The Canadian Revenue Agency says there are over 10 million cheques that were issued to Canadians which haven’t been cashed, totaling over 1.7 BILLION DOLLARS.
Specifically, as of October 2025, the CRA has 10,279,770 uncashed cheques, valued at $1,752,004,000
The average amount of each cheque is around $170.00
Reasons for this can vary, anything from it getting lost in the mail, misplaced in your house or simply accidentally thrown away.
This happened to me a few years ago, I called the CRA for something unrelated and the rep showed me how to check if I had unclaimed money and I did!
Government issued cheques never expire, so if $$ is owed to you, you can still get it.
The easiest way to check is to sign into your My CRA account
If you don’t have one, it’s easy to create it, that is actually how I ended up speaking to a rep, you need to talk to them (in some cases or all?) when you create your account.
Once you’re in, there is a section called Uncashed cheques – click that to see if you have money waiting to be collected.
You will find that by clicking on Uncashed cheques on the My Account Overview page or the Accounts and payments page
