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Business data in Canada. Where the records live.
Canada keeps its corporate record across fourteen separate registries : Corporations Canada federally, plus one in each of the ten provinces and three territories, and its roughly 1.2 million employer businesses are split between them, with Québec's filed largely in French.
What Atlas holds for Canada
Source: the Atlas database, updated automatically.
The official records
The legal source of truth for Canada is Corporations Canada.
Canada has no single national company register. Corporations Canada holds only federally incorporated firms; most businesses are filed provincially, through bodies such as Ontario's Business Registry, BC Registries, the Registraire des entreprises du Québec and Alberta's registry-agent network, each with its own search interface, fee model and data format. A company carries a nine-digit CRA Business Number for tax and a separate seven- or eight-digit corporation number from whichever registry incorporated it, so the same firm can surface under two identifiers.
A newly incorporated Montréal consultancy can sit in the REQ for months before any data vendor notices it. Reading the registries directly, in both official languages, is the only reliable way to catch that activity early.
How to use the register
- Start from the register, not from a bought list. It is the legal record of every company.
- Read the status field. Registers keep closed companies too. See how many have closed in other registers.
- Check the website belongs to the company, with the registration number or a distinguishing name on the page.
Sources
Descriptions are based on the national sources above. Figures in the text are rounded and change over time. Found an error? Write to atlasforgex@proton.me. More countries: business data by country and registers by country.