Canadian Individuals With Significant Control (ISC) Data Guide (2025 Update)
Last updated: December 2025
Verifying Canadian individuals with significant control (ISCs) isn’t easy. For two reasons.
The first is that few Canadian provinces have publicly available shareholder disclosures.
The second is that even a smaller number makes beneficial ownership information public.
The result? Canada ranks 70th globally, behind Bahrain and El Salvador, in terms of publicly accessible corporate registry information.
In this article, we’ll look at how financial crime teams can access Canadian ISC registry data, other ownership data, beneficial ownership rules in Canada, and alternative ways to verify Canadian ISCs.
What Is a UBO in Canada?
Canada does not define “UBO” (Ultimate Beneficial Owner) as a term in its federal corporate law. Instead, the federal statute – the Canada Business Corporations Act (CBCA) – uses an official legal term, Individual with significant control” (ISC).
Government guidance explains who ISCs are and how to identify them:
An ISC is someone who:
Owns, controls, or directs 25 % or more of the voting shares or their fair market value.
Has direct or indirect influence over the corporation without owning shares.
Jointly holds shares with others so that together they meet the 25 % threshold.
How trust relationships are caught: “If a trust owns or controls 25 % or more of the corporation’s shares, the individuals in control of the trust are each considered to be ISCs…”
Which Canadian Registries Offer ISC Registers?
Just 17% of Canadian provinces and territories have public ISC registries. 58% keep UBO information private. 25% don’t collect it at all.
Public: Only Quebec and the Federal Register (for national corporations) have public ISC registers.
Private: Ontario, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Yukon have private ISC registers available to law enforcement.
None: Alberta, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut have not yet adopted transparency register legislation.
Reforms: British Columbia claimed it would make its ISC register public by the summer of 2025, but this hasn’t happened.
This means financial crime teams must look for alternatives, such as shareholder information.
Where to Access Shareholder Information in Canada
Just 33% of Canadian provincial and territorial registries provide shareholder information available to purchase and download:
Quebec: Provides the three biggest shareholders.
Alberta: Disclosures can be obtained by authorised registry agents.
Manitoba: Available in Company Profiles.
Saskatchewan: Information on directors and owners can be retrieved in a Company Profile.
Takeaway: Despite not having ISC registers, Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan do provide shareholder information.
The Alternatives
It’s a little-known fact that, under the Corporations Returns Act, Statistics Canada collects legal ownership information from incorporated businesses in Canada whose gross revenues exceed $200 million, whose assets exceed $600 million or whose long-term debt or equity owing to non-residents exceeds a book value of $1 million.
Fee: An ownership request costs $1.
Access: Public (available to domestic and foreign reporting entities).
Data: Legal ownership disclosed, not real (or beneficial) ownership or control.
What If You Can’t Verify the Beneficial Owner?
Under Canadian AML law, obliged entities use the “senior management official rule” when UBO verification can’t be done.
According to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) guidance, you must “take reasonable measures to verify the identity of the entity's chief executive officer or of the person who performs that function” or apply EDD for high-risk clients.
The bottom line: Designate the “senior management official” as a last resort, once all reasonable measures to verify the actual UBO have failed.
What to Do (According to FINTRAC)
If you can’t verify the UBO, categorise the entity as high risk.
Apply enhanced ongoing monitoring.
Keep a record of these “reasonable measures” you’ve taken in case of a FINTRAC examination.
Things to Look Out For
Under Canadian law, only federally incorporated corporations are required to disclose the nominee status of their shareholders to the official registry.
But that doesn’t mean you’re left in the fog. There are three circumstances in which the nominee status must be disclosed: during litigation, under investigation, or during onboarding.
Under the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Regulations (PCMLTFR), legal entities must disclose their real shareholders during onboarding.
According to the World Bank, this “could include disclosing their status as nominees”.
Verify Canadian ISCs With Live Shareholder Data
Kyckr connects financial crime teams in real time to official company registers, including Canada’s 14 provinces, enabling lightning-fast retrieval of structured company registry data and company filings.
Whether by the Kyckr API or the Kyckr Portal, financial crime teams can automatically verify Canadian businesses using official company information, time and date-stamped at the time of retrieval.
Book a demo to find out more.