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Public Record Verification and Due Diligence in Canada
Where to find and verify official records about organizations in Canada: corporate registries, securities filings, courts, lobbying, political financing, charities and sanctions.
Records about organizations, not people
Public records let you verify what an organization says about itself: who owns it, where it is registered, whether it has been sued, who lobbies for it and whether it is sanctioned. This guide is about due diligence on organizations and public institutions. It is not a guide to background checks on individuals, which in New Brunswick can fall under private investigator licensing when done for a client.
Corporate registries
- Federal: Corporations Canada’s federal corporation search lists directors, status and filings for federally incorporated companies.
- Provincial: each province keeps its own registry, such as the Service New Brunswick corporate registry, the Ontario Business Registry and Québec’s Registraire des entreprises.
- Public companies: SEDAR+ holds Canadian securities filings; SEC EDGAR covers companies filing in the United States.
- Global: OpenCorporates aggregates registries worldwide, and the GLEIF database resolves Legal Entity Identifiers to parent and child companies.
Courts and tribunals
CanLII publishes court and tribunal decisions from across Canada for free, and the Supreme Court of Canada publishes its own judgments. Decisions are primary sources: read the reasons, not just the headline.
Government transparency records
- The Open Government Portal (open.canada.ca) holds federal datasets, contracts over $10,000 and other proactive disclosures.
- The Registry of Lobbyists shows who is lobbying federal officials, for whom and on what.
- Elections Canada publishes political financing returns and contributions.
- The Canada Gazette records regulations, appointments and official notices.
- The Canada Revenue Agency’s list of charities includes annual information returns with revenue, spending and directors.
Sanctions and leaks
Check organizations against Canada’s Consolidated Canadian Autonomous Sanctions List and the U.S. OFAC sanctions list. The ICIJ Offshore Leaks database lets you search entities named in major leak investigations; appearing there is not proof of wrongdoing, so report it with care.
Method
Record the registry, the search terms and the date of every lookup, and save a copy of each result. Search name variants and former names. Reconcile conflicting records rather than picking the one you prefer, and state plainly what the records cannot tell you.