Clearance or certificate of insurance?
Last reviewed 27 August 2026. Ontario.
They are asked for in the same email, filed in the same folder, and confused constantly. They cover different risks and they lapse on different days.
Side by side
| WSIB clearance | Certificate of insurance | |
|---|---|---|
| Who issues it | The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, a provincial agency. | The contractor's insurance broker or insurer. |
| What it proves | That the contractor's WSIB account is in good standing, and that the board waives its right to pursue you for what they owe. | That a policy existed on the day the certificate was issued, with certain limits. |
| The risk it covers | You being held liable for the contractor's unpaid premiums. | Damage or injury the contractor causes, to the extent the policy responds. |
| How long | Up to 90 days, mostly expiring on 20 February, May, August and November. | Until the policy expiry date printed on it, usually a year out and on no fixed calendar. |
| How it lapses | Renewal stops when the account falls into arrears. Nobody tells you. | The policy expires, or is cancelled mid-term. Nobody tells you. |
| What it costs the contractor | Nothing, for an account in good standing. | Nothing for the certificate. The policy behind it is the expense. |
The mistake this causes
An office that treats the two as one piece of paperwork tends to collect both at onboarding, file them together, and then track neither. That produces a folder where every trade appears documented and roughly half are currently covered by nothing.
The two go stale in different ways, which is what makes a single review date useless:
- Clearances go stale on a schedule you can predict. The quarterly dates are known years ahead, so the failure is not surprise, it is volume: twenty trades due on one morning.
- Insurance goes stale on a schedule you cannot predict. Every policy renews on its own anniversary, so expiries are scattered across the year, one at a time, on days when nobody is looking.
Which one do I need?
Both, for any subcontractor doing construction work on your site, and neither substitutes for the other. A trade with a current clearance and expired liability coverage is a trade you are exposed on. A trade with a good insurance certificate and an account in arrears is a trade whose unpaid premiums the board can look to you for.
Your own contract usually asks for more than the minimum: coverage limits, your company named as an additional insured, sometimes a specific deductible ceiling. Whether what the trade sent you meets those terms is your call under your own contract, and nobody else can make it for you.
Reading each of them
For the clearance, the fields worth checking are the account number, the legal name, the status, and the period the certificate covers. Legal name is the field that catches people out: businesses operate under one name and hold a WSIB account under another, and a clearance for the wrong entity is not a clearance. See what a clearance certificate is.
For the insurance certificate it is the insurer, the policy number, the general liability limit, and the expiry date. Reading a certificate of insurance goes through what an ACORD 25 shows and, more usefully, what it does not.
TradeClear does this part for you
It checks every trade's WSIB standing with the board each night. It keeps the page the province sent back as proof. It reads the expiry date off the insurance certificate they upload from their phone. And it emails you the morning either one lapses. Fourteen days free. We take a card up front; cancel before day fifteen and pay nothing.
Sources
- Questions and answers: Clearances, WSIB.
- Clearance Certificate, WSIB Operational Policy Manual.
Related
- The expiry calendar, and a reminderThe dates, a calendar file for Outlook, and one email three weeks before each cliff.
- Reading a certificate of insuranceThe four facts worth checking on an ACORD 25, and what a certificate is not.
- What a WSIB clearance certificate isWhat it proves, how long it lasts, and what it deliberately says nothing about.
- Onboarding a subcontractor in OntarioThe paperwork to collect before they set foot on site, and what to diarize.
Written by the team behind TradeClear. TradeClear tracks WSIB clearances and insurance certificates for Ontario general contractors. It keeps records; it does not give legal advice. This page is general information about how the paperwork works. What you owe under the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act and under your own contracts is a question for your lawyer and your broker.