The Contractor Verification Playbook: Five Checks Before Work Starts

A contractor verification file has five things in it: a workers compensation clearance issued in your name, a certificate of insurance that covers your dates, a trade licence checked in the registry that governs it, a clear answer on who will be doing the work, and a second clearance pulled before you release final payment.

Most rental operators do half of one of these. They ask for proof, get a forwarded screenshot, and file it. The protection comes from the document being issued to you, current for the whole job, and pulled from the source. A forwarded copy does none of that.

Check 1: Pull the workers compensation clearance yourself

This is the check with money attached to it. Hire a contractor who is behind on premiums and the board can come after you for them.

Ontario's WSIB policy is blunt about it. Without a clearance, the principal may be liable for the contractor's payment obligations to the WSIB, up to the value of the labour portion of the contract. Issuing a clearance is how WSIB waives that right, and it does so only for the validity period of the certificate. Clearances are free and valid for up to 90 days. In construction they are not optional: if work goes ahead without a valid clearance number, WSIB says both the contractor and the person or company who hired them are committing an offence, with a maximum fine on conviction of $100,000.

In British Columbia, the clearance letter has to be addressed to you, and it has to confirm the contractor was active and in good standing for the entire period of your contract. WorkSafeBC's guidance is to get one before the work and again before you make progress or final payments.

In Alberta, WCB puts it in one line: get a clearance before you hire the company or individual, and before releasing payment.

One trap is specific to landlords. WSIB exempts a home's resident or occupant, or a member of their family, who hires a contractor directly for home repairs or renovations. That exemption is written around the person who lives there. If you are hiring work on a unit somebody else occupies, do not assume it reaches you.

Check 2: Read the certificate of insurance for three fields

A certificate of insurance is a snapshot of a policy on the day it was printed. It is not the policy and it does not bind the insurer. Read it for three things and skim the rest.

• The policy period. It has to cover your dates, not the dates the contractor last renewed. A job that runs past the expiry needs a fresh certificate before it gets there.
• Your legal entity, spelled the way it is registered. The name on your title and your own insurance is the name that belongs here. An operating name that does not match the corporation is a problem you discover during a claim.
• Certificate holder or additional insured. These are not the same. Certificate holder means you get notified if the policy cancels. Additional insured is what extends the contractor's coverage to you for liability arising out of their work. If you want the second one, put it in the contract, then check the certificate shows it.

Check 3: Verify the trade licence in the registry that governs the trade

A municipal business licence, an association logo and a wrapped truck are not trade licences. Regulated trades have their own registries, and the registries have public lookups.

Electrical work in Ontario runs through the Electrical Safety Authority. Ask for the ECRA/ESA licence number and check it against ESA's Find a Contractor tool rather than the business card. The licensed contractor is the one who files the electrical notification of work, and ESA treats it as a red flag if a contractor asks you to file the notification in your name. When the work is finished, ask for the Certificate of Acceptance and keep it with the file.

Fuel-burning work is a different registry again. Registered fuels contractors are the only businesses legally authorized to do gas, propane and heating fuel work in Ontario, and TSSA publishes a searchable list of them. Furnaces, water heaters and rooftop units all land here, and this is the check people skip because the invoice says plumbing.

Check 4: Establish who will be on site

The company you verified and the crew that arrives are often two different companies. Ask whether any part of the job will be subcontracted, and get the answer before you sign rather than on the morning of.

The obligation flows downhill. WSIB's position is that when a contractor hires a subcontractor for construction work, that contractor becomes the principal to the sub and has to obtain a clearance from them. That is their duty, not yours. It is still worth a line in your contract saying subcontractors will be cleared and named in advance, because you are handing over access to a unit and you should know whose hands the keys reach.

Check 5: Pull a fresh clearance before final payment

An Ontario clearance runs up to 90 days, and most of them expire on the 20th of February, May, August and November. A job that starts partway through one of those windows can outlive its clearance quietly. WSIB's requirement is a valid clearance for the full length of the job, not for the first day of it.

So make the final invoice conditional on a current clearance. It costs nothing to pull, and it is the last point where you can still hold something back.

The pre-work checklist

1. Get the contractor's legal name and their board account number.
2. Pull the clearance yourself from WSIB, WorkSafeBC or your provincial board, issued to your entity.
3. Request a certificate of insurance that covers your job dates, with your entity named as registered.
4. Decide whether you need to be an additional insured, put it in the contract, and confirm the certificate reflects it.
5. Verify the trade licence in the registry for that trade, not on the estimate.
6. Ask in writing whether any work will be subcontracted, and to whom.
7. Diarize the clearance expiry and the insurance expiry against the job's end date.
8. Pull a fresh clearance before releasing the final payment.
9. File the clearance, the certificate and any Certificate of Acceptance with the work order.

Nine steps, most of them free, and almost all of them one-time for a trade you will use for years. Run it once per contractor and you have a file that answers the question before an adjuster or an auditor asks it.