How to Find Unclaimed Money in Canada (2026)

The Canada Revenue Agency was holding more than 10.7 million cheques Canadians never cashed as of April 2026, worth over $1.87 billion, and the average one is about $175. That’s one of four places unclaimed money sits in Canada. The others are the Bank of Canada, Service Canada, and a provincial registry if you live in British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec or New Brunswick. All four are free to search, and you can work through the whole list in about ten minutes.

Where does unclaimed money sit in Canada?

Unclaimed money in Canada is split across four separate systems, and no single search covers them all. Dormant bank accounts go to the Bank of Canada. Uncashed tax and benefit cheques stay with the CRA or Service Canada. Everything else, from credit union balances to court deposits, depends entirely on which province you’re in.

The split isn’t tidy, and it’s the reason so many people give up halfway. Each system was built by a different level of government for a different kind of money, so the only way through is to check them one at a time.

How does money end up at the Bank of Canada?

Under section 438 of the Bank Act (opens in a new tab), when a deposit at a federally regulated bank goes 10 years with no transaction and no statement of account requested, the bank has to pay the balance to the Bank of Canada by December 31 of that year. The same rule covers cheques, drafts and bills of exchange issued by a bank and left unpaid for 10 years. Once the transfer happens, the bank is discharged from all liability and the Bank of Canada becomes the custodian.

Your bank writes to you three times first

None of this happens silently. The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (opens in a new tab) says your institution must contact you in writing after 2, 5 and 9 years of inactivity, with the notices going out each January to the last address it has on file. The nine-year letter is the one telling you the balance is about to be transferred.

That last address is how most people lose an account. The letters went somewhere, just not to where you live now. If you’ve ever switched banks and left the old chequing account open with a small balance in it, that’s the one to look for.

A balance can sit for 30 years and earn for 10

The Bank of Canada holds unclaimed balances of less than $1,000 for 30 years, and balances of $1,000 or more for 100 years. Interest works on a completely different clock. Section 438 says the Bank pays interest only if interest was payable under the original terms of the deposit, and then only “for a period not exceeding ten years” from the day it received the money.

So a $600 balance can sit in Ottawa for three decades while only the first ten years earn anything. After that the amount stays exactly where it is, and what it buys keeps shrinking.

How to search the registry

The search lives at the Bank of Canada’s Unclaimed Properties Office (opens in a new tab). It’s free and it asks for a name, a city and a province. Try every version of your name you have ever banked under, including a maiden name, a middle initial, and the spelling on a joint account you didn’t open yourself.

If you find a match, you select the property, submit a claim request, and say whether the original owner is living, deceased or a business. The office emails back a claim form and the list of documents it needs. Claims worth more than $5,000 have to be mailed rather than submitted online.

How do I find uncashed cheques from the CRA?

Sign in to CRA My Account and select “Uncashed cheques”, either on the Overview page or under Accounts and payments. It lists personal cheques more than six months old, including tax refunds, most credits, and benefit payments. Some of what turns up is genuinely old: the CRA says cheques in the system date back as far as 1998.

Old government cheques are still good

The CRA’s own page is blunt about this. “Government of Canada cheques never expire.” If you still have the paper cheque, the CRA says (opens in a new tab) you can cash it at any financial institution in Canada for no charge.

If you don’t have it, you download a pre-filled form PWGSC 535, Undertaking and Indemnity, from My Account, sign and date it by hand, and return it through Submit documents. The CRA won’t accept an electronic, digital or stamped signature on that form, which catches people out.

What the online tool won’t show you

The lookup only reaches personal cheques over six months old. Business cheques (corporate tax, GST/HST, payroll), trust cheques, COVID-19 benefit and subsidy payments, and anything sent by direct deposit aren’t in it.

For those you have to phone, and the CRA warns you may need more than one number: 1-800-959-8281 for personal refunds and payments made to a trust, 1-800-387-1193 for credit and benefit payments including COVID-19 benefits, and 1-800-959-5525 for anything to do with a business.

Benefit cheques are a separate call

CPP, OAS and EI run through Service Canada, not the CRA, so they aren’t in the My Account list either. For a missed CPP or OAS payment, call Service Canada at 1-800-277-9914. For EI, it’s 1-800-206-7218.

How much is actually sitting there

The pile keeps growing, which tells you how rarely people check. In an August 2022 statement (opens in a new tab), the CRA put it at about $1.4 billion across an estimated 8.9 million cheques, averaging $158 each, and noted that roughly two million cheques worth $802 million had already been claimed since the lookup tool launched in February 2020. By April 2026 it was over $1.87 billion across more than 10.7 million cheques, as reported in June (opens in a new tab), with the average up to about $175.

Does my province have an unclaimed property registry?

Four provinces run one you can search today: British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec and New Brunswick. Live anywhere else in Canada and there’s no provincial registry to check, which makes the three federal searches above your complete list.

What the provinces hold that Ottawa doesn’t

The Bank Act reaches banks, so a forgotten account at an ordinary provincial credit union doesn’t go to the Bank of Canada, and neither do court deposits, estate money or security deposits. That’s what fills the provincial registries.

There’s one exception worth knowing. A handful of credit unions have gone federal, and the Act counts a federal credit union as a bank, so their dormant balances follow the bank rules instead. Coast Capital Savings in BC and UNI Financial Cooperation in New Brunswick are the two you’re most likely to have banked with, and both land at the Bank of Canada.

BC Unclaimed is holding $222 million and returned $3,797,213 to people in 2025. Its largest single dormant account is worth $1.9 million. New Brunswick’s FundsFinderNB holds $42 million and has reunited more than $4.06 million with its owners. Alberta’s registry listed roughly 344,808 items worth an estimated $168 million as of March 31, 2025.

Ontario passed a law for this and never turned it on

Ontario is the biggest gap in the country. It passed the Unclaimed Intangible Property Act in 1989, never proclaimed it in force, and the statute was repealed at the end of 2011. A consultation in 2012 went nowhere.

Five provinces have general unclaimed property legislation, according to Blakes (opens in a new tab): Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Quebec and New Brunswick. Manitoba is the odd one out, with a statute but no public registry to search, which is why the practical count is four. For an Ontarian, a Nova Scotian or a Saskatchewanian, the Bank of Canada, the CRA and Service Canada are the entire search.

Quebec runs its own system

Quebec’s register is administered by Revenu Québec, it’s free, and it’s updated weekly. It covers unclaimed successions and inactive financial products held at Quebec institutions, which is where a dormant Desjardins account goes. Heirs have ten years from the opening of a succession to claim an inheritance.

Balances at a federally chartered bank aren’t in it. Those go to the Bank of Canada, the same as everyone else’s.

Should you pay someone to find it for you?

No. Every registry on this page is free to search and free to claim, and the paperwork is a form plus proof of who you are. Locator firms are legal and some are perfectly legitimate, but they take a cut of money you can collect yourself for nothing.

Alberta caps the fee. Most places don’t.

Alberta’s rule is the clearest in the country: the locator fee “cannot be greater than 10% of the value of the property”, and the province tells you to get the arrangement in writing before you agree to anything. There’s no equivalent cap across most of Canada, so a finder elsewhere can ask for whatever you’ll accept.

The registries send letters, not emails

Both BC Unclaimed and FundsFinderNB run standing fraud warnings, and they exist for a reason. The provincial programs and the Bank of Canada reach people by mail, so an unsolicited email or phone call about unclaimed funds, especially one asking for a fee up front or your banking details, is a phishing attempt.

The CRA is the one exception, and only if you’ve signed up for its email notifications: it has emailed some benefit recipients to tell them a cheque is waiting. Even then it won’t ask for your banking details by email, so you can ignore the message entirely and go check My Account yourself.

Expect it to be slow

Alberta reviews claims within 120 days of receiving them, longer if it needs more documents, and a claim has to be filed within ten years of the province receiving the property. Nothing here happens in an afternoon. It’s free, though, and the money is already yours.

What to do with money you didn’t know you had

Most registry hits are small. $158 was the CRA’s own average, and plenty of dormant balances come in under $100. That makes it easy to treat the whole thing as a bonus and spend it in the same week it arrives, which is a shame when you went looking for it in the first place.

Somewhere useful is better: a first emergency fund, or the same account your tax refund lands in.

Lodavo is a free Canadian app built to make that part more fun. The more you save, the more free tickets you get in a weekly cash draw, with up to $10,000 on the line and at least $100 going to a user every week. It works with the bank you already have, so there’s nothing to move and no account to open.

Go and check

Ten minutes gets you through all four searches. The worst outcome is finding out nobody owes you anything, which is worth knowing. The best is a cheque from 2011 you’d completely forgotten about.

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