It’s hard enough to find someone’s phone number, but when most cell phone finders and other cell phone tricks only cover the United States, Canadians have an even harder time.

U.S. laws are much different when it comes to regulating cell phones and the searchable cell phone databases that let just about anyone find a cell phone number. But that’s not to say it isn’t possible in Canada too.

Because U.S. citizens put their private phone number on just about anything, it’s easy to make a huge database — even beyond that of a typical public record search. Marketing professionals say that Canadians, however, are less likely to put down their private numbers on forms in the mall or on the Internet. This fact has a lot of cell phone directories setting up shop only in the United States where they can get access to millions of phone numbers easily. Above the border though, there are only a few places that have set up a Canada cell phone directory.

There are positives and negatives to this: Canada cell phone directories have a smaller chance finding a number, but the information is much more likely to be correct. That’s because unlike residents of the United States, Canadians are also less apt to put down fake information on their mall questionnaires and online forms.

Another upside is that the competition for companies that allow you to lookup cellular numbers in Canada is only marginal. So finding a decent service is a lot easier than sifting through the scams and spams that dominate the United States market.

If you need to look up a cell phone number in Canada, try using social bookmarking sites or Google to locate more information about the person. You might stumble onto their MySpace or Facebook profile and can message them directly. Sometimes people also post their numbers onto resumes for job postings. Both may pop up in a Google search result. Although this is unlikely to find someone’s private information this way, it doesn’t hurt to try.

The most reliable way to look up a Canadian cell phone number is to use a private directory.