isde.canada.ca/site/office-superintendent-bankruptcy/en (verified 2026-07-19); the public record of filings (an 8 dollar fee applies to record searches); the mandatory financial-counselling program that comes with your proceeding, which is genuinely worth taking seriously. – Your province’s consumer-protection regulator, for a bureau that will not correct a real error: in Ontario, Consumer Protection Ontario (home of the Registrar of Consumer Reporting Agencies), 1-800-889-9768 and ontario.ca/page/credit-reports (both verified 2026-07-19); in Quebec, the Autorite des marches financiers, which supervises the designated credit assessment agencies Equifax and TransUnion, 1 877 525-0337 and lautorite.qc.ca/en/general-public/personal-finances/credit-report (both verified 2026-07-19). [VERIFY-AT-BUILD: one verified door per remaining province and territory.]

**Professional help**

– Non-profit credit counselling, for budgeting and rebuild planning at no charge: Credit Counselling Canada, the national association of accredited not-for-profit agencies, at creditcounsellingcanada.ca with its Find a Counsellor locator (verified 2026-07-19; the association publishes an email contact, no phone number).

Frequently asked questions