A Contractor Got Hurt at Your House: WSIB, WCB and the Clearance Letter

Hiring a company doesn't end your exposure when someone gets hurt doing work at your house. Crews are routinely subcontracted down to smaller operators, and in most provinces, the person who hired an uncovered contractor can be pursued for the contractor's unpaid workers-compensation premiums once a worker is injured on the job. The fix is a document almost no Canadian homeowner has ever heard of: a clearance letter, requested before the first nail goes in.

Here's how the exposure actually arises, the mechanism in each province, and the one phone call that closes most of it.

The scenario#

You hire a roofing company — a real business, a website, a crew in matching shirts — to replace your roof. Partway through the job, a worker falls from a ladder and is seriously injured. It turns out the roofing company subcontracted the actual labour to a two-person crew that wasn't registered with the provincial workers-compensation board at all.

The injured worker's medical bills and lost income need to be paid from somewhere. Because the crew that was actually on your roof wasn't properly covered, the board that would normally step in and pay a no-fault claim — no lawsuit required — has a gap to fill. In several provinces, that gap can be pursued against you, the person who hired the work, not just against the roofing company that subbed it out.

Nobody signed anything that said "homeowner assumes workers-compensation risk." That's exactly the problem: this exposure exists whether or not anyone in the transaction thought about it.

Why hiring "a company" doesn't make this someone else's problem#

Three separate gaps let this exposure reach a homeowner who did everything that felt reasonable:

1. Subcontracting is normal, and invisible from the outside. The company you hired may be fully registered and covered — and still send subcontractors who aren't. You have no way of knowing this by looking at a truck or a quote.
2. "Bonded and insured" is a marketing phrase, not a checkable fact. It usually refers to general liability insurance, which is a different thing entirely from workers-compensation coverage for the crew's own injuries. A company can be genuinely insured for the damage it causes to your property and have nothing in place for its workers.
3. The board's recovery route runs independently of a lawsuit. Workers-compensation systems exist specifically so an injured worker doesn't have to sue anyone to get paid — the board pays first, on a no-fault basis. But that bargain protects properly registered, covered employers from being sued directly by their own workers. When the actual employer wasn't covered, the worker or the board looking to recover what was paid can look elsewhere — and "elsewhere," on a residential job site, can be the homeowner.

WSIB, WCB, WorkSafeBC: the same idea, three names#

Every province runs its own workers-compensation board, and the acronym changes at the border — the mechanism doesn't.

Ontario's WSIB policy is explicit that a principal who directly retains a contractor for construction work must obtain a clearance certificate confirming the contractor's good standing, keep it valid for as long as the work continues, and that starting work without a valid clearance is treated as an offence for both the person who hired the work and the contractor. BC and Alberta's boards frame it slightly differently but land in the same place: check before you hire, check again if the job runs long, and check once more before the final payment goes out.

The clearance letter: the one thing to actually do#

Request a clearance letter or clearance certificate before work starts. It's free, it takes minutes online, and it tells you directly whether the specific contractor you're hiring is registered and paid up — not a guess based on a truck logo or a five-star review.

• Ontario: WSIB's clearance system is checked through its online eClearance service.
• British Columbia: WorkSafeBC's clearance letter tool lets anyone search a business's clearance status before hiring.
• Alberta: WCB-Alberta's clearance letters confirm whether a contractor carries coverage and is in good standing, and the board recommends checking before work starts, again during the job, and again before the final payment.

Ask for the clearance to name the actual entity doing the work on site — not just the company whose name is on the invoice. If a job is subcontracted partway through, that's the moment to ask again.

One practical signal worth noticing: a legitimate, registered contractor can produce a clearance number or agree to the lookup without hesitation, because it costs them nothing and confirms something true. A contractor who resists, deflects, or claims "that's not how it works for a job this size" is giving you information — not necessarily proof of a problem, but a reason to check directly with the board yourself rather than take their word for it.

What a clearance letter doesn't cover#

A clearance letter confirms one thing: that the named contractor's account was in good standing at the moment it was checked. It doesn't automatically extend to every subcontractor that contractor might bring on later in the job, and it doesn't stay valid indefinitely — Ontario's construction clearances, for instance, are good for a limited window and need to be reconfirmed on longer jobs. Treat a clearance letter as a snapshot of one entity's standing on one date, not a blanket guarantee that covers everyone who ever sets foot on your property for the life of the project.

What about a delivery driver or a gig worker, not a contractor?#

The same underlying mechanism can show up in a lower-stakes-looking situation: a courier or delivery driver slips on your icy steps while dropping off a package. If that driver is covered by their own employer's workers-compensation coverage, the board pays the no-fault claim directly and generally has no reason to look at you at all. But gig and delivery work is exactly the kind of arrangement where coverage status is inconsistent and not something a homeowner can see from the doorstep — and a board that pays a claim for a worker who turns out to have been uncovered can, in principle, pursue recovery from whoever was responsible for the property where the injury happened. It's a narrower version of the same contractor problem: you don't control who shows up at your door, only what you do before assuming everyone who does is covered.

The cash-job exposure: the friend you paid $200 to help with the roof#

The same underlying rule applies in miniature to informal arrangements that never felt like "hiring" anyone at all. In several provinces, paying someone — even a friend, even in cash, even a modest amount — to do certain kinds of physical work at your home can make you their employer for workers-compensation purposes, whether or not you thought of it that way. What counts as ordinary casual or domestic help versus a job that should have been registered differs by province and by board, and the honest answer here is: confirm directly with WSIB, WCB, or WorkSafeBC rather than assuming a small cash payment falls outside the system. If that friend falls off your roof and there's no coverage anywhere, the informal arrangement is exactly what leaves the gap open.

Which of your own policies responds — and where it stops#

Your homeowner liability coverage generally responds to an ordinary injury claim from someone hurt on your property, including many contractors and workers. But the workers-compensation recovery route described above is a different mechanism — a board pursuing unpaid premiums or recovering what it paid an injured worker, not a personal injury lawsuit against you personally. Whether your home policy's liability section responds to that specific kind of claim, and to what limit, is a wording question worth confirming with your broker rather than assuming either way.

Where a personal umbrella or excess liability policy clearly helps: if the situation does turn into a direct claim or lawsuit against you — for negligence in choosing or supervising the contractor, for instance — your home policy's liability limit responds first, and an umbrella above it catches anything past that limit. A $1 million umbrella typically costs $200–$300 a year, with roughly $50–$75 per additional million (estimates based on typical Canadian broker pricing, not quotes) — inexpensive next to a serious injury claim with no coverage underneath it.

The bottom line#

A roof replacement, a driveway repaving, a tree removal — these are exactly the jobs where subcontracting is routine and workers-compensation coverage is easy to assume rather than check. The fix costs nothing and takes minutes: before work starts, ask for a clearance letter naming the actual crew on your property, and ask again if the job changes hands partway through. That single habit closes the gap that "I hired a real company" never actually closed.