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Our response:

The best way to determine the price you paid for a stock is to keep the original purchase receipt; however, if you don’t have this information, you have some other options.

If you bought the shares in the brokerage account where you now hold them, your holdings screen or monthly statement shows a “book value” or “cost value”. That’s your cost, according to the brokerage and it’s what they’ll report to the Canada Revenue Agency on your annual trading summary. Sometimes these values are not exact, but they’re usually close enough.

If your shares are in a different account from where you originally held them, when you transferred the shares, your old brokerage likely provided the new brokerage with the book value. If they didn’t, you may wish to contact your previous broker.