A construction lien is a deadline before it is anything else. Sixty days to preserve it, ninety more to perfect it, and if you miss either the lien is gone — leaving you an ordinary contract claim with no security behind it. Everything else in the Construction Act follows from those two dates.
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Anyone who supplies services or materials to an improvement to land: the general contractor, subcontractors at any tier, material suppliers, workers, and rental equipment providers. You do not need a contract with the owner. The subcontractor two levels down the chain has lien rights against the owner's land even though the owner has never heard of them.
The lien attaches to the owner's interest in the land, which is exactly why it works. A registered lien clouds title, interferes with financing, and stops a sale from closing. That commercial pressure, not the eventual trial, is what usually gets the money moving.
Not every project works that way. On Crown land, municipal projects and certain public premises you do not register against title — you give written notice of the lien to the right party, and the lien attaches to the holdback instead. Leased premises and condominium units have their own rules. Establish which regime you are in before registering anything, because registering against the wrong land creates its own liability.
Preserve within 60 days. What starts those 60 days depends on your position in the chain and on the project: publication of a certificate of substantial performance, completion, abandonment or termination of the contract, or your own last supply of services or materials. Choosing the wrong trigger is the most common way liens are lost, and a return visit to fix a snag does not restart the clock.
Perfect within 90 days after the last day on which the lien could have been preserved. Perfection means commencing an action and registering a certificate of action on title, or the equivalent step where the lien attaches to holdback rather than land. Preserving and then doing nothing is a wasted registration.
There is no relief for lateness. Missing the lien deadlines does not end your right to sue for the money owed — the contract claim survives — but you lose the security. Against a contractor heading into insolvency, that security was the whole point.
Every payer must hold back ten per cent of the value of the work as it is done or certified. Since 1 January 2026 accrued holdback must be released annually rather than at the payer's option: the owner publishes a notice in the prescribed form within 14 days after each anniversary of the contract, pays within the window that follows, and the money then flows down the chain within days at each tier.
Prompt payment runs on its own timetable. An owner who receives a proper invoice must pay it within 28 days or deliver a notice of non-payment within 14 days. A contractor who is paid must pay its subcontractors within 7 days, and the same obligation repeats at every level below.
Money you receive on a project is trust money for the people below you until they are paid. Directors and officers who allow it to be used elsewhere can be personally liable, and that liability follows individuals through a corporate insolvency. It is the most underestimated provision in the Act.
Payment disputes can be sent to adjudication — a fast, interim-binding determination made while the job is running, rather than a judgment years after everyone has moved on.
Do not pay it just to make it go away, and do not pay twice for the same work. Check first whether the lien was preserved within time, whether the claimant actually supplied to this improvement, and whether the amount claimed bears any relationship to the value supplied.
You can vacate a lien from title by paying security into court — the amount claimed plus an allowance for costs, subject to a cap. That frees the title so a sale or refinancing can close while the underlying dispute continues on its own timetable.
A wilfully exaggerated lien, or one registered knowing there is no basis for it, exposes the claimant to liability for the damages it caused. That is real leverage against an inflated claim, but it needs evidence, not indignation.
Homeowners: if you paid your contractor properly and retained the required holdback, your exposure to subcontractors you never hired is generally limited to that holdback. Whether the holdback was actually retained is the question that decides most residential lien files.
Because lien rights arise from supplying to the improvement, not from a contract with you. The protection is the holdback: if you retained ten per cent as required and paid your contractor properly, your exposure to unpaid subcontractors is generally limited to that amount. If you paid everything out with no holdback, that protection is not available.
For extras, generally yes, where they were supplied to the improvement — though a disputed extra will be fought on whether it was authorised. Delay and disruption claims are more difficult and often better pursued as contract claims. Inflating a lien with weak heads of claim is risky, because an exaggerated lien carries its own consequences.
The lien is, but the debt is not. You can still sue for breach of contract, and where money was received on the project and not passed down you may have a trust claim, which can reach directors and officers personally. Those claims have their own limitation periods, so move quickly rather than assuming everything is lost.
A contract cannot validly take away lien rights — provisions purporting to waive them are of no effect. Registering will strain the relationship and may prompt a demand that you vacate it, but the right itself is statutory. The commercial judgment is yours; the legal right is not negotiable.
Much faster. Adjudication is designed to produce an interim binding determination while the project is still running, rather than after the trial of a lien action years later. The determination is enforceable and holds until a court or arbitration finally decides the issue, which in practice is usually never.
Open your file tonight — a licensed Ontario lawyer will confirm everything with you by tomorrow.