Is my contractor licensed in Ontario?

Ontario splits contractor licensing across six registries. Here is which one applies to your trade, what each actually proves, where the answer is that no licence exists — and why a contractor with no WSIB number is usually breaking no rule at all.

Last checked against the registries 8 September 2026.

There is no single Ontario contractor licence, and no single place to look one up. Which registry applies depends on the work — and for some trades the honest answer is that there is nothing to check.

What checking actually gets you

In some trades, unlicensed work is illegal rather than merely unwise. Ontario has 23 compulsory trades. The ones that turn up in a house are electrician (309A and 309C), plumber (306A), refrigeration and air-conditioning systems mechanic (313A), residential air-conditioning systems mechanic and sheet metal worker. Practising one of them without the certificate is against the law. For that work a licence is not a badge of quality — it is the difference between work that was legally allowed to happen and work that was not.

On a new home, the licence is what the warranty hangs off. The HCRA licenses the builder; Tarion pays the claim. The two are joined: someone who is not licensed cannot lawfully be issued a building permit to build a new home (Building Code Act, s. 8(2)(b)) and is not enrolled with Tarion, so there is no statutory warranty standing behind the house.

WSIB clearance keeps somebody else’s debt off your bill — where clearance applies at all. Outside the home-renovation exemption explained below, going ahead without a valid clearance number is an offence committed by both the contractor and the person who hired them. Checking is free and needs no account.

Start with the work, not the company

Ontario regulates by trade rather than by contractor. An electrician and a roofer are not the same kind of question: one is illegal to practise unlicensed, the other has no provincial licence at all. Find the row that matches the work you are having done.

When the answer is "there is no licence"

Roofing, landscaping, painting, general renovation and most handyman work are not compulsory trades in Ontario. Nobody can show you a provincial licence for them, because none exists — and a business claiming to be "licensed" for roofing is either referring to a municipal business licence or to nothing at all.

For that work the checks that still mean something are WSIB clearance, proof of liability insurance, and whether anyone you know has actually used them. But read the next section before you treat the first two as pass-or-fail, because neither is guaranteed to exist even when the contractor is doing everything right.

“He has no WSIB number.” Usually that is lawful.

This is the most misread fact in Ontario renovation, and it is worth getting right before you walk away from a good contractor over it. The exemption is a home-renovation exemption, not a “no employees” exemption. The WSIB’s rule is that a business that only does home repairs or renovations on private residences, where it is hired and paid directly by the homeowner or resident, does not need coverage — though it must still cover any employees it has.

That is your situation exactly: you live there, you hired them, you pay them. A solo renovator with no WSIB number, working on the home you live in, is not cutting a corner.

It starts mattering again the moment you step outside that description. If they have employees, those employees must be covered — the exemption never covered them. If you are not the resident — a rental you own, a property you are developing — you are not the person the exemption describes. The WSIB says the same about clearance certificates: not required when a home’s resident, occupant or a member of their family hires the work, but outside that, construction going ahead without a valid clearance number is an offence committed by both the contractor and whoever hired them, carrying a maximum fine on conviction of $100,000.

Insurance and bonds: what Ontario actually requires

Liability insurance is not something Ontario law requires of contractors generally. There is no province-wide rule to point at. Ontario’s own guide for home renovation and roofing businesses sets out what these businesses must do, and the only insurance obligation in it is WSIB. Carrying cover is normal and asking for the certificate is sensible — but when you ask, you are asking the market for something, not enforcing a rule, and it is worth knowing which of those you are doing. Our own practical advice, offered as ours and not as anyone’s official position: read the certificate rather than filing it, and check that the policy dates actually span your job.

Electricians are the exception, because there it is a licence condition. ESA will not issue an electrical contractor licence without public liability and property damage insurance coverage of at least $2,000,000, and ESA tells homeowners that every Licensed Electrical Contractor carries liability insurance, has Workplace Safety and Insurance Board coverage, and can show an ECRA/ESA licence number. So the ECRA/ESA number you looked up above brings the insurance with it. “Licensed renovator” brings nothing of the kind, because no such licence exists.

Bonds are a public-contract instrument, and a homeowner will never be in that regime. Section 85.1 of the Construction Act requires a labour and material payment bond and a performance bond only on a public contract — defined there as one where the owner is the Crown, a municipality or a broader public sector organization — and only above a prescribed contract price. Nobody renovating a house is covered by it. That is a real difference from Quebec, where the licence itself carries a bond a former client’s claim can be paid from; Ontario has no equivalent, which is why the lookups above are checks rather than protection.

Two more public lookups

Neither is a licence register, both are free, and together they are the closest Ontario gets to Quebec’s published claims list.

What you can hold them to once you have signed

Licensing is one statute; what happens after you sign is another. These rights come from the Consumer Protection Act, 2002, and they apply to a renovation contract whether or not the trade is a licensed one.

Ten days to change your mind — because you signed at your kitchen table. A contract worth $50 or more that you conclude in person somewhere other than the contractor’s own place of business is a direct agreement, and s. 43 gives you 10 calendar days to cancel it for any reason, with no cancellation fee. The trigger is where you signed, not what you bought: sign the identical contract at their office and those 10 days do not exist. If work has already started you can still cancel, but you owe reasonable compensation for the work and materials already provided.

No proper written copy, and you have a year. If what you were given does not contain everything the Act requires, s. 43(2) stretches that cancellation window to one year.

The estimate is a ceiling, not a suggestion. Where an estimate forms part of the contract, s. 10 says the final price cannot exceed it by more than 10% — and if it does, you may require the contractor to charge the estimated price. The exception is extra work you asked for, or a new price you agreed to.

There is no legal cap on a deposit in Ontario. The 10% figure repeated everywhere as a rule is the government’s advice to homeowners, not a limit in the Act. It is good advice, but argue it as advice: a contractor asking for 40% up front is not breaking a law you can point to.

Permits, and which warning signs are real

By default the building permit is your responsibility, not the contractor’s — so being asked to pull it yourself is not, on its own, a red flag. If you want them to handle it on your behalf, put that in the contract and do not let work begin until you have seen the permit.

The warning sign Ontario actually names is missing paperwork of any kind: estimates, contracts, professional licences, building permits. The two versions of it you will really meet are a contractor who tells you no permit is needed, and one who will not show you a permit before starting.

The check came back bad. Where the report goes.

Each regulator handles reports about its own licence and there is no shared front door, so the report has to go to the body that governs the work.

For anything that is not about a licence at all, Consumer Protection Ontario is the route Ontario itself describes on its filing a consumer complaint page — and a business that ignores the ministry twice can end up on the Consumer Beware List linked above.

What a complaint will, and will not, do

Worth knowing before you spend an afternoon on one. A complaint gets the contractor looked at, and it can end in a fine, a condition on their licence, a suspension, a prosecution, or an entry on the Consumer Beware List. It does not get you your money back. Ontario is unusually direct about this on its own page describing what it does with complaints: mediation is voluntary, the ministry cannot force a business to respond or to resolve anything, if the complaint stays unresolved you may pursue the matter in court, and administrative action “may have no direct benefit to consumers”. The HCRA is the same shape — it sends warranty questions, new-home defects, delayed-closing compensation and deposit protection to Tarion rather than handling them itself.

Money comes back through Small Claims Court, or through Tarion on a new home. Which is why the two minutes at the top of this page are worth spending before you hire: afterwards the system can punish the contractor, but it does not make you whole.

What a licence does not tell you

A licence proves someone is allowed to do the work. It does not tell you whether they turned up on time, cleaned up, or charged what they quoted. Those are the things people ask their neighbours about, and no registry holds them.

That gap is what Pros We Know is for: it finds the trades already in your phone's contacts, and when you search it puts the ones your own network has actually hired ahead of strangers. Licence status comes from the registries above; the rest comes from people you know.

Get the free app — iPhone and Android.

Sources

Every registry linked on this page is the official one. Licensing rules change, so check the registry itself rather than this page if something is borderline. Last verified 8 September 2026.

One trap if you go looking for the law yourself: Ontario passed a new Consumer Protection Act in 2023 and it is not yet in force. The statute that governs your contract today is the Consumer Protection Act, 2002 — S.O. 2002, c. 30, Sched. A — which is the one linked above.