Canada has no single personal-property registry. Each common-law province runs its own, under its own Act, and “run a PPSA search” only means something once you have named the province — usually more than one.
Key takeaways
SECTION 01 OF 04
Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba each enacted close variants of the same model personal property security legislation, and it shows: all three create the identical structure of a debtor-name, serial-number and registration-number search, a printed search result admissible as evidence, and a separate notice that can be filed against land where the collateral is or may become a fixture. Alberta’s Personal Property Security Act, R.S.A. 2000, c. P-7, s.48(1) lets a person request “a search according to the name of a debtor… a search according to the serial number of goods… [or] a search according to a registration number”.
Nova Scotia keeps the same three search types in its own numbering — s.49(2) of its Personal Property Security Act provides that a search “may be conducted according to… (a) the name of the debtor… (b) the serial number of goods… or (c) a registration number” — and New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador each run their own Act again. None of these share a database with each other or with Ontario.
SECTION 02 OF 04
Where Ontario leaves the standard to a “reasonable person… misled materially” test, Alberta’s Act says the quiet part out loud. Section 43(7) provides: “A registration is invalid if a search of the records of the Registry using the name, as prescribed, of any of the debtors… does not disclose the registration as an exact or inexact match.” Section 43(7.1) applies the identical rule to serial-numbered goods, and s.43(7.2) closes the loophole: “If a registration is disclosed as an inexact match… the registration is not, by that fact alone, valid.”
Saskatchewan’s Personal Property Security Act, 1993, c. P-6.2, runs the same three search types at s.48, confirming the harmonisation goes beyond drafting style into the actual mechanics a searcher relies on.
SECTION 03 OF 04
British Columbia’s Personal Property Security Act, R.S.B.C. 1996, c. 359, fixes its own fee schedule in a Schedule to the Act. Item 11 sets the charge “for a search of the registry… using the BC Online information service and a person’s own computer… $7”, rising to $10 if the search is “conducted by government personnel” instead. Ontario’s current PPSA regulation, O. Reg. 56/07, carries no comparable schedule — the search charge there is an administrative ServiceOntario fee, not a figure fixed in the Act or its regulations, and none is quoted here for that reason.
SECTION 04 OF 04
Every province above runs a debtor-name-and-serial-number PPSA registry descended from the same model law. Québec runs none of them: it has no Personal Property Security Act, and a search there means the register of personal and movable real rights instead, under a wholly different Civil Code mechanism. Our companion piece on buying business assets in Québec: the movable hypothec and the RDPRM covers that registry’s own search mechanics in depth, and the BC/AB contrast on what a registered interest survives against a buyer is covered in security that follows the assets: the BC and Alberta PPSAs compared. Naming the province, not the registry, is the first step — and naming Québec means leaving the PPSA framework altogether. Treadstone Law’s note on serial-numbered goods is written for Ontario specifically; it is a genuinely useful companion to the debtor-name-versus-serial-number distinction this page covers province by province, but it does not itself address the multi-registry problem.
No. Canada has no single personal-property registry — each of the nine common-law provinces and territories runs its own PPSA registry under its own Act, and a search in one shows nothing about a debtor’s registrations filed anywhere else in the country.
No. Quebec has no Personal Property Security Act at all — it runs a completely different system, the register of personal and movable real rights (the RDPRM), under the Civil Code rather than under PPSA legislation like the other provinces.
No. Alberta and Saskatchewan write the match standard directly into their Acts — a registration is invalid if a search of the debtor’s prescribed name does not disclose it as an exact or inexact match, a more mechanical test than Ontario’s.
Sources
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