Ontario Changed the Rules on Job Postings. Most Employers Have Not Noticed.

On January 1, 2026 a new Part of the Employment Standards Act came into force. It governs what has to appear in a job posting, what cannot appear, and what an employer owes a candidate after an interview.

Eight months later, most of the Ontario employers we speak to have never heard of it. That is not carelessness. It arrived without much noise, it sits in a Part of the Act nobody had reason to read before, and the obligations it creates are the kind a business only discovers when someone complains.

Before anything else, one question decides whether the rest of this applies to you.

Do You Have 25 Employees?

O. Reg. 476/24 says that Part III.1 does not apply to an employer that employs fewer than 25 employees on the day the posting goes up.

If you are under 25, none of what follows is a legal obligation. Some of it is still worth doing, and we come back to that below, but you are not in breach of anything.

If you are at 25 or above, all of it applies to you now. The threshold is measured on the day the posting is posted, which means a business moving through the mid twenties can be caught for one posting and exempt for the next. If you are near the line, the safer course is to comply rather than to count.

What Counts as a Job Posting

The regulation defines a publicly advertised job posting as an external posting that an employer, or someone acting for the employer, advertises to the general public in any manner.

Four things fall outside it. 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 performed outside Ontario, or performed both outside and inside Ontario where the outside portion is not a continuation of Ontario work.

Note what is not excluded. There is no carve-out for social media, for a notice in a window, or for a posting placed by a recruiter on your behalf. The phrase “in any manner” is doing real work in that sentence.

The Five Things the Act Now Requires

Compensation. Section 8.2 requires the posting to state the expected compensation or a range. The regulation caps the range at $50,000, so a posting offering forty to one hundred and twenty thousand does not comply. Positions expected to pay more than $200,000, or with a range topping out above that, are exempt.

Canadian experience. Section 8.3 prohibits a requirement for Canadian experience, in the posting or in any associated application form. This one is a prohibition rather than a disclosure, which makes it the easiest to breach by leaving old wording in place.

Artificial intelligence. Section 8.4 requires an employer who uses artificial intelligence to screen, assess or select applicants to disclose that use in the posting. More on this below, because it catches more employers than expect it.

Existing vacancy. Section 8.5 requires the posting to state whether it is for an existing vacancy.

Telling candidates the outcome. Section 8.6 requires an employer who interviews an applicant to tell that applicant whether a hiring decision has been made. The regulation sets the period at 45 days after the interview, or after the last interview where there was more than one, and allows it to be given in person, in writing or using technology.

Artificial Intelligence Is Defined More Broadly Than Most Employers Assume

The regulation defines it 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.

Read that against what your hiring actually runs on. If your applicant tracking system ranks or scores candidates, filters them against the posting, recommends a shortlist, or automatically declines applicants who miss a criterion, you are likely within that definition. Most employers using those features do not think of themselves as using artificial intelligence. They think of themselves as using the software they bought.

The obligation is only to disclose. Nothing in the Act prevents you from using these tools. But the disclosure has to be in the posting, and a line in a privacy policy or on a careers page is not a line in the posting.

If you do not know whether your system does any of this, that is the question to put to your provider this week, in writing.

Not Replying to a Candidate Is Now a Compliance Problem

Section 8.6 is the one we expect to generate complaints, because it turns something extremely common into something unlawful.

Every applicant you interview has to be told whether a hiring decision has been made, within 45 days of their last interview. Not whether they got it. Whether a decision was made. That is a low bar and it is still one most employers miss, because the ordinary practice in a busy business is to contact the successful candidate and let the rest work it out.

Two details matter. The regulation defines an interview as a meeting, in person or using technology, where questions are asked and answers given to assess suitability, and it expressly excludes preliminary screening before candidates are selected for such a meeting. So a quick screening call does not trigger the duty. A real interview does. And the obligation belongs to the employer whether or not a recruiter ran the process.

What to Do About It

None of this needs a project. It needs an hour.

Count your employees. Under 25 and Part III.1 does not apply to you. Then open the last three postings you ran and check four things: do they state compensation or a range, does the range fall within $50,000, do they say whether the vacancy is real, and is there any Canadian experience requirement left in the posting or the application form.

Ask your applicant tracking provider, in writing, whether the system screens, assesses, ranks or recommends candidates, and keep the answer. Then look at how you close out interviews. If interviewed candidates are not hearing anything, that is the gap most likely to produce a complaint.

Write down what you decided and why. If a complaint ever comes, the difference between a business that got it wrong and a business that never looked is the record.

If you are under 25 employees, the compensation and outcome pieces are still worth adopting. Candidates increasingly expect both, and adopting them before you cross the threshold means you are not rebuilding your hiring process in the same week you are trying to grow.

Where This Fits

Part III.1 is not difficult law. It is a small number of specific requirements with a clear threshold. What makes it a risk for smaller Ontario employers is not complexity, it is that nobody owns hiring compliance. In a business of forty people, the job posting is written by whoever is hiring, on the pattern of the last one, and no one has read the Act since before it changed.

That is worth an hour of someone’s attention before it is worth a complaint.