Two deadlines, neither of them extendable.
Ontario's Construction Act gives anyone who supplies services or materials to an improvement a claim against the property. To keep it you have to do two things in order.
Preserve, within 60 days
Register the claim for lien against title. What the 60 days runs from is set by section 31, and it is not a matter of what your contract says or a question of fact to be argued. The Act assigns the trigger based on your role on the project and on whether the work was supplied before or after substantial performance of the contract.
| Your role | Work on or before substantial performance | Work after substantial performance |
|---|---|---|
| Contractor (s. 31(2)) | 60 days from publication of the certificate or declaration of substantial performance | 60 days from completion, abandonment or termination of the contract |
| Everyone else (s. 31(3)) | 60 days from publication of the certificate or declaration | 60 days from the earlier of last supply and certification of the subcontract under s. 33 |
Two consequences follow, and both catch people out. A contractor's clock is never triggered by last supply at all, so it can have started months before they left site. And a subcontractor's lien can be split across two different trigger dates, with the pre-substantial-performance portion expiring on one date and the balance on another. If a certificate of substantial performance was published while you were still working, that is the date to check first.
Termination has its own machinery. A notice of termination must be published within 7 days of the contract being terminated, and where more than one is published it is the first that starts lien expiry running. Whether one was published, and when, is a title and registry question rather than something you can take on trust from the other side.
Perfect, within a further 90 days
Commence the action and register a certificate of action. The 90 days runs from the last day on which the lien could have been preserved, not from the day you actually registered it. Registering early does not shorten your perfection window: preserve on day 10 and you still have until day 150.
A lien that is preserved but never perfected expires, but it does not come off title by itself. It stays registered until it is discharged or vacated by court order, which is a problem for the owner and a false comfort for the claimant, whose expired lien secures nothing however long it sits there.
These deadlines are not like limitation periods. There is no discoverability argument, no relief for a near miss, and no agreement between the parties that extends them. Sixty days is sixty days.
One narrow piece of breathing room: where the last day falls on a weekend or a holiday, or the land registry office is closed or otherwise unavailable that day, the deadline moves to the next day it is open. That is a reason to know your date precisely, not a reason to aim for the last day.
Public work: do not register against title.
On a school, a hospital, a courthouse, a municipal building or a railway right of way, the ordinary rule does not apply. Where the premises are Crown land, municipal land, or a railway right of way, the lien does not attach to the land at all. There is nothing to register against, and a claim for lien registered on title is not a preserved lien.
Instead the lien attaches to the holdback and other amounts owing, and you preserve it by giving written notice of lien to the owner within the same 60 days, under sections 16(3) and 34(3). On Crown premises the notice goes to the office prescribed for that purpose; on municipal premises, to the clerk. The deadline is exactly as unforgiving, and the method is completely different.
This is the single most expensive mistake available on this page. A subcontractor on a public job who registers against title, and only finds out on day sixty-five that it was the wrong step, has no lien and no way back. In a region with this much public infrastructure work, establishing who owns the land is a day-one question, not a detail.
What the lien actually does for you.
An unpaid invoice makes you a creditor. A registered lien makes you a problem on someone's title. That is a different thing entirely, and it is the whole point of the exercise.
An owner with a lien registered against the property generally cannot close a sale, complete a refinancing, or draw the next advance under construction financing until the lien is dealt with. Lenders will not fund over it. That creates a commercial reason to resolve your invoice that has nothing to do with whether your position on the merits is right, and it is why lien claims settle at a rate ordinary debt claims never approach.
It also explains the urgency. The same claim, brought on day fifty-five, is a negotiation. Brought on day seventy, it is ordinary debt collection: slower, weaker, and exposed to the risk that the money is gone by the time you get judgment.
What changed on January 1, 2026.
The Bill 216 and Bill 60 amendments are the most useful development for contractors in years, and most of the guidance online has not caught up with them. Bill 216, the Building Ontario For You Act, 2024, introduced the regime; Bill 60, the Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act, 2025, refined it before it came into force.
- •Annual holdback release is now mandatory on contracts running longer than a year. The owner must publish a Notice of Annual Release of Holdback within 14 days of each contract anniversary, and pay no earlier than 60 and no later than 74 days after publication, provided no lien has been preserved or perfected in that period.
- •The contractor must flow its share down within 14 days of receiving payment, again conditional on no lien having been preserved or perfected in respect of the relevant subcontract.
- •Adjudication now runs 90 days from completion, abandonment or termination of the contract. For a subcontract it is the earlier of that window and certification of the subcontract or last supply.
- •The 60 and 90 day lien deadlines did not change. If a source tells you otherwise, it has misread the amendments.
Those release dates are enforceable obligations rather than a matter of goodwill, and each one is a date on which an owner can be in default. Check which regime your contract falls under before relying on that.
The transition rule matters more than the headline. 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 are sitting on years of accrued holdback on a legacy project, your first mandatory release may not arrive until 2027 or 2028. The right is real; for most long-running contracts it has not landed yet.
What this looks like in numbers.
A mechanical subcontractor finishes on site on 3 March and is owed $147,000, made up of two unpaid progress draws and accrued holdback. The first question is not the 3 March date. It is whether a certificate of substantial performance of the head contract has been published, because if one was published in January, the lien for all work supplied on or before that date expired in March and was already gone before anyone looked at the calendar. Assume here that none was published, so last supply governs under s. 31(3). The figures are invented to show how the timeline works, not drawn from any file.
| Step | Deadline | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Check for published substantial performance | day one | Decides which trigger applies; none published here |
| Last supply of services | 3 March | The 60-day clock starts |
| Preserve: register claim for lien | by 2 May | Lien registered for $147,000 (recoverable amount is a separate question) |
| Perfect: action and certificate | by 31 July | Security preserved; miss it and the lien expires |
| Owner vacates lien by posting security | any time | $147,000 plus the lesser of $250,000 and 25% paid into court; title clears |
| Practical result | — | Claim now secured by court funds, not by a debtor's solvency |
Registering for $147,000 does not secure $147,000 against the owner. The amount you claim and the amount you can recover from an owner are two different numbers. Under sections 17(3) and 23, an owner's exposure to a subcontractor is generally limited to the holdback it was required to retain, plus any amount still owing to the payer after it receives written notice of the lien. On a project where the holdback is thin and the owner has already paid the contractor out, the recoverable figure can be a fraction of the lien. Sizing that gap early is what tells you whether the exercise is worth running at all.
Note what the last row does. Once the owner posts security to clear title, the sub is no longer chasing a company that might be insolvent in eighteen months. It is arguing about money already sitting with the court. That change in position is what the sixty days buys, and it is why the deadline is worth more than the merits of most disputes.
Illustration only. Not real figures, not a quote, and not a prediction of any outcome. Trigger dates, holdback treatment and lienable amounts turn entirely on the specific contract and the facts of the project.
If you are the owner and a lien has landed on your title.
Do not pay a disputed invoice simply to make it go away, and do not assume you have to wait out a lawsuit before your deal can close.
- •Vacate it by posting security. The amount claimed plus the lesser of $250,000 and 25% of that amount for costs. Title clears, your transaction closes, and the fight continues against the money rather than the building.
- •Attack a defective lien. Liens registered late, against the wrong parcel, or by a party with no lien rights are vulnerable to a discharge motion.
- •Attack an inflated one. Section 35 makes a claimant who wilfully exaggerates a lien liable for the damages that follow. A lien padded with delay claims and lost profit is not just weaker, it is a liability for the person who registered it.
When you should not call me.
Some construction files are not worth what they cost to run, and you should hear that before you spend anything.
- •The owner is already insolvent and the land is fully encumbered. If the property has no equity left, the security you are fighting for may be worth nothing, and a title search answers that before you commit. But do not write the file off on the mortgage alone, because the priority rules in section 78 are more favourable than most claimants assume. A prior mortgage takes priority only to the lesser of the advances made before the first lien arose — that is, when the first services or materials were supplied to the improvement, not when you registered your claim — and the actual value of the premises at that time. Liens also beat a building mortgage to the extent of any holdback deficiency, and beat advances made after a lien was preserved or written notice of lien given. A fully encumbered title is a reason to check the dates and the advance history, not a reason to assume you are out.
- •Your claim is really a delay and lost profit claim. Those can be good claims, but they largely do not belong in a lien, and running them as one invites a section 35 problem. That is a contract action, and it should be priced and planned as one.
- •The balance is small and the relationship matters. If you want to work for this general contractor again and the sum in dispute is modest, a lien is a loud instrument. Sometimes a properly drafted demand and a notice of adjudication does the job without ending the relationship.
- •It is a residential renovation dispute with a homeowner over workmanship. These become defence-and-counterclaim files about deficiencies very quickly, and the economics rarely work for either side. Small Claims Court is often the honest answer.
Questions from both sides of the site
How long do I have to register a construction lien in Ontario?
Sixty days to preserve, then a further ninety days to perfect. Preserving normally means registering the claim for lien against the title to the property. Perfecting means commencing a court action and registering a certificate of action. Neither deadline can be extended, by agreement between the parties or by a judge, which makes them unlike almost every other deadline in civil litigation. What the sixty days runs from is set by section 31 according to your role and whether the work predates substantial performance, and it is frequently not your last day on site. A contractor's sixty days runs from publication of the certificate or declaration of substantial performance for all work supplied on or before that date, and from completion, abandonment or termination for work after it; last supply is not a trigger for a contractor at all. For a subcontractor or supplier, work before substantial performance runs from publication, and work after it runs from the earlier of last supply and certification of the subcontract under section 33, so a single lien can be split across two expiry dates. On Crown, municipal and railway lands the lien does not attach to the land and you preserve instead by giving written notice of lien to the owner.
What happens if I miss the 60-day lien deadline?
You lose the security over the land, not the debt. Your contract claim survives and you can still sue for the money in the ordinary way, and depending on timing you may still be able to start an adjudication. What disappears is the leverage: a registered lien stops an owner refinancing, closing a sale, or drawing on construction financing, and that commercial pressure is usually what gets a stalled invoice paid. After the sixty days you are an unsecured creditor in a queue, which is a much weaker position and a much longer road.
Can I register a lien without a written contract?
Yes. A lien arises from supplying services or materials to an improvement, not from signing a document, so verbal agreements, purchase orders and email instructions can all support a lien. What the absence of a written contract changes is the evidence: the value of your work and the date of last supply both become harder to prove. Site attendance records, delivery slips, dated photographs, texts with the site supervisor and your own invoicing history do that job. No paperwork is a reason to move faster, not a reason to assume you have no claim.
A lien has been registered against my property. How do I get it off title?
You post security with the court and the lien is vacated from title, usually within days. The security is the full amount claimed plus a further amount for costs, being the lesser of $250,000 and 25% of the amount claimed. Your title is then clear, so a sale or a refinancing can close on schedule, and the dispute continues against the money posted rather than against your land. That is normally far better than paying a disputed invoice under pressure. Where the lien was registered out of time, against the wrong property, or is grossly inflated, it can be challenged or discharged outright instead. Note that a lien which has expired because it was never perfected does not fall off title on its own: it stays registered until it is discharged or vacated by court order, so an expired lien still needs a step taken to clear it.
What is construction adjudication and should I use it as well as a lien?
Adjudication is a fast interim dispute process under the Construction Act that produces a binding determination in weeks rather than years, designed to keep money moving while a project is still live. It is not an alternative to preserving a lien, it is the other half of the strategy: adjudication moves the cash, the lien holds the security over the land. Since the 2026 amendments you have ninety days after completion, abandonment or termination of the contract to start one; for a subcontract the window is the earlier of that period and certification of the subcontract or last supply. On a live project with a payment dispute, doing both is usually the right call.
What changed in the Construction Act on January 1, 2026?
The Bill 216 and Bill 60 amendments made annual release of holdback mandatory on contracts running longer than one year. Bill 216, the Building Ontario For You Act, 2024, introduced the regime and Bill 60, the Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act, 2025, refined it before it came into force. The owner must publish a Notice of Annual Release of Holdback within fourteen days of each contract anniversary, then pay the accrued holdback no earlier than sixty and no later than seventy-four days after publication, provided no lien has been preserved or perfected in that period. The contractor must pass its portion down within fourteen days of being paid, again conditional on no lien preserved or perfected in respect of the relevant subcontract. Watch 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, so on a legacy project the first release may not arrive until 2027 or 2028. The window to commence adjudication was also extended to ninety days after completion, abandonment or termination. The sixty and ninety day lien deadlines themselves were not changed.
Can I lien for the full amount I am owed, including extras and delay costs?
You can lien for the value of the services or materials you supplied to the improvement, which is not always the same as everything you believe you are owed. Approved extras that were actually performed generally form part of the lien. Pure delay damages, loss of profit on work never performed, and claims that are contractual rather than tied to supply are more contentious and in many cases do not belong in the lien amount even though they may be perfectly good claims in the action. Inflating a lien is a genuine risk: section 35 of the Act makes a claimant who wilfully exaggerates liable for the resulting damages, and an obviously padded lien invites a motion instead of a settlement.
Who pays the legal costs in a construction lien dispute?
Ontario follows the loser pays rule, so a successful party normally recovers a portion of its legal fees on a partial indemnity basis, which in practice is usually well under half of what was actually billed. Lien work tends to be economic anyway, because the security over title creates settlement pressure that an ordinary debt claim does not. Many liens resolve on payment long before any hearing, precisely because the owner needs clear title more than it needs to win the argument. On smaller balances that leverage is often the entire value of the exercise.
Go deeper
Getting advice on a construction lien.
The first conversation is free and it is usually enough to tell you your trigger date, whether a lien is worth registering, and what the property will actually bear. I act for contractors, subcontractors and suppliers chasing payment, and for owners, developers and general contractors defending and clearing liens.
General legal information about Ontario construction law, not legal advice. Reading this page does not create a solicitor and client relationship.