On a construction file the law rewards whoever moves first. Sixty days after your trigger date, and it is often not your last day on site, the strongest leverage you will ever have is gone.
Still within 60 days? Read what to do when you are unpaid on a construction job first. A lien must be preserved by registration on title within 60 days, and perfected by starting an action and registering a certificate of action within a further 90 days. Neither deadline can be extended, by agreement or by a judge.
Ontario's Construction Act gives anyone who supplies services or materials to an improvement a claim against the land itself. That security is what separates a construction debt from an ordinary unpaid invoice, and it is why a lien gets paid when a demand letter does not: an owner who cannot refinance, sell, or draw on construction financing with a lien on title has a commercial reason to resolve that has nothing to do with the merits.
The Two Deadlines That Decide Everything
- Preserve, within 60 days. Normally by registering the claim for lien against title. Section 31 fixes what the clock runs from, according to your role and whether the work predates substantial performance. For a contractor, work supplied on or before substantial performance runs from publication of the certificate or declaration, and work after it from completion, abandonment or termination; last supply is not a trigger for a contractor at all. For everyone else, work before substantial performance runs from publication, and work after it from the earlier of last supply and certification of the subcontract under s. 33, so one lien can carry two expiry dates.
- Perfect, within a further 90 days. Commence the action and register a certificate of action. The 90 days runs from the last day the lien could have been preserved, not from the day you registered it. A preserved lien that is never perfected expires, but it does not come off title by itself: it stays registered until discharged or vacated by court order.
On Crown land, municipal land and railway rights of way the lien does not attach to the land at all. There is nothing to register against, and a registered claim is not a preserved lien. You preserve by giving written notice of lien to the owner within the same 60 days, under ss. 16(3) and 34(3). On a school, hospital, courthouse or city facility, confirming who owns the land is a day-one question.
Missing the 60 days does not erase the debt. You still have a contract claim, and often an adjudication route. What you lose is the security over the land, which is usually the only reason a slow payer moves at all.
What Changed on January 1, 2026
The Bill 216 and Bill 60 amendments to the Construction Act came into force at the start of 2026 and they change how money moves on longer projects. 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 the accrued holdback 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 portion down within 14 days of receiving payment, conditional on no lien preserved or perfected in respect of the relevant subcontract.
- Adjudication now runs 90 days from completion, abandonment or termination of the contract, extended from the previous window. For a subcontract it is the earlier of that period and certification of the subcontract or last supply.
- The 60 and 90 day lien deadlines were not changed. Anyone telling you otherwise has misread the amendments.
The annual release provisions are the most useful change in a decade, and they create new dates on which an owner can be in default. Check the transition rule before relying on them: 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 long-running legacy project the first mandatory release may not arrive until 2027 or 2028.
If You Are the Owner and a Lien Has Landed on Your Title
Do not pay simply to make it disappear, and do not assume you have to wait out a lawsuit before you can close a sale or a refinancing.
- Vacate the lien from title by posting security with the court: the amount claimed plus a further amount for costs, being the lesser of $250,000 and 25% of the amount claimed. Title clears, the deal closes, and the fight continues against the security rather than against your property.
- Challenge an inflated or defective lien. Liens registered out of time, against the wrong parcel, or for amounts that bear no relationship to the work are vulnerable. Section 35 of the Act makes a claimant who wilfully exaggerates liable for the resulting damages.
- Discharge it outright where it is expired or defective on its face.
Adjudication: Getting Paid While the Project Is Live
Adjudication produces a binding interim determination in weeks rather than years. It is not a substitute for preserving a lien, it is the other half of the strategy: adjudication moves the money, the lien holds the security. On a live project with a payment dispute, doing both is usually right.
"Almost every construction file I see arrives late. The ones that arrive on day fifty-five settle. The ones that arrive on day seventy become ordinary debt collection, which is a different and much weaker thing."
Who I Act For
Contractors, subcontractors, suppliers and trades chasing payment, and owners, developers and general contractors defending liens, resisting inflated claims, and getting title cleared so a transaction can close. Construction disputes are commercial disputes: both sides pay for counsel and both sides want the file resolved rather than litigated into the ground.
Related work: debt collection and judgment enforcement where the lien deadline has passed, commercial leasing where the improvement is a tenant fit-out, and civil litigation generally.