Federal Corporate Search

Federal corporate searches, or federal corporation searches as they are sometimes called, provide information about Canadian federal companies which have been incorporated pursuant to the Canada Business Corporations Act.

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Federal companies carry on business in the province or territory in which the registered office address is located. If you are not sure whether the company you wish to search is a federal company or registered as a provincial company, contact us and we will be glad to let you know what jurisdiction the corporation is incorporated under for free.

The federal government only provides certain information to the public about federal companies. For instance you can find out the names of the directors of a federal company but you cannot find out their home addresses. A record of the home addresses is kept with the federal government and a separate type of search must be done in order to find out those home addresses.

Further to federal government will only show shareholder information in some cases and in most cases this information is not shown so you should not perform a federal corporate search in order to solely find out the shareholders (or owners) since it will most likely not be recorded.

Officers are also not recorded by the federal government.

The information that a federal corporate search will provide you is as follows:

  • All previous names of a corporation
  • The registered office address
  • Whether the company is in good standing and has filed all of its annual returns
  • Which annual returns have been filed and are not filed.
  • Whether the corporation is in the process of being dissolved for non-filing of tax returns or annual returns
  • Whether the corporation has been dissolved and then revived
  • The most recent amalgamation of a corporation and the names of the companies that amalgamated to form that corporation
  • The names of all of the directors of a corporation

A federal corporation must file an annual return each year and the federal government does not let you know when this return needs to be filed. If this return is not filed each year eventually the corporation will be dissolved. Performing a corporate search can let you know whether there is a filing that is due that you are not aware of for your federal corporation.