The Canadian experience ban: what it means for your job search

Since 1 January 2026, section 8.3 of Ontario's Employment Standards Act, 2000 has prohibited an employer with 25 or more employees from including any requirement related to Canadian experience in a publicly advertised job posting, or in any application form attached to it.

If you have moved to Canada and been told your experience elsewhere does not count, this rule was written for you.

What is prohibited

The statutory wording is broad: "any requirements related to Canadian experience." Ontario reads that as covering three things.

• Canadian work experience. "Must have Canadian experience", "3+ years of Canadian work experience required", "no international candidates."
• Canadian education credentials. A requirement that your degree or diploma be from a Canadian institution.
• An established Canadian professional network or client base.

The prohibition covers the application form as well, so a screening question that filters on any of these is caught by the same rule.

What is still allowed

The ban is on requirements related to Canadian experience. It is not a ban on everything with the word Canadian in it. An employer may still require:

• A Canadian professional licence or registration where one is legally required to do the job. This is the stated exception. A provincial engineering licence, a nursing registration, a CPA designation.
• Knowledge of Canadian regulations or standards where the role genuinely needs it — Canadian payroll legislation, provincial building codes.
• Legal entitlement to work in Canada. A different question from experience, and an employer is allowed to ask it.
• Language proficiency where the role requires it.

The line is between where you got your experience and what you can do.

It reaches further than the ESA

Even where the ESA does not apply — an employer under 25 staff, or a federally regulated one — a Canadian experience requirement is still exposed.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission's policy on removing the "Canadian experience" barrier states that "a strict requirement for 'Canadian experience' is prima facie discrimination (discrimination on its face)" under the Human Rights Code, and can be justified only in narrow circumstances. The burden sits on the employer to show it is a genuine, job-related requirement.

Human rights law has no 25-employee threshold. Federally regulated employers face the equivalent analysis under the Canadian Human Rights Act.

What to do about a posting that breaks the rule

You can apply anyway. The requirement is unenforceable as a posting term, and plenty of employers simply have not updated a template.

If you want to raise it, the Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development handles Employment Standards Act complaints, and you do not have to have applied to make one. For the human rights route, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario takes applications directly.

The other things a posting now has to tell you

The same amendments give you four more pieces of information before you apply:

• The expected pay (s.8.2). A range, spanning no more than $50,000, unless the role pays above $200,000.
• Whether AI is screening you (s.8.4). If a machine ranks or filters applications before a person sees them, the posting has to say so.
• Whether the job actually exists (s.8.5). Pipeline postings must say they are pipeline postings.
• An answer within 45 days (s.8.6). If you are interviewed, the employer must tell you the outcome within 45 days of your last interview.

That last one is worth knowing. Being ghosted after an interview is not just rude in Ontario now.

Where these rules do not reach

Worth knowing so you are not surprised. They do not apply to employers with fewer than 25 employees, to federally regulated employers such as banks, airlines and telecoms, to Crown employers, or to roles performed entirely outside Ontario. A posting for a Vancouver-only job is not breaking Ontario's rules by omitting a salary — British Columbia's own pay transparency legislation is the one to look at there.

How this board uses the rule

Every posting here is scanned for Canadian experience requirements before publication, and the result is shown on the posting with the section it comes from.

We flag postings that conflict rather than hiding them, and rank them below postings that comply. You can see for yourself what an employer did and did not disclose.

This is not legal advice

This page explains the rules in general terms. Primary sources: section 8.3 of the Employment Standards Act, 2000 and the OHRC policy. If you think an employer has broken one and you want to act on it, the Ministry of Labour is the place to start.