Choosing a janitorial contractor in Ontario: WSIB, insurance and the scope of work

In Ontario, the most important piece of paper in a janitorial relationship is a current WSIB clearance certificate. If a worker is injured on your property and their employer has no WSIB coverage, the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board can hold you — the principal — liable for the employer's unpaid premiums and, in some circumstances, for the claim itself.

This is not a theoretical risk. It is the reason experienced property managers ask for a clearance certificate before the first clean rather than after an incident. Ask for one, check the expiry date, and ask for it again when it renews.

Alongside it, request a certificate of commercial general liability insurance naming your organization, and confirm the limit. Both documents should arrive within a business day from any contractor who is properly set up.

Most janitorial disputes are not about cleaning quality. They are about two parties having different ideas of what was included. A proposal that says 'clean offices five nights a week' is not a scope; it is a description.

A real scope of work lists every space, every task and every frequency. Washrooms: fixtures cleaned and disinfected nightly, floors mopped nightly, partitions detailed monthly, dispensers restocked and checked twice nightly. Reception: glass entry doors cleaned nightly, fingerprints removed, flooring vacuumed and damp-mopped. Breakroom: counters and sinks sanitized nightly, appliance interiors monthly, floors nightly.

Written that way, the scope becomes a document you can inspect against — and one you can hand to the next vendor without losing six months of accumulated assumptions.

Floor stripping and refinishing, carpet extraction, high dusting, window cleaning, post-construction phases and disinfection cycles are project work, not nightly work. If they are bundled into a monthly figure described as 'as required', you will not know what you are paying for and you will not be able to remove them when a budget tightens.

Ask for them as separate cycles with a stated frequency — VCT stripped and refinished twice yearly, carpet extracted annually, high dusting quarterly. Then you can decide, and your finance team can forecast.

Every contractor performs well during the first ninety days. The question is what happens after that, and the answer is supervision. Ask specifically how the site is inspected, by whom, how often, and what you receive afterwards.

A contractor who answers 'our supervisor drops by' is describing a hope. A contractor who answers 'a named supervisor inspects against the scope monthly and you receive a written report with findings and corrective actions' is describing a system. FILICARE runs boots-on-the-ground management with regular, rigorous site inspections precisely because standards slip when nobody measures them.

Finally, read the exit clause. A rolling monthly agreement with written notice costs a confident contractor nothing. A twelve-month lock-in tells you how much confidence they have in the service, and it removes your only real lever.