Question 1

What exactly does Sleuthify search?

Accepted Answer

Sleuthify operates 39 record connectors: federal and provincial corporate registries, court and tribunal records, land title registries, personal property and lien registries, insolvency records, professional licensing registers, sanctions and politically-exposed-person lists, telephone and business directories, domain registration data, web archives, and indexed news. Every connector, its operator, its per-search fee, and the statutory basis for searching it are published on the sources page.

Question 2

Is it legal to search someone's public records in Canada without telling them?

Accepted Answer

Yes, for genuinely public records. PIPEDA permits collection without consent from five enumerated categories of publicly available information: public telephone directories, professional and business directories, statutory public registries, records of judicial and quasi-judicial bodies, and material the individual published themselves. No notice to the person is required. What is not permitted is harvesting social media profiles, or obtaining restricted records by pretext — and neither happens here.

Question 3

How much does a Canadian public records report cost?

Accepted Answer

The preliminary scan is free and reports how many records match and where, with no credit card. A full cited records report is $249 CAD per case and typically arrives in about twenty minutes. Deep Research, where an analyst retrieves records by hand, is scoped and quoted on a call. Registry search fees are included in the report price.

Question 4

Can Sleuthify run a criminal record check?

Accepted Answer

No, and neither can any other private service in Canada. Criminal record checks are issued by the RCMP and police services, require the subject's consent, and are usually verified by fingerprints. What we can report is public court records — charges filed in a specific courthouse and how they resolved — in the provinces that publish party-name docket search, which are British Columbia and Québec. Those are different artifacts with different coverage, and we never present one as the other.

Question 5

Can I use a Sleuthify report to make an employment or tenancy decision?

Accepted Answer

No. Sleuthify is a public-records search platform, not a consumer reporting agency. Reports may not be used to make decisions about employment, tenancy, credit, or insurance. Those purposes are refused at intake, and if you tell us that is your intention we will decline the case and name a registered provider that can help, at no charge.

Question 6

Someone searched me. What are my rights?

Accepted Answer

Under PIPEDA you can require any organisation to tell you what personal information it holds about you and to correct inaccuracies, and we answer within 30 days at no cost and without asking why. Québec residents additionally have de-indexing and cessation-of-dissemination rights under Law 25. Our files are also purged on a schedule — 90 days after a free scan closes, 2 years after a paid report. What we cannot do is unpublish the underlying registry or court record, which belongs to its operator.

Question 7

Which parts of Canada does Sleuthify actually cover?

Accepted Answer

Automated connectors exist for Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, plus federal registries that apply nationally. Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick are analyst-only, and Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, and the three territories have no connectors yet. Coverage differences between provinces are structural rather than commercial: British Columbia publishes searchable court dockets and Ontario does not.

Question 8

Will you search someone's social media?

Accepted Answer

Not in the way most people mean. If you supply a specific profile URL we will confirm whether it resolves and whether the public display name is consistent with the subject. We do not search platforms to enumerate a person's accounts, and we do not ingest, store, or summarise profile content. Canada's Privacy Commissioner held that harvesting publicly-visible profiles is a collection requiring consent, so this boundary is a legal one rather than a product decision.

Question 9

Can I search Canadian corporate records by a person's name?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Corporations Canada and the provincial registries in British Columbia and Québec support director and officer name search directly. Ontario and Alberta are weaker: Ontario's registry is oriented around the entity rather than the person, so finding a named individual's Ontario companies often means cross-referencing other records. Sleuthify runs all of them and reconciles the results.

Question 10

Is it legal to search someone's corporate records without telling them?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Corporate registries are statutory public registries — one of the five categories PIPEDA's Regulations Specifying Publicly Available Information treat as collectable without consent. Directors' names are published precisely so that the public can identify who stands behind a company. No notice to the person is required.

Question 11

How do I find out who really owns a numbered company in Canada?

Accepted Answer

The registry shows directors and officers, not always the beneficial owner. To get closer you cross-reference the registered office against other filings, check whether the numbered company appears as a shareholder in a Québec REQ filing, look for it in land title and PPSA registrations, and check securities filings if any entity in the chain is a reporting issuer. This chaining is what the Deep Research tier does by hand.

Question 12

How current are Canadian corporate registry records?

Accepted Answer

Registries update when a filing is made, so accuracy depends on the company complying with its annual return obligations. A dormant company may show a director who resigned years ago. Every finding in a Sleuthify report carries the date we retrieved it and the date of the underlying filing, so you can judge staleness yourself.

Question 13

Does a corporate search show company finances?

Accepted Answer

No. Private Canadian companies do not file financial statements publicly. You can infer financial signals from other public records — PPSA security registrations, liens, judgments, and mortgage charges on corporate property — and reporting issuers file statements on SEDAR+, but a private company's revenue and profit are not public anywhere.

Question 14

How do I find out if someone has been sued in Canada?

Accepted Answer

It depends on the province. In British Columbia, search Court Services Online by party name. In Québec, search the plumitifs through SOQUIJ. In Ontario and Alberta there is no equivalent public online search, so you check CanLII for any reported decision and then either attend the relevant courthouse registry or have someone do it for you. Sleuthify runs the online sources and identifies which courthouses to visit.

Question 15

Are Canadian court records free to search?

Accepted Answer

Reported decisions on CanLII are free. Docket searches generally are not: British Columbia charges roughly six dollars per file through CSO, Québec's plumitifs are fee-bearing through SOQUIJ, and Ontario writ and PPSA searches run eight to eleven dollars each. A thorough multi-source search costs real money in per-search fees, which is why the free scan tells you where the hits are before you pay for the contents.

Question 16

Can I search Canadian criminal records online by name?

Accepted Answer

There is no public national criminal record database in Canada. British Columbia's CSO includes criminal court records searchable by name, and Québec's plumitifs cover penal matters, but these are courthouse records, not criminal record checks. A real criminal record check comes from the RCMP or a police service, requires the subject's consent, and is usually verified by fingerprints. Any website claiming to search Canadian criminal records for you is misrepresenting what it has.

Question 17

Will a court records search show family court or divorce files?

Accepted Answer

Generally no. Family law files are subject to access restrictions in every province, and while divorce judgments exist, they are not publicly name-searchable. A central divorce registry search is available only to the parties or their counsel. Sleuthify reports the financial and property records relevant to a family law matter rather than attempting to retrieve the family file itself.

Question 18

How far back do Canadian court records go?

Accepted Answer

Online coverage typically starts in the late 1990s or 2000s depending on the court's digitisation. Older files exist in paper or microfiche at the courthouse or in provincial archives and require a manual retrieval. Every Sleuthify report states the date range each source actually covered rather than implying the search was exhaustive.

Question 19

Can you find someone's bank accounts in Canada?

Accepted Answer

No, and neither can anyone else lawfully. Canadian bank account information is not held in any public registry. It can be reached through a court order in aid of execution, a Norwich order, or examination of a judgment debtor — all of which run through your lawyer and the court, not through a search service. Any company advertising a bank account locate is either lying or committing identity fraud to get it.

Question 20

How do I find out what property someone owns in Canada?

Accepted Answer

In British Columbia, Alberta, and Québec you can search the land registry by owner name directly. In Ontario you cannot — the registry indexes by property, so you either need to know the address already or infer holdings from other records such as corporate registered offices, mortgage registrations, and litigation filings. This province-by-province difference is the main reason asset searches vary so much in cost and completeness.

Question 21

What is a PPSA search and why does it matter for assets?

Accepted Answer

A Personal Property Security Act search reveals registered security interests against a person's movable property — vehicles, equipment, inventory, and general collateral. It tells you both that an asset probably exists and that a secured creditor already has a claim on it. In Ontario an individual-debtor PPSA search requires the exact legal name and date of birth, which is why intake pushes hard for a date of birth.

Question 22

Is an asset search useful before I sue someone?

Accepted Answer

Very. A judgment against someone with no realisable assets costs you the litigation and returns nothing. Running an asset search before filing tells you whether there is anything to collect against, and often reveals corporate structures worth naming as defendants. Most lawyers who do collections work run this search first, not last.

Question 23

Can assets held in a company be traced to a person?

Accepted Answer

Sometimes. Corporate registries name directors and officers, so a person can be linked to an entity, and the entity's property holdings are then searchable. What registries often do not publish is beneficial ownership — who ultimately profits. Chaining from a person to a numbered company to a property is exactly the kind of multi-step research the Deep Research tier does manually.

Question 24

How can I find someone's current address in Canada?

Accepted Answer

Start with telephone directory listings, which remain one of the few lawfully searchable sources of residential addresses. Then check corporate registries, since a registered office is often a home address, and professional licensing registers, which frequently list a business address. Court filings and PPSA registrations also capture addresses as of a filing date. No single source is reliable alone, which is why cross-referencing and dating each hit matters more than volume.

Question 25

Is it legal to look someone up in Canada without their knowledge?

Accepted Answer

Searching genuinely public records is lawful and requires no notice to the person. PIPEDA's Regulations Specifying Publicly Available Information permit collection from telephone directories, professional and business directories, statutory public registries, court records, and material the person published themselves. What is not permitted is scraping social media profiles, which the Privacy Commissioner addressed directly in the Clearview AI findings, or obtaining restricted records by pretext.

Question 26

Why can't Canadian people search use driver's licence or voter records?

Accepted Answer

Both are restricted by statute. Provincial motor vehicle records may only be released for specific statutory purposes and generally not to private searchers, and Canadian voter lists are not public documents. This is the main structural difference between Canadian and American people search, and it is why Canadian results are narrower but also why they are lawfully obtained.

Question 27

What if the person I'm looking for has no public records at all?

Accepted Answer

It happens, and we say so rather than manufacturing a result. Someone who rents, has a mobile-only phone, holds no professional licence, has never incorporated, and has never been to court leaves almost no public trace. In that situation the report tells you which sources were searched, that they returned nothing, and what identifier would most likely unlock a result if you can obtain it.

Question 28

Can you find someone if I only know their name and city?

Accepted Answer

Sometimes, for an uncommon name. For a common one, a name and city typically produces too many candidates to resolve confidently, and the honest output is a candidate list rather than an answer. A date of birth, a middle name, a former address, or an employer usually converts an unresolvable search into a resolved one — the free scan will tell you which side of that line you are on before you pay.

Question 29

How do I check if someone I met online is real?

Accepted Answer

Verify the specific claims they made rather than trying to profile them. Does the employer exist in a corporate registry and has anyone confirmed them there. Does the professional licence number resolve to them in the regulator's public register. Was the company's domain registered recently. Do court or insolvency records contradict the story. A consistent absence of corroboration across every claim is the strongest single signal of a fabricated identity.

Question 30

Can you tell me if someone is using fake photos?

Accepted Answer

No — reverse image analysis and photo forensics are outside what we do. We verify records, not images. For images, a reverse image search on the photos you were sent is free and usually decisive; if the same face appears under a different name on other sites, you have your answer without needing us.

Question 31

Will you search someone's social media for me?

Accepted Answer

Not in the way most people mean. If you give us a specific profile URL we will confirm it resolves and whether the public display name is consistent with the identity claimed. We do not search platforms to enumerate someone's accounts, and we do not ingest or summarise profile content. Canada's Privacy Commissioner held in the Clearview AI findings that harvesting publicly-visible social profiles is collection requiring consent, so that boundary is a legal one rather than a product decision.

Question 32

Is verifying a contractor's licence something I can do myself for free?

Accepted Answer

Often yes, and you should. Most provincial regulators publish a free public register — electricians, real estate agents, insurance brokers, lawyers, engineers, and physicians all have searchable public directories. Where we add value is doing all of them at once, cross-checking the corporate registration behind the business name, and noticing when a licence is real but held by someone other than the person you are dealing with.

Question 33

What should due diligence on a Canadian company include?

Accepted Answer

At minimum: confirm the legal entity and its registry standing, identify directors and officers, check litigation and judgment history, run PPSA and lien searches, check insolvency history for both the entity and its principals, screen against sanctions and PEP lists, and search adverse media. For a material transaction, add corporate structure mapping across provinces and a review of any securities filings.

Question 34

How do I check if a Canadian company is legitimate?

Accepted Answer

Search the federal and relevant provincial corporate registry for the exact legal name, not the trading name. Confirm the status is active and annual returns are current. Check when it was incorporated — a company claiming twenty years of experience but incorporated last year is a problem. Then check whether the directors have prior dissolved entities or insolvencies, and whether the registered office is a real place of business or a shared mail drop.

Question 35

Can I get a Canadian company's financial statements?

Accepted Answer

Only if it is a reporting issuer, in which case they are on SEDAR+ for free. Private Canadian companies have no public filing obligation for financials. You can build a partial financial picture from public records — registered security interests indicate borrowing, liens and judgments indicate non-payment, property holdings indicate capital — but the statements themselves are not obtainable without the company's cooperation.

Question 36

Is a due diligence report the same as a credit report?

Accepted Answer

No. A credit report comes from a registered consumer reporting agency, contains a score derived from tradeline data, and requires consent for a permitted purpose. A due diligence report is built from public records and contains no score and no tradeline data. They answer different questions and, for a business counterparty, most teams want both.

Question 37

What does a PPSA search show?

Accepted Answer

It shows registered security interests against a debtor's movable property: who the secured party is, what collateral classes are claimed, when the registration was made, and when it expires. It confirms an encumbrance exists and establishes priority order. It does not disclose the amount owing, so a registration against a vehicle does not tell you whether there is equity in it.

Question 38

Do I need a date of birth for an Ontario PPSA search?

Accepted Answer

For an individual debtor, effectively yes. Ontario indexes individual debtors by name and date of birth, and a search run without the correct date of birth may not disclose registrations that exist. Business-debtor searches use the exact legal entity name instead. If you do not have a date of birth, we will still run what we can and will tell you explicitly that the result is not a reliable clear.

Question 39

How do I check if a used car in Canada has a lien on it?

Accepted Answer

Search the provincial personal property registry using the vehicle identification number. Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta all support VIN search, and Québec's RDPRM does too. This matters because a security interest travels with the vehicle: buying a car with a registered lien can mean the secured party repossesses it from you. It is a small fee and it is the single most worthwhile check in a private vehicle sale.

Question 40

Is a lien search the same across all Canadian provinces?

Accepted Answer

No. Each province operates its own registry with its own fees, search logic, and reliability rules, and Québec uses a civil-law register, the RDPRM, that is structured differently from the common-law PPSA registries. A registration in Ontario does not appear in a British Columbia search, so if a debtor has operated in multiple provinces you need multiple searches.

Question 41

Can I find out who owns a property in Canada?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in every province. Land title registries are public and searchable by address or parcel identifier, and the registered owner is disclosed. Fees vary by province, typically ten to thirty-five dollars per parcel. This is the easy direction of a property search.

Question 42

Can I search Canadian property records by owner name?

Accepted Answer

In British Columbia, Alberta, and Québec, yes — those registries support owner-name search for account holders. In Ontario you cannot: the registry is indexed by property, so there is no way to ask which properties a person owns. Ontario holdings have to be inferred from corporate filings, mortgage registrations, litigation, and assessment records.

Question 43

Does a title search show how much someone paid for their house?

Accepted Answer

Usually yes. Transfer instruments record the consideration, so the purchase price and date are typically visible in the transfer history. That makes a title search useful for establishing a value baseline, though it reflects the price at transfer rather than current market value.

Question 44

Will a property search show a mortgage balance?

Accepted Answer

No. The registry shows that a mortgage is registered, who the lender is, and the original principal where stated. It does not show the current balance, because payments are not registered. Equity therefore has to be estimated rather than read off the title.

Question 45

How do I check if a lawyer is licensed in Canada?

Accepted Answer

Search the law society register for the relevant province — the Law Society of Ontario, the Law Society of British Columbia, and their counterparts all publish free public directories. These show current status, year of call, and conduct history. If someone claims to be a lawyer and does not appear, that is conclusive.

Question 46

Can I see a Canadian professional's discipline history?

Accepted Answer

Usually yes, for regulated professions. Most Canadian regulators publish discipline decisions and note findings on the public register. Coverage of older matters varies and complaints that did not reach a hearing are typically not published, so an empty discipline record means no published finding rather than no complaint.

Question 47

Is my contractor licensed in Ontario?

Accepted Answer

It depends on the trade. Electricians and gas fitters are licensed and verifiable; general contractors and renovators largely are not, which surprises most homeowners. What you can verify is the corporate registration, whether the business has liens or judgments against it, and whether WSIB coverage is current. Absence of a licence is often not a red flag because no licence exists to hold.

Question 48

How do I check if someone is on a Canadian sanctions list?

Accepted Answer

Search the Consolidated Canadian Autonomous Sanctions List, published free by Global Affairs Canada. Because sanctions evasion routinely relies on alternate spellings, search name variants rather than the exact string you were given, and screen the UN, OFAC, EU, and UK lists at the same time — a party sanctioned elsewhere but not yet in Canada is still a serious risk signal.

Question 49

What is a politically exposed person and why does it matter?

Accepted Answer

A politically exposed person holds or held a prominent public function — a senior official, judge, military officer, or state enterprise executive — or is a close family member or associate of one. PEP status is not wrongdoing; it is elevated corruption risk, which triggers enhanced due diligence obligations for reporting entities under the PCMLTFA and is worth knowing for anyone else.

Question 50

How often should sanctions screening be repeated?

Accepted Answer

Sanctions lists change frequently, sometimes weekly, so a screen is only valid as of its date. For an ongoing relationship, rescreen periodically rather than once at onboarding. Every Sleuthify screening result is stamped with its retrieval date for exactly this reason.

Question 51

How do executors find missing heirs in Canada?

Accepted Answer

Obituaries and death notices are the usual starting point, since they name surviving relatives. From there you work forward through telephone directories, corporate registries, professional registers, and property records to locate each named person. A documented record of the search matters as much as the result — it evidences the executor's diligence if a beneficiary surfaces later.

Question 52

Can I search Canadian death records?

Accepted Answer

Vital statistics death registrations are restricted to the immediate family and estate representatives, and access runs through the provincial vital statistics office. What is openly available is obituaries, cemetery and funeral home records, and Canada Gazette notices — which in practice answer most estate questions.

Question 53

Why do I need an asset search for an estate?

Accepted Answer

Because an executor who distributes before satisfying creditors can be personally liable. An asset and encumbrance search identifies registered claims against the estate — liens, judgments, security interests, and charges on property — before distribution, and also surfaces assets the deceased did not mention in any list the family has.

Question 54

What's the best free way to find someone in Canada?

Accepted Answer

Canada411 for a directory listing, then Corporations Canada and Québec's REQ for any registered office address, then obituaries for their relatives, then the Wayback Machine for deleted web pages. All four are free and together they resolve a substantial fraction of locates without spending anything.

Question 55

Why is finding someone in Canada harder than in the US?

Accepted Answer

American people-search relies on voter rolls, driver records, and commercially available credit header data. None of the three is accessible in Canada: voter lists are not public, motor vehicle records are statutorily restricted, and credit header data may only be furnished by a registered consumer reporting agency for a permitted purpose. Canadian searches work from a genuinely narrower base.

Question 56

Is it legal to find someone's address in Canada?

Accepted Answer

Searching public records is lawful and requires no notice to the person. PIPEDA permits collection from telephone directories, professional and business directories, statutory public registries, court records, and material the person published themselves. Using what you find to harass or contact someone against their wishes is a separate matter and can be criminal harassment under Criminal Code s.264.

Question 57

What if the person doesn't want to be found?

Accepted Answer

We will not release a located address where there is any protection order, peace bond, or no-contact condition in either direction — including one we discover during the search. If someone has deliberately gone to ground and there is no lawful entitlement behind the locate, the honest answer is that we will decline the work.

Question 58

How much does it cost to find someone in Canada?

Accepted Answer

The free sources cost nothing and often suffice. Fee-bearing searches run roughly six to eleven dollars each — BC court files, Ontario PPSA and writ searches, corporate profile reports — and a thorough multi-province locate touches enough of them that a bundled report is usually cheaper than running them individually.

Question 59

What are the biggest warning signs of a romance scam?

Accepted Answer

Refusing or repeatedly failing to video call. A story that requires them to be unreachable — offshore rig, deployed overseas, working in a remote mine. Moving the conversation off the platform quickly. Escalating emotional intensity within days. And the decisive one: any request for money, cryptocurrency, gift cards, or help moving funds, regardless of how the request is framed.

Question 60

Can I find out someone's real name from their dating profile?

Accepted Answer

Sometimes, and rarely through the profile itself. A reverse image search on their photos occasionally surfaces the same face under a real name elsewhere. If they gave you a company, the corporate registry names its directors. If they gave you a professional credential, the regulator's register names the registrant. Working from the claims outward is far more productive than working from the profile inward.

Question 61

Is it wrong to check up on someone I'm dating?

Accepted Answer

Verifying that a person is who they say they are, before you meet a stranger or send them money, is ordinary caution — and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre reports tens of millions of dollars in annual romance fraud losses. Verifying a presented identity is different from building a dossier on someone, which is why this service is scoped to confirming or contradicting the specific claims made to you.

Question 62

They asked me for money. What should I do?

Accepted Answer

Do not send it, and do not send it in any form — not crypto, not gift cards, not a wire, not by receiving and forwarding a payment, which makes you a money mule. Report it to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. A request for money from someone you have never met in person is, on its own, sufficient reason to stop, whatever the records show.

Question 63

How do I find out if a judgment debtor has any assets?

Accepted Answer

Search land titles by owner name where the province allows it, run a PPSA search for vehicles and equipment, search corporate registries for entities they control and then search assets against those entities, and run a writ search to identify creditors ranking ahead of you. Also check insolvency records, because a discharged bankruptcy may bar enforcement entirely.

Question 64

Can I garnish someone's bank account in Canada?

Accepted Answer

Yes, with a judgment and a garnishment order — but you generally need to identify the bank and branch first, and that information is not public. The usual route is an examination of the judgment debtor, which compels them to disclose assets under oath, or a Norwich order against the financial institution. Your lawyer drives this; a records search tells you where to point it.

Questions about Canadian public records

About Sleuthify

Checking your own record

Legality, privacy, and consent

What it costs, and how current it is

Courts, criminal records, and lawsuits

Property, assets, and liens

Companies, directors, and due diligence

Finding and verifying a person

Everything else