'Get started now': With deadline fast approaching, there’s still time to prepare, says lawyer
Ontario employers have less than four months to ensure compliance with sweeping new hiring and pay transparency requirements, as the province’s latest employment standards take effect Jan. 1, 2026.
These rules, introduced under the Working for Workers Acts, are designed to make the hiring process fairer, increase transparency, and strengthen protections for jobseekers across Ontario.
“We are sending a clear message to those bad actor employers out there that there are real consequences for bad behaviour,” said David Piccini, minister of labour, immigration, training and skills development, back in 2023.
“We are also supporting jobseekers by taking a balanced approach that gives them greater certainty in the hiring process without adding unnecessary or onerous requirements for employers.”
‘You don’t want to be left scrambling’
The new legislation includes mandatory salary range disclosure in job postings, new obligations to inform candidates about the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in recruitment, a ban on Canadian experience requirements and mandatory response times.
Employers that fail to comply face the highest fines in the country for employment standards violations, with penalties for individuals doubling to $100,000 and repeat offenders facing fines up to $5,000 per infraction.
“Get started now,” urges Duncan Burns-Shillington, associate at DLA Piper.
“January 2026 is the deadline, but the time to audit your job postings and hiring processes is now, it's not in December 2025. Because if there needs to be changes to either compensation structure, hiring processes, workplace policies, that takes time, of course. So, you don't want to be left scrambling.”
According to Joseph Cohen-Lyons, employers still have some work to do.
“I'd say they're aware — I wouldn't say they're necessarily prepared,” says the partner at Norton Rose Fulbright Canada. “I think clients or employers still have some work to do in making sure their postings are compliant with the new requirements.”
External job postings
To begin, employers advertising jobs in Ontario must include clear information about the existence of a vacancy, the expected compensation range, and whether AI will be used in the hiring process — but cannot include a “Canadian experience” requirement.
“If it's just recruiting within your existing employees, so if the job posting is internal only, then those job posting requirements don't apply,” clarifies Burns-Shillington.
He also notes that the rules apply according to where the employee would work, not where the employer is based.
“If the employee’s employment is going to be governed by Ontario law, so if you're living in working in Toronto, even if your boss is in Vancouver or the pay centre’s in Vancouver, that doesn't matter — you're an Ontario employee, these rules are going to apply.”
Pay transparency in job ads
A central feature of the new rules is the requirement to post an expected salary range for each publicly advertised job, with a cutoff for compensation over $200,000.
“At a time when many companies are posting record profits, it is only fair they communicate transparently about how they pay workers,” said Piccini back in 2023.
But how is “compensation” defined exactly? It’s tricky, says Burns-Shillington.
“It's going to refer to wages as that term is defined under the Employment Standards Act. So that includes your base salary, your hourly wage rate; it will also include commissions that you would earn, and it may include bonuses that are not purely discretionary. So, if it's tied to hours of work or efficiency or set formulas, those are non-discretionary, and those bonuses will constitute wages for the purposes of the legislation and for the purposes of these job posting requirements.”
If commissions or bonuses make up a big percentage of the compensation, it may be tough to define a salary range, he says.
“As an employer, you have an obligation to make reasonable efforts to comply with the law,” says Burns-Shillington. “If it's not going to be as easy for some positions, you just have to make best efforts at this at this stage.”
The definition of wages in the Employment Standards is pretty broad, says Cohen-Lyons, and while it doesn’t cover “truly discretionary bonuses,” he says, “I'd say a lot of bonuses will be caught within the definition of wages.”
The law sets a maximum range of $50,000, which is important, he says.
“It eliminates the ability of employers to provide a false range or a meaningless range. You can’t just do zero to a million [dollars], you have to narrow it to a realistic range.”
As for employers concerned about giving away confidential salary info, they’ll have to get past thatsays Cohen-Lyons.
“There’s pretty clear compliance requirements here, so they're going to have to give that range — whether or not that potentially gives competitive information. I mean, that's just an unfortunate casualty of the requirement for compliance.”
Internal pay equity considerations
Burns-Shillington also highlights the importance of internal pay equity given the legislation’s focus on greater pay transparency.
“If you're advertising for a position and you put a range significantly higher than what your current employees in that same or similar position are earning, that's going to raise questions,” he says.
“[It's about] looking internally at your own payroll practices and figuring out ‘How are we going to use this for recruitment as well as retention for our current employees?’”
There will be important employee relations considerations, agrees Cohen-Lyons: “You'll want to make sure that your existing employees are feeling valued, given what the compensation ranges are for new hires.”
That means not only internal audits but looking externally to market as well, to see where you line up, says Burns-Shillington, with some employers looking to be top of the range, while others are more in the middle or lower range — but may compensate for that with other perks.
“You don't have to advertise those other sort of perks in a job posting, but… it's probably a good idea to advertise what else you offer, otherwise, you're going to struggle with respect to retention," he says.
AI disclosure in job ads
Employers must also disclose if AI is used in the hiring process, as the government looks “to take action to ensure workers aren’t excluded from the job market because of technological biases and… their privacy rights are protected.”
The new law defines AI as “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.”
The definition is pretty broad, says Burns-Shillington, and the disclosure is generally expected in the job posting.
“People are starting to get a better understanding of AI systems and algorithms and all that. And I think this captures everything, or is intended to, so if you are using any sort of automated process — so it’s not a human making that that decision, it's left up to the machine — then you have an obligation to disclose that.”
But for employers, the requirement is to disclose whether or not AI is used in in recruitment — so the intake, processing and analysis of candidates — but not exactly how it's being used or why it's being used, says Cohen-Lyons.
'Canadian experience' ban
Ontario is also banning Canadian work experience as a requirement in job postings or application forms. The government says this move will help more internationally trained immigrants work in their fields and address labour shortages: “For far too long, too many people arriving in Canada have been funnelled toward dead-end jobs they’re overqualified for. We need to ensure these people can land well-paying and rewarding careers that help tackle the labour shortage,” said Piccini.
At this point, there’s nothing additional prescribed by the government on this limitation, says Burns-Shillington.
“They do leave open the possibility that there may be further teeth to this... so, if you say you need five to 10 years of experience for this job, you can't limit that to jobs performed within Canada only, right? There has to be a recognition of work experience elsewhere, wherever that might be.”
‘Ghosting’ not allowed
Larger employers are also required to respond to every candidate for a publicly advertised job within 45 calendar days after an interview — but that does not include preliminary screening or internal hires.
There is some flexibility here, as the response can be in writing or a phone call, says Burns-Shillington, adding it would be wise for employers to include calendar reminders in their recruitment process to ensure compliance.
If not done already, HR might want to do a review of their job posting templates to make sure the additional criteria are covered off, he says.
“I’d [recommend] automating some of those processes about following up after the interview as well... if you're only interviewing a handful of candidates, there’s not a big uplift to follow up. But for some of these jobs, you're going to be recruiting or speaking to one hundred, a couple hundred, so, that can become more of a burden in those cases.”
Employers need to have the internal monitoring in place to meet the various requirements around pay transparency and anti-ghosting, says Cohen-Lyons.
“They'll need to make sure that they have the infrastructure and procedures in place to make sure that they're monitoring and engaging in compliance.”
