The dates that govern a car accident claim in Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Free. 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
Three of the seven run out inside your first month. All seven apply in Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut alike. How long you have to incur medical costs differs by territory and sits in the benefits table below. Not drawn to scale.
Inside the first month Longer, and each counts from its own day
Every clock on this line applies in all three territories. What differs is how much the benefits pay and how long you have to incur medical costs, which the table further down sets out territory by territory. The two years to sue is the clock most likely to be counted from the wrong day. 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 sets it in its own Limitation of Actions Act, C.S.Nu., c. L-110, with the same wording.
| 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 | Limitation of Actions Act, C.S.Nu., c. L-110, section 2(1)(d) |
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. All three 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 and Nunavut Acts, 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 says the same. Section 5 gives a person under disability two years after they first cease to be under disability, and section 1 defines disability as infancy or a mental disorder. 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 a private insurance company for accident benefits.
The system is a combination of no fault and tort. Accident benefits are paid whoever caused the collision, usually by the insurer of the vehicle involved, and for a pedestrian struck in Yukon the law makes the striking vehicle's insurer pay first. 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. The standard terms in all three territories ask for written notice of claim within 30 days of the accident and proof of claim within 90 days, or as soon as practicable after. Reporting the day it happens removes the argument entirely.
Thirty days is the standard. Your own policy confirms it, and your insurer 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.
How much are accident benefits in the territories?
It depends which territory you are in. The Northwest Territories and Nunavut share one set of figures. Yukon's are lower, and its schedule was last amended in 1995.
The first thing to establish is which territory's policy applies to you. Yukon publishes its schedule under the Insurance Act as O.I.C. 1988/090. The Northwest Territories and Nunavut set theirs out in each territory's standard owner's policy, S.P.F. No. 1.
| Benefit | Yukon | NWT and Nunavut |
|---|---|---|
| Medical, surgical, dental, hospital, nursing and ambulance | $10,000 per person, for expenses incurred within two years | $25,000 per person, for expenses incurred within four years |
| Weekly disability | 80 per cent of average gross weekly earnings, $100 minimum and $300 maximum a week, nothing for the first seven days, nothing beyond 104 weeks | 80 per cent of gross weekly income to a maximum of $140 a week, nothing for the first seven days, 104 weeks unless you can't do any suitable work. The injury must stop you working within 30 days |
| Unpaid homemaker | $100 a week for up to 26 weeks, where completely incapacitated | $100 a week for up to 12 weeks, where completely incapacitated |
| Funeral expenses | $2,000 | $1,000 |
| Minimum third party liability | $200,000 | $200,000 |
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 Northwest Territories and Nunavut.
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?
$25,000 for medical and rehabilitation, and up to $140 a week. Both territories use the same standard owner's policy wording, so the figures are identical. Medical and rehabilitation expenses are covered to $25,000 per person if they are incurred within four years of the accident.
The weekly benefit has a 30 day trigger. It is paid only if the injury stops you working within 30 days of the accident. It pays 80 per cent of gross weekly income to a maximum of $140 a week, after the first seven days, for up to 104 weeks, and longer only if you can't do any work you're reasonably suited for.
Your own policy still governs your claim. Ask for its accident benefits section in writing. The Northwest Territories also has an Office of the Superintendent of Insurance whose work includes interpreting the Insurance Act.
One figure is shared across all three territories. The minimum third party liability is $200,000 in Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut alike.
Do not read Yukon's $10,000 as a Northwest Territories or Nunavut figure, or the reverse. The territory whose policy covers you decides the limit.
A pedestrian hit in the Northwest Territories or Nunavut can claim under the policy of the vehicle that struck them and under a household policy at home, but can recover only one benefit in total. Tell both insurers.
Hit while walking? Our articles for Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut cover the first week, who to call and what to record.
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 only 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.
Something else changed in October 2026. This page now gives the Northwest Territories and Nunavut benefit figures, confirmed from each territory's standard owner's policy, alongside Yukon's schedule, which was last amended in 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 capped medical limit, 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: October 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, the Nunavut Limitation of Actions Act, C.S.Nu., c. L-110, the Yukon Insurance Act Schedule of Benefits, O.I.C. 1988/090 and section 167 of the Yukon Insurance Act, the standard owner's policy, S.P.F. No. 1, for the Northwest Territories and for Nunavut, 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.
In October 2026 we added the Northwest Territories and Nunavut benefit figures, confirmed from each territory's standard owner's policy, and corrected the Nunavut limitation citation.
If you 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 11 p.m., in bed
$24.99 · instant download
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.
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.