Ontario job posting rules, in force January 2026

Ontario changed what a job posting has to say. The rules came into force on 1 January 2026 and live in Part III.1 of the Employment Standards Act, 2000, sections 8.1 to 8.7.

They are not guidance. They are statute.

One thing worth knowing before the detail: the Act creates the duties, but most of the numbers — the 25-employee threshold, the $50,000 range cap, the $200,000 exemption, the 45 days, the three-year retention, and the definition of "publicly advertised job posting" itself — are set by regulation, O. Reg. 476/24. The Act repeatedly says "as may be prescribed" and the regulation is what prescribes it. That matters because the numbers can change without the Act changing.

Who they apply to

Three conditions have to hold before the disclosure duties bite.

The posting is publicly advertised. The regulation defines this as "an external job posting that an employer or a person acting on behalf of an employer advertises to the general public in any manner", excluding four things: a general recruitment campaign that does not advertise a specific position, a general help wanted sign that does not advertise a specific position, a posting restricted to existing employees, and a posting for work to be performed outside Ontario.

The employer has 25 or more employees on the day the posting goes up. The count is of individual employees, not full-time equivalents — a part-time or casual worker counts as one, regardless of hours. It includes employees on leave, probationary employees, homeworkers, and employees across all Ontario locations. Related employers treated as one employer under the Act are counted together.

The position is not performed entirely outside Ontario. The regulation excludes postings for positions where the work will be performed outside Ontario, and roles involving work both inside and outside Ontario where the outside work "is not a continuation of work performed in Ontario". A role that will only ever be done in British Columbia is outside these rules, whatever the employer's head office says.

Crown employers and Crown agencies are exempt. So are federally regulated employers — banks, airlines, inter-provincial rail and trucking, telecommunications, broadcasters, Canada Post and the federal public service — because their workplaces are governed by the Canada Labour Code, not by Ontario's ESA at all.

The six requirements

1. Disclose the expected compensation — s.8.2

Section 8.2(1): "Every employer who advertises a publicly advertised job posting shall include in the posting information about the expected compensation for the position or the range of expected compensation for the position."

Section 8.2(3) makes the range "subject to such conditions, limitations, restrictions or requirements as may be prescribed", and section 4 of the regulation prescribes it: "a range of expected compensation shall not exceed an amount equivalent to $50,000 annually." So $85,000–$135,000 is fine; $85,000–$140,000 is not.

The requirement does not apply where the expected compensation, or the top of the range, is more than $200,000 a year.

A posting that says "competitive salary" no longer meets the standard.

2. Disclose the use of artificial intelligence — s.8.4

Section 8.4(1): an employer who "uses artificial intelligence to screen, assess or select applicants for the position shall include in the posting a statement disclosing the use of the artificial intelligence."

You do not have to describe the system. Stating that AI is used is enough.

The obvious question is what counts, and the regulation answers it. "Artificial intelligence" means "a machine-based system that, for explicit or implicit objectives, infers from the input it receives in order to generate outputs such as predictions, content, recommendations or decisions that can influence physical or virtual environments."

That is a wide net, and deliberately so. Resume parsing that ranks or shortlists produces recommendations from input, so it is in. So does automated video assessment, and any scoring applied before a human reads an application. A keyword filter that simply excludes applications missing a required certification is closer to the line — it applies a rule rather than inferring — but if a machine is narrowing your field, the safe answer is yes.

3. No Canadian experience requirements — s.8.3

Section 8.3(1): "No employer who advertises a publicly advertised job posting shall include in the posting or in any associated application form any requirements related to Canadian experience."

Ontario reads "requirements related to Canadian experience" broadly. It captures requirements for Canadian work experience, Canadian education credentials, and a requirement to have an established professional network or client base in Canada.

The stated exception is professional licensing and registration. Where the law requires a Canadian licence to do the job — a provincial engineering licence, a nursing registration, a CPA designation — requiring it is not prohibited.

This is also the one requirement that reaches beyond the ESA. The Ontario Human Rights Commission's policy on removing the "Canadian experience" barrier says "a strict requirement for 'Canadian experience' is prima facie discrimination (discrimination on its face)" under the Human Rights Code. That analysis does not depend on the employer having 25 staff.

4. State whether the vacancy exists — s.8.5

Section 8.5(1)(a) requires "a statement disclosing whether the posting is for an existing vacancy or not."

Both directions are required. If the role is open, say so. If the posting exists to build a pipeline rather than fill a job, the posting must state that there is no existing vacancy. Pipeline postings are not prohibited. They just have to be honest.

5. Tell interviewed applicants the outcome — s.8.6

Section 8.6 requires an employer who interviews an applicant to provide "the prescribed information" within "the prescribed time period". The regulation sets that at 45 days after the interview or, where there is more than one, 45 days after the last one.

The notice may be given in person, in writing, or using technology — phone, video call, email, text, or an update to a portal the applicant was given a link to.

What is not permitted is silence.

6. Keep the records for three years

Per Ontario's guide, copies of the posting and any associated application form must be kept for three years after public access to the posting is removed, including every revised version and copies of anything the posting linked to. Information given to interviewed applicants must be kept for three years after it was given.

If you run a job board, s.8.7 applies to you

This one is easy to miss because it binds platforms rather than employers, and it applies regardless of the 25-employee threshold.

Section 8.7 requires an operator of a job posting platform to have a mechanism for users to report fraudulent postings and to display it conspicuously, to have a written policy on how it handles fraudulent postings, and to keep that policy posted.

We are a job posting platform, so this binds us. Ours is here, and the reporting form is here.

How Hire a Canadian handles this

Every posting is checked against these requirements before it goes live, and the result is shown on the posting itself, including which requirements were not met and which section each one comes from.

The posting form asks the questions the legislation asks, so an employer filling it in honestly produces a posting that states what the rules ask for. Postings whose text contains those statements rank above those whose text does not.

We do not block a posting that falls short. These rules bind employers, not us, and plenty of employers are legitimately out of scope. What we do is show the reader what was and was not stated.

Where we say a posting is out of scope, that is based on what the employer told us about their size and industry. We have not audited it.

Enforcement, nine months in

As of late September 2026, we have not found a published enforcement action, prosecution or ministry bulletin specific to Part III.1. Read nothing into that. Employment standards enforcement usually begins with complaints and compliance orders that are not individually published, and a duty does not lapse for being quietly enforced — the requirements above bind from the posting's first public appearance, whatever has or has not been prosecuted yet.

This is not legal advice

This page summarises the requirements as we read them, in order to build a check into our posting form. It is not legal advice and it is not exhaustive. Ontario is also not the only province with rules about job postings — British Columbia has its own pay transparency legislation, and Quebec has French-language requirements that reach job advertising.

Primary sources: Part III.1 of the Employment Standards Act, 2000, O. Reg. 476/24 for the prescribed thresholds and definitions, and Ontario's guide to requirements related to publicly advertised job postings. If the answer matters to your business, ask an employment lawyer.