Debt Help in Canada – Why You Can Trust a Trustee

Posted by: shawn on 12/26/2010

As more and more Canadians sink deeper and deeper into financial quagmires, the field of professional debt help has exploded.  You see newspaper and television ads promising to cut your debt by as much as 70% in a matter of months.  In many cases that really is “too good to be true.”  So who can you trust to help you out?

Do your homework on debt help and sooner or later you will discover that the credit counseling and debt solution industry is totally unregulated with one exception – licensed bankruptcy trustees.

Some Canadians have heard of bankruptcy trustees but they don’t know whether they can trust them to do anything for them besides help with a bankruptcy filing.  Okay, for the moment let’s ignore the fact they go through more training than anyone out there to get a license and must maintain professional standards of conduct to keep the license.  Let’s further ignore the fact they go through an RCMP background check before getting a license.  And finally, let’s ignore the fact they are expected to attend continuing education courses while they are licensed.  Let’s instead focus solely on the issue of whether they might be predisposed to encourage you to file for bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy laws in Canada are part of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act of Canada.  Trustees are regulated by the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy.  Pay their website a visit and checkout the first responsibility of a licensed bankruptcy trustee, as set out in the act.  Here it is, verbatim:

The Trustee’s primary responsibilities are:

• Review the situation and counsel the debtor as to available alternatives…..

There you have it.  These are highly educated and trained professionals and our government dictates the very first thing they must do when meeting with you is ensure you know all the alternatives there are to avoid bankruptcy.