WSIB clearance expiry dates

Last reviewed 27 August 2026. Ontario.

Most Ontario clearances expire on the 20th of February, May, August and November. That is why the paperwork feels like a flood four times a year rather than a trickle all year round.

The four dates

Why they cluster

A clearance is valid for up to 90 calendar days from the date it is issued. Ninety days is a quarter, and the WSIB runs its clearance cycle on quarters, so a certificate pulled part way through one runs to the end of that quarter instead of ninety days from the day you asked for it.

The consequence is that the certificate you pull on 3 September and the one you pull on 14 October both expire on 20 November. Twenty subtrades onboarded across two months all come due on one morning.

The WSIB says "most" rather than "all", and that word matters when you are looking at your own list. Some clearances sit off cycle, so a roster is usually a big cluster on the quarterly date with a scattered tail either side of it. Working only to the four dates will leave the tail unwatched.

The three weeks before

The work is not the renewal. Clearances renew themselves for any account in good standing, at no charge. The work is finding the handful that will not renew, and finding them before the date rather than after it.

A practical sequence for the three weeks in front of a cliff:

1. Pull the list of every subtrade currently on an active site. Not every business you have ever hired. The exposure is on the contracts where work is actually happening.
2. Check each one now rather than on the date. A contractor who has fallen behind needs time to sort it out with the board, and three weeks is roughly what that takes. Finding out on the morning of the 20th leaves you choosing between sending a crew home and carrying the risk.
3. Chase the ones that come back anything other than clear. The usual answers are an account in arrears, a business that changed its legal name without telling anyone, and an account number nobody in your office ever recorded correctly.
4. Save what the board actually said, with the date on it. A screenshot with a timestamp is worth more than a note in a spreadsheet saying "checked, fine".
5. Check the insurance at the same time. Certificates of insurance renew on the policy's schedule, which has nothing to do with the WSIB's, so a roster that is clean on clearances can still be carrying three expired policies.

What goes wrong when nobody watches the date

The exposure is not abstract. If a contractor owes the WSIB money and you had no clearance covering the period, you can be held liable for what they owe, up to the value of the labour portion of your contract with them. How that liability is calculated is set out separately, because the number surprises people the first time they work it out on a real subcontract.

The second failure is quieter and shows up later. An auditor, an insurer, or the other side's lawyer asks for evidence that a trade was cleared during the window when the work happened. A folder of certificates collected at onboarding and never refreshed does not answer that question, and the answer you want to give is the page the province served on the day, not your recollection.

Sources

• Questions and answers: Clearances, WSIB.
• Clearance Certificate, WSIB Operational Policy Manual.