Canadian vehicle recalls: the register that makes the border crossable

Transport Canada has published a vehicle recall database since 1975. This site reads the whole file on its own schedule and holds 17,846 recalls from it, covering 1975 to 2026. It is the largest register kept here, larger than the American one.

The number that makes the border crossable

A defect does not have one recall number. It has as many as there are countries that publish it: a campaign number in America, a recall number in Canada, a reference in Britain, an alert number in Europe. What it does have only one of is the manufacturer’s own internal campaign code — the number the maker used before any regulator saw it.

Canada publishes that code, as its own column, for 12,304 of its recalls. The American register carries it for 3,828. That difference is why every cross-border comparison on this site exists: the joins are made on a number Canada was willing to print.

On an exact match of that code, after the same normalisation on every side and nothing paired on brand and date: 1,915 codes appear in both the Canadian and American registers, 327 in both the Canadian and European ones, and 109 in all three.

What the register does not say

It does not say when owners were written to. The American register publishes both the date a defect was reported and the date owners were notified, which is what makes the waiting time measurable there; the Canadian file does not carry the second date, so the same measurement cannot be made for Canada. It does not publish a completion rate. And, like every register kept here, it shows only the current wording of a notice and not what that notice said before.

The makes with the most

Counted one make per recall, across the 12,293 Canadian recalls that name one. A recall can carry more than one manufacturer code, and counting codes instead would flatter the larger makers.

Read further

Canada and America sets the two registers side by side on the codes they share. What your register tells you compares four national registers by what each one actually discloses. Recalled abroad first lists the defects another country published before America did.

Source: Transport Canada, Vehicle Recalls Database, full monthly file, open.canada.ca. Read by this site on its own schedule; figures on this page were counted 10 September 2026.