Service
Short answer
A PPSA search reveals registered security interests against a person's or company's movable property — vehicles, equipment, inventory, and general collateral. Canada runs separate registries per province, with Québec using the RDPRM instead. An Ontario individual-debtor search requires the exact legal name and date of birth.
Draws on 4 record sources, each named below with the statutory basis we rely on. See the list.
Ontario's PPSA registry indexes individual debtors by name plus date of birth, and a search without the correct date of birth is not merely less accurate — it can fail to disclose registrations that exist, and a certified search result is only reliable if the debtor name is exact. This single technical requirement is why our intake form treats date of birth as the highest-value field on the page, and why we tell clients plainly when its absence caps what the report can conclude.
A PPSA registration is notice that a secured party claims an interest in specified collateral. It tells you the secured party, the collateral classification, the registration date, and the expiry. It does not tell you the outstanding balance. So it establishes that an encumbrance exists and who ranks ahead of you, which is usually the question, without telling you how much room is left.
A PPSA search finds consensual security. A writ of execution search finds judgment creditors who are already enforcing. In Ontario these are separate searches at separate fees, and a diligence exercise that runs one and not the other has a blind spot. For anyone assessing collectability, the writ search is often the more informative of the two.
What you receive
Honest limits
Every item here is a structural limit of the Canadian record, not a paywall. Anyone promising you these is either misrepresenting what they have or describing something unlawful.
4 connectors
Each source carries the paragraph of the Regulations Specifying Publicly Available Information that permits collecting from it without the subject's consent.
ServiceOntario
Lawful basisStatutory public registrySOR/2001-7(c)
Paid account · 8.00 CAD per search
BC Registry Services
Lawful basisStatutory public registrySOR/2001-7(c)
Paid account · 7.00 CAD per search
Gouvernement du Québec
Lawful basisStatutory public registrySOR/2001-7(c)
Paid account · 3.00 CAD per search
ServiceOntario / Ministry of the Attorney General
Lawful basisStatutory public registrySOR/2001-7(c)
Paid account · 11.00 CAD per search
Figures
| Measure | Value | Source | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ontario PPSA individual-debtor search requires | Exact name + DOB | ServiceOntario | 2026 |
Questions
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.
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.
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.
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.
Next step
Markdown /services/lien-and-ppsa-search.md — the same content with no navigation chrome, for machine readers.