Canada Statutory default interest (Interest Act)
Canada Statutory default interest (Interest Act) is 5 percent. Last checked against the official source on 10 Aug 2026.
Canada's federal default interest rate: 5% per annum under s. 3 of the Interest Act whenever interest is payable but no rate is fixed by the agreement or by law. Judgment interest is provincial and separate.
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| Current value | 5 percent |
|---|---|
| In force from | — |
| Official source | Interest Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. I-15, s. 3: 'Whenever any interest is payable by the agreement of parties or by law, and no rate is fixed by the agreement or by law... the rate of interest shall be five per cent per annum' |
| Last verified | 2026-08-10 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
The federal gap-filler rate: whenever interest is payable by agreement or by law and no rate is fixed, 5% per annum applies Canada-wide. Static since the Interest Act 1900 — no indexation, no update mechanism; effective_from is left null because the rate pre-dates machine-usable effective dating (the citation is to the R.S.C. 1985 consolidation). SCOPE TRAP: this is a contractual-DEFAULT rate, NOT a judgment-interest rate. Pre- and post-judgment interest is PROVINCIAL and varies: e.g. Ontario's Courts of Justice Act ss. 127-129 sets quarterly bank-rate-based rates, and each province differs — do not blend the provincial regimes into this series. Also s. 4: where a written contract states a rate for a period of less than a year without an annual equivalent, the recoverable rate is capped at 5% per annum.
Get it programmatically
curl https://usaref.dev/v1/ca/statutory-interest
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://usaref.dev/v1/ca/statutory-interest/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://usaref.dev/provenance/ca/statutory-interestOther Canada series: Policy Interest Rate · Goods and Services Tax (GST) · VAT registration threshold · Federal Minimum Wage · General (Statutory) Holidays · Consumer Price Index (Inflation Rate) · Federal Corporate Income Tax Rate · Withholding tax rates · Federal Personal Income Tax Rates · Statutory social-insurance contributions · Bank of Canada exchange rates
The same figure elsewhere: Costa Rica · Dominican Republic · El Salvador · Guatemala · Honduras · all 10