Well, it's not quite true that you or a creditor can't get Equifax or TransUnion in the US to simultaneously pull their Canadian Bureau reports. There's a nominal additional $10 approx. Not all potential creditors will be bothered, but some do as you can see from various blogs and posts.
http://www.canadatotwincities.com/credit_cards.html
Sort of a moot point because it's hard to establish credit in the US without creditor reference letters from various financial institutions you've been successfully dealing with in Canada. Otherwise, it's like starting from scratch. Technically, although the bureaus may be separate, they have acess to access to the same credit data warehouses.
If you've got judgments, repossessions, a gazillion R9"s and a 1976 Ford Pinto to your name and work at KFC, your chances of getting US credit is pretty minimal whether or not the credit reports are separate. However, having a profession and lived there a few years, I assume you must have already established other lines of credit.
Laws are morphing every year and each new privacy act or modification ultimately lessens it through forcing us to make our personal information more easily accessed by parties with only the most perfunctory of reasons.
Anyhow, a lot of things in your initial description didn't add up when I read it a second time. The fact you've already had a Quebec lawyer acting for you and had initial bank settlement negotiations indicates that. Since they made a reduced offer of 80% which you staunchly refused, it suggests the default was certainly not accidental and you are entertaining the thought you may well be free from the consequences of walking away from the debt.
Or if you're willing to settle, then perhaps only for a nominal amount like 10% or 20%. As collection lawyer, Mark Silverthorn, and other collectors visiting the forum have mentioned, banks generally don't come down in settlement offer percentages until the debt gets fairly old. You might feel they should make an exception in your case as you've "made it across the border;" and so they should be willing to take what they can get.
Maybe that's partially true. But you've got to realize that recovery managers in banks are a (mentally) wooden lot who aren't terribly accustomed to decisions that don't follow head office template schedules. Collections doesn't tend to attract the brightest minds in finance.
Besides hoping to be immune from the impact of Canadian negative credit info harming your US reports, you also are trying to cover your ass from the legal aspect. Certainly logical, but I'm not sure why your Montreal lawyer wouldn't have been able to give you a little more indication what immunity from legal action you would have in the US.
Perhaps Canadian lawyers aren't familiar with all the details of the process serving procedures for judgment enforcement in American states. A guy like Mark Silverthorn would know as he has an office in Buffalo, deals with the American FCRA. To boot, he used to work as a collection lawyer for Global Credit and Collections. (How lucky can you get?) But I think he wants a lot of money.
Anyhow, the problem weighing on your mind seems to be: If I walk away from this debt, what can they do to me down here if they take me to court up in Quebec? I was on the wrong track about the negligence thing by one of their managers because of the misleading information you posted on Friday.
Well, it's impossible to know all the logistical minutiae of how court orders are implemented in each US court district, but I think it's pretty safe to say: if they want to get a judgment against you in Quebec, they don't have to personally serve you by sticking the thing in your hand when you're playing hard to find. Same thing if there's a problem with legal intricacies of delivery via mail.
Consult with your Montreal lawyer again about them getting a default judgment if you become difficult to serve. You really don't want that to happen for all sorts of nasty reasons like escalating post judgment interests and all the US firms out there buying up defaulted judgments. It seems like such a judgment could be readily enforced. Irregardless, you wouldn't want such a thing hanging over your head.
Alternatively, your case might be one where it would be worthwhile to give a guy like Mark Silverthorn a call.
Ray