What to Do After a Car Accident in Canada

You are shaken, possibly sore, and someone is telling you to call somebody. Most advice you find online quietly assumes you live in Ontario. You may not.

Four steps apply after any collision in Canada. Get medical care and say plainly that you were in a crash. Report it to your own insurer, because every province requires that regardless of fault. Find out which system covers you, since four provinces run public insurance and the rest run private. Start a dated record the same day. Everything after that is decided where you live, because Canada runs thirteen separate motor vehicle injury systems that disagree about who pays, what is covered and whether you are permitted to sue at all.

A motor vehicle injury system is the combination of who insures you, what benefits you can claim without proving fault and whether you keep the right to sue the other driver. Canada has thirteen of them, one for every province and territory.

Which insurer handles your claim after a car accident in Canada?

Your own, in every province, whether or not the other driver caused it. Who your own insurer is depends on where you live.

Four provinces run public insurance for injury claims. British Columbia is covered by the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, Saskatchewan by Saskatchewan Government Insurance and Manitoba by Manitoba Public Insurance. In Quebec, bodily injury is covered by the Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec, while damage to the vehicle stays with a private insurer.

Everywhere else the insurer is a private company you chose yourself. Ontario and Alberta run on private coverage, as do all four Atlantic provinces and all three territories.

The practical difference is who you telephone first. In a public system you contact the provincial insurer directly. In a private system you contact your own broker or insurer, and the other driver's insurer is a separate party with separate interests.

Can you sue the other driver after a car accident in Canada?

It depends entirely on where you were hurt, and the thirteen systems diverge sharply here.

In Quebec you cannot sue for bodily injury. The public plan has been the sole route since 1978, in exchange for benefits paid regardless of who caused the collision, and what that plan pays, along with the two sixty-day clocks for challenging a decision, is set out in what the SAAQ pays.

In Manitoba the Personal Injury Protection Plan replaced the right to sue in 1994, which makes a single decision by a case manager the whole claim, and puts two deadlines at the centre of it: what happens when MPI says no. In British Columbia the Enhanced Care model, in force since 1 May 2021, removed most rights to sue for injury and replaced them with expanded care and recovery benefits, which are set out in what ICBC owes you under Enhanced Care. Saskatchewan is unusual. Drivers there choose between a no fault package and a tort package that keeps the right to sue, and unless they filed a declaration they have the no fault one: which SGI coverage do you have.

In Ontario, Alberta, the Atlantic provinces and the territories you keep the right to sue, subject to thresholds, deductibles and caps that vary by jurisdiction. Ontario runs a hybrid. It pays accident benefits regardless of fault under the Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule while preserving a separate claim against the at-fault driver. Two processes, running at once, with different rules and different deadlines. What comes inside an Ontario policy narrowed on 1 July 2026, which is why the first question there is now whether you can claim lost wages at all.

Alberta is on a clock of its own. For collisions on or after 1 January 2027 it moves to a care-first system that pays benefits regardless of fault and removes most of the right to sue. A collision before that date stays under the rules in force today, which is one reason the date of a crash there matters as much as anything else about it: what the minor injury cap in Alberta covers, and what changes in 2027.

Where the right to sue is kept, a cap is often where the claim is actually decided. Alberta and the three Maritime provinces each limit what can be paid for pain and suffering on a defined set of injuries, at different amounts and under different tests: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.

One group has a different answer again. If you were driving for work when the collision happened, a workers compensation system is involved alongside the auto one, and it can remove the right to sue even in a province that otherwise keeps it. Whether it does turns on what the other driver was doing at the moment of impact. That situation carries elections and deadlines of its own, set out in which claim and which province applies to injured truck drivers.

What deadlines apply after a car accident in Canada?

Deadlines are where a real injury becomes a refused claim, and no two jurisdictions share the same set.

Ontario is the worked example. You have 7 days to notify your insurer of an accident benefits claim and 30 days to submit the completed application. A collision must be reported at a Collision Reporting Centre within 24 hours where combined damage appears to exceed $5,000, a threshold raised from $2,000 on 1 January 2025. A tort claim must be started within 2 years. A denied benefit must be disputed at the Licence Appeal Tribunal within 2 years, running from the insurer's refusal rather than from the accident date, under section 56 of the Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule.

Those figures are Ontario figures. Do not carry them across a border. Every province and territory sets its own notice period, its own application window, its own limitation period and its own appeal body. Find yours below.

If a benefit has already been refused, the clock you are on usually started at that refusal rather than at the collision. What to do when an injury claim is denied in Canada covers the steps that apply in every jurisdiction and where to find free help in yours.

What are you allowed to do after a car accident?

More than most injured people believe, and none of it depends on which province you are in.

You are allowed to decline a recorded statement to the other driver's insurer until you have taken advice.

You are allowed to ask for the questions in writing and to answer them in writing instead.

You are allowed to see a doctor even if you felt fine at the scene. Adrenaline masks pain in the first hours, and whiplash, concussion and soft tissue injuries commonly declare themselves days later.

You are allowed to ask for any decision in writing, including a refusal.

You are allowed to bring someone with you to an appointment and to take notes while you are there.

What should you record after a car accident in Canada?

Six things, and they carry in every province even though nothing else does.

1. The collision itself. Date, time, location, weather, road conditions, the other driver's name and plate, the police file or report number and the names of any witnesses.
2. Symptoms, daily. What hurts, where, how badly on a scale you use consistently, how you slept and how your mood and energy were.
3. Appointments. Date, provider, what was discussed, what was recommended, referrals made, tests ordered and tests completed.
4. Every call and letter. Date, the name of the person, what was said, what was agreed and what was refused.
5. Money. Prescriptions, equipment, physiotherapy, massage therapy, parking and travel to appointments. You cannot claim what you cannot prove.
6. What you cannot do. Work missed, tasks handed to someone else, activities dropped, caregiving now shared. The category people leave out of a record, and often the one that matters.

The National MVA Recovery Guide holds all six and works anywhere in Canada. Your provincial MVA Companion Guide holds the part that does not travel, which is the insurer, the forms, the deadlines and the dispute route where you live. Most people need both, because a careful daily record filed after a deadline still fails, and a perfectly met deadline with nothing behind it fails too.

Read next

• The First 72 Hours After a Car Accident
• How to Document Injuries After a Car Accident
• Injury Claim Denied in Canada: What to Do Next

Last verified September 2026. Deadlines cited in detail are Ontario provisions under the Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule and do not apply elsewhere. Every province and territory sets its own notice periods, limitation periods and appeal bodies. Insurance systems are amended from time to time: most Ontario accident benefits became optional on 1 July 2026, and Alberta's system changes on 1 January 2027, so confirm the current position on your provincial page before relying on it. Hurt Square Companion Guides are tools for documenting your own recovery. They are not legal, medical or insurance advice.