Pest Control near you

Correct identification comes first, because each pest calls for a different approach. These are the ones exterminators see often in Canadian homes, along with the clues they leave behind.

Health Canada describes proper pest management as a coordinated approach: monitoring the number and types of pests in and around your home and using control techniques that don't always rely on a pesticide. Spraying on a fixed schedule whether or not pests are present does the opposite, exposing your household to products it may not need while often missing the reason the pests came in. Integrated pest management rests on four steps.

Bed bugs are hard to eliminate on your own. Health Canada strongly recommends hiring a licensed professional pest control operator if you have them, and stresses that any treatment works only when physical control methods and prevention are used along with it. Professionals may use registered insecticides, steam or heat; Health Canada notes that bed bugs die at 50°C.

Your part matters as much as theirs. Health Canada advises washing clothes and bedding in hot water and drying them on the hottest setting, vacuuming often, including mattresses, bed frames and baseboards, and sealing the vacuum bag in plastic before throwing it out. Cleaned items should stay in sealed plastic bags or bins with tight lids until the problem is over. Inspect second-hand furniture carefully before bringing it home, and never buy a product without a Pest Control Product (PCP) registration number: unregistered pesticides are illegal in Canada.

Health Canada registers pest control products and notes that some provinces and territories require training and licensing for people who apply them professionally. In Ontario, the Pesticides Act requires a pesticide exterminator licence to apply pesticides commercially on any property that you or your employer don't own or farm, and structural extermination is one of the licence types.

In Quebec, the rules under the Pesticides Act make a certificate mandatory for people who sell or use pesticides in sectors where a permit is required, and application in pest management is one of the certified activities. Wherever you live, ask for the licence or certificate number of the technician who will treat your home.

Wildlife falls under provincial wildlife law rather than pesticide rules. Under Ontario's Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act, a landowner can have an agent remove an animal that is damaging their property. A wildlife removal business may capture and release the animal but not kill it, must release it within 1 kilometre of where it was caught and within 24 hours, and must treat it humanely. Other provinces, including Quebec, set their own rules, so ask the company how its methods comply where you live.

The exterminator should give you written preparation instructions for your pest and treatment, and following them closely makes a real difference to the result. They usually include the following steps.

Many infestations aren't solved in a single visit. Insect eggs can hatch after a treatment, rodents keep arriving until every entry point is sealed, and bed bugs often need more than one round. A sound treatment plan spells out how many follow-up visits are included, what each one checks and how progress is measured, usually with monitoring traps or inspections of the same spots.

Ask what the guarantee covers and for how long, what you must do to keep it valid, such as fixing a leak or storing garbage properly, and whether it covers the pest returning or only the areas treated. With wildlife, the follow-up should confirm the animal has left, with no young left behind, before the entry point is sealed for good.