Ontario insolvencies hit new peak, double from mid-2021

By Tom Parkin

May 14th, 2026

BURLINGTON, ON

Alberta also hit with high insolvencies, now 23% above the number in BC, which has 20% more population.

Ontario insolvencies double

Ontario insolvencies, monthly, Jan 2021 to Mar 2026

Perhaps “Insolvent Ontario” doesn’t have quite the same ring.

Doug Ford’s government is spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on the formerly illegal practice of using public money to pay for partisan advertising. That big ad buy tells voters he’s protecting Ontario jobs and businesses.

But despite his expensive PR push that you pay for, data shows that increasingly it is insolvency protection that is required in Doug Ford’s Ontario, according to data from the federal Office of the Supervisor of Bankruptcy.

The OSB’s latest monthly tracking of insolvencies — bankruptcies and proposals — was released Monday. In March there were 1,129 bankruptcies and 4,125 creditor proposals in Ontario.

That’s up from the precious month. It’s up from the same month last year. It’s double the number from about four years ago.

Trend to more insolvencies long pre-dates Trump 2.0

As a political slogan, Ford’s “protect Ontario” is designed to implicitly deflect blame for Ontario’s economic malaise onto external forces, presumably U.S. President Donald Trump.

But the insolvency numbers are part of a growing collection of data — including on employment, retail sales and GDP — showing Ontario’s economic weakness set in well before Trump. And that weakness deepened our vulnerability to his tariff attacks.

The number of consumer and business insolvencies in Ontario hit a peak in March, continuing a multi-year trend. In July 2022, when Ford’s PCs were first re-elected, there were 2,762 insolvencies. Since then the number of Ontario insolvencies has almost doubled to 5,254 in March.

Between March 2025 and March 2026 the number of insolvencies in Canada increased 10.2 per cent. But they increased nearly twice as fast — 19.1 per cent — in Ontario, the biggest increase in the country.

Alberta hit with 23% more insolvencies than BC in March

Several provinces are being hit by new peaks in insolvency, but on a per capita basis, Alberta stands out. In March, Alberta had about 23 per cent more insolvencies than neighbouring B.C. even though its population is about 20 per cent smaller.

Insolvencies, March 2026