Territories Car Accident Claim Deadlines
The dates that govern a car accident claim in Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Free. No email required. For drivers, passengers, cyclists and people on foot.
This page exists because almost nothing is written for the North. Search for how long you have to make a claim in Canada and you will find the same two year answer everywhere. In the territories the number is the same. The date it counts from is not.
THE SEVEN CLOCKS
Two of the seven run out inside your first month. Four of the seven are Yukon figures, because Yukon is the only one of the three territories whose schedule of benefits we can quote. One more clock is not on this line at all, because it sits in your own policy and only your insurer can tell you what it is. Not drawn to scale.
Inside the first month Longer, and each counts from its own day
The two years to sue is the one clock that is the same in all three territories, and it is the one most likely to be counted from the wrong day. The rest of the line is Yukon. The Northwest Territories and Nunavut set their own benefits, and this page says so rather than borrowing Yukon's numbers for them. Everything below sets out each clock, what actually starts it, and what to write down while it runs.
How long do you have to sue after a car accident in Yukon, the Northwest Territories or Nunavut?
Two years in all three. Yukon sets it in the Limitation of Actions Act, RSY 2002, c. 139 at section 2(1)(d). The Northwest Territories sets it in the Limitation of Actions Act, RSNWT 1988, c. L-8 at the same section number. Nunavut applies the Northwest Territories Act as it stood when Nunavut was created.
| Territory | Where the two years comes from |
|---|---|
| Yukon | Limitation of Actions Act, RSY 2002, c. 139, section 2(1)(d) |
| Northwest Territories | Limitation of Actions Act, RSNWT 1988, c. L-8, the same section number |
| Nunavut | The Northwest Territories Act, as it stood when Nunavut was created |
All three use nearly identical wording. An action for injury to the person, whether arising from an unlawful act or from negligence, must be brought within two years after the cause of action arose.
Two years is the outer limit, not a promise. Both Acts say the two year period does not apply where another Act specially limits the time, so a different statute or your own policy can impose something shorter.
That is exactly why one of the two questions to put to your insurer in writing is what your deadline is to notify them and to submit a claim. The court deadline and the policy deadline are not the same deadline.
When does the two year clock start in the territories?
On the day of the collision, not on the day you worked out how badly you were hurt. Most provinces moved to a limitation period that starts when you discovered the injury and knew who caused it. Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut did not. Their Limitation of Actions Acts give two years for injury to the person and run that period from when the cause of action arose, which for a collision is the day of the collision.
Read that phrase again. After the cause of action arose. Not after you discovered it.
The modern provincial statutes say discovery in so many words. The territorial ones do not, and that single difference is the whole finding on this page.
This matters most to anyone whose injury took months to show itself. If you are counting from the day you finally understood how hurt you were, you may be counting from the wrong day. Count from the accident, and get your own date confirmed by a lawyer early.
Is it too late to sue if you are already past two years?
Not automatically, and the answer turns on evidence rather than on sympathy. Courts have at times read a discovery allowance into older wording of this kind, so a late claim is not automatically hopeless. That is an argument made after the fact rather than a rule you can plan around, and it is not something to rely on.
A thin record costs you that argument. If the two years run from the collision and you are late, the only way back is showing when you actually knew how serious the injury was. That case is built entirely from dated notes and medical records made at the time. Nobody can reconstruct it afterwards.
Get the date confirmed rather than assuming it has gone. This page says it twice for a reason. Have your own limitation date confirmed by a lawyer early, and where the injured person is a child, ask about the under disability provision by name.
Does the territorial deadline change for a child or someone under disability?
Yes, and the provision has a name worth using. Under the Northwest Territories Act, which Nunavut also applies, someone under disability when the cause of action arises may bring the action within the ordinary period or at any time within two years after that disability ends. Disability there covers being a minor or unsoundness of mind.
Yukon's Act is built on the same model. That is as far as this page will put it, because built on the same model is not the same as word for word identical. Confirm your own date rather than assuming.
If the injured person is a child, this is the provision to ask a lawyer about by name. A collision at fifteen is not necessarily a claim that expires at seventeen.
Who handles a car accident injury claim in the territories?
Private insurers. There is no public insurer in the North. No ICBC, no SGI, no MPI, no SAAQ. You deal with your own insurance company for accident benefits, exactly as you would in Alberta or Nova Scotia.
The system is a combination of no fault and tort. Your own policy pays accident benefits whoever caused the collision, and you keep the right to sue an at fault driver for damages beyond what those benefits cover. Both halves matter in the North, because the benefits side is capped low and the tort side is where the rest of it has to go.
Report immediately and write it down. Notice requirements sit in your policy and in the territorial Insurance Act rather than in a public scheme you can look up in one place. Reporting the day it happens removes the argument entirely.
There is no single public page that tells you your own notice deadline. There is a policy, and there is an insurer who has to answer you in writing.
If your claim were decided tomorrow, what would your file say?
People who were genuinely hurt have lost benefits over a date nobody recorded, a form that arrived late, or a call nobody wrote down. Caught early that is fixable. A year on it is an argument you have to win. The Territories MVA Companion Guide keeps every date on this page in one place, with the form that goes with each and room to write down what actually happened. $24.99, yours to keep.
How much are accident benefits in the territories?
Less than almost anywhere else in Canada. An Alberta claimant works with a fifty thousand dollar medical ceiling. Yukon's is a fifth of that, and it has not moved since 1995.
Each territory sets its own schedule, so the first thing to establish is which one applies to you. Yukon publishes its schedule under the Insurance Act as O.I.C. 1988/090, and this is what it provides.
| Benefit | Limit |
|---|---|
| Medical, surgical, dental, hospital, nursing and ambulance | $10,000 per person, for expenses incurred within two years |
| Weekly disability | 80 per cent of gross weekly earnings to a maximum of $300 a week, nothing for the first seven days, nothing beyond 104 weeks |
| Unpaid homemaker | $100 a week for up to 26 weeks, where completely incapacitated |
| Funeral expenses | $2,000 |
| Minimum third party liability | $200,000, the same across all three territories |
The Yukon disability test is strict. The injury has to wholly and continuously disable you from performing any and every duty of your occupation, which is a more demanding standard than the substantial inability test used in the Maritime provinces.
What that means in practice is simple. A lower ceiling is reached faster.
Tracking what you have spent against the limit matters more in the North than it does in the South, not less.
What are the accident benefit limits in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut?
We are still not quoting benefit figures for either. Each sets its benefits under its own Northwest Territories Insurance Act or Nunavut Insurance Act, and we will not publish a dollar limit we cannot stand behind today.
Two places will give you the real number. The Northwest Territories has an Office of the Superintendent of Insurance whose work includes interpreting that Act. And your own policy's accident benefits section, requested in writing, gives you the number that governs your claim.
One figure is shared across all three territories. The minimum third party liability is $200,000 in Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut alike.
This is a gap on the page and we would rather show it than fill it. Yukon's numbers are on this page because Yukon publishes them in a form we could check. The other two are not, so nothing appears in their place.
Do not read Yukon's $10,000 as a Northwest Territories or Nunavut figure. If you live in either, the number that governs your claim is in your own policy, and the request for it goes in writing.
How do you claim medical travel and a flight south?
Keep every piece of it, starting with the first trip. Care may be a flight away. If you were medevaced or travelled south for treatment, keep the flights, the accommodation, the meals, the days you were away, and who travelled with you and why.
Those costs are large and they are routinely under claimed, because nobody kept the receipts. This is the single biggest difference between a Northern claim and a Southern one, and it is the part no national article prepares you for.
In Yukon, ambulance sits inside the same $10,000 line as medical, surgical, dental, hospital and nursing expenses, and that line covers expenses incurred within two years. One capped figure, several kinds of cost drawing on it, and a two year window on when the expense has to be incurred.
So record the trip, not just the receipt. A receipt shows an amount. What the trip cost you is the amount, the nights, the days away from work, the person who had to travel with you and the reason the treatment could not happen where you live. Write all of it down on the day, while it is still obvious.
Why does a gap in treatment count against you in the North?
Everything that makes a claim provable is harder here, and none of it is your fault.
Gaps in treatment get read as recovery. An adjuster in an office elsewhere sees six weeks with no appointments and concludes you got better. You know it meant the physiotherapist visits the community monthly, or the road was closed, or there was no appointment to be had.
Write the reason down each time, on the day.
That note is the difference between a gap and an explained gap.
Say every symptom out loud at every visit. Where appointments are scarce, the medical record is thinner by default, and a thin record is read as a mild injury. If it is not spoken it is not written down.
What should you do first if you were hurt in the North?
Report the collision to police and to your own insurer immediately. Get seen by a health professional even if you feel able to carry on. Then ask your insurer two questions in writing and keep the answers.
The two questions, word for word.
What are my accident benefit limits under this policy.
What is my deadline to notify you and to submit a claim.
Those two answers, in writing, sit alongside the two year court deadline on this page and are the dates your claim actually turns on.
Did the territorial deadlines change in 2026?
The deadlines did not change. This page did. An earlier version said the territories had not adopted a two year limitation period. That was wrong and has been corrected. All three set two years for injury to the person. What they have not adopted is the discovery based starting date used in most provinces.
The benefit figures are older than any of that. Yukon publishes its schedule as O.I.C. 1988/090 and its medical ceiling has not moved since 1995.
The correction is set out in full in the verification block below. If you read an earlier version of this page and concluded that no limitation period applied to you, read the first two sections again.
Do you need a lawyer to make a claim in the territories?
Not for the first steps. Reporting the collision to police and to your own insurer is something you do yourself. So is being seen by a health professional. So is asking your insurer, in writing, for your benefit limits and for your notice deadline.
Where this page does send you to a lawyer, it does it twice, and both times it is about a date. The first is your own limitation date, which is worth having confirmed early rather than assumed, because it runs from the collision. The second is the under disability provision, which is the one to ask about by name where the injured person is a child.
What no lawyer can do afterwards is reconstruct the record you did not keep. Whatever you decide about representation, the dates and the notes are yours to make.
Dates are only half of it. Knowing when a form is due does not tell you how medical travel and air ambulance count against a medical limit set in 1995, what to record on every trip south so the cost is recoverable or why most of what a serious Northern injury really costs ends up in the claim against the at fault driver.
Recovering after a car accident in the Territories covers the whole process and is free to read. Hurt in another province? Start from the guides by province and territory.
Last verified: August 2026
Checked against: the Yukon Limitation of Actions Act, RSY 2002, c. 139, the Northwest Territories Limitation of Actions Act, RSNWT 1988, c. L-8 as duplicated for Nunavut, the Yukon Insurance Act Schedule of Benefits, O.I.C. 1988/090, the Northwest Territories Insurance Act and the Nunavut Insurance Act. The Yukon third party liability minimum was cross-checked against the Insurance Bureau of Canada.
An earlier version of this page said the territories had not adopted a two year limitation period. That was wrong and has been corrected. All three set two years for injury to the person. What they have not adopted is the discovery based starting date used in most provinces.
We publish no benefit figures for the Northwest Territories or Nunavut, because we have not confirmed them.
If you know those figures or find something here that is wrong, write to Recovery@hurtsquare.ca and we will correct it publicly.
Keeping the record these deadlines depend on
In the North the record does more work. It has to explain the distances, the waiting, the travel and the gaps that someone reading your file from an office in another province will otherwise read as recovery.
The date of the collision, because that is where the two years start. The date you were first seen, and what you said at each visit. Why each gap in treatment happened, written on the day it happened. Every flight south, every night away, and who travelled with you. What each expense cost and when it was incurred, because in Yukon the medical benefit is capped and counted within two years.
Recovery First. Pressure Last.
EVERYTHING ON THIS PAGE, AND WHAT COMES NEXT
The Territories MVA Companion Guide
This page tells you the dates. The guide walks you through them, and gives you somewhere to write down what happened on each one.
- The two year limitation for all three territories, and why it counts from the collision
- The Yukon schedule of benefits in full, with somewhere to track what you have spent against it
- A travel log for every trip south: flights, nights away, who came with you and why
- Fillable on your phone, at 11pm, in bed
$24.99 · instant download · yours to keep
See the Territories Companion GuideMost people take it with the National MVA Recovery Guide, the daily record of symptoms, appointments, calls and costs a claim is eventually judged on. People who have only one tend to end up with a careful record aimed at the wrong process, or the right dates and nothing to put in front of them.
Not ready for that? The scene checklist for the first three days is at hurtsquare.ca/72. It is free and asks nothing of you.
This page is general information for people in Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. It is not legal or medical advice. Rules differ by jurisdiction and change over time. Confirm anything specific to your situation with a lawyer or your insurer.