There is no federal freight broker licence in Canada. Here is what the law actually requires of an intermediary — and the licensed role it gets confused with.
Key takeaways
Canada has no federal freight broker licence. The federal statute that governs interprovincial trucking regulates the undertaking that moves the goods, not the intermediary that arranges the move, so there is no equivalent of the American broker authority to apply for and no federal bond to file.
That is not the same as “nothing applies”. What applies to a Canadian freight broker is ordinary business registration, tax registration, record-keeping and contract law — plus, if you touch cross-border freight, an enrolment with the CBSA. And there is one genuinely licensed role that is constantly confused with brokering: the customs broker.
The Motor Vehicle Transport Act defines an extra-provincial truck undertaking as a work or undertaking, for the transport of goods by motor vehicle other than a bus, that connects a province with any other or others of the provinces or extends beyond the limits of a province. The operative words are “for the transport of goods by motor vehicle”. An intermediary that arranges transport and owns no trucks is not carrying on that undertaking.
The obligation the Act imposes follows from that definition: no person or body shall operate an extra-provincial motor carrier undertaking except under a safety fitness certificate issued by a provincial authority, and a certificate so issued is valid throughout Canada. That is the licence in Canadian trucking, and it belongs to the carrier.
So the honest framing for a broker is this: you do not hold the safety fitness certificate, but you had better be able to prove the carrier you tendered to does. That is the substance of carrier vetting, and it is where the real exposure sits.
There is a federal licence in the freight world, and it is not for arranging trucks. Under the Customs Act, the Minister may issue to a person qualified under the regulations a licence to transact business as a customs broker, and the Act then provides that no person shall transact or attempt to transact business as a customs broker, or hold himself out as a customs broker, unless the person holds such a licence or is qualified under the regulations and duly authorised by a licence holder — while preserving everyone’s right to transact business on their own behalf.
The qualifications are prescribed, including citizenship, residence and knowledge of the laws and procedures relating to importations and exportations, and the Customs Brokers Licensing Regulations set out the prescribed qualifications, application, security, fees, duration and examinations. If your business plan involves accounting for goods and paying duties as somebody’s agent, that is the regime you are entering — and calling yourself a customs broker without the licence is expressly prohibited.
If you arrange freight into Canada you may find yourself in the CBSA’s trade chain rather than outside it. The CBSA states that carriers and freight forwarders must enrol for a carrier code to do business with the agency, alongside separate requirements for sufferance warehouse operators.
A carrier code is an enrolment, not a professional licence — but it has operational teeth. The cargo control number that identifies a shipment consists of the carrier code followed by a unique reference number, with the first four alphanumeric characters being the CBSA-approved carrier code. And the data itself has a deadline: in the highway mode conveyance and cargo information must be received and validated by the CBSA no later than one hour before arrival at the first point of arrival.
Because there is no licensing regime, your contract does the work a licence would otherwise do — and one federal regulation decides which law fills the blanks. The Conditions of Carriage Regulations, made under the Motor Vehicle Transport Act, provide that the conditions of carriage and limitations of liability applying to transport by an extra-provincial truck undertaking are those set out in the laws of the province in which the transport originates, and that in the absence of a provincial enactment dealing specifically with conditions of carriage and limitations of liability, those that apply are the ones agreed to by the undertaking.
Read that twice, because it is the most useful sentence in Canadian freight brokerage. Which province’s rules govern a move is decided by where the transport originates, not by where your office is. And where a province has not legislated, whatever you agreed is what governs — which puts a premium on having agreed something in writing. On the drafting side, see what makes a commercial contract enforceable in Ontario and whether limitation of liability clauses are enforceable.
GST/HST is the first. The Excise Tax Act requires that every person who makes a taxable supply in Canada in the course of a commercial activity be registered, except where the person is a small supplier, and a person is a small supplier where the relevant consideration does not exceed $30,000 on the statutory test. Freight brokerage revenue arrives in large gross amounts, so this threshold is usually crossed early. Practical invoicing questions are covered in whether your HST number has to appear on every invoice.
Records are the second. The Income Tax Act requires records to be retained until the expiration of six years from the end of the last taxation year to which they relate, and the Excise Tax Act imposes the same six-year period after the end of the year to which the records relate. If you transmit data to the CBSA, that has its own rule: records must be kept for a period of three complete calendar years plus the year during which the data was transmitted.
The confusion almost always comes from American material, so it is worth naming the difference plainly. This paragraph describes United States law, which does not apply in Canada. In the US, a property broker must have a surety bond or trust fund of $75,000 in effect, filed on Form BMC-84 or BMC-85, and the FMCSA will not register a broker until it is, with the registration remaining in effect only as long as that security does.
Canada has no counterpart to that filing. If you broker freight that moves into or out of the United States, the American requirements attach to the party holding US operating authority — which is a question about your US structure, not about a Canadian licence you have failed to find.
Worked example: a two-person brokerage starting in Ontario
Two former dispatchers set up a brokerage in Ontario moving dry van freight between Ontario and Quebec, with occasional loads into New York State. They spend three weeks looking for the licence to apply for, and find nothing, which they read as a sign they have missed something.
What they actually needed was five things: a registered business and a GST/HST registration once they crossed the small-supplier threshold; a written customer contract and a written carrier contract, drafted knowing that conditions of carriage follow the province where the transport originates; a carrier vetting file with the safety fitness certificate or CVOR standing of every carrier they use; a CBSA carrier code before they arranged the first cross-border load; and a records system built to hold six years.
The item that later mattered most was the second one. On a damaged-freight claim originating in Quebec, the question was not what their Ontario paperwork said in general, but what the conditions of carriage were for a movement originating in Quebec and what their own agreement said where nothing else governed.
Not by federal law. The $75,000 surety bond or trust fund is a United States requirement under 49 CFR 387.307 and does not apply to a Canadian domestic movement. Customers and carriers may still ask for financial assurance commercially, which is a negotiation rather than a licensing step.
The prohibition on holding yourself out applies to the customs broker title under section 9(4) of the Customs Act, not to freight brokerage. Be careful not to blur the two in your marketing, because the restricted term is the one that sounds similar.
Only if you operate commercial vehicles. Ontario requires a CVOR certificate for, among others, trucks with a registered gross weight or actual weight over 4,500 kg. A brokerage with no trucks does not hold one — but it should be checking that its carriers do.
Then you are two things at once, and the carrier half is regulated. You need the safety fitness certificate for the operating side under section 7 of the Motor Vehicle Transport Act if the undertaking is extra-provincial, plus the provincial registration where you are plated. Keep the two sets of records separate from the first day; see the legal issues in buying or selling a trucking company for why that separation matters later.
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