Holdback used to accumulate quietly for the length of a project and get argued about at the end. As of January 2026, that is no longer the default.
The Bill 216 and Bill 60 amendments to Ontario's Construction Act came into force on January 1, 2026, and the central change is that annual release of the 10% basic holdback is now mandatory on contracts running longer than one year. It is not an option the owner may exercise. It is an obligation with dates attached. (The regime was introduced by Bill 216, the Building Ontario For You Act, 2024, and refined by Bill 60, the Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act, 2025, before it came into force. Much of the commentary calls the whole package Bill 60.)
Before relying on any of it, check the transition rule. For contracts entered into before January 1, 2026, mandatory annual release does not begin until the second anniversary of the contract date falling after January 1, 2026. If you have years of accrued holdback on a legacy project, which is exactly the person this change is supposed to help, your first mandatory release may not arrive until 2027 or 2028.
The new sequence
- Within 14 days of each contract anniversary, the owner must publish a Notice of Annual Release of Holdback.
- No earlier than 60 and no later than 74 days after that publication, the owner must pay the accrued holdback, provided no lien has been preserved or perfected in respect of it.
- Within 14 days of receiving that payment, the contractor must release the corresponding portion down the chain, conditional on no lien having been preserved or perfected in respect of the relevant subcontract.
Each of those is a date on which someone can be in default. That is the practical significance for a subcontractor who has spent three years being told the holdback will be dealt with at the end.
Adjudication now runs 90 days
The window to commence an adjudication was extended to 90 days following completion, abandonment, or termination of the contract. For a subcontract, the window is the earlier of that period and certification of the subcontract or last supply. Adjudication produces a binding interim determination in weeks rather than years, and it exists to keep money moving while a project is live.
It is worth saying clearly, because it is a common misunderstanding: adjudication is not an alternative to preserving a lien. They do different jobs. Adjudication moves the cash. The lien holds security over the land. On a live project with a payment dispute, the right answer is usually both.
What did not change
The lien deadlines. Preservation is still 60 days and perfection still 90 days after that, and neither is extendable. A surprising amount of commentary published this year has blurred the new holdback timelines into the lien deadlines. They are separate regimes and mixing them up is an expensive error.
If you are an owner
The publication obligation is yours, and it is short. Fourteen days from the anniversary is not long on a large project with several contracts running on different dates, and missing it does not make the holdback go away, it just puts you offside. Diarising each contract anniversary and building the notice into your project administration is the whole of the fix.
If you are a contractor or subcontractor
Work out the anniversary date on every contract of yours running past a year, and watch for the notice. If it does not appear, that is a conversation to have promptly rather than at the end of the job, because the amounts accrued over a multi-year project are usually significant and the leverage to collect them is best while the project is live.
For the deadlines that govern liens themselves, see the 60-day deadline and the date it runs from, and the construction lien practice page.
