There is a piece of folklore in Canadian incorporation content that says NUANS is required in roughly eight provinces. It is repeated on dozens of incorporation sites, including, until recently, one of our own guides. It is not correct, and the distinction is worth getting right, because ordering a report a registry never asked for is money and turnaround time spent for nothing.
The authoritative source is Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, which administers the NUANS system. Its provincial and territorial guidance sorts every jurisdiction into three groups: those that require you to obtain a NUANS report yourself and submit it, those that run the name search internally as part of the application, and those that do not use a name search of this kind at all.
The short answer
The full jurisdiction table
| Jurisdiction | Do you supply a NUANS report? | How the name gets checked |
|---|---|---|
| Federal (CBCA) | Yes, for a named corporation | Corporations Canada examines the NUANS report you file with the articles |
| Ontario | Yes, for a named corporation | Ontario Business Registry requires a NUANS report dated within the validity window |
| Alberta | Yes | Not available from the registry directly; ordered through a private search provider |
| New Brunswick | Yes | Not available from the registry directly; ordered through a private search provider |
| Nova Scotia | Optional, and worth it | The Registry searches the name itself, but supplying your own NUANS dated within 90 days cuts the search fee sharply |
| Saskatchewan | No, and it will not be accepted | Saskatchewan requires its own provincial name-search report; a NUANS report cannot be substituted |
| Manitoba | No, and it will not be accepted | Name reservation runs through the Companies Office on its own database |
| Prince Edward Island | No | Name search is handled inside the application process |
| Yukon | No | Name search is handled inside the application process |
| British Columbia | No | BC runs its own Name Request system; a Name Request is still required for a named company |
| Quebec | No | The Registraire des entreprises administers name review under Quebec's own rules |
| Newfoundland and Labrador | No | ISED lists no NUANS requirement, but NL still requires a separate name reservation before you incorporate |
| Northwest Territories | No | ISED lists no NUANS requirement, but NWT uses its own Application for Name Search and Reservation |
| Nunavut | No | ISED lists no NUANS requirement, but Nunavut uses its own Name Reservation Request form |
No NUANS required does not mean no name step
This is the trap in the table above, and it is worth stating plainly before anyone books a filing date on the strength of it. Saskatchewan requires a name reservation and will not accept a NUANS report; you must obtain a Saskatchewan name-search report instead. Manitoba reserves names through the Companies Office on its own database. Newfoundland and Labrador requires a name reservation with its own fee and its own 90-day window. Both territories that ISED lists as requiring nothing, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, publish their own name search and reservation forms. British Columbia requires a Name Request for any named company.
So the honest summary is narrower than the headline. Four jurisdictions want a NUANS report from you. Nearly all of the rest want something, just not that. The practical question is never whether you need a NUANS report in the abstract; it is what this particular registry wants to see before it will accept a name.
Why so many sites get this wrong
Two reasons. The first is historical drift. Several registries used to ask for a NUANS report and moved the search in-house as they modernised; the content describing the old process was never updated. The second is that NUANS reports can be ordered for jurisdictions that do not require them. A search provider will happily sell you a Saskatchewan or Nova Scotia report, and the existence of the product gets mistaken for a requirement.
Nova Scotia is the clearest case where buying a report nobody demanded still pays for itself. The Registry of Joint Stock Companies charges a materially higher fee to run the name search for you than it charges when you hand in an eligible NUANS report dated within the previous 90 days. The report costs money, the discount is larger, and the arithmetic favours supplying your own.
There is a legitimate reason to buy a report a registry did not demand, and it is worth separating from the mistaken one. A voluntary NUANS search is a risk check. If you are about to build a brand around a name, spending forty dollars to see the twenty closest existing names across Canada before you commit is cheap information, whether or not a registry asked for it.
The extra-provincial wrinkle
Registering an existing corporation to carry on business in another province is a separate question from incorporating there, and the name rules can differ. Ontario, for example, reviews the name of an extra-provincial corporation registering in the province and may require a NUANS report even though the corporation already exists somewhere else. A corporation that was incorporated federally and is now expanding into Ontario should assume a name check is coming rather than assume its federal approval carries over automatically.
Numbered corporations skip all of it
No jurisdiction in Canada requires a NUANS report for a numbered corporation. If the filing is urgent and the brand name can wait, incorporating as a numbered company and registering an operating name later is a legitimate and common route.
A note on the federal process
Corporations Canada has streamlined name review for straightforward online incorporations, and you will see claims that a NUANS report is no longer needed federally. Treat that with care. The federal name-granting rules still turn on whether a proposed name is confusing with an existing one, and a report remains the standard evidence an examiner reviews for a named corporation. The practical advice has not changed: if you want a word name federally and you want to know your odds before you file, get the report.
How long a report lasts
A NUANS report is conventionally treated as valid for 90 days from the date it is generated. If the filing has not gone through within that window, the report has to be re-run. That clock is the single most common source of wasted spend on name searches, particularly where a client takes several weeks to settle on a structure after the name was searched.
Ordering a report through Korporex
Korporex orders NUANS preliminary name-search reports for federal filings and for every provincial and territorial jurisdiction that supports them, at a flat fee per proposed name, with multiple names on a single order. Korporex is not a law firm and does not advise on whether a particular name will be approved; what it does is get the search run and the report back to you so that you, or your client's counsel, can make that call.