A builders lien is a legal charge you register against the property you worked on when you have not been paid, and it is the single most powerful tool a Canadian tradesperson has for getting paid. It ties your unpaid claim to the land itself, so the owner cannot easily sell or refinance until the debt is dealt with. But it is governed by strict deadlines that range from 30 to 90 days depending on the province, and missing one by a single day extinguishes the right permanently. This is the complete guide: what a lien is, the all-thirteen deadline and holdback matrix, how to preserve and perfect it, the deficiency trap, Quebec's hypothec as the exception, and a worked timeline.
What a lien is and how it secures your money
When you supply work or materials to an improvement on land, the lien legislation in your province gives you a claim against that land for the value of what you supplied, even though you may have no contract with the owner. Subcontractors and suppliers at every tier have this right, not just the prime contractor. A registered lien clouds the title, and that is what gives it teeth: an owner who wants to sell, or a lender who wants to advance the next draw, will usually make sure you are paid, or that the lien is bonded off (replaced with security) so the project can proceed.
The lien also attaches, in most provinces, to the statutory holdback: the slice of every payment that each payer in the chain is required by law to keep back as a protected fund for the trades below. Even if the owner has paid the general contractor in full, the holdback is meant to still be there for you. (Quebec is the exception and has no holdback; see below.) The holdback is covered in full in The Statutory Holdback Explained.
Preservation versus perfection: two separate steps
This is the part people get wrong, and it is the difference between getting paid and losing the lien. Securing a lien is a two-stage process and both stages have deadlines.
- Preservation is registering the lien on title (and in some provinces serving it) within the short statutory window after your last day of work. This is the headline deadline that ranges from 30 to 90 days. Miss it and the lien is gone.
- Perfection is starting a court action to enforce the lien (and, in several provinces, registering a certificate of pending litigation or lis pendens) before a second, later deadline. Preserving but failing to perfect also kills the lien.
In Ontario you preserve within 60 days and perfect within a further 90 days, 150 days in total. British Columbia is different again: there is no short perfection window, but a preserved lien lasts one year from filing, within which you must start a court action and file a certificate of pending litigation. The mechanical steps of filing are in Filing a Builders Lien Step by Step.
The complete deadline and holdback matrix
The deadline runs from your last day of supply, or from substantial performance, completion, abandonment or termination, whichever the statute names. Confirm the precise trigger for your situation, because in a few provinces it even depends on the date your contract was signed. The full matrix for all ten provinces and three territories:
- Ontario: preserve within 60 days, perfect within a further 90 days (150 total). Holdback 10 percent.
- British Columbia: preserve within 45 days. No short perfection window: the lien lasts 1 year from filing, but you must start an action and file a certificate of pending litigation within that year. Holdback 10 percent.
- Alberta: preserve within 60 days, or 90 days for concrete work or oil-and-gas well sites. Holdback 10 percent. Projects contracted before 29 August 2022 may still run on the old 45-day rule, so check the contract date.
- Saskatchewan: preserve within 40 clear days. Holdback 10 percent. Note carefully: Saskatchewan is 40 clear days. The 40-to-60-day change that some sources mention is Manitoba's, not Saskatchewan's. Saskatchewan's prompt-payment regime came in on 1 March 2022, but its lien preservation window is 40 clear days.
- Manitoba: preserve within 60 days for all contracts, regardless of when the contract was signed. Holdback 7.5 percent, the lowest in the country. Only the separate prompt-payment regime is limited to new contracts (signed on or after 1 April 2025).
- Nova Scotia: preserve within 60 days. Perfection runs concurrently: you must start an action and register a certificate of lis pendens within 105 days of your last day of work. Holdback 10 percent, dropping to a 2.5 percent finishing holdback after substantial performance.
- New Brunswick: preserve within 60 days. Holdback 10 percent on private projects, 5 percent on Crown projects.
- Prince Edward Island: preserve within 60 days. Holdback 15 percent where the work exceeds $15,000, or 20 percent for contracts of $15,000 or less.
- Newfoundland and Labrador: preserve within 30 days. Perfection runs concurrently within 90 days of last work. Holdback 10 percent. The ultimate limitation is 30 years under section 22.
- Northwest Territories: preserve within 60 days under the new Builders' Lien Act, in force 1 September 2025. Holdback 10 percent. Contracts signed before that date run under the old, now-repealed Act.
- Nunavut: preserve within 45 days. Holdback 10 percent.
- Yukon: preserve within 30 days. Holdback 10 percent.
- Quebec: not a lien. The legal hypothec is registered and served within 30 days of the end of the entire project, with 6 months to bring an action. No mandated holdback. See below.
The traps that catch tradespeople
The deficiency trap. A lien covers the value of work and materials you actually supplied to the improvement. Going back to fix a deficiency or do minor remedial work after the job is substantially complete does not reset or extend your lien clock. The courts are strict. Date your true last day of substantial supply and count from there, not from a later snag-list visit. One day late equals lien extinguished.
Using one province's deadline everywhere. A contractor used to Ontario's 60 days who starts a job in Newfoundland or Yukon (30 days) can lose the lien before even thinking about filing. When in doubt, treat the shorter deadline as the real one and file early.
The concurrent-clock trap. In Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and Yukon, the perfection clock does not restart when you register your lien. It runs from your last day of work alongside the preservation window. In Newfoundland you have 30 days to preserve but only 90 days total from last work to perfect, so if you register on day 29 you have just 61 days left. Contractors used to Ontario's clean 90-days-after-preservation rule routinely miscalculate this.
The contract-date trap. Alberta moved from a 45-day to a 60-day standard deadline on 29 August 2022, so a contract signed before that date may still run at 45 days. The Northwest Territories brought a new Act into force on 1 September 2025; older contracts run on the repealed Act. A tradesperson holding contracts on both sides of a transition date has to track each one separately.
Quebec is a separate animal: the legal hypothec
Quebec has no builders lien. The equivalent is the legal hypothec of construction under articles 2726 to 2732 of the Civil Code of Quebec. Two things make it different, and both catch out-of-province trades cold.
First, if you do not have a direct contract with the owner (most subcontractors and suppliers), you must serve the owner a prior written notice describing your contract and its value before you start work, or you lose hypothecary rights for everything done before the notice lands. There is no grace period and no standard government form. Direct contractors and labourers are exempt from the notice.
Second, the timeline runs from the end of the entire project, not your own last day. You register and serve within 30 days of completion of the work, and you have 6 months to bring an action. There is no mandated holdback in Quebec, so do not expect a 10 percent fund to be sitting there. The legal hypothec does have one strong advantage: it ranks ahead of other registered hypothecs, including mortgages, for the added value your work brought to the property. Quebec is covered in full in Getting Paid in Quebec.
Worked timeline: a $40,000 subcontract in Ontario
You are a subcontractor, last on site 31 May, owed $40,000, and the general contractor has gone silent.
- Pin the deadline. Your last real day of supply is 31 May. In Ontario you have 60 days to preserve, so the lien must be registered by 30 July. A snag-list visit in mid-June does not extend that date.
- Preserve by 30 July. Complete the Ontario claim-for-lien, swear the affidavit and register it on title against the property. This is non-negotiable and comes first, before any negotiation.
- Run adjudication in parallel. Because $40,000 sits within Ontario's prompt-payment regime, you can refer the dispute to ODACC adjudication for a fast binding determination while the lien protects your security. Adjudication does not pause the lien clock, so preserve first.
- Perfect within the next 90 days. To keep the lien alive you must start a court action and register a certificate of action by roughly 28 October (90 days after the preservation deadline). Diary it the moment you preserve.
- Watch the 2-year limitation as the outer wall to commence proceedings on the debt itself.
The lien secured your money against the land; adjudication or the holdback got you paid; the limitation period was the backstop. That layered approach is the whole point.
Common mistakes
- Counting from a snag visit. Going back to fix a deficiency does not extend the clock anywhere. Count from your last day of real supply.
- Preserving but never perfecting. Registering the lien is only half the job. Diary the perfection deadline too, and remember the concurrent clock in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Yukon.
- Mixing up Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Saskatchewan is 40 clear days. Manitoba is 60 days for all contracts at a 7.5 percent holdback. They are not the same.
- Assuming you have a lien in Quebec. You have a hypothec, with a prior-notice requirement and clocks that run from the end of the whole project.
- Waiting for adjudication to finish before preserving. It does not pause the lien clock. Protect the lien now, pursue the fast money in parallel.
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