Get the licences your trade needs: ESA, TSSA, HCRA, Tarion, Toronto

There is no single contractor licence in Ontario. There is a set of separate regimes run by separate bodies, and which of them apply to you depends on what you actually do rather than on what your company is called.

That is why searching for the answer produces contradictions. Two electricians can both be right and need different things, because one of them does service work and the other builds houses.

What it sounds like from inside

"So according to ESA and the govt of Ontario, we basically can't do any side work unless it's replacing receptacles/switches/lights without a HST number, having a master's license and owning a business"

an electrician on r/electricians

"link up with a good accountant and lawyer incorporate apply for your ECRA contractor license get a corporate bank account."

an electrician listing it from memory

"6) do i need wsib if I'm a one man show? ... 8) TSSA- when they come and do your inspection what are they looking for?"

an HVAC contractor on r/ProHVACR

Who runs what

These are the regimes contractors in this province run into. Which apply to you is a function of your trade and your work, and each body is the authority on its own rules.

ESA, the Electrical Safety Authority. Electrical contracting is licensed. The contractor licence is the company's, and it is tied to a qualified person holding the master electrician qualification. Doing electrical work for hire without it is the thing the quote above is describing.

TSSA, the Technical Standards and Safety Authority. Fuels, gas, boilers and pressure vessels, elevating devices. If you touch gas appliances or fuel lines, TSSA is your regulator and inspections come with it.

HCRA, the Home Construction Regulatory Authority. Builders and vendors of new homes have to be licensed by HCRA. This catches people who think of themselves as renovators but have crossed into building a home.

Tarion. New home warranty enrolment, which runs alongside HCRA licensing rather than instead of it.

Municipal licensing. Cities license trades and renovators separately. Toronto is the one most people meet first, and a licence there does not travel to the next municipality.

Your personal certificate is not the company's licence. A Certificate of Qualification says you are qualified. A contractor licence says the business may sell the work. Plenty of people discover the difference the first time they invoice.

Fees, renewal periods, qualification requirements and who exactly is caught by each are set by those bodies and they change. Get your answer from them, not from a forum and not from here.

Keep them where you can find them

Once you hold a licence, the job becomes not losing it and being able to prove it.

The licence, its number and the day it runs out, in the same place as everything else somebody will ask you for.

Licence number, issuing body, expiry, and a warning before it lapses. Sixty to ninety days is the right window for anything a regulator has to process, because a renewal that needs an inspection is not a same-week job.

Your setup checklist carries the licensing steps that apply to your trade, generated when you chose your activities, so the list of which regimes you are in is not something you have to assemble by searching. That is the bid-ready checklist.

The order that avoids dead time

Qualify the person before licensing the company. Most of these regimes need a named qualified individual. If that is you and your certificate is not in hand, that is the long pole: dealing with Skilled Trades Ontario.

Get insurance quotes before applying. Several licences require proof of insurance, so applying first means waiting twice.

Apply before you need it, not when the job appears. Every one of these has a processing time you do not control.

What it costs

Commercial terms depend on the workflow. Review the relevant AEC Stack product page before you start.

What you get is the list your setup generated and every date once you hold them, in one place that warns you before anything lapses. Which licences your particular work requires is worth confirming with the regulator that issues them.

Open your dashboard and record the licence you already hold, with its number and its expiry. Then look at which licensing rows your checklist still has open.